Can somebody tell me what Wraithstrike does?

[blargney the second]

Damage is what happens after you resolve whether your attack succeeded or not. The spell doesn't mention altering damage in any way.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Damage is what happens after you resolve whether your attack succeeded or not. The spell doesn't mention altering damage in any way.

Damage is a part of the resolution of an attack.

It's not a part of the resolution of an attack roll, but Wraithstrike doesn't say to treat melee attack rolls as melee touch attack rolls; it says to resolve the attacks as touch attacks.

-Hyp.

 

[Slaved]

Damage is a part of resolving an attack.

This does not really have anything to do with this case however.

Damage can occur as part of an attack, although it doesnt always. Damage can occur from something that is not part of an attack roll as well.

Injury poison requires damage to be dealt. This might mean that a character needs a successful attack roll to be able to deal that damage, but the poison itself is based on whether or not that damage is dealt, and not whether or not the hit was successful.

In this case, it makes no sense.

I am afraid that this is where you are getting mixed up. It looks like because it does not make sense to you then you are adding extra wording that is not actually there.

That reading doesn't make sense

I disagree. It makes perfect sense. It just is not strictly necissary. Those are not the same thing.

I assume it is there as clarifying text so that no one tried to say that because the hits normal damage was reduced to zero then it is similar to concealment.


If it meant what you are trying to make it mean then the wording would have to be very different. In fact, they could have easily just used the same word that they used directly after it. It is not like the two conditions were very far apart.

 

[blargney the second]

Damage is a part of the resolution of an attack.

Damage is a consequence of the resolution of an attack.

 

[Hypersmurf]

I assume it is there as clarifying text so that no one tried to say that because the hits normal damage was reduced to zero then it is similar to concealment.

Then why do they clarify it for touch attacks, but not for every other sort of attack?

Damage is a consequence of the resolution of an attack.

No, damage is a consequence of the success of an attack; it is a part of the resolution of the attack

-Hyp.

 

[Slaved]

Damage is one possible consequence of a successful attack. Not the only one and damage does not happen on every successful attack.

 

[blargney the second]

it is a part of the resolution of the attack

I think this part of your argument is debatable, and a lot of your conclusions hinge on it.

The wording of the spell doesn't mention changing the resolution of damage, so an application of Occam's Razor indicates that it's safer to assume that damage isn't affected.
-blarg

 

[tylermalan]

Damage is what happens after you resolve whether your attack succeeded or not. The spell doesn't mention altering damage in any way.

That's... true. I guess. In a sense, I mean. If we say that A = B, then we say that B = C, you can infer that A = C, even though it doesn't explicitly say that A=C.

So even though the spell says that it only affects the attack, we can infer that it has an effect on the damage as well, at least for the purposes of DR.

1) "Your attacks become touch attacks."
2) "DR does not get rid of (negate) touch attacks like it does to regular, non-touch melee attacks."
3) "Your touch attacks still do damage, even though they're touch attacks."
4) "DR does not negate the damage from an attack."

It would be ridiculous to say that the damage isn't negated even though the attack is. If a spell says "Your hand is charged with electricity, and on a successful melee touch attack, you deal 1d8 points of damage," then it follows that the spell is doing the damage - the damage isn't separated from the spell, which is separated from the attack roll, which is separated from the electricity...

 

[tylermalan]

I think this part of your argument is debatable, and a lot of your conclusions hinge on it.

The wording of the spell doesn't mention changing the resolution of damage, so an application of Occam's Razor indicates that it's safer to assume that damage isn't affected.
-blarg

The spell does mention changing the resolution of the damage, because it changes how damage is resolved by making it a touch attack. Since DR does not negate touch attacks, and DR normally has an effect on how damage is resolved, now damage is resolved differently because it is a touch attack. Instead of being resolved as though it came as the result of an attack from a regular, non-touch melee weapon, it is resolved as coming from the success of a touch attack.

Which, according to DR, are two different things.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Damage is one possible consequence of a successful attack. Not the only one and damage does not happen on every successful attack.

Right... but that's true of all attacks, not just touch attacks...

So what is it about touch attacks that is treated differently by DR than other attacks?

-Hyp.