Knight Magenta |
So brutish shove, the level 2 fighter feat says:
BRUTISH SHOVE
FEAT 2
Requirements
You are wielding a two-handed melee weapon.
Make a Strike with the required weapon. It gains the following enhancement and failure effect.
Enhancement
You can push the target, either automatically Shoving the target 5 feet away from you or causing the target to become flat-footed until the start of your next turn. The target chooses whether to be moved or become flat-footed. [...]
Failure
The target becomes flat-footed until the start of your next turn.
One of the options in success that the enemy can choose is to become flatfooted. But that is exactly the failure effect of the attack. So: if the enemy would prefer to be shoved, and you want them to be flat footed, wouldn't it be better for you to intentionally miss? That's kind of bizarre. Is the Enhancement supposed to say "Flat footed until the end of your next turn?
Zapp |
For people arriving here from Google searches, this feat did get clarification. Per the 2nd Printing of the core rules:
Throwing your weight behind your attack, you hit your opponent hard enough to make it stumble back. Make a Strike with a two-handed melee weapon. If you hit a target that is your size or smaller, that creature is flat-footed until the end of your current turn, and you can automatically Shove it, with the same benefits as the Shove action (including the critical success effect, if your Strike was a critical hit). If you move to follow the target, your movement doesn’t trigger reactions.
This Strike has the following failure effect.
Failure The target becomes flat-footed until the end of your current turn.