If an attack Misses the AC but is higher than the touch as does it still touch.

Here is the scenario.

I am a gm and I am making a custom creature.

This creature a demon has an ability that whenever it touches a person or object it places a "cursed mark" on it.

He can then use an action to detonate every mark in a certain range dealing fire damage.

Lets say he attacks with his claws on someone in full plate with a tower shield with 30 ac and 12 touch ac and hits ac 25.

Would that then place a mark on their armor or shield?

Would you say this is valid or no? You opinions?

Touch AC is literally just touching the target, anywhere, with anything in the way. Touching bare skin would actually require a normal hit because you have to get past armor and shields and whatnot. Things like cure wounds, chosking grasp, chill touch etc. affect the target even if you 'only' hit the things they are wearing.

Claw attacks are traditionally against full AC because they are physical damage that has to get through physical and semi-physical hindrances as well as merely touching the target.

If this mark or yours is a rider effect of a claw attack, it would normally require a successful hit against full AC.

If this is a touch attack without claw damage, it's a normal touch attack. In essence, casting a spell.

Now you can always invent new rules for how to handle this, making a combined claw attack and touch attack for the mark. It's not how I would handle things but it is your monster.

I just see it as a supernatural abilities ability that activates whenever any contact is made between the creature and any other creature or object such as weapons / shields and armors with no action required on behalf of the demon.

I'm looking at a mimic's adhesive as a guide at the moment and I'm kind of leaning towards if he misses their ac with a claw attack then no mark is placed but he can always chose to just do a touch attack to hit touch and place a mark.

I'm inclined to say no as it seems like its effectively granting your creature two attacks for the price of one. The mimic gets a free grapple because it gooily slams a person with your creature it gets 1 (claw attack) then automatically gets a secondary effect that can deal damage they can't avoid if he hits touch. This would also mean it also gets it when it hits with a claw. Instead of mimic I think a better comparison would be rend where they have to hit with multiple attacks to get additional damage. This is without touching on the fact as described it'd be applying this effect wherever it walked, got hit, picked up a rock and scattered it around as a mine field before they arrive.

I'd say either claw vs AC or Bomb vs touch as seperate attacks or bomb as a secondary if it hits with the claw not attack via claw that carries a potential touch benefit if it misses normal AC. Have your demon decide if it wants to physically attack with claws or apply its demon mark with a touch especially since it (a) is likely to have a higher attack bonus that a lot of touch attacking creatures and (b) is likely to be attacking creatures with a significantly lower touch than normal AC.

Look its simple.

If you want to do damage you're hitting AC.

If you just want to touch the person you aim for touch AC. It hits but does no damage.

Some effects all you need to touch and it goes off. Sounds like you want touch AC.

If you choose to hit and do damage and miss? You miss. You made the choice you get nothing. No secondary prize.

So make the choice when you swing. Just to touch or do you want the claws to do damage as well.

You have to choose.

Simple as I can explain it. Good luck.

It's your monster and you can make the rules for it, so sure you can give the demon an ability that does this. But be sure to calculate that ability into it's CR. That is a powerful ability.

Pathfinder has a fairly abstract combat system, and anything that does not matter is generally undefined, so in the general case there is no answer to this question (nor should there be). In the specific case of an attack which you are writing, it works however you write it to work.

There is nothing wrong in principle with an attack that has additional riders on better attack rolls (that is after all what crits are). But in this specific instance, it would probably feel a little unfair and/or unfun to the players. For certain kinds of characters, touch AC is very difficult to improve beyond terrible, so it becomes almst a gimme (especially since those characters with the worst touch ACs are probably exactly the sort of characters who would be moving to engage a big clawed demon).

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glass.

A similar case would be Spellstrike:

At 2nd level, whenever a Magus casts a spell with a range of “touch” from the magus spell list, he can deliver the spell through any weapon he is wielding as part of a melee attack. Instead of the free melee touch attack normally allowed to deliver the spell, a magus can make one free melee attack with his weapon (at his highest base attack bonus) as part of casting this spell. If successful, this melee attack deals its normal damage as well as the effects of the spell.

If a Magus casts Shocking Grasp and attempts to deliver it through a sword, we do not let the spell go through just because he hits touch AC. Letting them do so would make the Magus too powerful.

