During our playtest last night, the party's rogue failed a save vs. the Glitterdust spell and was blinded. She has the Careful Targeting feat, and wanted to know if the benefit of reducing "any miss chance by 20%" applied to the blinded condition.
Just reading the rules as written, it would seem that yes, it applies. The entry clearly states any miss chance and the blinded condition applies a 50% miss chance to all attacks. However, since the rule is sight based ("Your sharp eye greatly aids you when your target is partially hidden.")I felt that the spirit of the rule was not intended for this use, so I ruled that it did not function while the character was blinded.
So perhaps I'm wrong. If not, however, the feat should probably be reworded to indicate it is useable against miss chances provided by cover or spell effects.
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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A similar problem came up during my playtest game last night. In this case, the enemy was under a displacement spell, which granted a 50% miss chance. I thought that careful targeting wouldn't apply, but the player who had it pointed out that, as written, it applied against ANY miss chance. From my read on the ability and what I think it's intent is, shouldn't this be only useful against miss chances due to concealment?
As written, it helps vs, displacement, blindness, and incorporealness.
A similar problem came up during my playtest game last night. In this case, the enemy was under a displacement spell, which granted a 50% miss chance. I thought that careful targeting wouldn't apply, but the player who had it pointed out that, as written, it applied against ANY miss chance. From my read on the ability and what I think it's intent is, shouldn't this be only useful against miss chances due to concealment?
As written, it helps vs, displacement, blindness, and incorporealness.
The others should be mentioned to be not included, but displacement makes sense, actually, IMO.
You place the arrow where the adversary has to be, through careful observation of the surroundings, e.g.
"An incorporeal creature has no physical body. It can be harmed only by other incorporeal creatures, magic weapons or creatures that strike as magic weapons, and spells, spell-like abilities, or supernatural abilities. It is immune to all nonmagical attack forms. Even when hit by spells or magic weapons, it has a 50% chance to ignore any damage from a corporeal source (except for positive energy, negative energy, force effects such as magic missile, or attacks made with ghost touch weapons)."
I have ruled that careful targeting does not work against incorporeal creatures. They have a 50% chance to ignore damage, the attacker does not have a 50% chance of missing them.
With regard to the first post, I would also have ruled that careful targeting is vision based, so a blinded character can not take advantage of it. Again, it is open to interpretation and some may argue that I am wrong.