Blink and Sneak Attacks

[Hypersmurf]

To complicate it further... if you had a ghost touch weapon, could you still hit the target while they were ethereal?

Absolutely not.

Ghost Touch only hits incorporeal targets on the same plane. It can't hit someone on a different plane.

A Ghost Touch weapon is of no help to a Blinker to hit Material opponents while he's Ethereal, nor to someone attempting to hit an Ethereal blinker from the Material plane.

-Hyp.

 

[jgsugden]

So nobody remembers a sage ruling on this issue? Or some other rule interpretation? It is really bugging me that I can't figure out why I believed this to be true. My gut told me that it (blink allowing sneak attacks versus foes with see invisible) was in the sneak attack description, but it doesn't appear to be there ...

Edit: As I recall, the reason why you received the sneak attack opportunity was that the foe couldn't handle you jumping back and forth from the different planes, even though he saw you at all times.

 

[wocky]

I played a blinking rogue and never saw anything like that... fair enough if you couldn't sneak attack the "See invisible" guys. Otherwise, I would have had a hard time with the DM... bad enough that I did a combo with the Expert Tactician feat:

- Cast blink as Standard Action
- Move next to the enemy as a Move Action
- Expert Tactician grants a free attack, which is a Sneak Attack, since I'm blinking.

 

[Darklone]

While blinking, you take only half damage from area attacks (but full damage from those that extend onto the Ethereal Plane). You strike as an invisible creature (with a +2 bonus on attack rolls), denying your target any Dexterity bonus to AC.
You take only half damage from falling, since you fall only while you are material.

This sentence was the problem. Earlier in the description they say that the Blindfight feat does not help against it since you're (at least part of the time) not only invisible, you're gone. Later though this sentence says, you're treated as an invisible creature for your attacks. So on the one hand you could argue that things like Blindfight do not help the attacked person to retain it's Dex bonus... thus being sneakattackable... while on the same time you have a miss chance that's compared with concealment in another part of the text... while on the other hand you attack as an invisible creature, which would mean that any tactics that thwart invisible attackers should be valid.

So IMHO it's up to your interpretation. I stick with my gut feeling that says: You have two effects on you.
A) you change the planes. This imposes Factor 1, a miss chance because you're not there. Naturally, this has nothing to do with invisibility.
B) you're effectively invisible, you see the opponents, they don't see you part of the time. This is Factor 2. Against this, IMC, Blindfight would help.

In case both factors apply to your target (it does not see invisible creatures and is not able to strike ethereal creatures), 50% miss chance apply. In case one factor applies, 20% miss chance apply.

 

[Hypersmurf]

This sentence was the problem. Earlier in the description they say that the Blindfight feat does not help against it since you're (at least part of the time) not only invisible, you're gone.

Yup. Blindfight can't protect you against someone who's invisible because they're on the ethereal plane, because there are no non-visual cues for the feat to work from. They make no noise, they don't disturb the air, there's no vibration...

Whereas See Invisible specifically lets you see Ethereal creatures, so it's not thwarted by Blink like Blindfight.

-Hyp.