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Yes, archers can flank. And casters using spell attacks, too.
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Unfortunately, since errata every character class is trained in unarmed combat.
uh, um, no
this ‘does it threaten? or does it not threaten?’ deal was a weird PF1e thing, which is one of the aspects that should have been deprecatedI’m in combat
there is someone in front of me and someone behind me
that is distracting Al Franken and yes, does diminish my combat capability
and in the timeframe of rounds (6 seconds) and this ‘time freezes for everyone except the current top of the list peep, who then gets time froze as the next one time thaws’ poor reflection of reality, just that body being there is enough
there is no ‘oh, that is not someone on my side but they do not distract me because, you know, reasons
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Totally agree with Deth Braedon on this one. Honestly, the requirement to be able to make an unarmed attack is a weird one to begin with. If a wizard is 5ft away from me and, because rounds thematically are happening simultaneously, is LITERALLY IN THE PROCESS OF CASTING A SPELL TO KILL ME, then I think I might be a little distracted / focused on what he's doing to dodge / resist it. Honestly, the ONLY reason I can think of why people don't want flanking with a bow or magic user to be a thing is because of PF1.
Fortunately, though, since everyone can make unarmed attacks this limitation is functionally irrelevant in most situations.
P.S. Legolas may have been / definitely was over the top in LotR, but if you don't pay attention to the bow user behind you for 6 full seconds there's nothing to stop them from notching a few arrows and releasing them from 5 feet away.
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Totally agree with Deth Braedon on this one. Honestly, the requirement to be able to make an unarmed attack is a weird one to begin with. If a wizard is 5ft away from me and, because rounds thematically are happening simultaneously, is LITERALLY IN THE PROCESS OF CASTING A SPELL TO KILL ME, then I think I might be a little distracted / focused on what he's doing to dodge / resist it. Honestly, the ONLY reason I can think of why people don't want flanking with a bow or magic user to be a thing is because of PF1.
Fortunately, though, since everyone can make unarmed attacks this limitation is functionally irrelevant in most situations.
P.S. Legolas may have been / definitely was over the top in LotR, but if you don't pay attention to the bow user behind you for 6 full seconds there's nothing to stop them from notching a few arrows and releasing them from 5 feet away.
While the restrictions on flanking in Pathfinder 1st Edition are the primary reason players think that bows and spells don't flank, it is not the only reason.
The wording of PF2 flanking hints that the weapon that permits the flanking is the weapon that gains the reduced AC from flat-footedness. Why else would it insist on melee weapons and unarmed strikes causing flanking? The final sentence, "If you are wielding a reach weapon, you use your reach with that weapon for this purpose," could lead to counter-intuitive situations if a caster attacked with a ranged spell that does not require a free hand. If the caster wielded a greatsword, then he would have to attack with the spell from adjacent position for the flank but if he wielded a glaive then he could attack with the spell from 10 feet away and still gain the flank. Yet in neither case does the caster use the weapon to attack.
I remember the invention of flanking in Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition. In Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, a rogue character could backstab (sneak attack) if behind his target. D&D 3rd Edition explicitly removed facing where characters had front and back, because facing was a hard-to-resolve complication, and introduced flanking to replace attacking from behind. If we still had facing, then a bowshot or spell attack from behind would have the same benefit as a sword from behind. Thus, allowing a flanking attack via bow or spell seems fine to me.
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Totally agree with Deth Braedon on this one. Honestly, the requirement to be able to make an unarmed attack is a weird one to begin with. If a wizard is 5ft away from me and, because rounds thematically are happening simultaneously, is LITERALLY IN THE PROCESS OF CASTING A SPELL TO KILL ME, then I think I might be a little distracted / focused on what he's doing to dodge / resist it. Honestly, the ONLY reason I can think of why people don't want flanking with a bow or magic user to be a thing is because of PF1.While the restrictions on flanking in Pathfinder 1st Edition are the primary reason players think that bows and spells don't flank, it is not the only reason.
The wording of PF2 flanking hints that the weapon that permits the flanking is the weapon that gains the reduced AC from flat-footedness. Why else would it insist on melee weapons and unarmed strikes causing flanking? The final sentence, "If you are wielding a reach weapon, you use your reach with that weapon for this purpose," could lead to counter-intuitive situations if a caster attacked with a ranged spell that does not require a free hand. If the caster wielded a greatsword, then he would have to attack with the spell from adjacent position for the flank but if he wielded a glaive then he could attack with the spell from 10 feet away and still gain the flank. Yet in neither case does the caster use the weapon to attack.
