"Whenever you hit an enemy"?

[AbdulAlhazred]

They SURELY attacked you, because they targetted you with an attack power.
They SURELY did not hit you, because they never succeeded in an attack roll against you.

The only reason this can be confusing is when one is confusing possible english definitions of words with the definitions of those words as game terms. Sometimes, a game term in a game does not have the literal definition of the word in the english language. If you destroy a card in Magic the Gathering, you do not take the physical card out to the backyard and set it on fire. If you gain a level in D&D, you do not add another storey onto your house. If you move the king in chess, you do not employ diplomatic protocols required when transporting a head of state.

Simply put, the reason this confuses you is you are not using the same language the game is. These cases are non-ambiguous within the game's language. Which you should use. Cause they're written in the game's language.

Sorry, but you're simply incorrect in this case. If you are really determined to argue about it I'd suggest going to the WotC Q&A forum and digging up the monster thread on the subject there. One of the core devs (I forget which one) stepped in and put this ugly bugger to rest. It hasn't (yet) made an FAQ appearance but the DESIGNERS OF THE GAME state flat out unequivocally that Magic Missile hits. The explanation was A) it has a specific target (or maybe targets depending on which Essentials book you read), and B) it does damage. It is an attack, it hits, it doesn't have a damage ROLL and therefor a lot of extra damage can't be applied, but riders that trigger on a hit DO work.

There's nothing I'm misunderstanding or unclear about here. I know the rules inside and out, trust me. I agree that your interpretation is not a BAD one and holds with the way things were generally interpreted when the game came out, but there were no auto-hit powers back then. Now there are. Times change. The new way of defining it works just as well and is perfectly clear. Notice too that "hit" was never really defined in the published rules, it was defined by working out the implications of different possible definitions.

 

[MrGrenadine]

What you are describing is intuition. It seems intuitive that if you attack with a magic missile, you hit the target. I don't disagree, that is intuitive.

Intuition, however, is not logic.

I agree that intuition is not logic, but I don't see what that has to do with the case at hand.

Maybe you're working with a different definition than I am, but it seems to me that using 'intuition' here implies that I'm working off a hunch or gut feeling, which I'm not, because if someone sends a magic missile at a target, then the target is, in fact, hit by the missile.

In other words, I'm not intuiting that the target should be hit if the missile flies towards it. I'm looking at the fact that the target was indeed struck with the missile, and saying since the missile hit the target, riders that trigger on a hit should take effect.

No disrespect to the designers or anyone who chooses to follow that particular RAW, but I just don't choose to play it that way.

 

[psk20]

Sorry, but you're simply incorrect in this case. If you are really determined to argue about it I'd suggest going to the WotC Q&A forum and digging up the monster thread on the subject there. One of the core devs (I forget which one) stepped in and put this ugly bugger to rest. It hasn't (yet) made an FAQ appearance but the DESIGNERS OF THE GAME state flat out unequivocally that Magic Missile hits. The explanation was A) it has a specific target (or maybe targets depending on which Essentials book you read), and B) it does damage. It is an attack, it hits, it doesn't have a damage ROLL and therefor a lot of extra damage can't be applied, but riders that trigger on a hit DO work.

There's nothing I'm misunderstanding or unclear about here. I know the rules inside and out, trust me. I agree that your interpretation is not a BAD one and holds with the way things were generally interpreted when the game came out, but there were no auto-hit powers back then. Now there are. Times change. The new way of defining it works just as well and is perfectly clear. Notice too that "hit" was never really defined in the published rules, it was defined by working out the implications of different possible definitions.

Are you talking about this thread?

Post 242? That seems to be talking about whether MM is an attack, not whether it hits.

 

[Zaran]

I had thought the new rules compendium used magic missile as an example of an attack.

I don't remember where I read it but it was said that if the target in the target line was hit whether you had to roll or not it was stated that it is an attack. Since Cleave and Rain of Steel do not do the auto damage to targets in the Target: line they are not considered attacks.

 

[psk20]

I had thought the new rules compendium used magic missile as an example of an attack.

I don't remember where I read it but it was said that if the target in the target line was hit whether you had to roll or not it was stated that it is an attack. Since Cleave and Rain of Steel do not do the auto damage to targets in the Target: line they are not considered attacks.

It's the FAQ for the Player's Handbook:

38. What happens if I use magic missile while benefiting from a power like greater invisibility? Does it count as an attack and would my invisibility end?

Yes, it does, and yes, it would. The initial use of any attack power that has a target line, an attack line, or both counts as making an attack. Because of this fact, using an attack power like the fighter's rain of steel does not count as making an attack, since the power has neither a target line nor an attack line.

It doesn't say anything about magic missile hitting. I can't see anything (including in the thread that AbdulAlhazred presumably was referring to) that suggests that all attacks hit. That would be quite a huge rules change (much more substantial than the RC's statement that all powers that deal damage are attack powers, and much more substantial than PHB FAQ 38). Does anyone have a link or quote to back this idea up?

 

[Incendax]

You HIT an enemy whenever you process the HIT line of a power directly against said enemy.

You do not hit enemies that are indirectly affected by the HIT line of a power (such as splash damage). You can only hit enemies that are included by the primary target area of effect, or any additional area of effect included in secondary targets. This is fact.

