Aafuzzel's page

Think of it from the point of view of the PC. In the situation where there is a Champion with that reaction, and the creature they are fighting used stealth for initiative and the Champion failed to notice them before they acted. It makes sense for the Champion to not have a reaction.

In a different situation, the party comes across a pack of wolves that are feeding on a carcass, the champion doesn't act faster than the wolves but they also weren't using stealth for initiative. In that situation it would make sense for the Champion to have a reaction.

Its all situational. In general I would rule unless someone on either side is trying to be tricky (ie. using stealth or deception for initiative) everyone would have reactions, which is a majority of all fights.

The sidebar on page 298 about spell attack rolls says "However, note that the spell attack roll doesn’t gain any bonuses or penalties that apply specifically to weapon attacks or unarmed attacks."

So by strict reading of the text you are questioning, the inclusion of "using a weapon" prevents spell attack rolls from gaining this penalty... and I would also say they lose the option to be used to make a nonlethal attack unless the spell explicitly is nonlethal.

But that's being informed by my bias against huge surges of magical energy harness for explicitly lethal effect being not just big spikes of damage, but also easily improvised into another effect too. For example, why bother learning the sleep spell if you can achieve the same thing with a spell that can also do something else?

Alternatively if you went through the trouble of learning to harness this magical power why would you not learn how to direct to an area that wouldn't kill the target, like the appendages? As long as you are making an attack roll I don't see why you can't.

Those type of spells also have the attack trait meaning they would suffer other penalties that weapons would normally incur because of MAP.