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Situation:
A large room contains a pool, which sits in the middle of the room like a regular swimming pool. Water's edge is roughly a foot from the rest of the floor of the room.
A PC is standing on the edge of the pool, about 10 feet away from a scrag, which is wading in the pool at the edge. His waist is actually at the waterline and he is able to attack any creature from his position in the water with no penalty.
Does the PC have higher ground on the scrag? The scrag is large and wading. The water is only one foot below the floorline, and the scrag is waist high; he could very nearly kiss a halfling in the party on the mouth.
What say the community?
Yes. High ground is determined by, well, ground. For the scrag, that's at least five feet below the PC's ground.
Note that the effective height variance is similar to if the PC was fighting while mounted, which also grants a high ground bonus to targets on foot at the same elevation no matter what size those targets are. Similarly, note that a storm giant does not get a high ground bonus for attacking a dwarf even though the giant towers over the dwarf.
Would the pool be considered a trench as on this post by Maveten citing the Core Rules:
"Trenches on page 431 saying: Creatures outside a trench who make a melee attack against a creature inside the trench gain a +1 bonus on melee attacks because they have higher ground."
On this HERE.
The scrag is not 5 feet below the pc's ground:
PC ground is *0*
Water is -1 foot below pc's ground. Scrag is +5 above top of water.
That's like saying someone is swimming in a lake which is 200 feet down, their ground is there!
Except by your situation, the Scrag still has ground to stand on, the example you cite is saying because the ground is 200 feet down, that's where they're currently positioned. Airborne combat doesn't work that way.
It works based on height and position, which in game terms is calculated in 5 foot increments. The Scrag's foothold is 5 feet below where the PC's foothold is. Therefore, the PC has the higher ground (not having to swing at the feet of the Scrag), and thusly it becomes easier to hit the more vulnerable parts of the Scrag's body (i.e. face, eyes, etc.), which the +1 to hit simulates, and not its feet or legs.
By your logic, with both creatures on even ground, the Scrag would get +1 Elevation Bonus to hit the PCs because he's simply taller; that doesn't make sense, considering the rules for larger creatures actually apply penalties to hit, not bonuses. Since there is no such RAW that says or supports this, your theory is wrong, ergo our definition of what constitutes Elevation Bonus is more supported (and thusly more correct).
Remove the water and put ground where the scrag's feet currently are. The scrag would be standing on ground at least five feet below the ground the PC is standing on. Since the relative positions in your actual description are the same, the PC gets the higher ground bonus.
So higher ground can be defined as:
The area where you "feet" are determines where your "footing" is, thus a creature who is anywhere "below" your footing is on "lower" ground than you.
?
Essentially yes.
Let's remove the creatures themselves for a moment. We have an elevated area at 20 feet tall.
There's another area adjacent to it that's very hilly, leading up to a mountain. It scales at a rate of 10 feet high per 5 feet long.
Anything beyond the 20 foot area we originally cited has an exponential increase of 2 foot height for every 1 foot in length, ergo anything from that direction is considered "higher ground" than the original 20 foot area.
Now let's take this same exact area. We have your Scrag standing at the 20 foot tall area. A PC is charging down from the Mountain, moving down at a rate of 10 feet in height for every 5 foot square he moves. Being adjacent to the Scrag in game mechanics shows that he is still at most 10 feet higher than the Scrag in footing (and at the very least, 2 feet higher).
In game mechanics, creatures who engage in melee combat that are on a higher elevation than their opponent have an easier time to hit the more vulnerable spots of the creature (since they have gravity and position in their favor).
So if a halfling standing on hillock is fighting a giant who is standing one ground 5 feet below the halfling the halfing has higher ground...
Sounds ridiculous to me.
Instead of the Halfling stabbing at the giant's toes, he's stabbing at his now easier to reach guts and face.
Doesn't sound ridiculous at all when you think about it.
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Anyone with knowledge of combat training knows higher ground stands for a certain aspect of battle tactics. A simple wikipedia check will show this:
High ground is a spot of elevated terrain which can be useful. Fighting from an elevated position is easier for a number of reasons. Soldiers will tire more quickly when fighting uphill, will move more slowly, and if fighting in formation will have little ability to see beyond the soldiers in front of them. Likewise, soldiers fighting on the hill won't get tired as quickly, will move faster, and will be able to see farther when in formation, aiding them in making smart tactical maneuvers. Furthermore, soldiers who are elevated above their enemies can get greater range out of low-speed projectiles like rocks and javelins. Likewise, rocks and javelins will have less range when thrown uphill.