 

[Gradine]

Autohit powers with direct targets (such as Magic Missile) ARE attacks and ARE hits for the purposes of any riders that produce affects on attacks or hits. This is an argument that has long since been put to bed and I'll never understand for the life of me why people still argue it. I mean, I can understand disliking the call and arguing whether it should have been made, but this was a RAW question and it deserves a RAW answer, and that answer is actually quite simple. Magic Missile and other powers of its ilk are attacks and they produce hits.

The question about indirect auto-damage has also been put to bed much, much earlier thanks to fighter powers such as Cleave and Rain of Steel. This also includes the aforementioned warden power Tempest Assault. These are not attacks and therefore not hits.

Powers with secondary attacks such as Acid Arrow are similarly easy to adjudicate: there's a secondary target, a secondary attack, and hit line right there. That's a pretty easy call; those creatures, if hit, are hit. If all you had was a secondary target and an effect line I could see there being confusion (because then what makes it different from Cleave) but I can't think of any powers off the top of my head that that would apply to. If there were, as a DM I'd probably rule it a hit, answering my own previous paranthetical question with: it's different from Cleave because WotC wrote the power in a way to differentiate it from Cleave and make it more line with Magic Missile, which has been ruled both an attack and a hit.

 

[psk20]

Autohit powers with direct targets (such as Magic Missile) ARE attacks and ARE hits for the purposes of any riders that produce affects on attacks or hits. This is an argument that has long since been put to bed and I'll never understand for the life of me why people still argue it. I mean, I can understand disliking the call and arguing whether it should have been made, but this was a RAW question and it deserves a RAW answer, and that answer is actually quite simple. Magic Missile and other powers of its ilk are attacks and they produce hits.

Could you please explain where and how this was put to bed? I haven't seen anything to suggest that this claim is true. Where's the RAW support for it?

As I said, the claim quoted above seems to have pretty extreme consequences (e.g. my monk's Flurry of Blows would trigger Slashing Storm and would gain +2d6 damage via the Moonstalker PP). Thus I'd really like to see some authoritative links to back the claim up.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm pretty sure there was an actual post from one of the devs either in the thread linked above or in one of the other similar threads that have hashed this out over and over on Q&A. I'm REALLY not going to go through 100+ pages of threads looking for it. You can accept that FAQ entry 38 implies that MM and similar powers DO hit, accept the obvious RAI, or play it whatever way you feel like. While Greg Bilsland didn't address this issue exactly in the quote in the linked thread I seriously doubt he's going to come down on the side of it being an attack and then say it doesn't HIT. An attack that damages a specific target is an attack and it hits. If there are issues with that and other powers they need to be taken up there. As with a lot of similar areas of 4e there simply IS no one totally consistent reading of the rules that will do exactly what you want all the time. They simply aren't anywhere near written tightly enough for that.

 

[Gradine]

Could you please explain where and how this was put to bed? I haven't seen anything to suggest that this claim is true. Where's the RAW support for it?

As I said, the claim quoted above seems to have pretty extreme consequences (e.g. my monk's Flurry of Blows would trigger Slashing Storm and would gain +2d6 damage via the Moonstalker PP). Thus I'd really like to see some authoritative links to back the claim up.

While naturally I would cede to your request, it's already been done in this thread (in fact, looking back on it, by you.) Not to mention the various tweets and other communiques from the designers outright spelling this out back when the whole argument first started.

Of course, as soon as the RAW declared Magic Missile was an attack, all the naysayers cried "but they didn't say it was a hit!" and no, the FAQ itself does not, but now you're just grasping at straws. Attacks produce hits; just as not-attacks (i.e, the extra Cleave damage) do not produce hits. This is the simplest, most elegant way to define a hit. Saying that a power requires a "Hit" line to be a hit is the same as saying a power requires an "Attack" line to be an attack, and the Magic Missile errata and accompanying FAQ already proves line of thinking false. I'll admit it's not an absolute slam-dunk in saying that Magic Missile = hit, but it's closest possible thing. The only logic that can prove that Magic Missile is a hit is the same logic that only works if it isn't also an attack.

The oft-quoted line from the PHB is, at best, outdated. The full paragraph is as follows:

You resolve an attack by comparing the total of your
attack roll (1d20 + base attack bonus + attack modifiers)
to the appropriate defense score. If your roll is
higher than or equal to the defense score, you hit. Otherwise, you miss.

Now, the first sentence quoted here is demonstrably false. The second sentence, which has been quoted here several times, is therefore based on a faulty premise. Back when the PHB was first published, an attack required an attack roll, and a hit required an attack. This has changed. There are attacks that no longer require attack rolls. So does a hit now require an attack roll, or does a hit require an attack? The PHB is, remarkably, ambiguous. How so? The next paragraph begins thusly.

When you hit, you usually deal damage and sometimes
produce some other effect.

Emphasis added, but this line definitely seems to imply that the "effect" line is just as important as the "hit" when it comes to determining a hit. Is it tenuous? Yeah sure, but far less so than a quote from the PHB relying on an outdated definition of the term "attack." Since an attack no longer requires an attack roll, why must we cling to that same definition for the purposes of a "hit"?

Does this definition lead to some... interesting consequences? Yes. But just because a rule change breaks something doesn't make it not a rule change. Do I think WotC will ever definitively spell it out? No; I don't think there isn't a fully elegant solution that would satisfactorily cover all bases. There'd always be some exception here; some broken combo there. So yes, Magic Missile and Flurry of Blows are definitely attacks, and yes, they almost definitely constitute hits.