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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5410210" data-attributes="member: 82106">OK, nothing confusing or murky about it WRT familiars. NOTHING in the rules ever calls a familiar a creature. They simply are NOT creatures. In fact they aren't described as summons, conjurations, creatures, or in fact any other category of thing. They aren't even an effect of a power. They are a game element all of their own which arises as an effect of a feat.Since this is the case familiars are not allies either, ergo they cannot flank. They are also not generally capable of making attacks, which also makes them ineligible as flankers. Honestly in most cases the rules DO actually seem to envisage familiars as being treated LIKE creatures. They can be attacked, they have defenses, etc. The fact that they aren't ever defined clearly as being any specific category of 'game element' is actually pretty troublesome from a RAW perspective. It is understandable that people DO think of them as creatures since this usually works best, but as in the FAQ entry that states they can't flank there are some exceptions and gray areas.I don't see ANY problem personally with summons being able to flank. The rules arguments for it have been made already so it isn't worth rehashing, but clearly they are intended to work like normal combatants with the caveat that they work off the caster's actions. I think the intent of the flanking rules is that any time a creature has 2 enemies on opposite sides of it which represent a threat of some sort that it creates a disadvantage in combat. Imagine the action. The orc has a dretch on one side and a fighter on the other side of him. He can only parry one or the other at any instant and will necessarily have to move his attention from one to the other. The IN GAME action isn't divided up into turns or even specific attacks. The fighter and the dretch are both hacking away at the orc as best they can, perhaps even striking simultaneously to try to get past his defenses. Now the dretch gets stunned. He's no longer a threat because he's standing there drooling instead of fighting. The orc can now concentrate on the fighter and no longer grants CA. Mechanically the "must not be under an effect that prevents OAs" clause is just there to capture the concept of "this guy is an active threat". I don't think that it was intended to mean, or does mean, that the creature has to actually be able to make a specific OA, just be capable of attacking and not 'disabled' in some fashion. Maybe each condition should actually list "cannot flank" as one of its effects when that is the case and it would be more clear, but that is what they were trying to capture IMHO. In any case I'm pretty sure there is a FAQ entry on summons and flanking that says they can do so. It has certainly been brought up many times in Q&A and always the consensus is they can flank.</blockquote>

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