I remember the invention of flanking in Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition. In Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, a rogue character could backstab (sneak attack) if behind his target. D&D 3rd Edition explicitly removed facing...
Fair enough. I was thinking of from a thematic perspective, which I think is pretty clear if you look at the kind of language I was using and how I was explaining the world the characters were in more than quoting the flanking rules. However, I guess the language does help perpetuate that misunderstanding of the situation to some degree. It's fairly clear and can certainly be explained if you dig into the exact wording, but if you come from a system where that's how it worked and just took a glance at it it's not unreasonable to assume it works the same in PF2. It just... doesn't.
I think I might see it as more obvious because I don't see flanking as something you get, but rather something you give to your ally. Viewing it from that perspective it makes sense that having a reach weapon makes enemies perceive you as being immediately threatening from 10ft away even if it turns out that you were always threatening from that far away due to a bow, spell, etc. So, the fact that they're flatfooted despite the attack not coming from the reach weapon is kind of irrelevant, because it's not coming from the reach weapon itself, but rather from you and your ally splitting his attention. The flatfooted part is that split second where the enemy's paying more attention to your ally.
It definitely gets into some weird territory considering that a single ally doesn't distract someone enough to keep their back exposed in general regardless of range, but that's more of a side-effect to the game not having defined character facing than it is a failing of the flanking rules, which are trying to simulate the complications of being surrounded to some degree without having to define which cardinal direction a character is facing at all times.
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I think RAW and RAI are fine on this. PF1 made it confusing. I look at it this way, in combat, anyone that I don't to firmly be an ally is a potential threat, it is distracting me and I have to keep my eyes on them even if they don't make an attack against me. I am in a zone vs. a point defense.
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I mean the rules have disagreed with you on literally every topic you've posted in so far, but keep telling yourself that we're playing the game wrong, Zapp.
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Flanking is a powerful bonus
This fallacy is annoyingly common.
The flat-footed condition is practically an assumed debuff in this edition. There are so many methods of inflicting it upon your enemies, and it doesn't stack. Saying it's "too powerful" for casters or ranged characters (who shouldn't be up front anyways) to benefit from flanking, when there are innumerable ways to make a target flat-footed, is just a tired argument that needs to go away.
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Flanking is a powerful bonus that should have been given only to martial heroes.
uh, um, no, just no
this is a perspective I cannot grokit makes little sense, to me, from almost any perspective
- playability
- game balance
- real world representation
- and any other one might care to list
not to mention from the perspective of the math which has been instilled in PF2e
it isn’t and it doesn’t and not sure more can be said
but I wants our moon to be made of cheeses!
yeah, want whatever you’d like, but the moon is not made of cheese - sorry Teddy bRoosevelt
guess there was more that could be said
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Honestly, the ONLY reason I can think of why people don't want flanking with a bow or magic user to be a thing is because of PF1.Nope.
PF1's got nothing to do with it.
Flanking is a powerful bonus that should have been given only to martial heroes.
It's the only thing (in D&D mechanics anyway) that separates an unarmed man from an armed.
Every character just projecting this is deeply frustrating and an obvious houserule.
I mean, you literally just quoted PF1 to make your point (or some other past edition of DnD, idk), since flanking is an optional rule in 5e and is able to be done by anyone in PF2, so I can only assume you're referring to PF1 when talking about "D&D mechanics". PF2 even specifically calls out unarmed attacks, which again, anyone can do, as giving you the bonus. So, no, it's not "the only thing that separates an unarmed man from an armed [man]" in PF2, as it doesn't separate those at all, lol
I remember the invention of flanking in Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition. In Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, a rogue character could backstab (sneak attack) if behind his target. D&D 3rd Edition explicitly removed facing...That's kind of a mistatement or misremembered detail.
AD&D, along with the front and back of facing, had attacks from your "flanks" which got some benefits (but not as much as those from your rear).
And also AD&D Backstab wasn't just any attack from the back, but one that happened when the target also wasn't aware of you.
So saying 3rd edition was the "invention" of flanking is less accurate than saying 3rd edition changed how flanking is determined.
