As the title.
Our party came across a couple mindless creatures and one of our players tried to feint it to get an edge on his attack. Since the creatures are mindless, they are immune to effects that have the Mental trait, which feinting does possess. So he succeeds on the check, but receives no benefit other than knowing that feinting doesn't work on mindless creatures.
Now, another character goes to flank, and I initially was going to allow it, but the feinting player argued that flanking is similarly distracting from properly defending themselves, so I re-read how being flat-footed works, and it says:
"You’re distracted or otherwise unable to focus your full attention on defense."
So at the time, I went with the feinting player's logic and stated they couldn't be flanked either, since the description mentions requiring focus, which I imagined mindless creatures don't have. However, the key differences are that the feinting action has the mental trait, whereas a simple concept like flanking does not (unless I overlooked it somewhere). At the same time, being flat-footed means you're not mentally aware or fully capable of defending yourself, which I imagine is something that mindless creatures don't naturally or instinctively do other than what's listed in their creature demographic.
Is there anything that I'm missing here? What would you have done in this situation?
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IMHO, flanking is simply due to positioning on the battle map. So, lacking any further guidance (such as the "mental" trait) it would appear to work.
For example, skeletons are mindless. Would anyone claim you can't flank a skeleton?
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I'd say the first line in Flat-Footed (mentioning "focus") is pretty much fluff and should be ignored in rules discussions. To be inapplicable to mindless creatures Flat-Footed would have to say "this condition has the Mental trait" or equivalent.
(Alternatively, one could argue that if mindless creatures don't have "focus" then they must be flat-footed all the time....)
I'd say the first line in Flat-Footed (mentioning "focus") is pretty much fluff and should be ignored in rules discussions. To be inapplicable to mindless creatures Flat-Footed would have to say "this condition has the Mental trait" or equivalent.
(Alternatively, one could argue that if mindless creatures don't have "focus" then they must be flat-footed all the time....)
That was my initial thought too, but the flavor-text (which serves as the intent) of flat-footed is that you're considered distracted from oncoming threats, either because your attention is diverted elsewhere (from flanking), or because you are completely unaware of the attack (such as from sneaking, feinting, and so on). For the mindless creature (which is actually a 3rd level Fleshwarp), it isn't bothered by someone trying to fake it out (feinting), so why should it likewise be bothered by someone trying to get to its opposite side?
It just seems silly to me that you can't feint a creature who doesn't react to your attacks, but you can get on the opposite side which somehow gets on its nerves more than a feint would. The only real argument I can see is that the enemy would be more exposed regardless, but facing isn't a thing in this game (and if it is, it's limited such as via flanking), and as such that logic would be stretched to apply that way since it is likewise stretched via flanking.
i'm 99% sure you can flank mindless as intended, but feel free to homebrew it, just give them a little less HP to compensate maybe.
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The thing is flanking doesn't just represent attention per se. It is maybe the only rule in the game that interacts with the concept of facing at all. Even a mindless enemy can only be aware of that which it can actually see, so bare minimum the creature it isn't attacking, the one behind it, should treat it as flat-footed. If you want to talk flavor over rules.
Even a Mindless creature can be distracted. It attacks one character, who backs up, then the other character attacks from behind, rinse repeat. Like kiting on a small scale.
The only way it wouldn't happen is if a creature was solely focused in one specific target, and would never switch to the person behind it. Which means that person is free to disable it while it ignores them.
Well, not being aware of an attack also makes you flat footed, and even mindless creatures should be penalized if they don't know something is about to hit them. It's a lot easier to swat a fly that doesn't see you coming than one trying to buzz away.
Well, not being aware of an attack also makes you flat footed, and even mindless creatures should be penalized if they don't know something is about to hit them. It's a lot easier to swat a fly that doesn't see you coming than one trying to buzz away.
Again, if that's the case then feinting should work, because it doesn't see the attack coming. But it doesn't seem to matter.
With a misleading flourish, you leave an opponent unprepared for your real attack.
Basically, the mindless creature doesn't care what sort of fancy tricks you do to catch it off-balance, it will ignore any sort of attempt you make because it's mindless.
