touch attacks with melee weapons

[Bloody Hakak]

Can a weapon be used to attack the touch AC of an opponent? or is the attack considered a melee attack vs the opponents normal AC?

[James Risner]

Bloody Hakak wrote:

Can a weapon be used to attack the touch AC of an opponent? or is the attack considered a melee attack vs the opponents normal AC?

If you use a weapon it is vs normal AC.

If you have an effect that allows touch attacks, it will tell you how to make them.

[Vigil]

Something I have allowed as a house rule is the ability to make touch attacks to deliver special abilities only. For instance, the bard just can't reliably hit the enemy's high AC, he can attack the enemy's touch AC with his +1 shock rapier to deal 1d6 electricity damage.

The bard probably has better things to do with his action, but it's an option.

[KahnyaGnorc]

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/feats/deep-impact-psionic is a way to do so (There are other feats for unarmed/natural and ranged), if your campaign uses psionics.

[Joesi]

I don't see why not to allow non-projectile weapons to make touch attacks, except for the fact it's a bit unrealistic.

That said, why would you want to? you wouldn't deal any damage at all— you'd just be knighting them. Being able to make touch attack and still deal damage completely defeats the point of regular-vs-touch attacks.

I guess one purpose would be if you wanted to apply a contact poison with a reach weapon instead of typical hand-touch, but that doesn't sound particularly good.

[DM_Blake]

I think what needs to be addressed here is the root of the question: what is the difference between a touch attack and a regular attack?

In their simplest forms:

Regular attack: you swing so hard that your weapon punches through their shield, armor, and even their skin so that your weapon penetrates into their body and inflicts a damaging wound. All those types of armor (armor bonus, shield bonus, natural armor bonus) help them avoid your attack - if you can't punch through all their hard armor then you can't hurt them.

Touch attack: you barely make the smallest, weakest touch against the enemy, maybe even only lightly grazing their armor or shield (but certainly not penetrating it or even scratching it) or, if they're unarmored, your brief touch is just the slightest tickle on the surface of their skin - but in doing so you transfer some kind of magical energy to the enemy and the magic does all the damage. Armor, shield, and natural armor don't help them at all because you don't even try to punch through because you don't need to.

Sure, there are exceptions, but this is the basic difference.

So as you can see, bashing someone hard enough with a melee weapon to knock aside their shield, punch through their armor, and wound their flesh is a totally different thing than, for example, grazing the surface of their shield with your hand while casting a "Shocking Grasp" spell and watching the electricity arc into their entire body even from that feather-light touch.

[Claxon]

What DM Blake said.

As a general rule, allowing melee weapons to target touch AC is just a terrible idea. If you allowed it you might as well just remove armor, shield, natural armor, and many magical effects that add to normal AC bonus.

In othe words, lets just assume everyone hits everything all the time.