What, exactly, is the point of Combat Patrol?

[RazarTuk]

For reference, the text of the feat:

APG wrote:

As a full-round action, you may set up a combat patrol, increasing your threatened area by 5 feet for every 5 points of your base attack bonus. Until the beginning of your next turn, you may make attacks of opportunity against any opponent in this threatened area that provokes attacks of opportunity. You may move as part of these attacks, provided your total movement before your next turn does not exceed your speed. Any movement you make provokes attacks of opportunity as normal.

I had always assumed that "threatened area" and "reach" are synonymous, so the movement is optional. This makes sense, because the 5' square is already an approximation, and your character is actually weaving around within it and bobbing attacks. Thus, Combat Patrol would just increase the area your character is moving around in to attack from, even if your miniature doesn't move from its square. This would actually make it a pretty useful feat. (And as a side note, I actually tried swinging a sword 5 feet away. It already felt like I was lunging. Using the feat Lunge to strike at something literally 10 feet away seems impossible)

Then I learned from multiple threads here and on Reddit that it's apparently the only exception I'm aware of to threatened area equaling reach. If you want to attack someone outside of your normal reach without the feat, you need to actually move there. This already raises other questions like what it actually means for a character to threaten 20' further away at level 20 if it only has 15' of speed, like a small character in medium or heavy armor. Or, as the question in this point, why it's actually a useful feat. That "nerf" for lack of a better word makes it never really feel worth it to me.

[Meirril]

If you use Combat Patrol's full action and something gives you an AoO you can immediately move (so long as you have some move allowance left) to make your AoO. This obviously lets you guard a larger area, and react to things that aren't in your reach.

One thing that makes this feat useful is it isn't obvious that you threaten an area beyond your reach. Until it gets used I don't think anyone would assume the area 15' away from your 5' reach character is dangerous to run past. But suddenly you are there and you are hitting them. That could change the creature's plans now that you shifted.

And then something else tries to run through where you were, which is still in your combat patrol area so you use more of your move allowance to get your AoO against them. And that might change their action.

Combat Patrol doesn't give you extra reach, but it is still useful when your main goal is to makes AoO.

[djdust]

threatened area and reach aren't necessarily synonymous, it's just that they usually are because they both depend heavily on the size of the creature. This feat breaks them apart, so that a small or medium creature can now have an extended threatened area without needing a reach weapon. Tied with Combat Reflexes, this can really increase your ability to control the battlefield. It's maybe not meant for a character with a low movement speed, but a more agile one?

The question it raises for me is whether or not the movement taken as part of the AoOs counts against your movement on your turn? As I'm reading it, it doesn't state that it does, but I'm wondering if it was intended to.

[Xorran]

This is a very handy feat for a character with a reach weapon, at level 5 you have a threatened area of 15 feet, at 6th level with Lunge, that increases to 20 feet. With a high dex, which you would want with a combat reflexes build anyway, you could be getting a potential 5 to 6 (or more) attacks at level 6. And don't forget about trip manuevers, to help maximize the number of AoO's you can get, from when they stand up.

With Combat Patrol you can end up dishing out a lot of damage on your own, and at the same time keeping your enemies completely shut down from moving.

[The Guy With A Face]

It lets you lock down a large area. A whip build (20+ threatened area) focused on combat maneuvers (trip, disarm, dirty trick) with combat patrol is pretty good.

@Xorran. Lunge wouldn't help with combat patrol. The increase in reach from lunge only applies until the end of your turn.

Quote:

You can increase the reach of your melee attacks by 5 feet until the end of your turn by taking a –2 penalty to your AC until your next turn. You must decide to use this ability before any attacks are made.

[awbattles]

Keep in mind, as far as I know, every square an enemy moves through that is threatened could be the AoO, until you actually make one. That is, you can only AoO once for an enemy’s move action, but you don’t have to take it when they’re 30’ away; you can wait until they’re only 10’ away and then take it, because they would still be moving through threatened squares and you would still have an AoO to make. This lets you use your move speed more judiciously. Don’t take the move/AoO until you need to, then move up when they’re as close as possible without triggering a normal AoO, make the trip attempt, and then whack them again if they use their standard to get back up. It cost them everything but a move action AND they took a hit, while you only used 5-10 feet of movement and are still able to move to the next enemy who passes nearby.

[Alphavoltario]

Put it on a trip based character. Move over when provoked to trip, move to second guy who provokes with movement. When next round comes around, move over to the guy getting up and hit him, then do the same for the other.

