Pierce Magical Concealment feat

[SolitonMan]

I'm confused about the description of the Pierce Magical Concealment feat from Complete Arcane (pages 81-82). The feat grants the ability to ignore any miss chance from magical concealment and lists a number of spells that are examples of the types of concealment you can ignore. The list includes blur, darkness, invisibility and obscuring mist, all of which are obvious choices. However, it also lists ghostform (also from Complete Arcane, page 109 and Spell Compendium, page 103) as an example spell and this is what confuses me.

I downloaded the errata for Complete Arcane but this feat isn't mentioned. My problem with it is that the miss chance associated with the ghostform spell is due to the fact that the spell turns the caster into an incorporeal creature. This isn't a concealment effect, so I fail to understand why ghostform is listed in this example list.

In my game I'll be houseruling that incorporeal miss chances are NOT negated by Pierce Magical Concealment, but I was curious if others had faced this issue and how they dealt with it. Thanks for your thoughts!

 

[Physiker]

I don't see how the ghostform spell makes you incorporeal. It simulates that effect, that's true, but it doesn't change your typ, does it ?

So I would let this feat just work as it's written. Against a spellcaster which gets a 50% miss chance through a spell your feat works fine. Against an incorporeal creature you don't get any bonuses.

But of course, it's up to you to make it a houserule.

 

[SolitonMan]

I don't see how the ghostform spell makes you incorporeal. It simulates that effect, that's true, but it doesn't change your typ, does it ?

So I would let this feat just work as it's written. Against a spellcaster which gets a 50% miss chance through a spell your feat works fine. Against an incorporeal creature you don't get any bonuses.

But of course, it's up to you to make it a houserule.

Actually the ghostform spell (in the Spell Compendium) specifically states that you gain the incorporeal subtype for the duration of the spell.

 

[Physiker]

After reading the spell once again I have to admit that the spell says this.
Well, my fault. In this case you shouldn't get any bonuses through Pierce Magical Concealment.
I thought that only the Polymorph subschool was able to change the creatures type. And that it always says something like this in the spell description:

The subject’s creature type and subtype (if any) change to match the new form.

 

[Starbuck_II]

I'm confused about the description of the Pierce Magical Concealment feat from Complete Arcane (pages 81-82). The feat grants the ability to ignore any miss chance from magical concealment and lists a number of spells that are examples of the types of concealment you can ignore. The list includes blur, darkness, invisibility and obscuring mist, all of which are obvious choices. However, it also lists ghostform (also from Complete Arcane, page 109 and Spell Compendium, page 103) as an example spell and this is what confuses me.

I downloaded the errata for Complete Arcane but this feat isn't mentioned. My problem with it is that the miss chance associated with the ghostform spell is due to the fact that the spell turns the caster into an incorporeal creature. This isn't a concealment effect, so I fail to understand why ghostform is listed in this example list.

In my game I'll be houseruling that incorporeal miss chances are NOT negated by Pierce Magical Concealment, but I was curious if others had faced this issue and how they dealt with it. Thanks for your thoughts!

But the gaining of incorporeal is from magic: the feat only cares about the source.

 

[SolitonMan]

But the gaining of incorporeal is from magic: the feat only cares about the source.

But the miss chance due to incorporeality isn't a concealment effect, which is why (at least we've always understood the rules in our group) you have to make two checks against an invisible, incorporeal creature - one check for concealment from invisibility, and one check for incorporeality.

Maybe we've been misunderstanding this the whole time, but I've always understood incorporeality to be its own thing, not related to concealment.

 

[Physiker]

I don't think that you misunderstood that.
I would ask for two rolls too.
Obviously there is a misschance because of invisibility.
And there is a misschance because of beeing not entirely on this plane.

But I would call the second a misschance too, as long as the attacker has a magical weapon (because otherwise there is no chance to hit or a automatic hit with force effects).

If I had to decide in my group, then I would go for this:
When a spell creates this misschance, then this feat negates the misschance. Exeption: Polymorph says that the creature type changes, so the misschance comes not from the spell, but from having a new typ. Which has nothing to do with magic.

I can't tell for sure, that this is how the feat is ment, so perhaps this is again a housrule...

 

[SolitonMan]

I don't think that you misunderstood that.
I would ask for two rolls too.
Obviously there is a misschance because of invisibility.
And there is a misschance because of beeing not entirely on this plane.

But I would call the second a misschance too, as long as the attacker has a magical weapon (because otherwise there is no chance to hit or a automatic hit with force effects).

If I had to decide in my group, then I would go for this:
When a spell creates this misschance, then this feat negates the misschance. Exeption: Polymorph says that the creature type changes, so the misschance comes not from the spell, but from having a new typ. Which has nothing to do with magic.

I can't tell for sure, that this is how the feat is ment, so perhaps this is again a housrule...

The Spell Compendium version of Ghostform does state that you gain the incorporeal subtype when using the spell, so while there is a miss chance in that situation, it's not a concealment miss chance.

I found this article on the WotC site : Rules of the Game: There, Not There (Part Four)

It discusses incorporeality, and the entire series on the topic talks about concealment and incorporeality in combat. Good ol' Skip!

Anyway, thanks everyone for your input, I'm more comfortable with my position now. I think that the feat description in Complete Arcane is poorly worded, and any form of incorporeality (whether from a spell or not) will not be affected by this feat in my games.

 

[Physiker]

I don't have Spell Compendium, but if you say that the typ of the creature changes, than I would say that ghostform has to be crossed in the feats description.