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It's been brought to my attention that there is some ambiguity to this.
And by ambiguity I mean "miss is never defined in the rules" (as far as I and others can tell).
Is it any attack that fails to hit AC? Any attack that fails to hit, period (through miss chance, deflected attacks, and so forth)? Something else?
I think this is kind of important, as quite a few abilities and arguments hinge on things being one way or another, and I think a FAQ of this could clear up quite a few OTHER rules questions that have come up and may come up in the future.
I would assume that a miss is any attack that fails to apply damage (before DR or resistance). But I have no rules to back that up off-hand.
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An attack that doesn't hit?
I'm not sure what you're driving at precisely; but there's quite a few ways attacks can be made to miss. You're probably right that a proper definition is missing though (no pun intended).
Obviously, not hitting AC counts. Miss chance too, I'd say; it's in the name.
But there's a couple of other things that negate an attack, such as Deflect Arrows and Crane Wing that deflect attacks that have hit you; they deal no damage, but does that count as missing?
For example: you make a touch attack on a monk who uses Crane Wing.
- Can a non-damaging spell be stopped this way?
- If the damage from a damaging touch spell is negated, is the spell discharged?
It's not clear.
That is why I wish for people to FAQ this so it stops coming up. All of these things have come up before. Deflected attacks from various things, miss chance, etc. being called out as "not misses" because the only definition of "hit" to be found is "meets or exceeds AC".
The deflected touch spell thing has come up too.
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When has this been an issue? If you don't hit then you missed.
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Before we bother FAQing, can you explain why this is important? What important abilities hinge on a miss being defined?
Before we bother FAQing, can you explain why this is important? What important abilities hinge on a miss being defined?
One prominent example currently is whether or not using Crane Wing to deflect an attack allows for Snake Fang to come into play.
On-hit effects and as they interact with things like Blur and Mirror Image would be affected as well.
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The issue is with Snake Fang and Crane Wing in a Master of Many Styles monk:
If you roll an attack that would have hit, you can deflect it with Crane Wing. Does this then constitute a "Miss" so that you can then make an AoO with Snake Fang without having the Crane Riposte feat?
Would an AoO be triggered from Snake Fang if you were invisible, and the attack "hit" but then fell foul of the "miss chance"?
The problem is, "miss" is not really defined within the rules, while "hit" is clearly defined as any attack roll that exceeded your AC. Personally I feel that in the case of Crane Style, it's a powerful style and if you want Crane Riposte, you should pay for it with a feat and not get it on the sly. But that's just me, the rules could really be read a number of ways, and a clear ruling would help here.
Thanks for the explanation. I will hit the FAQ button. No pun intended.
Yeah, I don't like asking for a general rule on misses like this. It's going to cause problems no matter how it's ruled. You should instead be asking for a specific ruling on those things.
On hit effects don't work when you miss from blur/concealment/etc. because you didn't hit.
Snake Fang doesn't work when you Crane Wing because there's already a feat for that called Crane Riposte.
Look at 4e if you want to see what happens when you force developers to make hardline rules for vague things that dozens of different effects interact with. It gets messy fast. Defining an attack fixed like five things and wrecked dozens.
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Two other relevant cases (imported from the other thread):
1) Can a character with Snake Fang and Deflect Arrows make an attack of opportunity if they deflect the arrow of an opponent within melee range?
2) The Second Chance ranged weapon ability allows you to, once per round, reroll an attack if you miss. Can you reroll an attack if your arrow is deflected using Deflect Arrows?
EDIT: More
3) Can you use sidestep or Escaping Ward after deflecting an attack with Crane Wing?
4) Can a character with the Second Chance feat use it when an opponent deflects an attack with either Deflect Arrows or Crane Wing?
Also, I'm noticing a couple of abilities that say "when you miss due to concealment" (ex: Elven Accuracy) which suggests to me that the general "miss" includes attacks that fail due to miss chances (makes sense), but still may not include automatically deflected attacks.
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Can you use the Sudden Shift ability of the Deception Subdomain, in response to deflecting an attack via Crane Wing?
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As far as I'm concerned:
1) Can a character with Snake Fang and Deflect Arrows make an attack of opportunity if they deflect the arrow of an opponent within melee range?
No, they did not miss. You deflected it.
2) The Second Chance ranged weapon ability allows you to, once per round, reroll an attack if you miss. Can you reroll an attack if your arrow is deflected using Deflect Arrows?
