Charging and spaces

I'm in a combat situation.

My character is a duergar barbarian. He is enlarged, so his space is 10X10 and he has a 10' threat range. He is getting charged by a minotaur attempting a gore attack who is roughly the same size with the same reach.

The DM says that the minotaur only has to get 10' away from me and the minotaur can reach me from 10' away with his gore attack. Physically, I'm under the impression that the minotaur has to get 5' from me (which would mean it provokes an AoO for moving across spaces I threaten). It doesn't seem possible that a minotaur's neck can stretch 10' to let it gore me while it stands that far back.

Is there any ruling on attacks such as that? I know that the minotaur has a reach of 10' but I'm thinking that has to do with its arms, weapons, and such and not so much that it has a slinky for a neck allowing it to gore someone 10' away from its body.

Hawken said:

I'm in a combat situation.
....
Is there any ruling on attacks such as that? I know that the minotaur has a reach of 10' but I'm thinking that has to do with its arms, weapons, and such and not so much that it has a slinky for a neck allowing it to gore someone 10' away from its body.

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Your DM here is correct. 3.x makes no distinction between the types of weapons used. The Mino with 10ft reach gets to apply that to every attack regardless if its a dagger, his fist, his knee, or his Horns.

To flip this the other way the game also does not take into account that a medium human with a 6ft Greatsword has more reach than a medium human wielding a 1ft dagger. By the rules they are both considered to have 5ft reach.

I agree with ShadowChemosh and your DM. If you can knee someone 5' away, a mino can headbutt 10' away. The squares are an abstraction for game purposes. When you make an attack you move around, even into your enemy's 5' square, but you finish up back in your space.

I know that the minotaur has a reach of 10'

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That is all you need to know. Only reach weapons and inordinately long limbed natural attacks ever have a different reach than of the base creature and all such exceptions are noted as such.

Is it counter intuitive that a barely large minotaur has the full 10’ reach with it horns? Maybe, but that is the rule set. If you want the DM to reduce the reach on some weapons, combat is not the time to make the argument.