I am unable to find anything pertaining to it, other than the usual "You can't attack a creature within 5ft. with a reach weapon", but I just wanted to be sure;
Is the Abnormal Reach ability something that prevents all (other than unarmed) weapons from being able to attack enemies within 5ft.?
And if so, what is the counter play when 5ft. step isn't and option?
It’s believed that abilities like this change your natural reach as if you were a size larger.
Large, Huge, Gargantuan, and Colossal Creatures: Very large creatures take up more than 1 square.
Creatures that take up more than 1 square typically have a natural reach of 10 feet or more, meaning that they can reach targets even if they aren't in adjacent squares.
Unlike when someone uses a reach weapon, a creature with greater than normal natural reach (more than 5 feet) still threatens squares adjacent to it. A creature with greater than normal natural reach usually gets an attack of opportunity against you if you approach it, because you must enter and move within the range of its reach before you can attack it. This attack of opportunity is not provoked if you take a 5-foot step.
Large or larger creatures using reach weapons can strike up to double their natural reach but can't strike at their natural reach or less.
That's *really* good. You could slam anyone trying to get within range with an AoO, then fight them normally.
It would also make Cleaving Finish and Improved Cleaving Finish incredible.
That's *really* good. You could slam anyone trying to get within range with an AoO, then fight them normally.
It would also make Cleaving Finish and Improved Cleaving Finish incredible.
It is good but there are a few ways to achieve this, like the longarm spell. You could even do crossblooded with the aberrant bloodline. It’s unclear if all of those are meant to be stackable. They technically do stack since they aren’t technically size bonuses, but expect table variation.
Long arm and enlarge person are on the bloodrager spell list. So, using those as a crossblooded bloodrager with black blood and aberrant bloodlines you could have a natural reach of 25’. There are a few other options you could add in like lunge. And you could include a reach weapon, but the interaction with the extended natural reach isn’t well represented in the rules.
I’d personally never play a crossblooded bloodrager, but the super reach build is still a fun concept
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Long arm and enlarge person are on the bloodrager spell list. So, using those as a crossblooded bloodrager with black blood and aberrant bloodlines you could have a natural reach of 25’.
The only problem is that enlarge person is a one-round cast and since it's not touch or personal you can't even use it with greater bloodrage.
I played around with a "walking fireball" dwarf bloodrager. Used the dwarf "cleave anybody in your reach" feats and crossblooded abyssal/aberrant. Could have been abyssal/black blooded. Longarm with greater bloodrage. It was a fun thought exercise but in actual play it would mean giving up a lot and I wouldn't really get my awesomeness on until very late in any campaign.
Enlarge person is hopefully a prebuff cast from an ally.
I had (with elephant in the room active), an Abyssal Bloodrager who went into whirlwind attack (which is far far more practical with EITR, as its just dodge + mobility as one feat, spring attack and then whirlwind attack).
Due to Abyssal, he autoenlarged, and at level 7 he had his thing going.
Looking back:
--Should have made him an Urban Bloodrager, for the cast bladed dash as part of your greater bloodrage thing
--Stagger proof boots are your friend before greater bloodrage
--the difference between 15 feet reach and 20 feet reach was often significant (I got good value out of lunge), the difference between 20 and 25 feet less so.
--I picked spring attack into whirlwind over a cleave build because the spring attack with reach is amazing in a "duel" (he fought a couple against Paladins), even more so if you have a movespeed advantadge.
With minute/level durations, both enlarge person and long arm are likely to have good uptimes in your adventuring day. Of course those don’t even become available until level 4, and don’t enjoy a lot of up time until around level 10, when you can cast them multiple times per adventuring day. At higher level you will probably substitute Monstrous Physique II for enlarge person.
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With minute/level durations, both enlarge person and long arm are likely to have good uptimes in your adventuring day.
I know not much PF1 actually gets played anymore, but I would still love to play in one of these campaigns where I could plan out a character assuming that minute/level buffs are active before combat for most of my encounters.
