Spring Attack AoO

[Fist2Jaw]

Spring Attack:

You can deftly move up to a foe, strike, and withdraw before he can react.

Prerequisites: Dex 13, Dodge, Mobility, base attack bonus +4.

Benefit: As a full-round action, you can move up to your speed and make a single melee attack without provoking any attacks of opportunity from the target of your attack. You can move both before and after the attack, but you must move at least 10 feet before the attack and the total distance that you move cannot be greater than your speed. You cannot use this ability to attack a foe that is adjacent to you at the start of your turn.

Normal: You cannot move before and after an attack.

So I came into a situation today where my polearm using fighter tried to trip another reach-using creature. I don't have Improved Trip, which usually isn't a problem against most creatures with limited range, but I got blind sided by this one's reach ability. Anyways, I usually get around taking AoO from enemies thanks to reach, and if I'm spring attacking them I also take advantage of my great mobility to hit them and run.

With that being said, do I still provoke AoO from targets of my Spring Attack for doing attack actions which normally would like combat maneuvers without the feats?

[born_of_fire]

I'd say that the feat protects you from provoking any movement based AoO's however the descriptive text does not specify that. The idea that you could move up to your opponent, perform as many actions as your action economy allows that would normally provoke, attack your opponent in a manner that would normally provoke and then move on without provoking any AoO's at all feels all kinds of wrong to me BUT a strict reading of the text seems to indicate you can. Have you checked for FAQ's on the matter?

[Weirdo]

Technically yes, but I doubt many GMs would allow it to work like that.

[Quintain]

Fist2Jaw wrote:

** spoiler omitted **

So I came into a situation today where my polearm using fighter tried to trip another reach-using creature. I don't have Improved Trip, which usually isn't a problem against most creatures with limited range, but I got blind sided by this one's reach ability. Anyways, I usually get around taking AoO from enemies thanks to reach, and if I'm spring attacking them I also take advantage of my great mobility to hit them and run.

With that being said, do I still provoke AoO from targets of my Spring Attack for doing attack actions which normally would like combat maneuvers without the feats?

Yes. Spring Attack only eliminates the attack of opportunity related to the in-and-out movement of the attack, not any attacks of opportunity that are a result of the attack or attack type itself.

You can provoke for multiple different reasons in any particular round.

[CheezWizrd]

Spring Attack falls under the category of 'special full-round actions', so it's similar to Charge. The maneuvers Trip, Sunder, and Disarm are normally performed with weapons, and can be 'swapped in' in place of a melee attack. Actions that take a Standard Action usually cannot. This is, for example, why Bull Rush is specifically called out as being able to be performed as part of a Charge.

With Spring Attack, the movement that normally provokes an AoO by entering or leaving a threatened square is overwritten (i.e. doesn't happen). The AoO provoked from using a non-Improved Combat maneuver is a different category of AoO, which Spring Attack does not explicitly cover.

As such, I'd say Spring Attack does not allow any other actions that normally provoke to 'not' provoke.