Longstaff

[JustKim]

This weapon appears in Complete Adventurer and again in Dragon 331. It says "If you are proficient with the longstaff and you fight defensively or employ the total defense combat maneuver, you cannot be flanked for the rest of the round".

Huh? This is very ambiguous. I guess the rest of the round means anyone who acts before you on the next round can flank you, making it different from every other one round effect out there. That seems like a mistake.

More puzzling is that you cannot be flanked. What does that mean? Does it mean people who would normally flank you don't get the flanking bonus? Or does it mean of the 8 spaces surrounding you, only 4 can be physically occupied by enemies? The wording seems to suggest the latter, as "flanking" is different from a "flanking bonus", but if you don't get a flanking bonus you can still sneak attack. Is the longstaff meant to institute a state of flanking-but-not-flanking?

This feels strangely like 2E.

 

[HellHound]

You can still have people on all sides of you, but they fail to flank you. Unless of course the Beholder can only have people in 4 of the 8 surrounding squares (since the beholder has the same special ability "can't be flanked"

Rest of the round means until your next action, typically.

 

[Pielorinho]

I'm with Scrappy Doo.
Daniel

 

[AuraSeer]

When a character "can't be flanked," that does not prevent enemies from bracketing him between them. It simply means that the enemies do not get the +2 attack bonus for flanking, and cannot use any special abilities that depend on flanking (like a rogue's sneak attack). This is the special meaning of "flanking" in the D20 system-- if the rules meant something else, they would explicitly say so.

Also, you are misinterpreting the phrase about "the rest of the round." It simply means the effect lasts until the character's next action. There does not exist an arbitrary end-of-round point, nor a demarcation between the end of one round and the start of another. All durations simply last for a number of rounds, starting on the activating turn, and ending immediately before his turn some number of rounds later.

 

[Crothian]

I'm with Scrappy Doo.
Daniel

SCrappy has is right as usual

 

[HellHound]

SCrappy has is right as usual

No 'as usual' in there. I'm tragically wrong so often in rules discussions that it pains me. I have Hypersmurf to blame though, he's more often than not the one to tell me.

 

[Len]

Maybe you're always right and Hypersmurf is wrong. Did you ever think of that?

 

[shilsen]

Maybe you're always right and Hypersmurf is wrong. Did you ever think of that?

Look! An aerial porker!

 

[HellHound]

LOL!

Sure... Hypersmurf is king of rules.

I need to run all my d20 writings past him for rules consistency and past Mr Cooper for critter stat blocks.

 

[Len]

If you post all your material here phrased as questions, you could trick them into doing it for free.