Cover penalties on ranged attacks.

[Hannibal Barca]

Does a cover induced attack penalty apply to ranged touch attacks? For example, would a cleric using a Tower Shield casting a Searing Light spell suffer a -4 penalty to his attack if he had half cover against his target? Paragraph 1 of the second column on page 132 of the PHB is somewhat ambiguous on this.

 

[Pax]

Ranged touch attacks use the exact same rules as Touch attacks, except, they are ranged.

IOW, any AC bonus type that applies to a melee Touch attack, unless directly specified to be otherwise, applies to a ranged Touch attack.

Which means, yes, cover applies.

 

[Murrdox]

As far as I know, cover applies to ALL ranged attacks, whether it's a touch attack or a normal ranged attack.

Tower shields specifically I'm not sure about, I'm not familiar with Tower shield rules.

 

[Hannibal Barca]

Page 132 appears to distinguish between ranged attacks and melee attacks, citing arrow slits and archers, but does not go on to specify how this is handled differently.

 

[Christian]

With ranged attacks, it's a DM judgment call as to how much cover is afforded each party-it's not necessarily the same, as it is (for similarly-sized opponents) for melee. The arrow-slit example is an extreme situation where the person behind the slit has 90% cover, while a target (that's not on the edge of the field of view from the slit) has none. I'd generally give, at most, 25% cover to a target of someone stepping partially from behind a tower shield-possibly no cover relative to a crossbow user; while the shield user could still get 50% or maybe even 75% cover while launching the attack.

There are no general rules for this, because there are too many possible cases. It's left as a judgment call for the DM.

 

[guido1999]

Except that tower shields don't help against touch attacks, even though they provide total cover.

From the SRD:

Shield, Tower: This massive wooden shield is nearly as tall as the wielder. Basically, it is a portable wall meant to provide cover. It can provide up to total cover, depending on how far a character comes out from behind it. A tower shield, however, does not provide cover against targeted spells; a spellcaster can cast a spell on a character by targeting the shield. A tower shield cannot be used for the shield bash action.

 

[Destil]

Except that tower shields don't help against touch attacks, even though they provide total cover.

Sometimes. That's targeted spells. Ranged touch spells generaly have an effect "ray". Though there are some with targets too, I think.

 

[Murrdox]

So basically - YES you do take cover AC bonuses into account when resolving ranged touch attacks, such as magical rays, etc...

UNLESS the cover AC bonus is coming from a shield of some sort, in which case the shield AC is not counted.

 

[Christian]

The OP was asking about a penalty to the attack roll when the caster, not his target, was behind the shield. The target's shield or lack thereof is irrelevant in this case, but the caster's tower shield may not be. (If the caster just barely peeks around the shield and sticks out his searing light finger, whichever that is, he'd probably get a +7 AC bonus for three-quarters cover or a +10 for nine-tenths cover against any attackers in that direction, but I'd probably give his target a +2 AC bonus from one-quarter cover because of the caster's shield.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Sometimes. That's targeted spells. Ranged touch spells generaly have an effect "ray". Though there are some with targets too, I think.

Going from memory, but the FAQ considers ray spells to be targetted spells for certain effects. It's a weird ruling. Maybe for Spell Turning?

Maybe someone who's interested could look it up and see if ray spells ignore tower shields

-Hyp.