RAW, the answer would be No. If you attack normal AC and miss, you miss.

Logically, it would make sense that if you miss within the margin that their armor gives them, that you hit but their armor deflected it, but that would fall into the homebrew side of rules.

RAW, the answer would be No. If you attack normal AC and miss, you miss.

Logically, it would make sense that if you miss within the margin that their armor gives them, that you hit but their armor deflected it, but that would fall into the homebrew side of rules.

And as Mathew points out if you start doing it for an enemy certain classes are going to have the player wanting the same rule for themselves.

Custom Creatures can be any way you think is fun, for them being custom =P

It would be most consistent with the rest of PF if the demon activated the ability on a successful hit vs. AC OR on a special attack which only delivered the mark vs. touch.

I also think that on one hand saying "requires no action by the demon" and then having the demon "use an action to detonate" is kinda wierd. Have you also considered the sheer bookkeeping required? How about something that detonates immidiatly? Like some items that deal damage to someone attacking you. It kinda leaves a mark where contakt is made - actual contact, not a bare tangency - but then the mark bursts into flames / detonates a second later, so still in the same characters turn.

I've played a game where this worked out. So folks could precast and hold a spell while attacking with weapon if they hit touch AC the spell portion still went off.
That game (Legend of Zelda based one) wanted more dynamic spellsword abilities.

On the whole, it was pretty fun when everyone could do it. It equally messed us up as it did them.

I can't speak as to the effect of your custom creature though

this seems like something already in the game.

if your holding a touch spell and miss the ac but hit the touch ac does the spell go off? held touch spells will go off on anything you touch next even if it was an accident. so if the touch spell would go off then this would if the touch spell would not then this would not either.

this seems like something already in the game.

if your holding a touch spell and miss the ac but hit the touch ac does the spell go off? held touch spells will go off on anything you touch next even if it was an accident. so if the touch spell would go off then this would if the touch spell would not then this would not either.

While most commonly seen with the Magus and Spellstrike, the Magus actually uses the same rules as Touch spells delivered through Unarmed-Strikes/Natural-Attacks. The rule is that of you're targeting regular AC in order to deal damage with your weapon (or fist or claw etc) then you either hit or miss entirely. There is no "Partial hit" in the pathfinder rule-set.

Basically: No it doesn't work without house-rules.

The people saying it does not work by RAW are wrong, because the OP is wrting the RAW in this case. RAW is literally whatever they decide it is.

The people saying you could write it to work that way, but probably shouldn't, are on much safer ground.

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glass.

Right, but it's the rules forum, so we give the OP the rules answer for similar abilities.

It should probably be in the Home-brew forum really, but I think for the advice asked for the answer has been pretty well given.

It is your game, so you can invent whatever monster power you want. I suggest you to give a time limit to the ability (the marks last X rounds) or a very high CR value, as it ha plenty of uses, from creating a minefield to marking several times a creature and then threatening it with death if it doesn't do what the demon want.
Do the marks radiate evil? As they are an effect of a demon power they will probably do it, and that will be very interesting fro messing with Detect Evil and similar spells.

this seems like something already in the game.

if your holding a touch spell and miss the ac but hit the touch ac does the spell go off? held touch spells will go off on anything you touch next even if it was an accident. so if the touch spell would go off then this would if the touch spell would not then this would not either.

We can run it that way as soon as we can determine if it was a miss because of armor/shield as opposed to a miss because the creature dodged out of the way of the attack. Of course there are no rules for this, so we would have to come up with some - which puts us well into house rule/DM call territory. By RAW, a miss is a miss, and nothing happens.

The RAW answer has already been pretty well stated, but there was some discussion about the fluff behind the RAW and I'll point out that it's not as clear-cut as "you touch if you hit touch AC but miss normal AC". Specifically, a rolled attack that misses doesn't mean you swung and missed or swung and hit armor, it more accurately means you didn't hit.

In a real battle, if your enemy is covered in plate mail then you might not wildly swing, hoping to somehow penetrate and deal damage. Moreso with some weapons than others, you would spend time trying to angle and aim for the perfect strike. A given attack roll that misses due to the enemy's armor could absolutely mean you hit armor once. It could also represent a flurry of many light blows, none of which pierced armor. It could mean you were trying to angle for that perfect strike and never found your opening, so you simply never swung or lunged. It could even mean that while you were angling you telegraphed your move too much and your enemy dodged, creating a situation in which they dodged when they otherwise wouldn't have, specifically due to their heavy armor.

