If your casting a ray or an orb do you need precise shot to avoid the
-4 penalty?
Yeah. Spells get no special exception to ranged attack rules.
Yes. All ranged combat rules apply. The -4 for shooting into a melee to avoid hitting an ally. The soft cover a creature in between you and the target grants the target from your attack. Concealment miss %. And so forth.
Thank you!
And so forth.
Such as the potential AoO from making a ranged attack while in a foe's melee threatened area, separate from the AoO / concentration check for CASTING the spell in melee.
Yeah, that bit is particularly nasty. I think some people rationalize that since you shoot as part of the spell, the ranged attack and spell casting are the "same action" and thus only provokes one AoO (though if you avoid the casting one via casting defensively, you'd still get hit with one for the ranged attack but at least it wouldn't disrupt the casting).
But RAW, yeah. Using ray spells while threatened is an incredibly bad idea.
Also remember that you will likely be suffering a additional effective -4 because the person you want to hit has a +4 cover bonus to their armor class from your friend being in the way.
Precise shot gets rid of the -4 to shoot into melee, but not this cover bonus