Nonsensical flatfooted rule

[Gaiden]

I have been wondering how the rules make sense given the following information. Flatfooted does not allow you to use your Dex bonus. However, someone with a dex penalty would still have a penalty to his AC. As with all abilities, dexterity is on a continuum. If you can't react to a threat (because you are flatfooted) then why should someone who has a dex penalty be further penalized. If you are going to remove the dex benefit, the idea behind it (to me) would seem that dexterity can't help you with this attack because you can't react to it.

In that case dexterity is meaningless and the whole dex mod should be irrelevant. In fact it makes the case that dex should be considered 0 for this attack.

Other than game balance, what does everyone think about this?

 

[CRGreathouse]

I think it's important here to remember what 'flat-footed' is in terms how it's visualised in the game. As has been clarified both by the Sage and the designers, flat-footed does not mean rooted to the spot, doing nothing; that is the helpless state. The character is responding to events as best he can. But he's hampered by not uhaving got up to speed with the events affecting him, so he can't react properly (at least as I picture it, YMMV).

Hence the low Dexterity character is still hampered even further than his average or better colleagues because he's still got lousy reflexes, or he's stumble-footed, or just plain clumsy, depending on how you want to picture that low Dexterity attribute.

Certainly, that makes sense to me.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Unless he "cannot react to the attack", while not being helpless

But I won't bring that up.

-Hyp.