| 1 person marked this as FAQ candidate. |
The rules state that in a surprise round one gets either a standard action or a move action. A charge is a full round action with the stipulation that it can be taken as a standard action if you are limited to taking only a single action in a round.
Unless I'm missing something, this post appears to answer its own question.
Well the charge is in the full round column and it doesn't specifically say move or standard action(single action). Follow up... If a character is 5' away from a door and surprised a enemy opening the door, does that character get to attack? It can't charge from 5' and if it moved 5' which is a no action do you still get a standard action in surprise?
The rules state that in a surprise round one gets either a standard action or a move action. A charge is a full round action with the stipulation that it can be taken as a standard action if you are limited to taking only a single action in a round.
Yes. IME, the staggered condition and surprise rounds are 99,9% of standard action charges.
Note that if you have Pounce, you can Full Attack on a standard action charge.
Just a little derail: Recently I came upon a spell or ability that basically said: You get a move and two standard actions but you can not combine it to a full round action. I do not remember what it was.
Would that allow you to do two standard action charges in one turn? Because you can only make standard and move actions but not full round actions?
If you are able to take only a standard action on your turn, you can still charge, but you are only allowed to move up to your speed (instead of up to double your speed) and you cannot draw a weapon unless you possess the Quick Draw feat. You can't use this option unless you are restricted to taking only a standard action on your turn.
The text is not clear in whether it means only a standard action (and nothing else) or only a standard action (but not a full round action).
To Kendrick's second question: In both PF and D&D 4E, enemies exactly 10' from you are in a sort of no-man's land where you can't charge them, but you can't reach them with a normal attack either; you have to move in some way. Normally your 5' step takes care of this, but if you're staggered or have already used it, you can't get at that enemy this round, at least with a melee attack.
Why would staggered prevent the old 5 foot step and whack?
Two squares takes YOU ten feet. And you have to go to them as directly as possible. If they're exactly ten feet away, you end up BESIDE them, not in front of them, which isn't a valid charge.
Pathfinder is ambiguous with exact space because of it's combat system.
Your character is somewhere within it's 5 foot squares immediate area but you are assumed to occupy the whole square for functional purposes (why various rules allow drawing lines from any corner).
X= characters square, O= empty square
XX = two adjacent characters and the game considers you touching, literally this is base touch attack range, and not any distance apart from one another
[there are a few ways to be closer than this, to share a square/overlap, in game but all I know of have special rules explaining how they work]
XOX = two characters 5 feet apart
[a reach weapon of 10 foot reach attacks two squares away, one of which is not the target square]
XOOX = two characters 10 feet apart
[if you moved the two squares you would have moved "at least" 10 feet, and thus you had met Charge's minimum, and would be adjacent to (0 distance between), not in the square with, the target.]
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
From page 198 of the Core Rulebook: "If you are able to take only a standard action on your turn, you can still charge, but you are only allowed to move up to your speed (instead of up to double your speed) and you cannot draw a weapon unless you possess the Quick Draw feat. You can’t use this option unless you are restricted to taking only a standard action on your turn."
So you can charge during a surprise round (a standard action) but only your movement speed's distance. If you are staggered, you can still charge.
As far as 5-foot step while staggered, the staggered condition doesn't prevent you from taking movement actions or slow your speed, merely limits you to one move or standard action. You could take a free 5-foot step so long as you didn't then use your single action as a move action.