Are You Considered Flat-Footed When You Are Prone?

[Olaf the Stout]

So, do you think a character is considered flat-footed, and therefore open to sneak attacks, when he is prone?

I would have thought so but I can't find anything in the rules that says that you are.

This is what the rules say in regards to being prone:

[sblock=Prone]The character is on the ground. An attacker who is prone has a -4 penalty on melee attack rolls and cannot use a ranged weapon (except for a crossbow). A defender who is prone gains a +4 bonus to Armor Class against ranged attacks, but takes a -4 penalty to AC against melee attacks.

Standing up is a move-equivalent action that provokes an attack of opportunity.[/sblock]

The fact that it doesn't directly say that a prone character is flat-footed leaves me to assume that they are there for not flatfooted.

What are your thoughts?

Olaf the Stout

 

[Geoff Watson]

Being prone does not cause you to be flat-footed.

Why would you think it does?

Geoff.

 

[Sound of Azure]

It looks like you've answered your own question Olaf.

Your conclusion is sound. Being prone neither makes you lose your Dexterity bonus to AC, nor makes you flat-footed. If it did, I am fairly sure the prone description would explicitly say so. It would take some other triggering condition to allow a rogue to sneak attack a prone character (feints, flanking, etc).

 

[Darklone]

Soooo many people play D&D since years with the houserule that you may be sneak attacked when you're prone and didn't notice that it's a houserule.

If one of these guys told you, he's probably certain it's an official rule.

Threads like this one popped up much more often before 3.5.

 

[Dross]

Being prone does not cause you to be flat-footed.

Why would you think it does?

Agree, you are not prone. It would have said if you were FF. Not that you are not FF while grappled for instance but states other conditions (lose DEX).


Olaf could have been told that happens because it's a house rule then it didn't happen from another DM, or had it as an assumption, or just wondered because he thought it "seemed reasonable" :\ It happens. It has happened for an number of people, including myself.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Agree, you are not prone. It would have said if you were FF. Not that you are not FF while grappled for instance but states other conditions (lose DEX).


Olaf could have been told that happens because it's a house rule then it didn't happen from another DM, or had it as an assumption, or just wondered because he thought it "seemed reasonable" :\ It happens. It has happened for an number of people, including myself.

It had never actually come up in our game before last night's session. I actually happened to be a player last session (I'm normally the DM) but not the player that this rule affected (the Rogue was attacking someone on the ground). My initial reaction was that "of course if you are on the ground you're flat-footed". It just seemed logical and reasonable as Dross suggested.

When I actually looked up the definition of prone I was surprised that it didn't mention that you were or weren't considered flat-footed. I therefore assumed that, because it didn't state explicitly that you were flat-footed, it meant that you weren't. However I have found in 3.5E that sometimes there is an obscure reference on some other page that says otherwise.

That's why I started this thread, to see if there was a rule somewhere that I was missing, or a page reference that I had missed.

In the game it didn't matter in the end. The Rogue did enough damage without adding in sneak attack damage to kill the guy anyway. I just wanted to double check and clarify the rule before next session in case it came up again. No-one was using it as a house rule or anything like that. This was just the first time that the situation had occurred in the campaign.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Darklone]

My initial reaction was that "of course if you are on the ground you're flat-footed". It just seemed logical and reasonable as Dross suggested.

I got a lot of heavy flak once in a German forum because I tried to explain to people that you don't lose your Dex bonus while prone...

Having seen some guys roll around on the floor, I do see the rules logic though.

 

[hong]

I got a lot of heavy flak once in a German forum because I tried to explain to people that you don't lose your Dex bonus while prone...

Captionthsplskthxbye

 

[Darklone]

Yeah, German flak IS deadly.

 

[Flynn]

You might want to look under the Armor Class Modifiers table in the SRD:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/combatModifiers.htm

You can easily see that prone imposes a penalty to melee AC and a bonus to ranged AC, but it does not have the superscript that denotes that the defender loses any Dexterity bonus to AC. Therefore, you are not flatfooted while prone.

Of course, that being said, you can do whatever you like in your home campaign, but the rules do not define a prone person as being flatfooted.

Hope that helps,
Flynn