This all goes to the point that the rules are abstract, not designed to micromanage these details. They're concerned with macroscopic outcomes. Therefore, it may be ill-advised to try to describe outcomes based on assumed details which were not part of the game design, your PC's builds, or ultimately the dice rolls prior to your interpretation.

It's questions like this that really should be referred to the Armor as DR rules.

Right, but it's the rules forum, so we give the OP the rules answer for similar abilities.

It is the Rules forum, hence the need to be precise in our answers.

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glass.

And people are, the OP’s original question “does this attack hit on a miss” is not RAW. If they make the ability do so, they are doing so with the knowledge that the ability is an exception, not that this is how hits and misses and AC function by RAW.

The RAW answer has already been pretty well stated, but there was some discussion about the fluff behind the RAW and I'll point out that it's not as clear-cut as "you touch if you hit touch AC but miss normal AC". Specifically, a rolled attack that misses doesn't mean you swung and missed or swung and hit armor, it more accurately means you didn't hit.

In a real battle, if your enemy is covered in plate mail then you might not wildly swing, hoping to somehow penetrate and deal damage. Moreso with some weapons than others, you would spend time trying to angle and aim for the perfect strike. A given attack roll that misses due to the enemy's armor could absolutely mean you hit armor once. It could also represent a flurry of many light blows, none of which pierced armor. It could mean you were trying to angle for that perfect strike and never found your opening, so you simply never swung or lunged. It could even mean that while you were angling you telegraphed your move too much and your enemy dodged, creating a situation in which they dodged when they otherwise wouldn't have, specifically due to their heavy armor.

This all goes to the point that the rules are abstract, not designed to micromanage these details. They're concerned with macroscopic outcomes. Therefore, it may be ill-advised to try to describe outcomes based on assumed details which were not part of the game design, your PC's builds, or ultimately the dice rolls prior to your interpretation.

True but the issue there is if you start down that rabbit hole you open yourself up to all sorts of further questions.

1) What order do the various AC components apply in e.g. is Dex factored in before shield bonus or after?
2) Do touch attacks ignore armour bonus from magical barrier shields like mage armour like they do actual physical armour?
3) If touch attacks go through mage armour do they go through walls of force?
4) What is that mysterious base 10 meant to represent?

just to start you off.

True but the issue there is if you start down that rabbit hole you open yourself up to all sorts of further questions.

1) What order do the various AC components apply in e.g. is Dex factored in before shield bonus or after?
2) Do touch attacks ignore armour bonus from magical barrier shields like mage armour like they do actual physical armour?
3) If touch attacks go through mage armour do they go through walls of force?
4) What is that mysterious base 10 meant to represent?

just to start you...

The answers to all of these feel painfully obvious to me and I've used the apparent order as a DM to describe how close an enemy came to hitting a player. Its never had any game effect. At one time I considered using it to apply the damage dealt to a character's armor and/or shield until I realized that the order I use means that a character's shield almost never gets hit.

The specific order I use is

Base 10
circumstance bonuses
miscellaneous bonuses
dodge bonuses
stat bonuses in standard order (str, dex, con, int, wis, cha)
Shield bonus
Armor bonus
Natural armor bonus

So, to put it in perspective, assume a character has the following

+2 circumstance (lets say lighting conditions)
+2 misc. (lets say cover)
+1 dodge
+3 dex
+1 shield
+4 armor
+3 natural armor

for a total AC of 26

If your attack hits:

(AC 9 or less)-You miss the square the character is standing in
(AC 10 to 11) -You miss because of lighting conditions
(AC 12 to 13) -You hit the cover they are behind
(AC 14 to 17) -The character dodged the attack
(AC 18) - The character blocked the attack with their shield
(AC 19 to 22) - The attack was deflected by their armor
(AC 23 to 25) - The attack was stopped by the character's thick skin

But to be honest, I don't describe every attack this way as it would bog the game down to much. I only tend to do it when an attack barely misses, missed wildly or the player asks.