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I'm reading the Ranged Disarm feat on p 103 of Complete Warrior and I wondered if someone could use a ranged touch spell as the weapon to accomplish the task? Since you can technically use Ranged Touch as a Weapon Focus (as indicated from Complete Arcane) and this feat makes no mention of having the ranged weapon to be a physical weapon (unlike Ranged Pin and Ranged Sunder, which does specify a projectile or thrown weapon), would anyone allow this?
Picturing it in my head, it would be pretty cool to fire off a ranged touch spell to focus on disarming a melee opponent of his sword.
To be clear, you can not choose ranged spell as a weapon focus, you can choose a Ray (which are spells, but not all ranged spells are rays). However, assuming that is what you meant in your question by ranged spell I will go on.
Choose one type of ranged weapon with which you are proficient.
You certainly are proficient with a ray, so you are good on the first sentence and can take the feat as Ranged Disarm: Ray.
Reading over the rules laid out in the Rules Compendium for Disarm, I don't see anything that would prevent a ray from being used the same as any other ranged attack.
You would need a ruling on the DM if the ray counted as two-handed, one-handed, or light for the penalty (I would suggest light, like an unarmed or natural strike) and if the size adjustment would be taken into account (since spell damage does not scale with size, I would suggest no).
Overall it seems like a really good use of 0-level spells or wands of low level rays. As you get to higher levels it would be much less useful a tactic though (as disarm is in general), but in a low level game you don't expect to progress real far this would be a option.
The downside with Ranged Disarm is that you don't get your str added to the roll as does the defendant and you have a poor BAB... the fact that the ray was a touch attack doesn't mean anything to the disarm attempt.
Sean Mahoney
To be clear, you can not choose ranged spell as a weapon focus, you can choose a Ray (which are spells, but not all ranged spells are rays). However, assuming that is what you meant in your question by ranged spell I will go on.
The Complete Arcane says there are 2 examples... 'Ranged Touch Spell' and 'Melee Touch Spell' for purposes of using Weapon Focus. (ex: Weapon Focus: Ranged Touch Spell)
I apologize as that isn't verbatim(no book at work), but point being it's does not have to be specific such as RAY, ORB, etc. according to the rules I'm familiar with. Is it different in PF CORE or some other source?
