Alright, so I looked through a couple threads on this, but they didn't really address this issue too well.
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Holding the Charge: If you don't discharge the spell in the round when you cast the spell, you can hold the charge indefinitely. You can continue to make touch attacks round after round. If you touch anything or anyone while holding a charge, even unintentionally, the spell discharges. If you cast another spell, the touch spell dissipates. You can touch one friend as a standard action or up to six friends as a full-round action. Alternatively, you may make a normal unarmed attack (or an attack with a natural weapon) while holding a charge. In this case, you aren't considered armed and you provoke attacks of opportunity as normal for the attack. If your unarmed attack or natural weapon attack normally doesn't provoke attacks of opportunity, neither does this attack. If the attack hits, you deal normal damage for your unarmed attack or natural weapon and the spell discharges. If the attack misses, you are still holding the charge.
The bolded part is the main question here, though I've got a followup to it as well.
Let's say we've got a fairly high level draconic sorcerer, going into dragon disciple, so we have 2 claw attacks and a bite.
Though it is clearly mentioned that you can deliver a touch spell through a natural attack (targeting regular AC rather than touch AC, of course), it doesn't explicitly say that you can still full attack.
So... can you? If our sorcerer casts Fleshworm Infestation, then waits a round, can he full attack and discharge it on any attack that hits his opponent? Or does he have to use a standard action to attack with a single claw or bite, and if that hits, the spell goes off with it?
That's my main question. Here's the followup though.
If you can make a full attack while holding a charge, what about Chill Touch? Say we use Form of the Dragon III, and get ourselves 6 natural attacks, then cast Chill Touch. If all 6 of those natural attacks hit, can we discharge 6 instances of Chill Touch into the opponent?
And lastly, Calcific Touch. It has the limitation of, and I quote:
"Once per round, you may deliver a touch attack that inflicts 1d4 points of Dexterity damage and slows the target (as the spell) for 1 round."
If we specifically choose to deliver a touch attack once per round this is pretty clear cut. If we can full attack for them though, does it discharge every time we hit them, or is it still limited to the once per round bit?
Some clarification on these would be much appreciated.
Dot.
it doesn't explicitly say that you can still full attack.
So... can you?
I don't see any reason why you can't make as many unarmed strike or natural attacks as you are allowed, discharging a touch spell on any hit.
Fleshworm Infestation seems to work on every hit during the duration.
Chill Touch and Calcific Touch would be CL number of hits.
That's using only the rules as printed, however.
James Jacobs posted (here) that multi-touch spells like chill touch stop functioning as touch spells after the first successful hit. Using this interpretation, after the first claw or whatever hits and delivers a chill/calcific touch, the spell ends, you're no longer holding a charge, and any remaining touches get converted into a special ability. Since you're not holding the charge, the rules for holding the charge don't apply, and you can't deliver the effect with an unarmed strike or natural attack, and it doesn't dissipate if you cast another spell. There's a FAQ request post here if anyone would like an official response to that.
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Unless a spell states otherwise, you can deliver a touch spell through natural attacks as part of a full attack, but once an attack hits, the touch spell is discharged.
For spells like Chill Touch/Calcific Touch, where you get more than one touch attack, I assume you can keep making touches until all are discharged, but can't deliver them more than once per round (per each spell's description). What this means is not entirely clear, but I'd say you can continue to attempt to deliver your "once per round" touch until you successfully discharge it. So if you have 6 natural attacks per round, you may use all 6 of those to make the attempt, and once discharged you can't discharge another until next round, even if you still have natural attacks left.
You could also argue you may only make the attempt once per round, and if you miss it you don't get to try again until next round, but I don't think it's intended to work like that. I think you can keep making attempts until you hit or run out of attacks.
I assume you can keep making touches until all are discharged, but can't deliver them more than once per round (per each spell's description).
Chill Touch doesn't say anything about rounds.
Calcific Touch does, but it specifies one touch attack per round. In order to be able to use it with unarmed strikes at all, the Holding the Charge rules must take precedence. And the Holding the Charge rules say you may make a normal unarmed attack and deliver it on a hit, there's no reason that couldn't happen with each attack you make.
This is all assuming you are not using James' interpretation.
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I'm not familiar with James' interpretation. If you could provide a link I'm interesting in reading it though.
As it is, I don't believe the Holding the Charge rules overrule the basic functioning of the spell, which specifically limits it to one touch per round. I do think you'd get to make multiple attempts, provided you have more than one applicable attack available, but only one successful discharge per round.
RE: Chill Touch: My mistake, I thought it was limited, turns out not. In that case, you should be able to make multiple discharges per round. Calcific Touch, no.
I'm not familiar with James' interpretation. If you could provide a link I'm interesting in reading it though.
I linked it in post #3 in this thread.
As it is, I don't believe the Holding the Charge rules overrule the basic functioning of the spell
If this is true, then you can't deliver the spell with an unarmed strike or natural attack at all.
-edit- so many edits, confused. I'm going to delete my now-irrelevant post up there.
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I linked it in post #3 in this thread.
Found it.
Upon review, I'm reminded again of why James Jacobs is not well regarded as a rules source.
My interpretation (which may change after I've had more coffee):
Chill touch provides 1 "charge" per level. Once one charge is discharged, another one lines up to be discharged next as if you had a held charge. these charges lost upon casting another spell same as any other held charge.
