Dazzling display requires weapon focus. Can you get away with taking weapon focus touch attack or ranged touch attack? Or does the weapon litterally have to be a weapon?
I'm thinking of making a sorcerer with dazzling display, so that when I'm out of spells I'll be able to hurl frightening rays about the battlefield and scare people with them. I hope this is kosher.
It says right there in the text for Weapon Focus that you can take unarmed strike, grapple, or ray as your weapon for the purposes of that feat.
It also says for dazzling display that you must be wielding the weapon. Is that a hole in the idea?
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I have this sudden image of John Travolta in a white leisure suit, doing a dazzling display that ends with him pointing his finger at the BBEG and a searing ray firing out of it, after which time he blows the smoke off the tip of his finger.
It also says for dazzling display that you must be wielding the weapon. Is that a hole in the idea?
Yes. In a home game, you might be able to convince your DM that "wielding" includes casting a ray as part of the dazzling display. But I can't see it working for PFS.
You have to spend a full-round action wielding the weapon in which you are intimidating enemies. Since rays shoot directly from your fingertips as a standard action, then they are gone, this doesn't really work in your favor.
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I actually asked this as part of another thread about weapon focus and other feats making 0 level spells more useful/powerful. Funny enough in that thread the general concensus was no since as Submit says above the rays would have to be shooting out of your hands all over the place for the full time of your standard action.
Personally I lean more towards the thoughts on this thread; if one of my players posed this to me in my homebrew I'd rule yes because 1. its cool, 2. it doesn't overballance the power of the player.
As for what it might look like thematically, I imagine something like Dragon Ball Z; the arcanist shouting the syllables for the Ray of Frost spell, drawing their hands back, gathering motes of blue twinkling energy around their fingers. All the while the temperature is dropping rapidly around them. Then suddenly they thrust forward, propelling a streaking bolt of pure energy sub-zero style from Mortal Kombat with an eldritch scream.
