I flank myself! ...

[CRGreathouse]

An invisible enemy (even improved invisible) is only undetected until they begin to attack. When I feel their sword hit me, I swing my weapon in their direction, move slightly away, and generally try to reduce the damage they deal me.

When I'm ignoring them, I don't swing my weapon toward them even when they do attack me. I don't try to move away, and I don't minimize damage. They just hack at me constantly.

In general, then, this is a bad idea - but it might be worthwhile for the 16th-level paladin to ignore the goblin flanking him, even if it does have a solid chance to deal 7 points of damage.

 

[chilibean]

Perhaps we should try to replace the word "ignore" with the words "not look at".

Why can 3 people attack the same side of an opponent with no additional penalty to the defender? Doesn't he have to "pay attention" to all those in front of him? The reason is obvious, because he can see them all.

Why is he not able to fight someone on either side of him just as well, because he can't see both of them at the same time. During the instant he is looking left, the guy on the right has an advantage, and vise versa. What if he decided to fight the exact same way, but only look left, so the guy on the left never gets an advantage and the guy on the right is constantly advantaged?

As for the argument brought up that there is no facing, I ask you this. Is it fair for a DM to give a circumstance bonus to an assassin sneaking up in a direction opposite from the opponent he is currently fighting (that is code for "behind you", but I can't say that since there is no "facing")? If so, is it fair for someone to purposely look around during combat to spot the sneaking assassin (and thereby cancel the circumstance bonus) if he has reason to suspect someone might be there?

 

[Pielorinho]

I don't think this screws the rogue royally. There are relatively few circumstances in which the rogue's flankpartner will be worth ignoring.

Imagine, for example, your great wyrm red dragon fighting a rogue (on one side of him) and an Irish Setter (on the other side of him). That Irish setter ain't gonna get through the dragon's damage reduction, but according to the strict interpretation, the dragon can't ignore the dog. That doesn't make sense to me.

I'm going for the invisibility rule, and I'll start using it in my campaign next session, and I'll suggest it to the DM in my campaign.

Daniel

 

[CRGreathouse]

You are screwing with something that is going to severly affect game balance when you start to introduce facing and ways to get rid of the flanking.

For one thing you are just about gutting the combat effectiveness of rogues. "Oh crap, he's getting sneak attack damage, I'm going to ignore the other guy so I don't sneak attacked again."

It's a bad idea to try to fix something that doesn't really need it.

It's not about reducing the combat effectiveness of rogues, it's about reducing the effectiveness of summon monster I flanking. My rule makes it absurdly hard to igniore a foe, since damage is *maximized* and criticals are a near-certainty.

Since you think my rule makes rogues less effective in combat, I'll assume you read my example? It wasn't designed to prove my point, and there are many (contrived) ways of making it more effective - dual-wielding heavy picks against a dexterous foe would make a much sronger statement.

 

[Storm Raven]

After all this, I ask again: If you don't know the invisible opponent is there, how can you dodge away from him? Why would you make wild swings to keep him away? (Is it some kind of paranoid epileptic condition that makes you flail about wih your sword just in case there's an invisible opponent nearby?) Wouldn't the first indication of the invisible opponent be a dagger up the strap? If I don't know he's there, aren't I effectively ignoring him?

Invisible opponents are not also automatically silent, scentless, and formless. You can possibly hear, smell or feel their presence (by feeling their presence, I mean that their motion causes disturbances in the air, some people, myself included, can notice this sort of thing in the right circumstances).

In addition, being invisible does not mean that the effects of their actions are invisible. Dust moved by their motions and footprins can help give them away, and so can any number of other factors. An invisible opponent is difficult to deal with, but it isn't like they have an automatic 'immune to detection' spell on as well.

 

[Pielorinho]

Again, do you guys think that you can be flanked by an invisibile opponent? What if you're completely unaware of the invisible opponent?

If you think that you *can* be flanked by an opponent of whom you're unaware, then you need to come up with a new explanation of how flanking works: it's apparently not effective because the flanker distracts you.

If you think that unnoticed opponents do not receive or grant a flanking bonus, then you need to explain why I can't choose to pay as little heed to a noticed opponent as I would to an unnoticed opponent. And you need to explain why an ignored opponent would be more dangerous to me than an unnoticed opponent.

At worst, I could imagine forcing PCs to make a concentration or wisdom check to ignore an opponent.

Any answer to the "can an unnoticed opponent grant or receive a flanking bonus" question?

Daniel

 

[BlindKobold]

How about making the person helpless to the ignored person, allowing the person being ignored to coup de'grace the person.

Ignoring a person is really making yourself helpless against the attacker and gives the attacker the ability to very easily strike a vital area (backbone, neck, kidneys, spleen, hamstrings, etc.).

In a real fight, if you ignore someone with a weapon... you are going to die.

 

[IceBear]

That was how I was planning on handling it too, if it came up in game. However, some posts on here make me rethink that. Just because you are attacking someone who is ignoring you doesn't mean they wouldn't suddenly move in response to something else.

Also, it would open up the can of worms of "Well, I'm invisible and he didn't hear me, so why can't I CdG him?"

IceBear

 

[mmu1]

Wait a moment - you'd suffer a near-automatic critical for max from the fighter in exchange for denying the rogue a flank?

That was actually meant to refer to the idea of treating someone you ignore as invisible, which a number of people seemed to think was just great.

As for your "maximized crit" variant, I suppose it's fine mechanically, but it really isn't much of a solution. In many cases it's so prohibitive, that in effect it amounts to saying "you can't ignore an opponent", just not in so many words...

In any case, the only real problems with not being able to ignore things crop up in the whole "cocker spaniel and the tarrasque/great wyrm dragon case", and even there they're not even remotely unbalanced... So you try to use Monster Summoning I to flank a dragon? BFD... One of two things will most likely happen: a)The flanker will die from one of the dragon's three to six attacks (depending on size) or breath weapon, or b)It's not going to roll a natural 20 on it's saving throw against the thing's fearsome aura, and run for it, dying from an AAO. Really, monsters so powerful they should logically be able to ignore certain enemies have so many advantages already that it's really a bad idea to stack things in their favor.

Finally, in reference to the whole "well, if you have three people all on the same side of you, why aren't you flanked? You're definitely distracted." question - this is a game, and a fantasy one at that. Game balance will take precedence over the way things might work in real life every time. Simple as that...

 

[SpikeyFreak]

If you think that you *can* be flanked by an opponent of whom you're unaware, then you need to come up with a new explanation of how flanking works: it's apparently not effective because the flanker distracts you.

I think if an invisible person was haking at my back it would really distract me. I don't know how you would act, but I find it hard to believe that you would ignore someone hitting you with a sword just because you couldn't see them.

That's a very interesting case of "out-of-sight, out-of-mind."

--Flanked Spikey