Blink vs Magic Missile when caster has See Invisible


Rules Questions


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The enemy has Blink up.

The elven wizard could attack this enemy with his longbow, but he would have a 50% miss chance. He could cast Magic Missile (a force effect that can hit ethereal creatures) and only have a 20% miss chance.

If he casts See Invisible, his longbow attack would only have a 20% miss chance and his magic missile attack would have no miss chance.

Correct ?


That is correct.

Quote:
Any individually targeted spell has a 50% chance to fail against you while you're blinking unless your attacker can target invisible, ethereal creatures. Your own spells have a 20% chance to activate just as you go ethereal, in which case they typically do not affect the Material Plane (but they might affect targets on the Ethereal Plane).


Assuming that "he" refers to the elven wizard, I believe that Magic Missile would hit 100% of the time, with or without See Invisibility:

Blink said wrote:
Force effects and abjurations affect you normally. Their effects extend onto the Ethereal Plane from the Material Plane, but not vice versa.


Mystic "X" wrote:

Assuming that "he" refers to the elven wizard, I believe that Magic Missile would hit 100% of the time, with or without See Invisibility:

Blink said wrote:
Force effects and abjurations affect you normally. Their effects extend onto the Ethereal Plane from the Material Plane, but not vice versa.

If you cannot see your target, you cannot direct the spell at them. Blink means you cannot see the target 50% of the time, so the spell (even magic missile) fails 50% of the time without see invisibility active.


Not being able to target probably at the time of casting is the reason why magic missile would fail, and it is the same reason the other targeted spells fail.
However with see invisibility active magic missile should work 100% of the time since it affects ethereal creatures also.


concerro wrote:

That is correct.

Quote:
Any individually targeted spell has a 50% chance to fail against you while you're blinking unless your attacker can target invisible, ethereal creatures. Your own spells have a 20% chance to activate just as you go ethereal, in which case they typically do not affect the Material Plane (but they might affect targets on the Ethereal Plane).

The phrase "attacker can target invisible, ethereal creatures" means that the attacker must be able to target creatures that are both invisible AND ethereal. (A list of adjectives separated with a comma means that all of the adjectives apply equally to the noun at the same time.)

While See Invisibility would let you see ethereal creatures, I don't know if that's enough to be considered "targeting" the ethereal creature with a mundane weapon. (With a spell, it is obviously enough, but I don't know whether "target" implies "able to hit/touch" instead of just "able to see".)

Also, I don't think you suffer any miss chance if you can target invisible, ethereal creatures: I think you get no benefit from this spell in that case.

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