Ghost Touch Weapons & Blinking

[Wrathamon]

Can you ignore the miss chance when attacking from blinking if you are using a ghost touch weapon?

How about if you are ethereal? Can you strike non-ethereal creatures if you are using a ghost touch weapon?

I have my thoughts on this but curious what others thought

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Ghostt Touch weapons affect Incorperal creatures.

When the Blink spell moves you to the ethereal plane, you are considered incorperal.

As such a Ghost-Touch weapon basically ignores the effects of the Blink spell.

However, my read is that a character weilding a Ghost Touch weapon would have to deal with the effects of the spell normally as Ghost Touch does nothing to help striking corporeal creatures.

Perhaps there needs to be a 'Mortal Touch' weapon that does the opposite of Ghost Touch

 

[Hypersmurf]

As such a Ghost-Touch weapon basically ignores the effects of the Blink spell.

Ghost Touch has absolutely no benefit related to the Blink spell.

When you're blinking, you may be incorporeal, but you are also on another plane, and the Ghost Touch property cannot reach the Ethereal Plane from the Material Plane.

From the SRD: While on the Ethereal Plane, a creature is called ethereal. Unlike incorporeal creatures, ethereal creatures are not present on the Material Plane.

and

Since you spend about half your time on the Ethereal Plane, you can see and even attack ethereal creatures. You interact with ethereal creatures roughly the same way you interact with material ones.

An ethereal creature is invisible, incorporeal, and capable of moving in any direction, even up or down. As an incorporeal creature, you can move through solid objects, including living creatures.

It's like if there's an incorporeal goblin on the other side of a stone wall. Your Ghost Touch longsword may be able to strike incorporeal creatures, and the goblin is an incorporeal creature, but your longsword has no special ability to hit a creature who's behind six feet of solid rock.

Ghost Touch is great for striking shadows and spectres. It can hit a ghost who is manifested (and thus incorporeal on the Material Plane), but not a ghost who isn't manifested (and thus residing solely on the Ethereal Plane). It has no special ability to strike someone who is blinking (and thus spending some of the time on the Ethereal Plane), since the times that they are incorporeal, they are not on the Material Plane anyway.

Likewise, as you say, it grant no special ability to reach the Material Plane from the Ethereal Plane.

Note that an incorporeal creature on the Material Plane (a manifesting ghost, say) can use a Ghost Touch weapon to effectively strike corporeal creatures; the weapon is treated as either incorporeal or corporeal, whichever is most beneficial.

A ghost touch weapon deals damage normally against incorporeal creatures, regardless of its bonus. (An incorporeal creature’s 50% chance to avoid damage does not apply to attacks with ghost touch weapons.) The weapon can be picked up and moved by an incorporeal creature at any time. A manifesting ghost can wield the weapon against corporeal foes. Essentially, a ghost touch weapon counts as either corporeal or incorporeal at any given time, whichever is more beneficial to the wielder.

-Hyp.

 

[Wrathamon]

-Hyp that was my interpretation as well... that Ghost Touch doesn't work with ethereal.

But, a player who is using this combo in our game keeps bringing up this

Essentially, a ghost touch weapon counts as either corporeal or incorporeal at any given time, whichever is more beneficial to the wielder.

And, in blink it mentions going incorporeal. He said I should get one since I use a cloak of etherealness... he said it should work since Ghost touch needs the spell etherealness to make.

Very loose interpretation of the rules on his part... but he is a lawyer

 

[Sollir Furryfoot]

What's more fun for the game? If its a completely unbalancing combo and/or makes the player shine much more than the others, don't use it. If it's not too strong, let him have it-every +1 of a magic weapon increasing the price dramatically (even a +1 ghost touch weapon is 8k+ gold). Remember that weapons can be sundered, Blink spells dispelled and territorial ethereal horrors you would not normally meet lurking about (they're there all the time! You just never ran into them before because you weren't hanging out in the ethereal). Just be sure not to punish or penalize the players for thinking creatively-at the same time, if they're trying to be effective you have to play at their level.

 

[Wrathamon]

First, I am not running the game... your post implies that I am.

We "as a group" are just curious what others thought... since it seemed to be bending the rules a bit as written. I can see the interpretation and at first I thought it was 100% legit, until I read everything to see if it could work with my character.

I felt it didnt work because blink = ethereal, not incorporeal, even thou ethereal grants incorporeal.

The DM didnt care which way because we have already been playing it that it did work and the Ghost Touch weapon was destroyed when the player rolled a 1 on a save. Now after the fact the player's are curious.

I find the "Fun for the player or group" answers to be a "I dont know the answer" answer.

It is pretty common sense to go "if it isnt game breaking then dont worry about it".

That wasn't the question.. I didnt ask if it was overpowering or would cause a problem or wasnt fun.

Since the combo is no longer affecting the game we were curious what the rule really was or at least come closer to see if others played it the way we did.

Sorry if I am coming off snarky but I find when someone asks about rules tthere is always someone coming in saying dont worry about the rules if it is fun... It seems like a wasted post imo.

 

[DungeonMaester]

That is a really good question, and I thought about it with great care. This is what I came up with:

In essence, in order for a incorporeal creature to not have 50% chance, they would have to be weilding a corporeal weapon. But, Incorporeal creatures can not effect the material plane* so as soon as the weapon turns corporeal, it is dropped.

*I am not to sure on this, I will have to re-read the incorporeal subtype.

---Rusty

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Hyp, the problem I run into is that the blink spell states "...An ethereal creature is invisible, incorporeal, and capable of moving in any direction, even up or down."

Which reads to me that while they are on the Etheral plane, they are also incorpereal... just like a manifested Ghost...and thereby can be hit by Ghost Touch weapons.

Which I suppose also means the Blinking character would be able to use the Ghost Touch weapon against the Material plane.

Does a Cloak of Etheralness have that same line?


[side note.. not often I disagree with Hyp ]

 

[Wrathamon]

From the SRD

Cloak of Etherealness
This silvery-gray cloak seems to absorb light rather than be illuminated by it. On command, the cloak makes its wearer ethereal (as the ethereal jaunt spell). The effect is dismissible. The cloak works for a total of up to 10 minutes per day. This duration need not be continuous.

from Etheral Jaunt

An ethereal creature is invisible, insubstantial, and capable of moving in any direction, even up or down, albeit at half normal speed. As an insubstantial creature, you can move through solid objects, including living creatures. An ethereal creature can see and hear on the Material Plane, but everything looks gray and ephemeral. Sight and hearing onto the Material Plane are limited to 60 feet.

seems Blink replaced insubstantial with incorporeal - huge difference! mechanic rules use incorporeal while insubstantial is just describing the effect.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Hyp, the problem I run into is that the blink spell states "...An ethereal creature is invisible, incorporeal, and capable of moving in any direction, even up or down."

Which reads to me that while they are on the Etheral plane, they are also incorpereal... just like a manifested Ghost...and thereby can be hit by Ghost Touch weapons.

He's on the Ethereal Plane and, according to the spell text, incorporeal.

A manifested ghost is on the Ethereal Plane, and also exists on the Material Plane as an incorporeal creature.

Note the difference - the blinking creature may be incorporeal, but while he's doing it, he isn't on the Material Plane at all. The ghost exists on both planes; the blinking creature only exists on one at a time.

If we picture the Ethereal and Material Planes as adjacent rooms, the ghost is standing in the doorway, so the guy in the Material room with the Ghost Touch weapon can hit him. The blinking guy is standing in the Ethereal room, so even though the Ghost Touch weapon can strike incorporeal creatures, that doesn't help him strike the blinker, because the wall gets in the way.

-Hyp.