Sutek said:
1) Sneak attacks could be accomplished if an opponent was denied "either Dodge Defense or Parry Defense" (quote from AE). Now, I interpreted that as when any target was denied one or the other or both. The general interpretation was when a target was denied only both Dodge or Parry, but the "or" kept me convinced that being denied just one of the two was enough to warrant Sneak Attacks to be allowed. It's a crucial interpretation, though, and I wonder if 2ed cleard up the grammar (for me anyway).
That's not an entirely correct representation of the issue. As with Trodax, we already had a debate on this, so I won't get into that again, but I will clarify the issue in case it does get addressed here, so that it is properly addressed.
The text of Sneak Attack (per p. 270 of the pocket edition) says "A sneak attack can only be made against a character who is unable to use Dodge Defense
or Parry Defense to defend himself, or who is being flanked." Further, it says "If a character is able to defend himself with either Dodge Defense
or Parry Defense (such as a character with the Reflexive Parry feat who is attacked when flat-footed) then he is not susceptible to a sneak attack, unless the sneak attack is of a kind that the chosen defense cannot help against. For example, a flat-footed character with Reflexive Parry could still be sneak attacked by a character using a ranged weapon, because ranged attacks cannot be parried." (Underlining added by me.)
Now that the exact text is available, the issue can be presented. As I understand it (but it has been a while), Sutek read the text to mean that if either of the defenses are not available (an exclusive "or" for the first underlining), then the target could be sneak attacked, i.e., if someone has a bow 30' from the target, then they could do sneak attack damage to the target because the target only has Dodge Defense available, and cannot use Parry Defense - regardless whether the target was surprised, flat-footed, etc., i.e., just simply standing there aware of the attack.
Basically the remainder of us understood the text to mean that if neither (an inclusive "or" for the first underlining) defense were available against the attack, then sneak attack could occur. I.e., if a target isn't flat-footed, or if is flat-footed but has Uncanny Dodge, Dodge is available to a target being attacked by a bow and therefore does not take sneak attack damage from the bow attack.
Further, Sutek appears to miss other significant matters, including (1) that a character declares whether he is dodging or parrying against each opponent, so against a ranged opponent, the target would select dodging which the character can use against ranged opponents, and (2) that under his interpretation, a character could never use Reflexive Parry when flat-footed to avoid sneak attack damage, because the character could not use Dodge Defense (since he could only parry, and Sutek thinks that if one type of defense is unavailable, the target can be dealt sneak attack damage regardless that another defense is available).
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