Yes, my memory of the AD&D rules is fuzzy. I played it in college, 1980 to 1984. The Rulebooks we owned were given away when my family packed to move, so I cannot doublecheck them. I remember the party rogue hiding in shadows and sneaking up behind people, but I myself did not play a rogue until D&D 2nd Edition.
I remember nothing in AD&D or D&D 2nd Edition about attacking from the flanks. Maybe the situation never came up in my combats.
My point was that D&D 3rd Edition flanking was an attempt to mimic an attack from behind without characters having a direction they faced. If flanking was simply about threatening, then we would have the situation given by the Gang Up rogue feat.
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Raven, you've been here long enough to know that's their gimmick.
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Then it would be easier to follow if you explicitly state it as your personal opinion rather than some kind of undeniable truth..
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Unfortunately you need a houserule for this to happen :(My first post contains six paragraphs. I've quoted the entirety of my post unedited. Let's walk through the paragraphs, shall we?
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#6: Here I clearly state that what I want is not what the rules say.
Okay, but this assumes that all of the posts that popped up immediately after your second post not only read the entire thread and saw your previous post, but also, the much less likely requirement that they noticed that it was the same person who posted the comment they were replying to.
Let's not forget that people were responding to this:
Flanking is a powerful bonus that should have been given only to martial heroes.
It's the only thing (in D&D mechanics anyway) that separates an unarmed man from an armed.
Every character just projecting this is deeply frustrating and an obvious houserule.
I'll admit that the fact that the first line there said "should" somewhat implies you realize this isn't actually the case, but that's in no way clear, and idk about others but I read "an obvious houserule" as you saying that allowing non-martial/non-melee characters to flank to be something that people are obviously just houseruling into their games. I now know you to mean that you think it's obvious that you should houserule it out of the game, but at the time that hadn't even crossed my mind.
On a totally separate note I also happen to think that would be a bad houserule both mechanically and thematically, but hey, your game *shrugs*.
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When you and an ally are flanking a foe, it has a harder time defending against you. A creature is flat-footed (taking a –2 circumstance penalty to AC) to creatures that are flanking it.
To flank a foe, you and your ally must be on opposite sides of the creature. A line drawn between the center of your space and the center of your ally's space must pass through opposite sides or opposite corners of the foe's space. Additionally, both you and the ally have to be able to act, you must be wielding melee weapons or be able to make an unarmed attack, you can't be under any effects that prevent you from attacking, and you must both have the enemy within reach. If you are wielding a reach weapon, you use your reach with that weapon for this purpose.
You need to be trained in unarmed attacks to be considered "threatening" and thus flanking.
Do you have a citation for that? I see nothing in the above-quoted text that mentions being trained in unarmed attacks.
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When you and an ally are flanking a foe, it has a harder time defending against you. A creature is flat-footed (taking a –2 circumstance penalty to AC) to creatures that are flanking it.
To flank a foe, you and your ally must be on opposite sides of the creature. A line drawn between the center of your space and the center of your ally's space must pass through opposite sides or opposite corners of the foe's space. Additionally, both you and the ally have to be able to act, you must be wielding melee weapons or be able to make an unarmed attack, you can't be under any effects that prevent you from attacking, and you must both have the enemy within reach. If you are wielding a reach weapon, you use your reach with that weapon for this purpose.
You need to be trained in unarmed attacks to be considered "threatening" and thus flanking.Do you have a citation for that? I see nothing in the above-quoted text that mentions being trained in unarmed attacks.
It doesn't say that, they're just inserting rules where there are none. It doesn't even matter anyway, every class is trained in Unarmed Attacks.
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As far as I can tell:*Even if your hands are full (say with a bow) you can still make an unarmed attack.
I don't think that's as clear as many (possibly most) people claim that it is. The rules for unarmed attacks state that "Table 6–6: Unarmed Attacks lists the statistics for an unarmed attack with a fist, though you’ll usually use the same statistics for attacks made with any other parts of your body. Certain ancestry feats, class features, and spells give access to special, more powerful unarmed attacks. Details for those unarmed attacks are provided in the abilities that grant them."
The statistics for Fist on Table 6-6 has a "Hands" entry of 1. The fact that other unarmed attacks provided by "ancestry feats, class features, and spells" don't have that requirement, to my mind, contributes to why they are "more powerful."
Further, the Unarmed weapon trait says "It also doesn't take up a hand, though a fist or other grasping appendage generally works like a free-hand weapon."