This feat on the the right character is all about melee battlefield control.

[Xorran]

Once you get Greater trip, you basically get double the AoO's against an enemy, first from it moving, then the trip will provoke, next round when he gets up you get another AoO.
Make sure to get movement increasing items, like Boots of Striding and Springing. By level 10, your threat area and number of feats you get,make this build pretty ridiculous. Make sure you take Stand Still, then you can control the whole area, even against creatures that can't be tripped.

[RazarTuk]

I guess my main problem is that when I first read the feat, I associated it with the same sort of archetype as the Stalwart Defender. Mostly stays in one place, but controls a massive area around them. So it seems counterintuitive that in this one case, at least, you actually need to be up "next" to an enemy, as opposed to vaguely wandering around and just approximating that as being in a certain "square".

I can tell that it's obviously meant to lock down an area. It just feels oddly restrictive to tie it to movement speed.

[The Guy With A Face]

You can't just "approximate" which square someone is in without breaking the movement system. How would that interact with attacks of opportunity? How would that work with enemies already close to the patroller? Would he just walk through occupied squares without penalty or AoO's? How could you determine if enemies could make one attack or a full attack if he's moving around in an undefined area?

[Yqatuba]

RazarTuk wrote:

(And as a side note, I actually tried swinging a sword 5 feet away. It already felt like I was lunging. Using the feat Lunge to strike at something literally 10 feet away seems impossible)

I assume you mean in real life?

[RazarTuk]

Yqatuba wrote:

RazarTuk wrote:

(And as a side note, I actually tried swinging a sword 5 feet away. It already felt like I was lunging. Using the feat Lunge to strike at something literally 10 feet away seems impossible)

I assume you mean in real life?

Yes. I literally just grabbed a wooden longsword I got at the Renn Faire one year, laid down on the ground to establish what 5'9" looks like and guesstimate 5' and 10', then tried swinging that far. I figured this was relevant because it demonstrates what 5-ft squares are approximating, and that concept of actually moving around roughly within that square is why it made sense to me to not need to move with the feat.

[Gug on the Silver Mountain]

RazarTuk wrote:

Yes. I literally just grabbed a wooden longsword I got at the Renn Faire one year, laid down on the ground to establish what 5'9" looks like and guesstimate 5' and 10', then tried swinging that far. I figured this was relevant because it demonstrates what 5-ft squares are approximating, and that concept of actually moving around roughly within that square is why it made sense to me to not need to move with the feat.

Characters aren't standing still when attacking. Like, people don't fill a 5' square when standing, that's how we can pass each other in corridors less than 10' across. If you've ever seen fencers there's a constant back and forth going on, that's what the 5' squares represent. You don't need a feat to physically lunge, (how else do you attack with a piercing weapon?) the feat represents the ability to move and attack someone who thought they were just outside the reach of your weapon without dropping your guard (admittedly probably using a lunge).

[Volkard Abendroth]

RazarTuk wrote:

For reference, the text of the feat:

APG wrote:

As a full-round action, you may set up a combat patrol, increasing your threatened area by 5 feet for every 5 points of your base attack bonus. Until the beginning of your next turn, you may make attacks of opportunity against any opponent in this threatened area that provokes attacks of opportunity. You may move as part of these attacks, provided your total movement before your next turn does not exceed your speed. Any movement you make provokes attacks of opportunity as normal.

I had always assumed that "threatened area" and "reach" are synonymous, so the movement is optional. This makes sense, because the 5' square is already an approximation, and your character is actually weaving around within it and bobbing attacks. Thus, Combat Patrol would just increase the area your character is moving around in to attack from, even if your miniature doesn't move from its square. This would actually make it a pretty useful feat. (And as a side note, I actually tried swinging a sword 5 feet away. It already felt like I was lunging. Using the feat Lunge to strike at something literally 10 feet away seems impossible)

Then I learned from multiple threads here and on Reddit that it's apparently the only exception I'm aware of to threatened area equaling reach. If you want to attack someone outside of your normal reach without the feat, you need to actually move there. This already raises other questions like what it actually means for a character to threaten 20' further away at level 20 if it only has 15' of speed, like a small character in medium or heavy armor. Or, as the question in this point, why it's actually a useful feat. That "nerf" for lack of a better word makes it never really feel worth it to me.

At higher level most melee characters should have the means to significantly increase their move speed.

There are quite a few ways to pick up 60’ fly speed, for example, which is highly recommended for any melee.