Rules Questions

[Caliber]

I have two questions that are pretty different, but I figured I would combine them to avoid thread population.

1) Are Incorporeal creatures (for example Spectres or Ghosts) considered Ethereal? How would the 50% miss interact with Magic Missiles? Ghost Touch weaponry? Are some Incorporeal creature's Miss Chance negated by Force affects while others aren't?

2) How would you treat firing missile weapons through a Wall of Fire? Would the Wall give Cover or Concealment? Full or something less? Would a Crossbow Bolt burn up in the fire? A magical one?

I hope someone can help me out here. These have come up in my group's past couple of sessions and I wasn't sure how it would work. I made an on the spot ruling but I like to know my rulings have backup.

 

[hong]

I have two questions that are pretty different, but I figured I would combine them to avoid thread population.

1) Are Incorporeal creatures (for example Spectres or Ghosts) considered Ethereal?

No. Incorporeal is distinct to ethereal.

How would the 50% miss interact with Magic Missiles? Ghost Touch weaponry? Are some Incorporeal creature's Miss Chance negated by Force affects while others aren't?

Magic missiles (and force attacks in general) always ignore the 50% miss chance against incorporeal creatures. Same with ghost touch weapons.

2) How would you treat firing missile weapons through a Wall of Fire? Would the Wall give Cover or Concealment? Full or something less? Would a Crossbow Bolt burn up in the fire? A magical one?

It's concealment. The wall won't stop someone from running through it (although they take damage), so it won't stop a crossbow bolt or arrow either. That said, the arrow might take some damage on the way through; if you do this, don't forget its hardness and hit points (say about 5 and 1 for an arrow, 10 and 2 for a bolt).

Personally, I'd just ignore this and let people shoot through the wall. The arrow or bolt is exposed to the flames for only a fraction of a second, which shouldn't be enough to totally destroy it.

 

[Alzrius]

I'll shed some light on question 1, leaving the Wall of Fire question to someone a bit more knowledgeable than I.

Incorporeality and Ethereality get confused pretty often. This is because any Ethereal creature attacking Prime Material creatures is incorporeal to them. If you journey to the Ethereal plane though, any creatures there are totally solid to you, and you would find Prime Material things ghostly and intangible to you. However, not all creatures with the Incorporeal subtype are necessarily ethereal. Shadows, for example, are incorporeal monsters who don't exist on the Ethereal plane. Such creatures (incorporeal but not ethereal) are simply beings with no substance, instead of beings whose substance is on another plane.

The 50% miss chance applies to any non-force effect directed at an incorporeal creature from a material creature (a ghost and a human on the Ethereal plane are both solid to each other). Magic Missiles, being force effects, ignore the 50% miss chance and automatically hit as per usual. Ghost Touch weapons also ignore the 50% miss chance and hit and do normal damage if the attack roll hits (thats the whole point of the Ghost Touch special quality - to ignore that 50% miss chance). Every incorporeal creature is subject to these rules.