Ranged attacks while blinking -- no miss chance?

[kerbarian]

What happens to items that you let go of while blinking, if you happen to be ethereal at the time? Do they stay ethereal, or do they return to being material immediately? Either way, there are some weird effects.

If they immediately return to being material, then you'd have no miss chance when using thrown or projectile weapons while blinking, yet you'd still get the benefits of being an invisible attacker.

If they stay ethereal, then you can do some wacky tricks like permanently transport characters and items to the ethereal plane. Load the rest of the party into a portable hole, start blinking, and spread the portable hole out while you're ethereal (perhaps trying a few times until you get it right). Let go and step back so it stays ethereal, and then the party crawls out onto the ethereal plane. If you have two casters who can cast blink, you could get the entire party ethereal that way, then use the same trick at your destination to get back to the material plane. Or for an even simpler option, just use Blink to stash and retrieve objects on the ethereal plane.

 

[heirodule]

You could still have a miss chance on the idea that you have a 50% chance of having no visible target when you let go the arrow.

 

[MarkB]

You could still have a miss chance on the idea that you have a 50% chance of having no visible target when you let go the arrow.

Only if the target were more than 60 feet away.

I would consider the ammunition to retain the subject's status, if ethereal, until impact.

 

[Rackhir]

Remember that there are creatures and entities that prowl around on the etherial plane. If you just start tossing stuff there, it's going to start disapearing.

 

[Warehouse23]

From the SRD:

Likewise, your own attacks have a 20% miss chance, since you sometimes go ethereal just as you are about to strike.

Regardless of the physics or the metaphysics of how long a launched arrow remains ethereal, attacks made while blinking still suffer miss chance.