I played and GMed a LOT of PF1 - thousands of hours is not an exaggeration - between 2010 and early 2020. Other than a few adventures that were explicitly designed as "dungeon crawls" or "tournaments" there couldn't have been more than a couple of dozen encounters over the years where a party could be reasonably certain that combat was going to start within even a half-hour window.
Dungeon crawls were far more likely to have the party going through every door buffed to the gills. Especially in adventures where there were no downsides to resting. But when (for whatever reason) resting was a bad idea conserving spell slots became far more important. No one wants to burn 3 spell slots on short-duration combat buffs only to find the next room is a tricky puzzle.
It generally happens that you buff up in the first encounter and then run wildly from room to room until the buffs run out. It’s not that unusual for enemies from one room to go and grab their buddies from the next room anyway.
We often don’t even loot the room right away but just come back and work on searching and such after burning down some combats.
The only problem is that enlarge person is a one-round cast and since it's not touch or personal you can't even use it with greater bloodrage.
I always pack a couple of potions of Enlarge Person on melee characters. Potions are a move to retrieve and a Standard to drink. It still takes you out of the combat for a round, but A) You get the benefits of reach instantly, rather than on the following turn, and B) You finish the spell instantly which means you can do other things between turns if something comes up. Obviously pre-buffing with spell-slots is better, but for when you need Enlarge and you didn't have to prebuff, potions are your friend .
Enlarge person is hopefully a prebuff cast from an ally.
I had (with elephant in the room active), an Abyssal Bloodrager who went into whirlwind attack (which is far far more practical with EITR, as its just dodge + mobility as one feat, spring attack and then whirlwind attack).
Due to Abyssal, he autoenlarged, and at level 7 he had his thing going.
Looking back:
--Should have made him an Urban Bloodrager, for the cast bladed dash as part of your greater bloodrage thing
--Stagger proof boots are your friend before greater bloodrage
--the difference between 15 feet reach and 20 feet reach was often significant (I got good value out of lunge), the difference between 20 and 25 feet less so.
--I picked spring attack into whirlwind over a cleave build because the spring attack with reach is amazing in a "duel" (he fought a couple against Paladins), even more so if you have a movespeed advantadge.
Yeah I just finished a campaign with an ABERRANT BLOODRAGER. Toward the end my go-to strategy was to cast LONG ARM as part of Greater bloodrage, then cast MONSTROUS PHYSIQUE II to transform into a GUG , and when you combine that with Aberrant Reach from my bloodline I had 25 foot natural reach. I could make AoOs on pretty much anyone on the battlefield.
Even though I played this character from 1 to 19, and even though I had this crazy reach, I can count on my fingers the number of times I got more than 2 AoOs in a round. When it happened it was glorious , but it's fairly rare. I ended up not going for the best options to make use of that reach though because I think my GM would have flipped the table =P
I used Lunge a bit, but I found that Lunge is mostly only useful when your reach is exactly 5 feet longer or shorter than your opponents' reach. If it's 5 feet shorter it allows you to approach them and attack without provoking an AoO, and if it's 5 feet longer then you can approach and attack them, and they're still too far to just 5-foot-step in to attack you. This means they have to move, which means they don't get their full attack and you get an AoO as they move in. But it's fairly niche unless you're fighting a lot of enemies of a particular size . If you are facing a lot of enemies of that size then it's a really good feat, but if you have 15-20 foot reach already it's unlikely that Lunge will really make the difference that often.
The real benefit of that excessive reach was Threatening those AoOs. If I stand in front of my party then the enemy has a choice between attacking me or attacking my allies. If they attack me then great , but if they want to attack my allies they have to make another choice: Walk through my threatened space and take a hit, or walk around, and probably take longer to get to my allies. With a 10 foot reach you can do this fairly well, but with 20+ foot reach the choice isn't just an extra action, it's an entire extra round or two to get past me if they don't want to provoke. So it basically removed the option of going around.
I really enjoyed it as a playstyle, but you have to make yourself as tanky as possible - I spent a LOT of the first 7 or so levels going unconscious most combats.