Flanking text "
When making a melee attack, you get a +2 flanking bonus if your opponent is threatened by another enemy character or creature on its opposite border or opposite corner."
Melee attack text"
Melee Attacks: With a normal melee weapon, you can strike any opponent within 5 feet. (Opponents within 5 feet are considered adjacent to you.) Some melee weapons have reach, as indicated in their descriptions. With a typical reach weapon, you can strike opponents 10 feet away, but you can't strike adjacent foes (those within 5 feet)."
Combat Maneuvers"
Performing a Combat Maneuver: When performing a combat maneuver, you must use an action appropriate to the maneuver you are attempting to perform. While many combat maneuvers can be performed as part of an attack action, full-attack action, or attack of opportunity (in place of a melee attack), others require a specific action. Unless otherwise noted, performing a combat maneuver provokes an attack of opportunity from the target of the maneuver. If you are hit by the target, you take the damage normally and apply that amount as a penalty to the attack roll to perform the maneuver. If your target is immobilized, unconscious, or otherwise incapacitated, your maneuver automatically succeeds (treat as if you rolled a natural 20 on the attack roll). If your target is stunned, you receive a +4 bonus on your attack roll to perform a combat maneuver against it.
When you attempt to perform a combat maneuver, make an attack roll and add your CMB in place of your normal attack bonus. Add any bonuses you currently have on attack rolls due to spells, feats, and other effects. These bonuses must be applicable to the weapon or attack used to perform the maneuver. The DC of this maneuver is your target's Combat Maneuver Defense. Combat maneuvers are attack rolls, so you must roll for concealment and take any other penalties that would normally apply to an attack roll."
So my question. Is a grapple check a melee attack, and thus should get the flanking bonus, the prone bonus, can get parried, etc?
I would like some rules text backup in any answers.
Where does it say that in the combat maneuvers part?
When you attempt to perform a combat maneuver, make an attack roll and add your CMB in place of your normal attack bonus. Add any bonuses you currently have on attack rolls due to spells, feats, and other effects. These bonuses must be applicable to the weapon or attack used to perform the maneuver. The DC of this maneuver is your target’s Combat Maneuver Defense. Combat maneuvers are attack rolls, so you must roll for concealment and take any other penalties that would normally apply to an attack roll.
"Other effects" being things such as flanking and the like. For instances since tripping and disarming can be done with weapons, you also add masterwork bonuses or enhancement bonuses.
But flanking isn't a bonus on attack rolls. It's a bonus on melee attack rolls, which is a subset of attack rolls.
But flanking isn't a bonus on attack rolls. It's a bonus on melee attack rolls, which is a subset of attack rolls.
Well... It's an attack roll, and it's in melee, so...
This is pretty contested, I realize, so I guess it's up to the GM.
But flanking isn't a bonus on attack rolls. It's a bonus on melee attack rolls, which is a subset of attack rolls.
As opposed to ranged attack rolls, meaning you don't get flanking bonuses on ranged attack rolls.
Combat maneuvers are performed while in melee.
Yes, but it's not a melee attack, it's a Combat Maneuver check. If it was just a melee attack, then you could use it as an AoO, or a swashbuckler could parry it.
Flanking specifically only gives you a bonus on melee attacks, which the core rulebook defines as quoted above.
Yes, but it's not a melee attack, it's a Combat Maneuver check. If it was just a melee attack, then you could use it as an AoO, or a swashbuckler could parry it.
Flanking specifically only gives you a bonus on melee attacks, which the core rulebook defines as quoted above.
It is an attack roll made in melee.
Flanking applies.
Melee Attack: While a melee attack isn’t an action type itself, many options and other rules affect melee attacks. Some combat options (such as the disarm and sunder combat maneuvers) can be used anytime you make a melee attack, including attacks of opportunity. These options can’t be combined with each other (a single melee attack can be a disarm or sunder combat maneuver, but not both), but they can be combined with options that modify an attack action or are standard or full-round actions. Some options that take or modify melee attacks have limitations—for example, Stunning Fist can be used only once per round.
Combat maneuvers are even used as examples in the definition of "Melee Attack"
Yes, "Some combat options (Disarm and sunder). Grapple is not one of those
Yes, "Some combat options (Disarm and sunder). Grapple is not one of those
It is an example, not an exclusive list.
It is also an admission, by you, that combat maneuvers are not categorically excluded from the subset "melee attack"
Weapons are not included in the Melee Attack definition, nor are they explicitly stated as being melee attacks elsewhere.
