Nanocyte's Menacing Pall and Alies Flanking

[Fake Rules Lawyer]

Ahoy! The rule I'm looking to clarify is the Nanocyte's menacing pall. The ability gives the weilder flanking on enemies by threatening any square that contains a cloud array. Would this ability also give alies flanking as well, considering this ability acts as threatening enemies? Also, do modifiers, like reach, also affect this ability, treating each cloud square as having 10ft reach?

[Kishmo]

I think so, yes! The key points to Menacing Pall are:
- You must be within or adjacent to your Cloud
- only works with melee attacks with weapons formed with your gear array
The definition for Flanking tells us you get Flanking "if your opponent is Threatened by another creature on its opposite border or opposite corner" and the rules on Threatened Squares tells us that "you threaten all squares into which you can make a melee attack," and Menacing Pall lets us make melee attacks from a large number of places, and therefore Threaten a large number of squares. Putting it all together, it reads as if yes, your allies can 'flank' with your cloud, and if you have a gear array weapon with reach, it looks like you can reach 10 ft away from your Cloud!

[Fake Rules Lawyer]

Unfortunately my GM doesn't read it so charitably. He made the argument that because the ability gives "you" position based benefits, that those same benefits don't apply to allies. He mentioned some clarification for a Vanguard that gives themselves flanking and not allies, but I couldn't find were that was noted.

[Xenocrat]

I think I agree with your GM that from a balancing standpoint if they'd intended to provide extremely easy, widespread flanking (you can make a big cloud once this ability is available) they would have explicitly said so.

[Fake Rules Lawyer]

Perhaps, but not explicitly stating alies can flank too doesn't preclude the rule applying. The ability could just as easily be read that explicitly calling out gaining the benefits from flanking and not percluding allies means it acts like standard flanking. There are plenty of abilities that give you something, but specifically exclude some other standard feature you'd normally apply. Plus, this is a higher level ability that requires the player to use many resources to get off the ground (gear array, must be melee, positional requirements for both the player and targets, cloud array, a high level knack, etc).

[TheLastGasp]

Came here looking for something similar, I think this falls under the "if it's too good to be true" category. The fact that Menacing Pall doesn't allow for AoOs kinda implies your weapons aren't just floating out there in the cloud array ready to strike at any moment, so I could see your GM applying similar to logic to why you aren't granting flanking at all times to everyone in your cloud. Especially with that tricky usage of the word "you", which feels imperative — "you" get the benefit because your weapon is appearing out of your cloud to flank someone *at the moment* of your attack. But I could see it either way when reading the text about how threatened squares works... Great opportunity for an official errata.