No, you did not miss, they deflected it.
3) Can you use sidestep or Escaping Ward after deflecting an attack with Crane Wing?
4) Can a character with the Second Chance feat use it when an opponent deflects an attack with either Deflect Arrows or Crane Wing?
No, the attacks do not miss, they are deflected.
Also, I'm noticing a couple of abilities that say "when you miss due to concealment" (ex: Elven Accuracy) which suggests to me that the general "miss" includes attacks that fail due to miss chances (makes sense), but still may not include automatically deflected attacks.
It totally includes miss chance--it's even called miss chance--but not deflection, because you don't deflect attacks that miss.
Can you use the Sudden Shift ability of the Deception Subdomain, in response to deflecting an attack via Crane Wing?
No.
But again, I'd rather FAQ those five questions than FAQ a general "what is a miss?"
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No, they did not miss, you deflected it.
They would have hit, but you deflected it, and so it missed.
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As far as I'm concerned:
1) Can a character with Snake Fang and Deflect Arrows make an attack of opportunity if they deflect the arrow of an opponent within melee range?No, they did not miss. You deflected it.
2) The Second Chance ranged weapon ability allows you to, once per round, reroll an attack if you miss. Can you reroll an attack if your arrow is deflected using Deflect Arrows?No, you did not miss, they deflected it.
3) Can you use sidestep or Escaping Ward after deflecting an attack with Crane Wing?
4) Can a character with the Second Chance feat use it when an opponent deflects an attack with either Deflect Arrows or Crane Wing?
No, the attacks do not miss, they are deflected.
Also, I'm noticing a couple of abilities that say "when you miss due to concealment" (ex: Elven Accuracy) which suggests to me that the general "miss" includes attacks that fail due to miss chances (makes sense), but still may not include automatically deflected attacks.It totally includes miss chance--it's even called miss chance--but not deflection, because you don't deflect attacks that miss.
Can you use the Sudden Shift ability of the Deception Subdomain, in response to deflecting an attack via Crane Wing?No.
But again, I'd rather FAQ those five questions than FAQ a general "what is a miss?"
4/5 of those can be consolidated into "Does a deflected attack count as a 'miss' for abilities that rely on 'missed attacks'?"
The miss due to 'concealment' has a specific condition so I'm not sure it needs to be explained further, the specific condition is precise enough.
Why? Why would you rather FAQ 5 separate questions when getting a single one answered will answer all of it?
For my 2 cents, I think you're over thinking hit. Hit or miss is a bit of a binary thing. It doesn't matter how the miss is achieved, just that there is one. Either through poor aim or deflection or by hitting a shadow clone, you still missed the target.
But hey, who knows, I could be wrong. Hence the question: What is a miss?
FAQ'ed. From a design perspective, I would be okay with this being handled one of two ways:
-Provide a universal definition of 'miss', and be prepared for follow-up questions when that universal definition causes additional issues
-Add to each ability triggered by a miss the following statement: "For the purposes of this ability, a 'miss' is..." and then provide the definition for that ability only.
The former is going to be more useful but will require more work on the part of the designers in the long run to provide clarification on specific cases; the latter will avoid having to clarify those specific cases but could lead to confusion when 'miss' for Ability A gets mixed up with 'miss' for Ability B.
Why? Why would you rather FAQ 5 separate questions when getting a single one answered will answer all of it?
For my 2 cents, I think you're over thinking hit. Hit or miss is a bit of a binary thing. It doesn't matter how the miss is achieved, just that there is one. Either through poor aim or deflection or by hitting a shadow clone, you still missed the target.
But hey, who knows, I could be wrong. Hence the question: What is a miss?
If it were only 'hit' and 'miss' then it could have been binary. As 'deflected' was introduced in the CRB there is and always has been a third option. If the design team wanted to they could have just stated the 'attack misses' in the feat descriptions, instead they used the wording 'the attack deals no damage' not 'it misses.' Apparently the design team does care how it is achieved even though you don't.
Well, there's only one way to find out, isn't there?
Again, I think you're overthinking the use of a word that is near synonymous with the word miss. But again, I could be wrong. Arguing about it any more won't help matters.
When something is "obvious" to both sides of the argument, that is an indicator that something is worded unclearly.
Given the way the FAQ system seems to work, I think the following quote by Skylancer4 stands a better chance of being answered than the original, open-ended question (which the Rules Team might decide is too open-ended). So it might be worth FAQ'ing it, instead:
4/5 of those can be consolidated into "Does a deflected attack count as a 'miss' for abilities that rely on 'missed attacks'?"
mplindustries nailed it. Exactly my thoughts.
