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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 2773845" data-attributes="member: 18280">Since you are responding to my statement, "Clearly, even you agree that you do not have to entirely tune out a creature in a flanking position in order to ignore them enough to avoid the flanking penalty," which referenced an ally in the flanking position, you must therefore be arguing that standing back-to-back with an ally either (1) grants a foe a flanking bonus or (2) disallows you from reacting to your ally (such as casting cure light wounds on him when he is injured).Your Dexterity bonus is reduced to 0.  While you do not have a Dexterity penalty (i.e., you are not stumbling Clouseau-like into an attack, neither are you able to leap out of the way.  All you have is your base AC (10 for a medium creature), any size modifier, and any armor bonus.  The base AC + size modifier are how hard it is to hit an object of your size, and nothing more.  The armor modifier is how hard it is to damage that target once you hit it, and nothing more.  You do not get to use your shield.  You do not get to use your Dexterity.Once more, do not confuse "completely helpless" with "unable to react".One assumes that a helpless opponent who is "otherwise at your mercy" is at your mercy in a manner similar to being "bound, sleeping, paralyzed, or unconscious" rather than, say, merely not actively defending against you.  In fact, not actively defending against you is exactly what being flat-footed is.  If this is a silly argument, it is merely so because you want "helpless" to mean one thing in one context and another thing in a different context.  Simply put, if I were a player in your campaign, and I turned coat and attacked Fred the Other PC while we were fighting back-to-back, you wouldn't decide that Fred was helpless.  Trying to make any other kind of argument is just dishonest.Is the purpose of ignoring an opponent to avoid a thief's sneak attack.  Quite possibly, yes.  But the standard flanking rules assume that you give equal attention to all opponents, and if you are fighting two opponents, one of whom is clearly a superior combatant, then you are an idiot.  IMC, this has only come up once, in a fight with a gargoyle, where only one PC was using a weapon that offered a significant threat.  I ruled then as I rule now -- and my PCs are smart enough to take advantage of a flat-footed opponent with non-damaging attacks, if that is what is required.RC</blockquote>

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