I was looking at the confused condition and saw two parts that made me wonder if they could end poorly for a group when someone gets confused. The first part is that on a confused creature's turn, it will attack whatever most recently attacked it so long as its attacker remains alive and in sight. This makes reasonable sense as one of the major effects of the confused condition is a characters inability to tell friend from foe, allowing him to simply guess anything attacking him isn't his friend. This is also related to the second part of the condition that caught my eye when reading it. When a creature is confused, any allies attempting to cast a beneficial spell requiring a touch on the confused creature are required to make a melee touch attack as the creature now sees his old ally as a potential foe.
Here's my question: Does this touch attack as a part of the beneficial spell count as an "attack" for inciting counterattacks from the confused creature? I can certainly see how sometimes it wouldn't cause it, such as when a cleric healed the creature of damage. It would seem to me, however, that with some other spells might cause a counter attack. For example, what if the fighter gets confused during a fight and the wizard, in an effort to help protect his debilitated friend, casts a displacement spell on the fighter and succeeds on touching him. From the fighter's point of view, some possibly evil wizard has just walked up and placed some strange magic on him that is warping his vision of his body. Would the fighter respond to this "attack" by beating the wizard over the head immediately on his turn?
Here's my question: Does this touch attack as a part of the beneficial spell count as an "attack" for inciting counterattacks from the confused creature? I can certainly see how sometimes it wouldn't cause it, such as when a cleric healed the creature of damage. It would seem to me, however, that with some other spells might cause a counter attack. For example, what if the fighter gets confused during a fight and the wizard, in an effort to help protect his debilitated friend, casts a displacement spell on the fighter and succeeds on touching him. From the fighter's point of view, some possibly evil wizard has just walked up and placed some strange magic on him that is warping his vision of his body. Would the fighter respond to this "attack" by beating the wizard over the head immediately on his turn?
I think this will ultimately come down to GM interpretation of what constitutes an "attack" for the purposes of confusion; the spell does not specifically lay anything out. However, the "confused" condition states the following:
Allies wishing to cast a beneficial spell that requires a touch on a confused creature must succeed on a melee touch attack.
This line leads me to believe a beneficial spell cast on a confused creature is not necessarily considered an attack. Displacement in no way does anything but help the confused fighter, so it's very hard to call it an attack.
If you're the GM, I suggest common sense as a rule: does the action cause hit point loss, ability damage, or inflict a status condition? If so, it's an attack. If not, then why consider it such?
One way you could look at it is that they have to make an attack roll to hit with the spell, if the spell is blatantly helpful then it could make sense to not switch targets to them, but if they miss then the confused character has no way to know that they were trying to help them. Just that they had a (possibly) glowing hand and were attempting to touch them with it.
A confused creature cannot tell the difference between ally and foe, treating all creatures as enemies.
Maybe this is the jerk GM in me, but if all creatures are foes to a confused person, then that confused person threatens any creature in its threat area. Casting a healing spell would provoke simply for the casting. Heck, casting prestidigitation on a nearby flower would provoke if the caster is standing in the confused creature's threat area.
It makes sense if you've ever see people try to subdue a violently crazy person.