Furthermore, deflected attacks (by crane wing and deflect arrows) don't miss, they hit and deal 0 points of damage.
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Crane Wing says it Deflects an attack "that would normally hit".
In this abnormal situation, the attack does not hit (like it normally would).
What would you call an attack that does not hit?
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Given the way the FAQ system seems to work, I think the following quote by Skylancer4 stands a better chance of being answered than the original, open-ended question (which the Rules Team might decide is too open-ended). So it might be worth FAQ'ing it, instead:4/5 of those can be consolidated into "Does a deflected attack count as a 'miss' for abilities that rely on 'missed attacks'?"
Which is almost exactly the wording I suggested for the FAQ in the other thread but people seemed to gloss over that one in favour of calling the issue obvious and the other side stupid.
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I find it hilarious that some people insist that a attack that didn't hit is not a miss....
Why not simply admit that you don't like the ability combination and would like to see it nerfed?
Every attack either hits or misses. There's nothing else. "deflecting the attack" is just what caused it to miss, instead of AC, Mirror Image or whatever.
But it's still a miss.
So if an ability allows you to reroll an attack that misses, and you roll a natural twenty but miss due to some kind of deflection, what happens? You make the attack roll again and it gets deflected again?
I find it hilarious that some people insist that a attack that didn't hit is not a miss....
Why not simply admit that you don't like the ability combination and would like to see it nerfed?Every attack either hits or misses. There's nothing else. "deflecting the attack" is just what caused it to miss, instead of AC, Mirror Image or whatever.
But it's still a miss.
I find it hilarious people argue rules questions based on their opinion alone even when given multiple examples of hot things aren't that 'simple' or 'obvious.' I don't care about the combination, it gets used in our home games, but that is because we house rule it to. The words on the page of the books do not say missed, they say 'deflected' and the attack that hit 'deals no damage.'
But hey, the monk fanbois need something else to complain about, cry 'foul' and 'nerf' to, I get it.
Patently False. An attack can hit and be ineffective, there are numerous ways this can occur. Elemental attacks with resistances, physical attacks with DR, immunities, etc. The reasoning that an attack that deals no damage means it is a miss is just plain ridiculous. The mechanics of the game follow an 'order' sometimes there are exceptions. Just because this defensive ability negates the damage of a successful attack does not mean it becomes a miss. The words on the page don't say that, RAW makes no mention of 'miss' anywhere in connection to this ability.
We have hits that deal damage.
We have hits that don't deal damage.
We have misses.
We have misses that do deal damage.
It isn't binary, the rules have exceptions, Crane Wing makes a successful attack deal no damage. Hey look a hit that deals no damage, that isn't defined as a miss anywhere in its description. Maybe in your mind that is a miss, but the words on the page don't say it missed now do they? Mechanically it is an ineffective hit.
Heh... Still hilarious...
Heh... Still hilarious...
Do you have any rules or examples to back up your statements?
Or are you just the peanut gallery and this is where you choosing to waste your time?
If a deflected attack counts as a hit, would abilities that trigger off the attack hitting, rather than off the attack dealing damage, come into play (such as stunning assault)?
For the record, in my opinion a deflected attack would count as a miss.
mplindustries nailed it. Exactly my thoughts.
Furthermore, deflected attacks (by crane wing and deflect arrows) don't miss, they hit and deal 0 points of damage.
What then do you make of the phrase "that would normally hit" used in Crane Wing, which would tend to suggests that the attack that normally would hit do to the person overcoming the AC now does not hit because it is deflected.
Further, what do you make of the Wind Wall and Wall of Vengeance Spells that clearly suggests that deflected attacks are missed attacks. I should not say suggest. They expressly say that deflected attacks are missed attacks
Rather than continue to argue about this in yet another thread, where there is nothing even resembling a consensus, why not hit the FAQ button?
This is clearly a gray area of the rules, and where logic may not suffice due to this being strongly tied to game mechanics, which don't always make strict sense in favor of balance.
If a deflected attack counts as a hit, would abilities that trigger off the attack hitting, rather than off the attack dealing damage, come into play (such as stunning assault)?
For the record, in my opinion a deflected attack would count as a miss.
As far as I am concerned, it counts as neither a hit nor a miss. It is deflected--it is something different.
