Ranged Attacks and Attacks of Opportunity

[someweirdguy]

So, I'm prefacing this with an apology that the following is probably one of the silliest rules arguments I've ever seen, let alone been involved in.

I'm currently involved in a lively discussion about Ranged Attacks and how they do (or do not) provoke attacks of opportunity. The person I'm talking with is under the impression that because of how things are listed in the Table "Actions in Combat", making a Full Attack with a Ranged Weapon does not provoke attacks of opportunity. His argument is that because the Full Attack option says it does not provoke an attack of opportunity, then any ranged attacks made during such an action would therefore not provoke attacks.

I've directed him towards feats such as Snap Shot, Improved Snap Shot, and Point Blank Master which explicitly state "Normal: Making a ranged attack provokes attacks of opportunity", but he went on to state "In any case, it does not state a specific type of action, and therefore only modifies actions that would provoke an attack of opportunity, like a standard action ranged attack."

I know the answer is "Making a ranged attack provokes attacks of opportunity", but can anyone point me to an unequivocal place in the rules where that is stated? Or even better, can a Paizo employee come and do a facepalm and state it so I can just link to someone official saying his argument is ridiculous? ;)

[Cheapy]

The column has the superscript that points to this:

Quote:

1 Regardless of the action, if you move out of a threatened square, you usually provoke an attack of opportunity. This column indicates whether the action itself, not moving, provokes an attack of opportunity.

The Full Attack action by itself does not provoke. It says nothing about the constituent parts of the action though.

The act of making a ranged attack provokes attacks of opportunities, according to the table.

A full attack of ranged attacks will not provoke for making the full attack, but it will provoke for each and every ranged attack you make as a part of the full attack.

Related, the charge action by itself doesn't provoke AoOs, but the movement made as part of it does provoke AoOs. By his argument, the movement would not provoke.

There's also this post by James Jacobs on the topic, although. I bring this post up because there was someone making the same argument your friend did, and he was using a post by James as justification for your friend's argument.

[Cheapy]

And if his next recourse is to say you can only provoke once per action (in this case, full round action), this FAQ shows that to be completely false.

[Carbon D. Metric]

The best I have for right now, still looking, I know its here somewhere.

[Grick]

someweirdguy wrote:

The person I'm talking with is under the impression that because of how things are listed in the Table "Actions in Combat", making a Full Attack with a Ranged Weapon does not provoke attacks of opportunity.

The second column in Table: Actions in Combat is labeled "Attack of Opportunity1"

That footnote (1) says "Regardless of the action, if you move out of a threatened square, you usually provoke an attack of opportunity. This column indicates whether the action itself, not moving, provokes an attack of opportunity." (italics mine)

For example, the full-round action Charge doesn't provoke, however you may still provoke while charging by leaving a threatened square.

Likewise, the full-attack action itself does not provoke. However, if you use the full-attack action to perform an act that does provoke, then that act will still provoke. Attacking with a ranged weapon, unimproved unarmed strike, or unimproved combat maneuver all provoke, regardless of whether they are done with the attack action or with a full-attack action.

Jason Bulmahn (Lead Designer) speaking about the intentional change in having ranged touch attacks provoke like all other ranged attacks wrote:

the homogeny of ranged attacks working in a similar way, spell or not, was just simply cleaner from a rules perspective.

FAQ wrote:

When you cast a spell that allows you to make a ranged touch attack (such as scorching ray), and an enemy is within reach, do you provoke two attacks of opportunity?

Yes, you provoke two attacks of opportunity: one for casting the spell and one for making a ranged attack, since these are two separate events.

Note: there's no action specified. It's making a ranged attack that provokes, not the specific action taken to do so.

[Herbo]

If Full Attack removed or over-wrote the action type (it doesn't but I'm just playing Devil's Advocate here), then it wouldn't qualify for any of the conditions of a melee attack either using the line of thinking presented in the OP.

Now I don't have a high enough mastery of game system minutiae to point out specific problems this would cause, but I'm fairly certain a number of melee attack effects wouldn't trigger any longer on a Full Attack which would make some classes/monsters sad pandas.

Hypothetical wrote:

Ted: I'm going to go full attack and slice this (thing) to ribbons! OH and I get to add (melee attack effects) on top too since I haven't used (those abilities) yet today!

GM: Nope...sorry, full attack =/= melee attack Ted.

Ted: *lunges across table, pencil in hand*

[someweirdguy]

Thanks for the quick responses guys. I'll link him to some of the James Jacobs quotes and point out that the table states that Attack(ranged) is the action stated as provoking (already tried the Whip one).

The whole thing is in a thread over on the Pathfinder_RPG subreddit if anyone wants to see it.