Ethereal and Dragon Breath

[darth_borehd]

Can dragon breath affect manifested ethereal plane creatures like ghosts?

What about the opposite situation with a ghost dragon breathing fire on prime material plane adventurers?

[Starglim]

darth_borehd wrote:

Can dragon breath affect manifested ethereal plane creatures like ghosts?

Yes, a dragon's breath weapon is a supernatural ability, so it affects incorporeal creatures. The ghost would take half damage.

darth_borehd wrote:

What about the opposite situation with a ghost dragon breathing fire on prime material plane adventurers?

I see nothing in the rules that prevents an incorporeal creature's supernatural ability working on normal creatures. Even if it normally didn't, this seems like a reasonable variant ghost ability to replace one of the ghost dragon's other options.

[James Jacobs]

A ghost dragon's breath weapon should affect creatures normally. That's pretty awesome, also, so that's another plus in that category.

Since ghosts retain things like supernatural abilities and spellcasting, this DOES mean that ghosts made out of things with those abilities are naturally more powerful and more versatile than ghosts made from things like fighters or animals (or other monsters that have no actual magical powers). That's fine. It's perfectly okay for some monsters to be better suited to take advantage of any one template than other monsters.

[Nebelwerfer41]

James Jacobs wrote:

A ghost dragon's breath weapon should affect creatures normally. That's pretty awesome, also, so that's another plus in that category.

Since ghosts retain things like supernatural abilities and spellcasting, this DOES mean that ghosts made out of things with those abilities are naturally more powerful and more versatile than ghosts made from things like fighters or animals (or other monsters that have no actual magical powers). That's fine. It's perfectly okay for some monsters to be better suited to take advantage of any one template than other monsters.

I just had a DM-gasm! GHOST DRAGON...

[Father Dale]

Just to clarify the above:

A ghost is an incorporeal creature, not an ethereal creature. This is somewhat different from 3.5, where the ghost was an ethereal creature but was also an incorporeal creature when it was manifested. In PF it is simply incorporeal.

A dragon's breath is a supernatural ability and thus can harm incorporeal creatures. Incorporeal creatures would take half damage from a dragon's breath, before saving throws and resistances are applied. Some dragon breaths might not affect a ghost for various reasons...as undead ghosts have several immunities.

A dragon's breath would not harm an ethereal creature. An ethereal creature exists on the ethereal plane and not the material plane, and a dragon's breath does not reach into the ethereal plane. An ethereal creature that is wholly on the ethereal plane cannot be harmed by a dragon's breath.

The switch from ethereal to just incorporeal with ghosts makes things much simpler. Ghosts were notoriously one of the hardest creatures to adjudicate in 3.5. Now everything is pretty much spelled out in the incorporeal section.

[darth_borehd]

OK,so:

Pathfinder: A ghost takes half damage from dragon breath and quarter damage if it saves.

3.5: Dragon breath does not harm the ghost unless manifested. In which, case, it is the same as above.

Do I have it right?

[reefwood]

Here's a couple more ghost dragon related questions...

1) Can the Vital Strike feats be applied to the Corrupting Touch attack of a ghost? I would think not because Vital Strike can apply to manufactured and natural weapons, but they do physical damage, and this ghost attack does damage via magic means (supernatural aging).

2) The ghost entry says that "A weapon of +1 or better magical enhancement, however, can harm material creatures, but any such attack deals only half as much damage (50%)," so if a dragon had magic fang with permanency cast on all its natural weapons... could it make a full attack with bite, claws, wings, and tail?

[reefwood]

reefwood wrote:

Here's a couple more ghost dragon related questions...

1) Can the Vital Strike feats be applied to the Corrupting Touch attack of a ghost? I would think not because Vital Strike can apply to manufactured and natural weapons, but they do physical damage, and this ghost attack does damage via magic means (supernatural aging).

2) The ghost entry says that "A weapon of +1 or better magical enhancement, however, can harm material creatures, but any such attack deals only half as much damage (50%)," so if a dragon had magic fang with permanency cast on all its natural weapons... could it make a full attack with bite, claws, wings, and tail?

Anyone?