Incorporeal attacks

[rhammer2]

Incorporeal touch attacks do not ignore force effect armors or magic armor with the ghost touch ability.

Incorporeal attacks and normal touch attacks are not the same.

No armor helps against any touch attack, corporeal or not. Touch attacks ignore armor, shields, and natural armor.

If a spectre attempts to hit you with its energy drain, that is an incorporeal touch attack. All your armor bonuses are ignored, regardless of where they come from.

If a ghost hits you with a +1 ghost touch longsword, that's a regular incorporeal attack. Force effects like Mage Armor do protect you from this, but normal armor does not (unless it has ghost touch).

[Edited to add that I apparently misread Dr. Zoom's post. Ooops.]

 

[Hypersmurf]

Is there actually any example of an incorporeal attack that isn't an incorporeal touch attack? (And since I don't consider a strike with a ghost touch weapon an incorporeal attack, I mean any other examples )

-Hyp.

 

[AuraSeer]

Incorporeal touch attacks do not ignore force effect armors or magic armor with the ghost touch ability.

Incorporeal attacks and normal touch attacks are not the same.

These two sentences mean different things. The second is a correct statement, but the first does not follow from it.

An "incorporeal touch attack" is both incorporeal and a touch attack. A touch attack ignores all armor, regardless of whether it's force or not.

An "incorporeal attack" that is not specified as a touch attack would be affected by force armor. The only example I can come up with is an incorporeal creature using a ghost touch weapon, though there may be other examples.

From a rules standpoint, it is not necessarily true that all incorporeal attacks are touch attacks. All of the standard incorporeal monsters have touch attacks, apparently, which means that they ignore all armor. But someone could create a custom monster who doesn't use the touch attack rules, and whose natural attacks would therefore be stopped by force armor.

 

[IceBear]

I don't agree with this AuraSeer. What's the point of saying that mage armor would stop an incorporeal attack if it's going to be ignored anyway. I think incorpreal touch attack is a special case of a touch attack - it's a touch attack because it can ignore armor normally. If I have a chain shirt (and no other bonuses) then the spectre needs to hit AC10. I would rule that if I had mage armor on, then it would need to hit AC14, instead of 10 like a normal touch attack. The only reason I feel this way is because they go out of their way to state that incorpreal creatures can't ignore force effects like mage armor.

IceBear

 

[jlhorner1974]

Whether it is a touch attack or not makes a big difference.

With any touch attack, incorporeal or not, you are not attempting to get your hit through the defender's armor, you are only trying to touch your target. So it doesn't matter at all what kind of armor it is (leather, plate, mage armor). If touching an armored fighter's plate mail counts as touching him for purposes of a touch attack, then mage armor should work the same way. The fact that mage armor is made of force has nothing to do with it because you aren't trying to bypass the armor in any way.

If an incorporeal creature ever has to make a regular attack (not a touch attack) to damage, now the attacker needs to bypass the armor to score a hit. Normal armor is still ignored (since the incorporeal creature bypasses it), but mage armor cannot be ignored because it is made of force and incorporeal creatures cannot bypass force effects. So the defender does get the armor bonus to AC provided by mage armor in this case.

 

[IceBear]

Whether it is a touch attack or not makes a big difference.

With any touch attack, incorporeal or not, you are not attempting to get your hit through the defender's armor, you are only trying to touch your target. So it doesn't matter at all what kind of armor it is (leather, plate, mage armor). If touching an armored fighter's plate mail counts as touching him for purposes of a touch attack, then mage armor should work the same way. The fact that mage armor is made of force has nothing to do with it because you aren't trying to bypass the armor in any way.

If a corporeal creature ever has to make a regular attack (not a touch attack) to damage, now the attacker needs to bypass the armor to score a hit. Normal armor is still ignored (since the incorporeal creature bypasses it), but mage armor cannot be ignored because it is made of force and incorporeal creatures cannot bypass force effects. So the defender does get the armor bonus to AC provided by mage armor in this case.

Understood, but since there isn't an incorpreal creature in the core rules that doesn't make a touch attack then I don't see why they explicitly mentioned the rule so many times unless they had some monster(s) in mind when the wrote it. Based on this, I believe they intended for incorpreal creatures to have to overcome mage armor when they attack.

Thus, I interpret a spectre's attack as requiring to actually touch the person - reaching through the armor and into the person and pulling out some of it's life force. That would normally be a touch attack as the person's armor doesn't count, but if the person had mage armor then it would have to get through that first.

Edit: BTW, before this gets ugly, did anyone ever contact the Sage on this the last time it came up, and if so, what was the answer?

IceBear

 

[jlhorner1974]

I actually agree with your interpretation, IceBear. I think that is what the designers probably intended.

My argument is with the books calling a spectre's attack an incorporeal touch attack. They should just say that the spectre is making a normal slam attack.

Being that a spectre is incorporeal, it automatically ignores any armor, natural armor, or shield bonuses the defender has (unless they are ghost touch items or due to a force effect).

A touch attack implies that all the spectre needs to do is touch the defender or any part of his equipment (including his mage armor, if that is up). And I think we both agree that this shouldn't be the case.

 

[IceBear]

Yeah, that's why I've rationalized an incorpreal touch attack as being a limited touch attack.

IceBear

 

[Wippit Guud]

Asked a friend who's not on here, here's what he said:

Mage armour is also a force affect. And since force affects affect all incoporeal creatures (Ghost's can't move thru a wall of force, for example) it affects them. It was even in one or two of the eratta's and FAQ's

So mage armor does give you a def bonous vs Incoporeal creatues... (same with ecoplasmic stuff that psions can do, it works the same)

 

[IceBear]

I just checked the FAQ and couldn't find it.

IceBear