Very steep and/or rocky terrain, like mountain sides, can be an obstacle to tanks and armoured personnel carriers, or in the past to cavalry and war elephants. For example, in the Soviet war in Afghanistan, mujahideen guerrillas based themselves in the mountains of Afghanistan, thereby protecting themselves from the Soviet motorized divisions. This forced the Soviets to rely heavily on helicopters to conduct the war, but the United States gave the mujahideen FIM-92 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, which, arguably, combined with the defense of the mountains, was able to win the war for the mujahideen. The high ground and anti-aircraft missiles made it possible for the mujahideen to use guerrilla warfare against the Soviets without being wiped out. High ground was also employed in the 1423 Battle of Horic in Bohemia, where Taborite soldiers took to high ground, forcing the Utraquist cavalry to dismount to attack them, and also rendering their cannons ineffective. Taborite soldiers were eventually able to make a downhill charge and wipe out the remaining Utraquists. Here again, high ground played a crucial role in the outcome of the battle.
However, getting the high ground is not always advantageous. In Battle of Jieting of the Three Kingdoms period of China, Shu Han forces occupied a hilltop, where Cao Wei forces soon surrounded and isolated the Shu forces from water supplies and reinforcements. The Shu forces suffered a humiliating defeat, and the Shu northern expedition had to be aborted.
We're playing a game with giants and pixies and dragons and oozes. The combat system is a gross abstraction and is logically inconsistent in pretty much every way from a pure simulationist perspective. With two people that are basically the same height, high ground is easy to figure out, but should a giant get high ground bonuses against a pixie? Should high ground bonuses apply at all when attacking a black pudding? This doesn't even get into game balance issues, which can and often do trump "realism".
Having to answer all of these questions would complicate the game and slow it down for no real benefit to those playing it. So we make an abstract rule, give the GM free reign to modify the rules if and when they don't make sense, and get to playing. The abstract rule is, higher ground means higher ground, not higher head or arms or whatever. If that's unplayable to you, then go and house it, but diatribes and Wikipedia citations about historical battles won't solve anything regarding the text.
Wait until you see the mass combat rules. You'll probably have an aneurysm. ; )
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Being mounted doesn't guarantee higher ground bonus. Here's the full rule:
"When you attack a creature smaller than your mount that is on foot, you get the +1 bonus on melee attacks for being on higher ground."
There's no definition that I can find regarding what higher ground is. But keep in mind that everything is designed with the small and medium sized characters in mind. A gigantic monster will have higher ground already considered in it's attack and AC. So if you raise a PC's height, you effectively remove some of the benefit the creature has built it.
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The RAW on mounted combat seems to have telltale wording regarding higher ground and therefore just because you are on higher ground you don't necessarily obtain a bonus to attack.
Since there isn't any text regarding high ground other than this, it's pretty clear to me footing doesn't matter.
With that rule, a halfling wouldn't get a higher ground bonus if he simply stepped onto a table vs. a giant. That makes sense.
I think a good definition of higher ground bonus would be if the opponent has to shift his entire focus upward and definitively away from other fields of vision, this grants the attacker a higher ground bonus. Footing is irrelevant.
In the case of the scrag in the pool, it's just like the scrag was a halfling and the PC a giant. The scrag's head is on level with the PC's chest; it appears to really be a situational decision.
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Saying that footing is irrelevant for higher ground bonus isn't accurate, though. In the case of the Mounted Combat, the effective footing of the Mounted character is several feet above the footing of the character on the ground. Using your reasoning, a human will always have high ground over a halfling.
If you want to ignore footing, then think of it this way. Assume character A wants to swing a sword at Character B of approximately equal size. To hit his chest, does he swing level, up, or down? If level, nobody has high ground bonus. If up, character B has high ground. If down, character A has high ground. Now ignore the actual size of the combatants, but that isn't figured into the abstraction.
The halfling on a hillock against the giant below it doesn't strictly scan to me. I don't know that I would give it to him. A halfling on a table against a human, though, I might. I'd imagine part of that, though, is an unstated assumption that how I think of higher ground only really applies within one size category. Applying higher ground outside of one size category differences, though, is a nightmare in any event. If there were a corresponding low-ground penalty, then it would be much easier to adjudicate how things applied between multiple size-category differences.
Edit:
Since there isn't any text regarding high ground other than [mounted combat], it's pretty clear to me footing doesn't matter.
False statement. There's also the trench rules, which are most easily interpreted as based on footing.
It seems to me that if the scrag is in a pool in which the water level is at the ground level of the PC, the PC is on higher ground due to the scrag being in a trench of sorts. The pool, since the mouth of it is at ground level of the pc, is a trench of sorts and the scrag is in it.