The Free-Hand trait says "You can’t attack with a free-hand weapon if you’re wielding anything in that hand or otherwise using that hand."
So my reading says that if the only unarmed attack an attacker has access to is Fist, then they must have at least one free hand in order to "be able to make an unarmed attack" and thus contribute to flanking.
I recognize that this is not the generally held position.
* Nothing says you have to use the weapon that meets those flanking rules to get the bonus.
This part I definitely agree with, though strictly speaking the attacker usually isn't getting a bonus, the target is taking a penalty. Sneak attack and a few other specific mechanics change that.
As such, can't archers generally flank just fine?
Like I said, I'm not really convinced of this interpretation, but for what it's worth, as a GM I use it anyway.
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At worst, you can claim the weapon in hand could be used as an improvised weapon. For instance, say you have a heavy crossbow: you could hit someone with the butt of the weapon using the improvised weapon rules easily enough so it's not like you could ignore them because they can't make a melee attack.
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At worst, you can claim the weapon in hand could be used as an improvised weapon. For instance, say you have a heavy crossbow: you could hit someone with the butt of the weapon using the improvised weapon rules easily enough so it's not like you could ignore them because they can't make a melee attack.
That strikes me as a reasonable compromise position.
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Let's complicate this.
A whip wielding wizard.Does he get flanking bonuses on his spell attacks at whips range?
Does ally get flanking if the wizard is invisible?
Does ally get flanking if the wizard is invisible and undetected?
Yes, yes, yes.
All very obvious if you read the rule so why do you ask? Invisible and undetected have got nothing to do with it.
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Let's complicate this.
A whip wielding wizard.Does he get flanking bonuses on his spell attacks at whips range?
Does ally get flanking if the wizard is invisible?
Does ally get flanking if the wizard is invisible and undetected?
Ranged attacks don't benefit from flanking.
If they're only hidden, yes. But that would require the enemy to have seeked for the Wizard which would be weird to notice an invisible creature 10 feet away and not move closer or farther away. Since the Wizard is invisible, the enemy is still flat footed to them in all ways.
If they're undetected, still yes. Flanking doesn't care if you're undetected or not, only if you're positioned in the right way. The enemy is still flat footed to the wizard in all ways.
Let's complicate this.
A whip wielding wizard.Does he get flanking bonuses on his spell attacks at whips range?
Does ally get flanking if the wizard is invisible?
Does ally get flanking if the wizard is invisible and undetected?
Yes to all. The limitation about the opponent being in melee range is what makes them flat-footed to the creature flanking it, not to the weapon or weapons you're flanking with. There are many places in the rules where a creature is considered to be flat-footed "for that attack" or something similar, so they easily could have put that limitation under flanking if they wanted to.
Going down to invisible and undetected, though, it gets a little more complicated. RAW it's actually pretty clear that it's allowed, as flanking rules don't mention anything about the character being observed, or detected at all for that matter. However, I could easily see a GM overruling that for flavor purposes, especially for undetected. Obviously that person would get a flanking bonus (though, the target will be flat-footed to them anyway due to not detecting them), but I could see an argument that the person on the opposite side of the target shouldn't get a flanking bonus, because the creature can't really be overwhelmed by something that they don't know is there. But again, that's talking more thematically than RAW.
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Yea I agree that an enemy shouldn't suffer flanking penalties if one of the enemies are undetected. The whole point of flanking is that you are distracted by multiple enemies attacking from opposite sides. If you don't even know one of those enemies exists, you wouldn't focus on them at all and keep focus on the one you can see.
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For what it is worth Mark Seifter confirmed on the Arcane Mark discord that while you can flank while your hands are full the flanking benefit should only apply to melee attacks.
You definitely provide a flank when all your hands are full. The contention is we should likely specify that ranged attacks do not use flanking if we failed to do so.
Interesting. That's definitely evidence that it might be RAI, but RAW is still pretty clearly worded, actually. The quote above (as well as the rules themselves) establishes that you get the bonus even if your hands are full. And earlier in the rules here it says that a creature is flat-footed "to creatures that are flanking it." This kind of language is used several times throughout PF2. Creatures can be flat-footed in general, flat-footed to you, flat-footed to an attack, etc. And in this case they're flat-footed to the creatures themselves, not to specific kinds of attacks they make.
