For the grit feat "Redirected Shot", do you count as your own ally


Rules Questions


Redirected Shot is in "Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Inner Sea Combat".
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/redirected-shot-combat-grit/

The feat reads as follows:
As long as you have at least 1 grit point, after an ally has made a ranged attack roll but before the results of the roll have been revealed, you can fire a loaded firearm at the volley as it moves toward its target, redirecting its path. Make an attack roll using your highest attack bonus, and use your result in place of your ally’s original attack roll. On a successful hit, your ally’s attack deals damage as normal. You may perform this action a number of times per round up to your Wisdom bonus (minimum 1).

I know that the FAQ states that "you count as your own ally unless otherwise stated or if doing so would make no sense or be impossible".
https://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1fm#v5748eaic9nda

Do I count as my own ally for the purposes of my feat? Which is to say, is shooting bullets at my own bullets to redirect them (which would seemingly allow me to replace any attack roll I make in a full attack action with an attack roll at highest BAB) nonsensical or impossible?

Or even if it makes sense and isn't impossible, is there anything in the feat that would make this strategy inviable?


I can't see how your later shots would catch up with your earlier shots to redirect them so - IMO - this would be impossible, as in the FAQ quote.


avr wrote:
I can't see how your later shots would catch up with your earlier shots to redirect them so - IMO - this would be impossible, as in the FAQ quote.

Uh, by that logic the ability wouldn't even work since hitting your ally's projectile (in a way that would be beneficial) is also impossible.


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I'm so tired of the "Own Ally" FAQ. It was meant to be a band-aid on any area buff that technically didn't include yourself, like Bless.
The FAQ is not supposed to change how anything works. It's a clarification. And even if it was errata it was written in 2010, so any content after that shouldn't be affected if that was the case.

If it weren't for that FAQ, would you ever have reached the idea that you could use Redirect Shots on your own attacks?
How about Butterfly's Sting? Intrepid Rescuer?
All three feats seems to obviously point at the conclusion that you help another ally, not yourself.

So throw my vote on the "No, absolutely not" pile. Anytime you ask if you count as your own ally there's like a 90% chance you're not, unless we're talking about area buffs.


avr wrote:
I can't see how your later shots would catch up with your earlier shots to redirect them so - IMO - this would be impossible, as in the FAQ quote.

Hey! Didn't even think about it that way! It does seem like if you're shooting (linear shots) from a stationary position it would essentially be impossible for later shots to intersect with earlier shots. Thanks avr!

One other question I had was, in the case of redirecting an ally's shots, you make an attack roll with your "highest attack bonus". Would that simply be BAB + DEX or would you factor in things like enhancement bonuses on your weapon or feats like Weapon Focus?


Wonderstell wrote:

I'm so tired of the "Own Ally" FAQ. It was meant to be a band-aid on any area buff that technically didn't include yourself, like Bless.

The FAQ is not supposed to change how anything works. It's a clarification. And even if it was errata it was written in 2010, so any content after that shouldn't be affected if that was the case.

If it weren't for that FAQ, would you ever have reached the idea that you could use Redirect Shots on your own attacks?
How about Butterfly's Sting? Intrepid Rescuer?
All three feats seems to obviously point at the conclusion that you help another ally, not yourself.

So throw my vote on the "No, absolutely not" pile. Anytime you ask if you count as your own ally there's like a 90% chance you're not, unless we're talking about area buffs.

Hi Wonderstell! You can see how it might be confusing when you're saying "90% chance you don't count as your own ally" when the FAQ says "you almost always count as your own ally". Most people are going to turn to the FAQ first for rules questions!

I basically got the idea from a reddit thread that mentioned the feat could be used this way and I wanted to get a second opinion from the forums before pestering my GM about it. You may be right in that I might not have entertained this possibility quite as much if I hadn't previously read advice threads that mentioned the FAQ. In my mind I was kind of imagining a "Dark Tower" or "Matrix" situation where people are manipulating their gunshots beyond what physics allows.

In any case, I agree with avr that in this case, being your own ally falls into the "impossible" bucket.


