So in my recent Rise of the Runelords campaign, the wizard in my group that I am DM'ing for decided to cast Spectral Hand. He had a wand of vampiric touch and thought this would be the best way to deliver the attacks. He proceeded to send the spectral hand at the target (a raging barbarian ogre with a magic weapon).
After I looked at the spell I concluded that the ogre would get an attack of opportunty on the spectral hand as it moved into his space to deliver the touch attack. The hand has 1d4 hit points and 22 + int bonus of the caster, in this case 28.
I rolled a 28 on the attack, and then rolled the 50% miss chance to see if I hit the incorporeal hand, which I did.
After this all occured my wizard player was very put off feeling that the spell is useless. Did I DM this wrong? I could not figure out the reason for giving the spectral hand such high ac and other defenses if not for it provoking as it moved into threatened areas.
Any insight on this would be greatly appreciated.
Anyone?
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1: Incorporeal objects no longer benefit from a 50% miss chance, instead they take 50% damage. Check the back of your rules for more complete description.
2: Incorporeal objects are completely immune to all non-magical attack forms. This means that if the monster in question didn't have a magic weapon, he would swing at it and do no damage whatsoever. So it's still a useful spell against many monsters.
I just thought I'd bring #1 up for when it would be more relevant. Other than that I think the lesson here is not to send a small thing into melee with a raging barbarian with a magical weapon.