Is it possible to attack a creature 2 squares away at a diagonal with reach?
My GM recently said "no" before TPKing our entire party by 5-foot stepping past our reach weapon line. He claims that it is 15-feet away and not 10-feet, and is therefore out of range of our reach weapons.
(I personally find the idea of there being diagonal "gaps" in the reach radius, in a game that has no facing no less, to be completely ridiculous.)
What is the attacker's reach? Just like movement, the first diagonal square is 5 feet and the next is 10.
What is the attacker's reach?
The attackers were all medium and small creatures with 5-foot reach. They knocked the party members down one by one, then swarmed in on the fallen foe to perform coup de graces whenever possible. At least one PC had a polearm, but the enemy totally bypassed it by moving in diagonally.
It was vicious.
Sounds like GM had a prerogative. Ouch.
The way the rules are worded with Reach weapons, you apparently can't attack diagonally at all. Since you can't attack into a square next to you but can't attack two squares away diagonally because "It's 15 feet."
That's silly.
Basically, you need to establish with your DM, can my Reach weapon attack diagonally AT ALL. And if he says you don't have reach into two squares diagonally, well get out your damned drafting compass, draw a circle on your map, and SHOW him that a 10ft reach weapon CAN reach two squares away.
This is what paizo gets for constantly trying to work in terms of "feet" on square grids.
This 5/15 reach thing is where RAW breaks down and we need to be reasonable.
I thought that rule only applied to movement...?
EDIT: There technically is no such rule from the looks of it. The rules say that the first diagonal counts as 1 square, the second counts as 2 squares, the third counts as 1, the fourth as 2, and so on.
Doesn't even mention "feet," which is what melee reach rules use.
It's not like the Medium enemy two squares away is occupying two squares simultaneously. He is either ten feet away from your character, or he isn't.
I personally follow the interpretation that makes the most sense, but how to get the GM to agree?
This 5/15 reach thing is where RAW breaks down and we need to be reasonable.
Reason? Blasphemy.
This is Paizo. We shall have none of that stuff here.
/sarcasm
There technically is no such rule from the looks of it. The rules say that the first diagonal counts as 1 square, the second counts as 2 squares, the third counts as 1, the fourth as 2, and so on.
If I remember correctly, the ruling came from an errata or an FAQ answer or something. It's been awhile.
Solution: Get rid of the grid. Use a ruler or tape measure. 1-inch = 5-feet. Same distance every time, regardless of the angle.
If I remember correctly, the ruling came from an errata or an FAQ answer or something. It's been awhile.
I can't seem to find it in the official Core Rulebook FAQ.
Bottom line is that loopholes are useful for killing PCs, because they don't alter CR.
Ravingdork, here you go: LINK
The current tally is 141 to 17 in favor of using the 3.5 exception.
In short, the 3.5 exception that allowed reach weapons to attack the second diagonal did not make it into Pathfinder.
Awhile back SKR stated that it does not prevent an AoO via moving in along the diagonal but that is not within the rules. A link to that statement is in my first post (linked above).
If your GM abused the system to avoid the bad guys taking AoOs then I would have a frank discussion with him regarding that.
If I remember correctly, the ruling came from an errata or an FAQ answer or something. It's been awhile.I can't seem to find it in the official Core Rulebook FAQ.
I remember it got addressed somewhere in the forums. Like I said, I'm fuzzy on it. But it's covered in the Reach templates. Here
Just a note: the d20pfsrd threatened space templates have some inaccuracies.
For the Large (tall) and Huge (long) templates the green area's corners should be pink.
For the Colossal (NOT tall) template the pink area is short in the corners. They should extend one more square.
Finally, the graphic at the bottom (below the Size Comparisons image) showing space and threatened area is incorrect for all three sizes.
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It's a stupid rule and should be ignored.
5/10/5 is fine for movement, but it causes mind-bogglingly stupid problems when applied to reach weapons.
I had a DM draw a 5' diagonal corridor and say *I literally could not use my reach weapon on that map*, because she chose to align it along a diagonal instead of a different axis.
Starsnuffer, there are quite a maps that have diagonal corridors relative to the grid. You cannot readily rotate the grid without completely re-drawing the map so you just play using diagonals.
For most purposes it works just fine but the moment someone has a 10foot reach that breaks down.
If you have a hard time imaging this just imagine a square room with corridors leading off at diagonals. Most of the map could be aligned along the square room but the diagonals make it impossible to use a reach weapon.
This would be especially problematic in PFS where the GM cannot alter anything and the 3.5 exception cannot be used. The reach weapon user would not be able to attack anything in a 5' wide diagonal corridor.
The fix is simple... play on hexes.. :-)
Starsnuffer,
Shifting the grid 1 inch (I assume you meant inch rather than foot as you stated) does not help since that still winds up with a 1 square wide diagonal corridor and does nothing to solve the problem of not being able to attack anything in the corridor if you have a reach weapon.
Yes, a GM could try and figure out how to rotate the map so that the corridor aligns with the grid but then you run into problems at the ends of the corridor where it turns back into non-diagonal grid.
I honestly don't find it incredibly over-limiting that you can't use a 10 foot long slashing pole effectively in a 5 foot wide hallway. There has to be some significant trade-off for doing something that in real life would be laughed at.
Slashing pole? Try piercing via Longspear.
And, if you want to discuss 'swinging room' you would need to eliminate greatswords and just about many other non-reach weapons with a wide swing as opposed to a thrusting motion.
The fact is that this is an artifact of the conversion from 3.5 to Pathfinder.
The Devs might have thought they were leaving it behind out of simplicity or they simply forgot to bring it with (perhaps it wasn't on the SRD) and now it's absence is baked in. H
I thought there had been a post from a developer that said that "Reach" didn't follow the same rules as movement and you did affect diagonally.
I thought there had been a post from a developer that said that "Reach" didn't follow the same rules as movement and you did affect diagonally.
If there is such a post I would LOVE a link to be able to show my GM.
Well, after a TPK just change de GM or start a new one with the same GM. He did all this, twarting laws and rules to achieve it, so stop playing this campaing and make him star another, because that what he won (I believe that killing all yout players this way is because you see that game as a win or lose. He won, just give him/her rewar, dump the campaing)After dumping his/her own campaing and work for a pointless win, he will reconsider his ways as a GM (perhaps)
Not the low-level ones.