Butterfly's Sting - Steal Glory & Outflank

[Jack Amy]

Hi All,

I am uncertain on how the Butterfly's Sting feat interacts with the Cavalier ability Steal Glory and the Outflank Teamwork feat.

With butterfly's sting, if you forgo the effect of a critical hit, I am assuming that an AoO isn't provoked for anyone using Steal Glory or Outflank. Please could someone confirm this?

Butterfly's Sting (Critical):

When you confirm a critical hit against a creature, you can choose to forgo the effect of the critical hit and grant a critical hit to the next ally who hits the creature with a melee attack before the start of your next turn. Your attack only deals normal damage, and the next ally automatically confirms the hit as a critical.

Steal Glory (Ex):

At 8th level, the cavalier can steal the glory from another creature's successful strike. Whenever a creature other than the cavalier scores a critical hit against a target that the cavalier is threatening, he can make an attack of opportunity against the same target.

Outflank (Combat, Teamwork):

Whenever you and an ally who also has this feat are flanking the same creature, your flanking bonus on attack rolls increases to +4. In addition, whenever you score a critical hit against the flanked creature, it provokes an attack of opportunity from your ally.

[Angry Wiggles]

The way that I read this is as follows:

You attack someone and confirm a critical hit. This triggers a choice in Butterfly's Sting, which determines the rest of the results. If you choose to forgo the critical hit with Butterfly's Sting, see A. If you choose not to, see B.

A. You have chosen to forgo your critical hit. Your landed blow is now no longer a critical hit, which means Outflank is no longer triggered and it does not provoke an attack of opportunity from your ally. Your ally's next landed blow is automatically confirmed as a critical hit per Butterfly's Sting, which will provoke an attack of opportunity per Steal Glory.

B. You have not chosen to forgo your critical hit. You deal critical damage, and make the creature provoke an attack of opportunity from your ally per Outflank. The ally's attack is not automatically confirmed as a critical hit per Butterfly's Sting. You do not provoke an attack of opportunity for yourself per Steal Glory.

I could be wrong, though. That's sort of an odd edge case. I'm looking forward to other people's thoughts.

**edit for clarity**

[David Neilson]

I believe the answer is that for both steal glory, and outflank a deferred Butterfly's sting still counts as a critical. So they would both activate, now the reason question to my mind is what happens if the person with outflank also has butterflys sting.

[Ascalaphus]

I think you're hoping to try this:

You confirm a critical hit. You hand it to your ally with Butterfly Sting. On his next attack he hits and gets the crit. Now you get an AoO with Steal Glory, and also with Outflank.

I think this is legal. Some GMs might say that a single act can provoke only one AoO, but that's not precisely the actual rule;

PRD -> CRB -> Combat -> Attacks of Opportunity wrote:

Combat Reflexes and Additional Attacks of Opportunity: If you have the Combat Reflexes feat, you can add your Dexterity bonus to the number of attacks of opportunity you can make in a round. This feat does not let you make more than one attack for a given opportunity, but if the same opponent provokes two attacks of opportunity from you, you could make two separate attacks of opportunity (since each one represents a different opportunity). Moving out of more than one square threatened by the same opponent in the same round doesn't count as more than one opportunity for that opponent. All these attacks are at your full normal attack bonus.

The feat and the class ability create separate opportunities for an AoO, so you do get to make two of them.

Pretty neat really. "Here's some glory. Can I have it back please, with interest?"

[DocsMistake]

Passing the buck again down the line would kinda defeat the purpose wouldn't it, since Butterfly's Sting doesn't give you an attack it just makes the next one auto-crit wouldn't you just let the 3rd person in line (The one after the second user of Butterfly's Sting) take their AOO first if they have a better crit than you as long as they are also flanking with them to trigger Outflank