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Yeah, I don't like asking for a general rule on misses like this. It's going to cause problems no matter how it's ruled. You should instead be asking for a specific ruling on those things.
On hit effects don't work when you miss from blur/concealment/etc. because you didn't hit.
Snake Fang doesn't work when you Crane Wing because there's already a feat for that called Crane Riposte.
Look at 4e if you want to see what happens when you force developers to make hardline rules for vague things that dozens of different effects interact with. It gets messy fast. Defining an attack fixed like five things and wrecked dozens.
I disagree. General hardline rules can do a lot of work to reduce confusion and uncertainty, by handling the same issue the same way across dozens of abilities. Conditions such as Staggered have made it much simpler to administrate various abilities because they all cause the same behaviour instead of ten different abilities that reduce your actions in different ways.
However, adding such a general approach late after the fact is harder than during core design. Doesn't mean it's not useful though.
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Regarding deflection.
A Deflection bonus to AC makes it more likely that an attack will miss, due to not meeting the now-higher AC.
An ability that deflects generally reduces damage to 0 - but does the attack miss? It would be nice if deflection meant the same thing every time.
If it's a touch attack that deals 2 damage and Petrification, does the Petrification still go off, since you hit AC and "didn't miss"? All that deflecting an attack does now is take an attack "that would normally hit" and alter it; it never explicitly says that the attack no longer hits, so strictly reading you'd deliver the effect.
On the other hand, if deflecting an attack is a miss, you wouldn't expend the touch spell.
If it's a "third option" that's neither hit nor miss, is the spell delivered, expended, or still charged up? We're in undefined territory there because the touch spell rules don't tell us what to do when an attack neither hits nor misses.
If a deflected attack counts as a hit, would abilities that trigger off the attack hitting, rather than off the attack dealing damage, come into play (such as stunning assault)?
For the record, in my opinion a deflected attack would count as a miss.
I would say yes. It is a hit that doesn't deal damage but it's still a hit. Same as a hit that deals too little damage to get through DR.
But we get close to a problem with the AC system as a whole. If you have an ability that takes effect on a hit, would a melee touch attack be sufficient to trigger it?So even if my gut reaction would be to still count deflected hits as hits it may be opening a box that should better remain closed.
No, they did not miss, you deflected it.They would have hit, but you deflected it, and so it missed.
Yet it made contact with you, so it did not miss.
Both sides of this argument have merit, that's why we need the FAQ.
Crane Wing says it Deflects an attack "that would normally hit".
In this abnormal situation, the attack does not hit (like it normally would).
What would you call an attack that does not hit?
In this case, a blocked or deflected attack.
It is emphatically and definitely unclear, in fact, without any doubt whatsoever.
A miss is whatever the situation needs it to be, if you miss with a weapon that disintegrates all it touches then a miss is not blocked by a shield, if it is a normal sword swing then it might have been blocked, if it is an attack by a HUGE GIANT you likely did not block it with your shield or at most barely deflected it.
That's still deflection, not miss.
Not sure if this helps or not, but my own game has always used this definition of missing.
If you did not meet or exceed AC, but you did beat the touch AC, then you connected with the target, but did not land a solid blow and therefore did not damage him. Basically, you skidded off his armor/scales/etc. If you only missed hitting by his shield AC, then he blocked it with his shield.
Any miss chance (blur, dim light, special abilities, invisibility, etc) is a complete miss if you rolled the miss chance.
Deflected arrows are not misses, you hit, but something stopped you from doing damage.
That makes it a little more confusing but also makes sense.
That's a really nice houserule! I dig it.
It's actually not hard to keep track of. Usually it only comes up when someone rolls a 17 or higher, and still doesn't do damage, and they ask for a feel of how close they came. So if I say the sword hit the guy in the chest, almost caught, but then skidded, they know they were close to hitting, and probably need an 18 or 19. So far, haven't had anyone take any style feats for it to be needed for that.
Not sure if this helps or not, but my own game has always used this definition of missing.
If you did not meet or exceed AC, but you did beat the touch AC, then you connected with the target, but did not land a solid blow and therefore did not damage him. Basically, you skidded off his armor/scales/etc. If you only missed hitting by his shield AC, then he blocked it with his shield.
Any miss chance (blur, dim light, special abilities, invisibility, etc) is a complete miss if you rolled the miss chance.
Deflected arrows are not misses, you hit, but something stopped you from doing damage.
I like this and I think it is pretty common sense way of looking at it.