essentially do casters need to get precise shot to avoid the firing into melee with ranged touch. kinda confused on this please help. thanks in advance
essentially do casters need to get precise shot to avoid the firing into melee with ranged touch. kinda confused on this please help. thanks in advance
yes, or only use ranged touch spells against opponents larger than the allies they are fighting to reduce/eliminate the penalty.
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My cleric ran into that precise problem with acid darts. Actually, now that you mention it, I am not even sure that the benefit of Point-Blank Shot and Precise Shot even apply to ranged touch attacks.
Point-Blank Shot (Combat)
You are especially accurate when making ranged attacks against close targets.
Benefit: You get a +1 bonus on attack and damage rolls with ranged weapons at ranges of up to 30 feet.
Precise Shot (Combat)
You are adept at firing ranged attacks into melee.
Prerequisite: Point-Blank Shot.
Benefit: You can shoot or throw ranged weapons at an opponent engaged in melee without taking the standard –4 penalty on your attack roll.
The feat descriptions mention only weapons. Any thoughts?
My cleric ran into that precise problem with acid darts. Actually, now that you mention it, I am not even sure that the benefit of Point-Blank Shot and Precise Shot even apply to ranged touch attacks.
The feat descriptions mention only weapons. Any thoughts?Point-Blank Shot (Combat)
You are especially accurate when making ranged attacks against close targets.
Benefit: You get a +1 bonus on attack and damage rolls with ranged weapons at ranges of up to 30 feet.
Precise Shot (Combat)
You are adept at firing ranged attacks into melee.
Prerequisite: Point-Blank Shot.
Benefit: You can shoot or throw ranged weapons at an opponent engaged in melee without taking the standard –4 penalty on your attack roll.
Just parse it like this:
Precise Shot (Combat)
You are adept at firing ranged attacks into melee.
Prerequisite: Point-Blank Shot.
Benefit: You can shoot (or throw ranged weapons) at an opponent engaged in melee without taking the standard –4 penalty on your attack roll.
There. Now you can shoot (anything) at an opponent. Or you can throw ranged weapons at an opponent. All without the penalty. Isn't English grand?
My bad.
I misquoted the rules (should have looked them up rather than trusting the old gray matter) so I'm deleting the whole post. Carry on.
The feat descriptions mention only weapons. Any thoughts?
Previous posters' sarcasm aside, this is a valid question and it gets asked often. This is a Rules forum, so telling someone who has a valid question to "parse" the official text with substitute unofficial text is not really helpful (although I agree with Mr. Dudley that his ( ) makes the text more clear, and likely is exactly how the author intended it to be read).
Here's a thread that answered this question just two days ago.
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essentially do casters need to get precise shot to avoid the firing into melee with ranged touch. kinda confused on this please help. thanks in advanceyes, or only use ranged touch spells against opponents larger than the allies they are fighting to reduce/eliminate the penalty.Nope, this isn't RAW.
Neither the size of the target or ally is taken into consideration for the -4 penalty for firing into melee. Regardless of their size, you tak ethe -4 penalty becayse you are trying so hard to make sure you miss your ally that you reduce your chances of hitting the enemy too.
Perhaps you are confusing this with Soft Cover?
If your ally is between you and the enemy, he can provide Soft Cover. This gives +4 AC to the enemy. If your ally is also engaged in melee with that enemy, then both rules apply, so your enemy gets +4 AC and you take -4 to your attack roll.
But if your ally is off to the side, so that you have a clear line of effect to the enemy, you must remember that things are moving quickly, and even though the miniatures are frozen in place in their own squares on the battlemat, the actual combatants are moving, leaping, ducking, circling (at least a little), etc. All of which means you still have to "aim away" from your ally, resulting in you becoming more likely to miss your target, so you still take the -4 penatly for firing into melee even though your enemy doesn't get any AC bonus for Soft Cover.
And, as with all cover, if more than half of the target is still visible, such as when your medium-sized fighter ally is between you and a huge giant, then the target only gets +2 AC instead of +4 - subject to the DM's discretion.
Well, also in your medium vs huge example, the firing into melee penalty is reduced to -2 (as the target is two size categories larger than your ally) and if that Huge giant gets hit with Enlarge Person, turning him into a Gargantuan creature, and as such is 3 size categories larger, then there is no penalty for firing at it while it is in melee with an ally. And odds are that your ally wouldn't be providing much cover to it either, but that's not my point.
The feat descriptions mention only weapons. Any thoughts?Previous posters' sarcasm aside, this is a valid question and it gets asked often. This is a Rules forum, so telling someone who has a valid question to "parse" the official text with substitute unofficial text is not really helpful (although I agree with Mr. Dudley that his ( ) makes the text more clear, and likely is exactly how the author intended it to be read).
Here's a thread that answered this question just two days ago.
Not sarcasm at all, and not unofficial text. If you read the feat and presume it's talking about only weapons then you have already parsed it in one way (you're reading it as: "you can shoot (or throw) ranged weapons"). I suggested parsing it in another. I added the parentheses for clarity to show what your brain is already doing with the words when you read. The text by itself can be parsed either way, which makes it ambiguous. So I'm not really sure how you think my post was unhelpful if you agree with the way I parsed it as how you think the writer intended.