The arguments that flanking should work are problematic simply because it's not known whether flanking is equal parts having weaknesses exposed as well as having attention diverted (which is where being mindless negates that), or if not having one or the other trumps it. The rules are unclear on the matter of whether not giving a damn about a certain enemy (which was probably on purpose) plays a key role in determining if flanking applies. It probably won't in normal circumstances, but mindless creatures are specifically known not to do this, as mentioned in their descriptions and the abilities they gain from it, hence why I feel they have extra credence to just say "Nope, no flanking, don't care."
You might also consider houseruling the other way by taking the Mental trait off Feint, so it and flanking both work on mindless creatures.
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The rules are unclear on the matter of whether not giving a damn about a certain enemy (which was probably on purpose) plays a key role in determining if flanking applies.
No, the rules are pretty straight forward. The rules tell us how flanking and feinting work mechanically and information within the creature's stat block will inform us of anything that changes.
In the case of feinting, we know it doesn't work in this case because of the traits it possesses. In the case of flanking, there's no specific trait that inhibits its function and nothing within the stat block that explicitly blocks flanking, so flanking works.
The ambiguity is something you're adding in yourself. If flanking undead doesn't make sense to you (I'm still not entirely clear why it doesn't, but to each their own) you can houserule it away, but it's unequivocally a houserule to do that.
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Feinting is not just making an attack your target doesn't see coming. It's tricking your target into thinking the wrong thing to properly defend them self against an attack.
And the mindless creature isn't thinking about it's defense, so you can't trick it with a feint to any noticeable effect.
Was that a response to my suggested "remove Mental trait from Feint" houserule?
Mindless is not the same as totally unthinking; like many traits, you have to look it up, not just apply the English meaning.
A mindless creature has either programmed or rudimentary mental attributes. Most, if not all, of their mental ability modifiers are –5. They are immune to all mental effects.
Rudimentary is not nonexistent.
Searching the Bestiary, the first non-construct mindless thing I come across is the Lemure devil.
Lemures have little drive of their own, but other devils can take command of them. A non-lemure devil can issue a command to all lemures within 60 feet of it with a single action, which has the auditory and concentrate traits. The devil picks one of the following orders lemures can understand, and the lemures follow that order. The command and its effects end once the commander is out of the lemure’s sight, a new command is issued by the same or another devil, or the lemure dies.
• Kill The lemure attacks one target the commander singles out and gains a +1 circumstance bonus to attack rolls against the target.
• Defend The lemure circles the commander and attacks any creature that comes near. It gains a +1 circumstance bonus to AC and saves.
• Fetch The lemure gains a +10–foot circumstance bonus to its Speed and attempts to get an object or person the commander singles out. It attacks anyone and anything that gets in the way.
• Work The lemure performs drudge work dictated by the commander.
"Defend" and "fetch" each entail a certain amount of processing power, certainly enough to think about defense or be distracted from doing so. (If it can understand defending someone else, it can understand defending itself.) Hence they should not be immune to flanking or the flat-footed condition (the OP's actual question). That feinting has the mental trait means Paizo estimates that it takes more processing power than that to fall for it, but it's perfectly reasonable for a GM who thinks being flanked and being feinted take the same amount of processing to houserule that away.
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Feinting is not just making an attack your target doesn't see coming. It's tricking your target into thinking the wrong thing to properly defend them self against an attack.
And the mindless creature isn't thinking about it's defense, so you can't trick it with a feint to any noticeable effect.
The problem is that this logic based on flavor text likewise applies to flanking. It just doesn't make sense to me that you can't feint a mindless creature but you can flank a mindless creature when the reasoning behind both penalties (unable to properly defend oneself) are exactly the same.
I suppose one can claim that in the case of flanking, the positioning is really all that matters and nothing else, which I suppose I can dig, since by that point being mindless is irrelevant. I just wish the wording better reflected that concept.
Either way, I think Fuzzy's explanation behind mindless not actually being mindless is a good enough argument I can use the next time this comes up. Since I will be a PC in the next campaign, this will come handy if the GM throws mindless baddies at us, so I appreciate the help and resources brought to my attention.
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RAW, there's nothing in the rules that makes mindless undead immune to flanking. If the mindless trait would make monsters immune to flat-footed or flannking, it would have said so in the Bestiary entry for Mindless (p. 347: spoiler: it doesn't).
IMO, mindless creatures being immune to feinting is wrongheaded thinking that persisted from PF1 and before. Anyone who's played console games against predictable computer opponents knows that mindless opponents can be tricked.