For the next week my character is on the edge of death from a huge mud elemental. First the rant: statistically speaking, my character should rarely be hit in this encounter (something like 17% with high AC and displacement) but he's taken 5 out of 7 hits in the first 2 rounds taking him down to 1/5 of his hp. OK, that's done.
With no chance of taking this thing out in 1 rd, I've got to retreat to safer ground. But Withdrawing is no good as I'm 10' away and he has 15' reach. So while it probably won't help, the +2 AC from fighting defensively is attractive. My question is, can I fight defensively without any intention of, you know, actually fighting? You know, like if I was planning to run away behind the casters like a complete and total wuss, can I still get that +2 to AC?
Luck is an elusive lover. My char in the last game had 41 AC and got hit 100% of the time, meanwhile the character with 27 AC, against the same enemy and having to defend against a similar number of attacks, he didn't get hit even once (I'm suspecting foul play though because this pattern has been repeating for a few months). My char died, and his survived easily and even killed the monster becoming the hero of the town.
Use total defense and don't attack if you think the chances of doing anything are that low, also, fighting defensively is not a great idea if you aren't build for it OR you aren't going to get help/reinforces, is just delaying the inevitable. Also imo in this system the best defense is going full offensive.
You have to make attack action (standard) or full-attack action(full-round) to fight defensively. Technically you can attack the empty square or ground (tho your GM might be stingy on that), but you cant just say "i take penalty on my attacks for fighting defensively" and then move-move or disengage. You can, as Kageshira said, do total defense as standard action for +4 dodge to AC (+6 if you have 3 rank in Acrobatics).
Like the others said, you have to attack to fight defensively, but if you go total defense before you move you get the AC bonus (which would make you very hard to hit, barring bad luck).
Your next best bet (since Tumbling is probably not option or you would have mentioned it) is to say something to your beefier friends like, "Draw it's attack so I can move safely away" or some other way to tell them to provoke its AoO (it shouldn't have Combat Reflexes). Hold your action until after theirs if you to.
Tumbling? you mean Acrobatics? is not an option unless you have it heavily optimized, I played a monk with 24 Dex and maxed ranks and I was failing Acrobatics to not provoke a lot because it's tied to CMD, and we all know what happens with that.
Ideally the best option in these cases is teleporting away, but most martials don't have that option.
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If you're not planning on actually attacking and are willing to burn a standard action, instead of fighting defensively, take the total defense action
Total Defense
You can defend yourself as a standard action. You get a +4 dodge bonus to your AC for 1 round. Your AC improves at the start of this action. You can’t combine total defense with fighting defensively or with the benefit of the Combat Expertise feat. You can’t make attacks of opportunity while using total defense.
So, burn a standard action to go 'total defense', then use a move action to move away.
Yeah, tumbling is not an option against these guys; their CMD is high and I only have +9 Acrobatics. The summoner used an archon to draw an AoO from one of the other three elementals the round before so I am hoping I can get him to do it again as he is right before me in initiative.
I don't know why total defense didn't connect in my brain. Someone uses it in another campaign constantly.
You don't say what your character can do otherwise, but honestly I think I'd just 'go for it'.
If your math is right, you could just move away and only have a 17% chance of being hit (the fact that it got lucky before doesn't actually effect this, even though it sometimes 'feels' like it does) and if you do get hit, at 1/5 of your hit points after already taking 5 hits, it sounds like you are likely to survive (possibly go down, but not likely death) which if they get lucky on another set of full attacks they might.
If you just move away and then do something, you can hopefully end the fight quicker. Rather than having it drag on with you already in a pretty bad spot. Of course, that depends greatly on how effective you can be at range, if you are focused on just melee, the fighting defensively probably makes sense.
We have a weird party makeup. Arcanist, Summoner, Monk (vanilla), Magus, and Invesitgator (me). The Magus and I are the melee fighters. His spell combat/strike is obviously the main damage, but I normally get respectable hits, except it's all precision damage and elementals are immune.
I'm completely Dex-based (-1 STR--I know, genius build, right?) so while I can hit at range, I can't do any actual damage to these things.
As far as surviving if I get hit, mud elementals have this lovely thing called entrap. First hit entagles you with mud, so that hurts hit, damage, and ac for me. Second hit encases you and you become helpless. The modus operandi for these guys is apparently to then coup de gras the entrapped creature. There is a FORT save to be entrapped, but I've got a marvelous +4 there so without a big roll, that would definitely happen.
tl;dr - If I get hit again, it will kill me.
Pax Miles, to influence the attitude of someone with diplomacy takes 1 minute (or you get a -10 I think), something not very doable in combat
Most of the characters I make try to take 3 ranks of acrobatics so that total defense is actually +6AC.
Most of my character have 3 ranks in acrobatics by 5th level.
So he lived. Summoner had a lantern archon fly in front of my character. Elemental held his AoO. I went total defense (32 AC) and ran for it. Elemental swung with a 35, but he got a -2 from an aura and a -2 from soft cover.
GM rolled displacement just to see if it would have factored in. Nope. Without the Summoner intervening I would have been one dead Investigator.
Also put 3 ranks in acrobatics when we leveled up after the fight.