Working on making a Tengu Swordmaster Rogue. Right now I'm a little confused as to what actual use their Monkey Trance is supposed to have. The rules text reads:
Monkey Trance (Ex): As the monkey springs, the swordmaster leaps from the reach of her enemies. While in this trance, a swordmaster can make an Acrobatics check opposed by an opponent’s CMD. If she succeeds, she may move 5 feet as a swift action within the opponent’s threatened area; this movement does not provoke attacks of opportunity and does not count as a 5-foot step.
Meanwhile, the rules text for a 5-foot step read:
You can move 5 feet in any round when you don’t perform any other kind of movement. Taking this 5-foot step never provokes an attack of opportunity. You can’t take more than one 5-foot step in a round, and you can’t take a 5-foot step in the same round that you move any distance.
This appears to indicate that you can't take a 5-foot step and use Monkey Trance together in the same round, since Monkey Trance is movement (even if it doesn't count as your 5-foot step), so as far as I can tell, other than, say, taking a move which puts you in an opponent's threatened square, attacking (or taking some other standard action) then moving slightly to the right, there's no situation that this could be used and end up being more useful than just taking a 5-foot step.
Has anybody encountered this ability at all? If so, what's your interpretation of it?
I feel like that's kind of an arbitrary ruling, and suggests that you could just as easily take a full move action after a 5-foot step. The rules read that you can't take one in the same round, not that you can't take one if you've moved prior.
My expectation is that either the rules for the trance weren't written out in such a way to mention that this ability should've been an exception to the 5-foot step's rule about other forms of movement, there's another possible use I'm not thinking of, or I'm correct in my reading of this and it's borderline worthless.
James Risner is correct.