Anarchy_Kanya wrote:
avr wrote:
I can't see how your later shots would catch up with your earlier shots to redirect them so - IMO - this would be impossible, as in the FAQ quote.
Uh, by that logic the ability wouldn't even work since hitting your ally's projectile (in a way that would be beneficial) is also impossible.

I think that while hitting your ally's shots is functionally impossible, hitting your own shots seems to be physically impossible. As in while there could be a 1/(very large number) chance of the former happening, there is a probability of essentially 0 for the latter occurring.

After thinking about it more, the only way I can conceptualize hitting your own bullets is if you had one gun in each hand and shot the second almost simultaneously with the first. If you only had one gun, it could happen if you somehow repositioned your gun and shot from a different angle almost instantaneously, or if your whole body was transported or moved between one attack and the other incomprehensibly rapidly. Or portals or curving bullet trajectories. Maybe possible in the Pathfinder universe but probably not without magic!


As for later shots catching up to earlier shots, you could consider slipstreaming. The second bullet travels faster because the first bullet already pushed the air out of the way for it.


I think this fits in the “if doing so would make no sense...” clause as well as the (paraphrased) “let’s be reasonable with how many free actions we allow” clause. Especially if you’re only using a single firearm... you’re supposed to be able to shoot, reload as a free, and then shoot *again* to hit your previously shot projectile (as an untyped action performed like a free action taken at any point during your or an ally’s turn)... I could *potentially* see using two pistols to make this work, but even then you’d have to drop one to reload the other, and then if you have QuickDraw you draw another one to keep shooting and continue to flirt with abusing free actions. I think this is an obvious no lol


hypophora wrote:
Hi Wonderstell! You can see how it might be confusing when you're saying "90% chance you don't count as your own ally" when the FAQ says "you almost always count as your own ally". Most people are going to turn to the FAQ first for rules questions!

Hello!

The problem is that nobody ever asks questions like "will this area buff also affect me?", because that's obvious. The questions that gets asked are always some variant of "can this feat that's meant to aid an ally be used by myself?", with generally overpowered results.

So anytime that question actually gets asked, there's a very large chance that they're trying to force some strong and unintended benefit from their feats. But it always fails on the "makes no sense/impossible" clause, since the designer of the feat obviously intended for you to aid another creature.

hypophora wrote:
I basically got the idea from a reddit thread that mentioned the feat could be used this way and I wanted to get a second opinion from the forums before pestering my GM about it. You may be right in that I might not have entertained this possibility quite as much if I hadn't previously read advice threads that mentioned the FAQ. In my mind I was kind of imagining a "Dark Tower" or "Matrix" situation where people are manipulating their gunshots beyond what physics allows.

I think many players want to share fun tricks and new synergies, but in their excitement forget that the rules weren't made to be broken.


Yes that's indeed the issue. You're your own ally in most cases and most of those cases are self evident. A spell affects allies by touch. Of course it should almost always work on you, barring something in the spells effects where it would be evident it wouldn't

It's in these corner cases that people try to find loopholes, such as "teamwork feats need Allies to work and I'm my own ally so I dont need others" that the FAQ just doesnt help it's own case.

This is one such a case.


@Anarchy_Kanya: When shooting an allies' attack you can potentially mess around with the order of events a little. You saw where they were aiming and with your superhuman abilities figured out it was going to be off-target, so fired at the same time they did.

@hyphophora: At your highest attack bonus includes all modifiers. It just means that you don't use the bonus for your second or later iterative attack.


avr wrote:
At your highest attack bonus includes all modifiers. It just means that you don't use the bonus for your second or later iterative attack.

To clarify, "using your highest attack bonus" simply means you don't apply any iterative attack penalty (that's the -5 for the second attack that you got from BAB +6, and so on).

When you attack with a weapon, you always add strength or dexterity, magic items (especially weapon enchantments), feats (like Weapon Focus), spells (like Haste), other buffs (like Inspire Courage), and class features (like Weapon Training), unless something explicitly says otherwise. You'd still suffer the penalty from using Deadly Aim on your last turn, for instance, even though it won't affect your ally's damage.

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