Or, it works more like Produce Flame, in which case you've been given a number of attacks, not charges, which are not lost of you cast another spell, and each charge is missed if you miss the attack instead of being held. Since they are not charges, you they cannot be delivered through an unarmed strike or natural weapon.
Or, Chill Touch has no charges to hold and is a simple instantaneous effect which allows you to make a touch attack against one creature per level as part of the spell's casting.
I agree Chill Touch is weird, but without any real clarification, I go with my first interpretation.
If this is true, then you can't deliver the spell with an unarmed strike or natural attack at all.
No, you may still deliver touch attacks through an unarmed strike or natural weapon, but you can't do so more often than the spell allows.
-edit- so many edits, confused. I'm going to delete my now-irrelevant post up there.
Coffee. ;)
Chill touch provides 1 "charge" per level. Once one charge is discharged, another one lines up to be discharged next as if you had a held charge. these charges lost upon casting another spell same as any other held charge.
Exactly how I read it.
Or, it works more like Produce Flame, in which case you've been given a number of attacks, not charges, which are not lost of you cast another spell, and each charge is missed if you miss the attack instead of being held. Since they are not charges, you they cannot be delivered through an unarmed strike or natural weapon.
This, I think, is what James was going for, except he left the first one to work like a touch spell so that you get your free attack the turn you cast the spell.
Or, Chill Touch has no charges to hold and is a simple instantaneous effect which allows you to make a touch attack against one creature per level as part of the spell's casting.
Lots of people used to argue this, but it's completely broken for a CL5 caster to be granted 5 attacks with a standard action.
No, you may still deliver touch attacks through an unarmed strike or natural weapon, but you can't do so more often than the spell allows.
Calcific Touch is a better argument for this one since it specifies once per round.
I still think Holding the Charge must take precedence. The spell says you get to make a touch attack each round. HtC says you can use an unarmed strike instead. So in order to use an unarmed strike, HtC must overrule the spell text. Further, using the "touch anything or anyone while holding a charge" rule, I don't see how you couldn't deliver the spell with a second successful hit.
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Or, Chill Touch has no charges to hold and is a simple instantaneous effect which allows you to make a touch attack against one creature per level as part of the spell's casting.Lots of people used to argue this, but it's completely broken for a CL5 caster to be granted 5 attacks with a standard action.
I agree. Completely broken. See below.
No, you may still deliver touch attacks through an unarmed strike or natural weapon, but you can't do so more often than the spell allows.
Calcific Touch is a better argument for this one since it specifies once per round.
I still think Holding the Charge must take precedence. The spell says you get to make a touch attack each round. HtC says you can use an unarmed strike instead. So in order to use an unarmed strike, HtC must overrule the spell text. Further, using the "touch anything or anyone while holding a charge" rule, I don't see how you couldn't deliver the spell with a second successful hit.
Calcific Touch is really the only spell I'm arguing here, as it states it can only be used once per round. Allowing it to be used more than once per round opens up the possibility of, in a single round, permanently petrifying a target who gets no save. I see no reason why the spell's limit on uses per round and holding the charge can't both work.
As for "touch anything blah blah" if the spell's use per round has already been discharged, additional touched have no effect and nothing else is discharged.
I still think you can keep making attempt to discharge that once per round charge until successful or until out of applicable attacks.
The spell clearly states how many times it's effect can go off each round.
If a player seriously presented the arguement that "the holding a charge rules superseed the explicit wording of the spell", that player would never be invited to another session of a game I ran.
Your zeal to ban players with different interpretations of the rules is commendable, but how do you justify keeping "Once per round" but removing "you may deliver a touch attack" when they're both explicit in the spell and part of the same sentence? Why does Holding the Charge change the methods you have to deliver the spell, but not also change the duration?
Fleshworm Infestation seems to work on every hit during the duration.
James Jacobs posted (here) that multi-touch spells like chill touch stop functioning as touch spells after the first successful hit...
Just FYI, Fleshworm Infestation is only a single touch. The duration applies after it's hit a creature.
As for JJ's ruling... well, that certainly complicates this matter. I added an FAQ request to your post with his and Jason's interpretations.
The way I originally thought Chill Touch worked was basically that you cast the spell, and got X charges of it, where X is your caster level. You then hold the spell (as per holding the charge) until you use up all of those charges, during which time you are still considered holding a touch spell, as normal.
The instantaneous duration and James Jacob's ruling are making me less sure of that now though. I'm still more inclined to the way I originally read it, because it sounds like a weird mess of unintended rules in the other case, but... huh.
Calcific Touch is really the only spell I'm arguing here, as it states it can only be used once per round. Allowing it to be used more than once per round opens up the possibility of, in a single round, permanently petrifying a target who gets no save. I see no reason why the spell's limit on uses per round and holding the charge can't both work.
I can certainly see the reasoning that the wording for the spell would limit how many times it goes off in a round, regardless of whether you hit more than once. That's why I brought up both Chill Touch and Calcific Touch, since they work similarly (in that you essentially have an extended duration of touch charges) but one of them has that limitation while the other does not.
But as said, the spell specifies you can deliver a touch attack once per round, which is what you could normally do while holding a charge anyway, aside from the fact that other spells would usually be gone after a single hit. If you are holding a charge and making multiple attacks though, I can also see the reasoning for it being discharged on each hit if you're landing them.
Hence why I'm asking for clarification, of course :P