No Range Increment for Ranged Touch Attacks?

[reanjr]

Second that.

Given core rules only, what's the longest range on a ranged touch spell?

[edit] copy and pasted wrong number, fixed now.

Enlarged Acid Arrow, 20th level caster has a range of 2,400 feet.

 

[Ranger REG]

I find it hard to believe there is no range increment for Ranged Touch Attacks. It would seem reasonable to have ranged Touch Attacks have the same ranged increment of say a Composite LongBow.

Only if the spell's element is affected by earth's gravity and drag, (i.e., physics).

 

[reanjr]

May I suggest for those who take issue with this to simply use the base range as the range increment. Long Range would have a range increment of 400, for instance.

This would cut down a bit on the absurdity of the aforementioned 20th level caster casting an enlarged Acid Arrow being able to hit with perfect accuracy a target so far away (about half a mile) that he likely would have a seriously hard time even spotting the target in the first place.

 

[Plane Sailing]

The issue is as follows.

The rules assume that there is only one thing that affects your ability to hit things at range - the degree to which the attacks energy falls off with range. Thus thrown things have a low range increment, bows are better (and more powerful bows are better than shorter bows).

The rules *ignore* the fact that a target which is further away is a smaller target to hit. Greater realism would be achieved by doing something simple like treating a target as one size smaller for every 30ft of range (or one size smaller every doubling of 30ft of range or whatever floats your boat).

Ranged touch attacks would thus still be subject to "target apparent size" penalty... at 2,400ft even a colossal creature appears like a fine target from the point of view of aiming at it! - but wouldn't have any fall off due to energy/speed of attack.

I realised that this hole in the rules existed while watching an excellent episode of the UK comedy "Father Ted". Father ted is holding up a little toy cow and speaking to the rather simple Father Dougal.

"Now Dougal. This cow is small. That cow is far away"

Cheers

 

[shilsen]

The rules *ignore* the fact that a target which is further away is a smaller target to hit. Greater realism would be achieved by doing something simple like treating a target as one size smaller for every 30ft of range (or one size smaller every doubling of 30ft of range or whatever floats your boat).

Maybe the designers didn't want to add that degree of realism. I seriously do not feel a lack or see a problem in my games because ranged touch spells have no range increment. YMMV, and apparently does.

 

[ARandomGod]

I have a bit of a problem with a 10th level caster being able to use a ranged touch attack spell with medium range being able to hit a target with no penalty at 200'; whilst an archer character has a minus 2 to hit w/o far shot.

Ok what I really have a problem with is 6th level Spryte Magister using the Ranged touch attact version of Sorcerous Blast,(think a ray type fireball with long range), being able to snipe from over 640' away with no penality. Sure, Sure Cover and Visibilty applies, but it surely seems odd that the best sniper is the caster that makes a long ranged ranged touch attack spell.

Well, an archer can hit anything he can see on a natural twenty. A caster HAS a range increment. The range of his spell is short, and anything higher has a -infinity penalty.

 

[dcollins]

The rules *ignore* the fact that a target which is further away is a smaller target to hit. Greater realism would be achieved by doing something simple like treating a target as one size smaller for every 30ft of range (or one size smaller every doubling of 30ft of range or whatever floats your boat).

Right, you'd definitely want to use the second version (reverse square-law) to be "realistic". That is, your effective size-category should change at the points of 30 ft., 60 ft., 120 ft., 240 ft., etc. But oddly, that folds back into the fact that size attack penalties double at each step, so I think you wind up having a linear penalty increase over distance at the end (thinking about it quickly here).

 

[Plane Sailing]

Maybe the designers didn't want to add that degree of realism. I seriously do not feel a lack or see a problem in my games because ranged touch spells have no range increment. YMMV, and apparently does.

Yes, differing agendas are interesting. This seems to me a much more obvious and common situation than the weapon size rules introduced in 3.5, yet didn't receive any attention. I think it simply never occured to any of the developers.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Right, you'd definitely want to use the second version (reverse square-law) to be "realistic". That is, your effective size-category should change at the points of 30 ft., 60 ft., 120 ft., 240 ft., etc. But oddly, that folds back into the fact that size attack penalties double at each step, so I think you wind up having a linear penalty increase over distance at the end (thinking about it quickly here).

I haven't thought about it seriously yet either. I'm inclined to use the "little drawing" method of working out what seems reasonable, by taking a big sheet of graph paper and drawing lines at it to represent "equivalent size"

But I think something really simple will probably capture the flavour of it well enough without fretting about absolute accuracy.

Cheers

 

[dcollins]

But I think something really simple will probably capture the flavour of it well enough without fretting about absolute accuracy.

I think my point was that -2 per some number of feet (current rules) is actually what you'll wind up coming out with at the end of the exercise. Granted the current penalties for size categories.