Once you're over the "immune to nonmagic" barrier, I only see it really mentioning a miss chance on "corporeal spells" and "effects that don't cause damage." I don't think you should have had the 50% miss chance.
I always assumed that there is only a single 50% chance.
If your attack roll equals or exceeds the creatures AC, and you have a magical weapon, there is a 50% chance that you deal full damage, and a 50% chance that you deal no damage.
If you have a 50% chance that a successful attack roll is still a miss, or a 50% chance that a hit deals no damage, really doesn't make a difference. And it says in many places that any attack that does deal 0 damage is automatically treated as a miss.
That is incorrect. In 3.5 you had a 50% misss chance. Pathfinder got rid of that and changed it to half damage.
@Yora Thats a pure houserule. It is true that for the average, long run damage it does not make a difference, but in any given round it quite does.
Per Rules there should be no miss chance (as long as there wasn't something else in play to cause it). Maybe he mixed it up with blink or 3.5?
Even when hit by spells or magic weapons, it takes only half damage from a corporeal source (except for channel energy).
This is how it works.
True enough. Ghost Touch is one of those things you're glad you have the one time incorporeal shows up, but then glare resentfully at during the other 99/100 encounters. DM mileage may vary of course.
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I'm so paranoid most of my characters end up with it. Also, there's a paladin spell that puts ghost touch on your weapon. What was cool was the one time I prepared it we fought an incorporeal. There's so many cool abilities I want to add to my weapons. Heartseeker is another I like but haven't added yet.
If the wraith didn't have any additional abilities, or unless the combat took place in darkness (or in other conditions that would grant concealment), then there should not have been a miss chance.
If he was hitting you with both half damage and a 50% miss chance, you were definitely getting screwed. One or the other results in approximately the same outcome, but both is completely nerfing your ability to do damage.
Sounds to me as though he's played 3.x, where being incorporeal gave a 50% miss chance on attacks that stood any chance of harming the target (magic weapons), and noticed that in Pathfinder being incorporeal means you take half damage from weapon attacks that have any chance of harming you, and (like me, first time I read it) assumed that the miss chance had also carried over, when in fact the half damage thing replaces the miss chance.
Either point him at this thread, ask him to show you the rule that makes him think incorporeal in PF gives a miss chance, or confirm that he knows this is a house rule which makes incorporeal creatures quite a lot tougher than they're meant to be (they'd be worth at least a +1 CR bump).
Indeed, incorporeal = 50% damage, no miss chance at all (for weapons) in Pathfinder.