Quick question about Black Tentacles and Incorporeal

[Johnny5]

I thought I'd find more threads about this - the only ones I found refer to other games.

Are incorporeal things (such as ghosts) stopped by Black Tentacles?

The reason I ask is because they are clearly magical. And the Incorporeal condition says they're immune to nonmagical attack forms, but seem to be affected by spells.

The only thing that makes me think incorporeal things would not be stopped by tentacles would be that the spell refers to them as "black rubbery tentacles", implying a physical force, as oppossed to say Wall of Force, which would definitely stop incorporeal things because it says they take full damage from force effects.

It's a minor point, I just have a group which does a lot of battlefield control, in an area where they have ghosts to do battle with soon, and also, in theory, their enemies are probing and watching (and in theory, learning), but dispel magic seems to be the only way to deal with these issues. That or Liberating Command.

[Phasics]

The attacks made by by black tentacles are non-magical

and my reasoning for this is simple, they do not allow spell resistance. Treat them as you would a summoned creature as far as the ghost is concerned its just a giant squid or octopus and cannot be affected by its physical attacks.

So your ghosts would be unaffected by both the grapple and the damage, they would also be immune to the difficult terrain component as well.

[Ashenfall]

What Phasics said.

Think of the conjuration school of magic as "indirect" magic. It's a great way to get around spell resistance, as summoned creatures' natural attacks aren't subject to SR, but for incorporeal creatures, the net effect of your magic is that you're still making a physical attack.

The black tentacles are excellent against medium and small creatures, especially ones with spell resistance, like drow.

[Quantum Steve]

Black Tentacles are NOT summoned creatures and should not be treated as such.

Quote:

Incorporeal creatures cannot make trip or grapple attacks, nor can they be tripped or grappled.

So, Black Tentacles do nothing.

[Ashenfall]

Steve, what are you talking about?

Nobody is saying that the tentacles ARE summoned creatures; simply that their attacks would be treated the same way summoned creatures' attacks would: Despite the fact that magic conjured the critters/tentacles, the resulting conjuration is corporeal, and is making non-magical physical attacks.

[Phasics]

Quantum Steve wrote:

Black Tentacles are NOT summoned creatures and should not be treated as such.

Quote:

Incorporeal creatures cannot make trip or grapple attacks, nor can they be tripped or grappled.

So, Black Tentacles do nothing.

sigh, always interesting how people can misinterpret things