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IIRC there is a blurb somewhere in the CRB that states that "Fist" stands for any part of the body that can be used to hit an opponent, hence the flanking with hands full.
Mark's answer is not clear to me on whether he meant flanking does not apply when making a ranged attack while having all the criteria fulfilled, or whether the ranged attack does not suffice in fulfilling the criteria (which is pretty obvious IMO since the RAW mentions reach and not range).
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I'm glad that RAI is RAW in this edition. I, like Mark, assumed that flanking benefited only melee attacks (hence, the niche for produce flame as a cantrip). So, while it isn't written explicitly, there is enough to confirm melee-only flanks until the design team decides to weigh in.
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I'm glad that RAI is RAW in this edition. I, like Mark, assumed that flanking benefited only melee attacks (hence, the niche for produce flame as a cantrip). So, while it isn't written explicitly, there is enough to confirm melee-only flanks until the design team decides to weigh in.
Honestly No. This is precisely the reason designers shouldn't make too many comments. They are as likely to break perfectly clear workable rules, as they are to fix actual problems.
Note the widespread agreement about what the rules actually say.
The rules are not even vaguely unclear. They make perfect sense. They are not unreasonable or complex. It just that they are not liked by a portion of gamers. But you could say that about most rules in the game. Sure it is a change from other versions, but so much of this game is unique.
There is absolutely no need to go with RAI based on some media comment. The designers are not in charge of your game you are.
The designers should just butt out and leave it alone. They really should accept what they have done, and fix what needs to be fixed. There is enough of those.
Likewise GMs should fix in their games what needs to be fixed. For sure that is their call not mine as to what these should be. This should not be one of them.
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flanking...with a bow
tl;dr
Remember bows are somewhat unique in that they require 1-1/2 hands which means it takes two to load and fire, but you can hold it with one hand without investing actions to adjust your grip. So, when its not your turn, you would have a hand free to threaten with. The bow is not necessarily threatening the target (depending on how you feel about improvised weapons), you are. That might make it easier to envision flanking the target.
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Only because Mark Seifter's earlier comment was brought up, I'll quote his follow-up.
I looked up the flanking thing and it currently says nothing about melee at all. So my memory of an earlier version doesn't really apply. So even more than usual, don't use my memory of the earlier version to make a ruling of flanking.
I mean I know I always say that, but this time also the text is different.
In any case, I've filed a flag for us to decide about it, and that if we want flanking to work with ranged attacks made within your reach while you are flanking, to look at adjusting produce flame since it loses that edge.
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Excellent to know that there are reasonable people out there. Thank you Mark for following up.
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Yeah, Mark is a total boss
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Only because Mark Seifter's earlier comment was brought up, I'll quote his follow-up.
A link to his post on the Arcane Mark discord serverI looked up the flanking thing and it currently says nothing about melee at all. So my memory of an earlier version doesn't really apply. So even more than usual, don't use my memory of the earlier version to make a ruling of flanking.
I mean I know I always say that, but this time also the text is different.
In any case, I've filed a flag for us to decide about it, and that if we want flanking to work with ranged attacks made within your reach while you are flanking, to look at adjusting produce flame since it loses that edge.
Wait, wouldn't Produce Flame still benefit from flanking if ranged attacks were ruled otherwise? You get to choose if its a melee or ranged attack when you cast the spell, if you use it to make a flame sword it should benefit just as much as shocking grasp would.
Yes, it would. For context, the conversation about flanking and ranged attacks started with mentioning the ability to benefit from flanking as part of the point of produce flame being able to be used as a melee or ranged spell attack. If everything can benefit from flanking, there is much less benefit and produce flame might merit some other adjustment.
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Yes, it would. For context, the conversation about flanking and ranged attacks started with mentioning the ability to benefit from flanking as part of the point of produce flame being able to be used as a melee or ranged spell attack. If everything can benefit from flanking, there is much less benefit and produce flame might merit some other adjustment.
There isn't a whole lot to differentiate produce flame from other cantrips anyway with it's 1d4 persistent damage on crit vs like acid splash's 1 persistent acid damage [less base damage vs more persistent on crit]. With it having the benefit of negating ranged penalties like weather, prone-cover, ect it seems balance without flank.
Ah I get it now, I misinterpreted what the "adjustment" to produce flame would have been.
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Could still improvised weapon the bow