Pounce: RAW vs RAI (resolved)

[Rinny]

Charge

Charging is a special full-round action that allows you to move up to twice your speed and attack during the action. However, it carries tight restrictions on how you can move.


Pounce (Ex)

When a creature with this special attack makes a charge, it can follow with a full attack—including rake attacks if the creature also has the rake ability.

A charge is an action that includes a move and an attack. This ability says that 'a charge' can be followed with a full attack. You charge, with a move, and an attack. Then, you make a full attack, via Pounce. This phrase treats them as discrete from each other. Colloquially, 'charging' refers to just the movement, but the game has defined it as a specific action which includes the movement plus the attack.

Honestly I'm not even sure this is even RAI. Maybe the text is using 'charge' colloquially to refer to just the movement portion; or is using 'follow' to loosely refer to the implied but unstated 'movement' of the charge. It shouldn't, because it needs to maintain a high degree of precision and consistency. And maybe it shouldn't even work that way, for balance reasons (Shock Trooper, Leap Attack). Would the additional attack difference made by a pouncing monster be imbalanced in its own way (at lower levels)? I don't know.

The Rules Compendium states that, in a pounce, the full attack does receive the +2 charge bonus of the charge, implying that things like Shock Trooper and Leap Attack should.

But RAW, the charge is separate and distinct from the full attack within the Pounce action; and I'm told that RAW is supposed to be pretty important. Thoughts?

[ezekielraiden]

Charging is a full-round action in 3.5e.* Therefore, if you are "following" the charge with a full attack, it must be part of the same action, or give you an extra action with which to full attack. Since the pounce text does not say that you get any further actions, that only leaves being part of the same action. Therefore, a creature with the pounce special ability takes a full-round action to charge and full attack. Hence why it was officially stated that you get the benefits of a charge on said full attack--it's part of the same action as the charge, and therefore is affected by all things that affect attacks during a charge.

*Unless you're restricted to only taking a standard action, in which case it can be done as a standard action. But the same things would still apply, because Pounce triggers when you make any charge, not when you spend a full-round action to charge.

[Rinny]

Charging is a full-round action in 3.5e.* Therefore, if you are "following" the charge with a full attack, it must be part of the same action, or give you an extra action with which to full attack. Since the pounce text does not say that you get any further actions, that only leaves being part of the same action. Therefore, a creature with the pounce special ability takes a full-round action to charge and full attack. Hence why it was officially stated that you get the benefits of a charge on said full attack--it's part of the same action as the charge, and therefore is affected by all things that affect attacks during a charge.

*Unless you're restricted to only taking a standard action, in which case it can be done as a standard action. But the same things would still apply, because Pounce triggers when you make any charge, not when you spend a full-round action to charge.

I don't see how that line of thinking follows, since at face, you're talking about two 'full round actions' taking place in one round, each with another 'thing' being done within that round. You could interpret it your way; or you could interpret 'Pounce' as modifying and making an exception to Charge being an actual 'full-round action', and shoehorning it into the 'full round action' of a full attack action in the same way. I.e., your interpretation still has a 'full-round action' within a 'full-round action', so isn't fully sound without making an exception somewhere, which could be either of the 'full-round actions' being 'downgraded' and shoved into the other; or both being 'downgraded'. Clearly this (more recent) rule is making one of these exceptions, but it's not clear which one that would necessarily be. It is more common to see a Full Attack being modified to less than an actual full round action, but I don't see why the the same couldn't be applied to Charge.

Similarly, in this case the Rules Compendium would be 'making an exception' to the Pounce rule, but that could just as easily be seen as a completely self-contained exception rather than a more generalized ruling or clarification.

Also, as a side note, I know this level of lawyering seems silly, because of the common emphasis that the DM is the final arbitrator of all rules, but it matters for a couple reasons: 1) Some DMs specifically operate on 'defer to RAW', and co-operate with the player on understanding said RAW; and to a lesser extent 2) it can be desirable to know if a build has some degree of universal application across multiple possible future DMs/games. Including Western Marches stuff.

All that said... my brain is tired, and I'm now leaning towards the perspective of it just being yet another case where RAW is expressed in a flawed and ambiguous way, and RAI being more or less 'inferrable'.

Honestly, it's frustrating that they don't go out of their way to use more clear and exhaustive language. Even running into this pattern in 5e -- it's lame.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Rules Compendium, p101:


Pounce
When a creature that has this extraordinary special attack
charges, it can still make a full attack even if it charged while
restricted to a single action. All its attacks receive the +2 bonus
on attack rolls gained from charging. If it uses its attacks to
successfully start a grapple, and it has the rake ability, it can
also make rake attacks.

A Charge (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/specialAttacks.htm#charge) says under Attacking on a Charge that you make a single attack after moving. Pounce is an exception to that, stating you get a full attack instead of the single attack.

If the full attack was separate from the charge, then your charge would still get its single attack in addition to that full attack. This is clearly not the case.

[Rinny]

Rules Compendium, p101:



A Charge says under Attacking on a Charge that you make a single attack after moving. Pounce is an exception to that, stating you get a full attack instead of the single attack.

If the full attack was separate from the charge, then your charge would still get its single attack in addition to that full attack. This is clearly not the case.

I still contend that the core Pounce text doesn't state this clearly, and the Compendium note isn't as helpful as it could have been, but I accept it in a RAI sense.

Changed the thread title to make it less, ah, provocative. Thanks for replies.

[liquidformat]

A charge is an action that includes a move and an attack. This ability says that 'a charge' can be followed with a full attack. You charge, with a move, and an attack. Then, you make a full attack, via Pounce. This phrase treats them as discrete from each other. Colloquially, 'charging' refers to just the movement, but the game has defined it as a specific action which includes the movement plus the attack.

Honestly I'm not even sure this is even RAI. Maybe the text is using 'charge' colloquially to refer to just the movement portion; or is using 'follow' to loosely refer to the implied but unstated 'movement' of the charge. It shouldn't, because it needs to maintain a high degree of precision and consistency. And maybe it shouldn't even work that way, for balance reasons (Shock Trooper, Leap Attack). Would the additional attack difference made by a pouncing monster be imbalanced in its own way (at lower levels)? I don't know.

The Rules Compendium states that, in a pounce, the full attack does receive the +2 charge bonus of the charge, implying that things like Shock Trooper and Leap Attack should.

But RAW, the charge is separate and distinct from the full attack within the Pounce action; and I'm told that RAW is supposed to be pretty important. Thoughts?

If Pounce said: it can follow up with a full attack. I would agree with you; however, as it is you are adding words into RAW to get a dysfunctional result that adds an extra attack into the functionality of pounce and claiming it as RAW.

I am also anti rules compendium in general and this is a great example of why as it adds forcing a grapple into pounce in order to make rake attacks which was never intended.

Also I believe this is a case where 3.5 tried to cleanup the rules and made a mess of it, once I am home I will link 3.0 wording which if I remember correctly is much cleaner RAW.

[Anthrowhale]

We had a discussion on this previously (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22857808&postcount=40). There are several variants of pounce. Notably, the common version implies that the full attack is not a part of the charge and hence not shocktrooper applicable, which is a notable nerf to an ubercharger. Other variants could be combined with shocktrooper.