The Warlock Vigilante archetype gains Mystic Bolts as a supernatural ability. Mystic Bolts can be either melee or ranged attacks. "A warlock can sling projectiles of magical energy at will by shooting a bolt or touching her foe. A melee mystic bolt requires the target to be within reach, and a ranged mystic bolt is a ranged attack with a range of 30 feet."
There are many forum posts regarding the damage element of Mystic Bolts, so that's not something I'm trying to bring up again. Instead, I'm interested in how to interpret "ranged attack with a range of 30 feet."
From what I can tell, range is interpreted very differently when used under the Magic rules for spells compared to the Weapons rules for weapons. As a supernatural (SU) ability, Mystic Bolts are magical but not spell-like. They are not subject to SR, counterspells, or dispel magic. This definition of SU leads me to believe that Mystic Bolts should be treated under the magic rules.
While most spells have a range of Personal, Touch, Close, Medium, Long, or Unlimited, the magic rules state that, "Some spells have no standard range category, just a range expressed in feet." Thus, if the range of Mystic Bolts is interpreted under the magic rules, it has a static, absolute range of 30 feet. And because Mystic Bolts are not spells which use spell slots, the range cannot be extended with metamagic.
On the other hand, Mystic Bolts act and are generally treated more like weapons than spells. "The warlock vigilante attacks with mystic bolts as though they were light one-handed weapons, and the bolts can be used for two-weapon fighting (with each hand creating one mystic bolt) and feats and abilities that apply to weapon attacks (unless they’re excluded from that feat, such as with Power Attack, Weapon Focus (ray) doesn’t apply to mystic bolts, but a warlock can take Weapon Focus (mystic bolt) and apply it to both melee and ranged mystic bolts."
Looking at the weapons table for light melee weapons and/or one-handed melee weapons, each of the tables has a column titled "Range." Range is defined as follow: "Range: Any attack at more than this distance is penalized for range. Beyond this range, the attack takes a cumulative –2 penalty for each full range increment (or fraction thereof) of distance to the target. For example, a dagger (with a range of 10 feet) thrown at a target that is 25 feet away would incur a –4 penalty. A thrown weapon has a maximum range of five range increments. A projectile weapon can shoot to 10 range increments."
There is a significant distinction between having an absolute maximum range of 30 feet (as implied under the magic rules) versus a range increment of 30 feet which would allow attacks from beyond 30 feet (up to 150 feet as a thrown weapon) with increasing -2 penalties for each range increment. By level 3 a single Mystic Bolt can resolve against touch AC and at level 5 all Mystic Bolts resolve against touch AC. Unlike with guns, there is no language which limits the touch AC only to the first range increment.
Due to the dramatically different result depending on which definition of range is used, I am wondering whether the range for Mystic Bolts should be interpreted under the magic rules or the weapons rules?