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If we entertain the notion that not all combat maneuvers are part of the subset of “melee attacks” could someone please show me at what range I am allowed to grapple? The Combat Maneuver section doesn’t say and I can’t use the Melee Attacks section since a grapple *isn’t one of those*
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Could you show me where I am limited to the “range of the limbs your are using to Grapple”? I am looking for rules text, not assumptions. Not “common sense” or “physics” since this is a fantasy game.
I can use my hands to affect things at range, such as using my hands to throw a rock or using my hands to communicate a welcoming gesture to a creature.
But without being able to use the reach rules associated with melee attacks, it would appear that I can grapple any creature that doesn’t have total cover to me. The rules allow me to make grapple checks. There aren’t any rules limiting me to my natural reach (unless I use the Melee Attacks rules) so therefore I should be able to grapple anything, anywhere.
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Keep in mind that Combat Manuevers use the same rules for calculating bonuses to attack, despite not actually been Melee Attacks.
Combat maneuvers are literally used to define "Melee Attack."
Two combat maneuvers and Stunning Fist are, in fact, the only explicitly defined "Melee Attack" options in the game.
If you argue that the remaining combat maneuvers are not melee attacks because they are not explicitly defined as "Melee Attacks", you'll also have to provide explicit RAW naming each specific weapon as capable to being used to make a "Melee Attack", as this is the level of proof you are seeking for anything to meet this definition.
Fine. Strictly by RAW no combat Manuevers are Melee attacks.
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When performing a combat maneuver, you must use an action appropriate to the maneuver you are attempting to perform. While many combat maneuvers can be performed as part of an attack action, full-attack action, or attack of opportunity (in place of a melee attack), others require a specific action. Unless otherwise noted, performing a combat maneuver provokes an attack of opportunity from the target of the maneuver. If you are hit by the target, you take the damage normally and apply that amount as a penalty to the attack roll to perform the maneuver. If your target is immobilized, unconscious, or otherwise incapacitated, your maneuver automatically succeeds (treat as if you rolled a natural 20 on the attack roll). If your target is stunned, you receive a +4 bonus on your attack roll to perform a combat maneuver against it.
----------------Since they replace a melee attack by definition they aren't melee attacks.
Incorrect. You are looking in the wrong place.
(a single melee attack can be a disarm or sunder combat maneuver, but not both)
Now, prove to me, using strict RAW, that hitting someone with a longsword is a "melee attack" instead of the more generic "attack roll"
You can take advantage of a distracted foe.
Benefit(s): When you attempt a combat maneuver check against a foe you are flanking, you can forgo the +2 bonus on your attack roll for flanking to instead have the combat maneuver not provoke an attack of opportunity. If you have a feat or ability that allows you to attempt the combat maneuver without provoking an attack of opportunity, you can instead increase the bonus on your attack roll for flanking to +4 for the combat maneuver check.
Special: This feat counts as having Dex 13, Int 13, Combat Expertise, and Improved Unarmed Strike for the purposes of meeting the prerequisites of the various improved combat maneuver feats, as well as feats that require those improved combat maneuver feats as prerequisites.
The feat doesn't place any restrictions on what kind of Combat Maneuver is affected, it just plainly states that combat maneuvers benefit from flanking.
But if this is the hill you're gonna die on, and you're gonna argue that this feat would 'according to RAW' only function on the three weapon maneuvers... then you're letting semantics get in the way of RAI.
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I think the issue is the debate of tags.
Like take a half-orc. It's a human, orc subtyped creature. If I was a human and took racial heritage Orc or the Orc bloodline I gain the Orc subtype, so I'd be a human, orc but not a half-orc which is a human, orc subtype so I couldn't take anything that only half-orcs can take.
Similar parsing CAN (maybe not should) be done with Combat maneuvers. All of them are melee with the melee tag. All of them are attacks with the attack tag, but MAYBE not all have the melee-attack tag.
The view in question is that any maneuver you can do as an attack replacement is tagged with melee-attack, along with the normal melee and attack tags (which yes expands the list from Disarm and sunder to also be trip so yes the list isn't all encompassing but it might not be all maneuvers but all attack replacement maneuvers). Grapple isn't one of those maneuvers that can be subbed in for an attack, thus it only has the melee and attack tags but not the melee-attack tag. Its it's own special standard action to use.
Now I do not believe that the authors with their "conversational" style of word usage intends for any difference and that grapple gets flanking and benefits from trip and all that, but the argument does exist that it might not.