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Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Does Damage Reduction Actually NOT Negate Damage from Touch Attacks???
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<blockquote data-quote="eamon" data-source="post: 3654846" data-attributes="member: 51942"><p>The MM definition of Damage reduction doesn't refer to touch attacks at all. In the DMG, the re is a sentence stating "Whenever damage reduction completely negates the damage</p><p>from an attack, it also negates most special effects that accompany</p><p>the attack, such as injury type poison, a monk’s stunning, and</p><p>injury type disease." If you read the entire section however, it's clearly more a descriptive kind of thing thing trying to give you a feel for what damage reduction means. It's of note that the the DMG (and SRD) only says "most" special effects. The special effects mentioned have one thing in common; in their description, it always explicitely mentions the fact that you need to deal damage to be considered successful.</p><p></p><p>According to the DMG, most abilities have that limitation. Some do not, and if they don't say, they don't have the limitation. Therefore, I think your interpretation is correct. A Duskblade can channel his "touch" spells on a "successful melee attack", where successful simply means that the d20 roll is successful.</p><p></p><p>Incidentally, since the touch attack section is in the "descriptive" DMG section and not the "definitive MM" section, I'd say that touch attack damage, if it's normal weapon damage, is effected by damage reduction. It so happens that this is only rarely the case (that a touch attack deals normal damage), but wraithstrike should. Clearly, it's not the intent of wraithstrike to bypass all damage reduction - if such a powerful yet non-obvious ability were intended, they'd come out and say so in the text.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="eamon, post: 3654846, member: 51942"] The MM definition of Damage reduction doesn't refer to touch attacks at all. In the DMG, the re is a sentence stating "Whenever damage reduction completely negates the damage from an attack, it also negates most special effects that accompany the attack, such as injury type poison, a monk’s stunning, and injury type disease." If you read the entire section however, it's clearly more a descriptive kind of thing thing trying to give you a feel for what damage reduction means. It's of note that the the DMG (and SRD) only says "most" special effects. The special effects mentioned have one thing in common; in their description, it always explicitely mentions the fact that you need to deal damage to be considered successful. According to the DMG, most abilities have that limitation. Some do not, and if they don't say, they don't have the limitation. Therefore, I think your interpretation is correct. A Duskblade can channel his "touch" spells on a "successful melee attack", where successful simply means that the d20 roll is successful. Incidentally, since the touch attack section is in the "descriptive" DMG section and not the "definitive MM" section, I'd say that touch attack damage, if it's normal weapon damage, is effected by damage reduction. It so happens that this is only rarely the case (that a touch attack deals normal damage), but wraithstrike should. Clearly, it's not the intent of wraithstrike to bypass all damage reduction - if such a powerful yet non-obvious ability were intended, they'd come out and say so in the text. [/QUOTE]
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Does Damage Reduction Actually NOT Negate Damage from Touch Attacks???
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