Searing Light vs Incorporeal?

[Deylinarr]

My party is fighting a dread wraith and I want to use Searing Light

Searing Light wrote:

Focusing divine power like a ray of the sun, you project a blast of light from your open palm. You must succeed on a ranged touch attack to strike your target.

An undead creature takes 1d6 points of damage per caster level (maximum 10d6), and an undead creature particularly vulnerable to bright light takes 1d8 points of damage per caster level (maximum 10d8).

The GM is saying that since the wraith is incorporeal it only does half damage.

Incorporeal wrote:

An incorporeal creature has no physical body. It can be harmed only by other incorporeal creatures, magic weapons or creatures that strike as magic weapons, and spells, spell-like abilities, or supernatural abilities. It is immune to all nonmagical attack forms. Even when hit by spells or magic weapons, it takes only half damage from a corporeal source (except for channel energy). Although it is not a magical attack, holy water can affect incorporeal undead. Corporeal spells and effects that do not cause damage only have a 50% chance of affecting an incorporeal creature. Force spells and effects, such as from a magic missile, affect an incorporeal creature normally.

Im thinking that the spell is sort of DESIGNED for this sort of battle, is it really considered a 'corporeal' source and only half damage?

[Majuba]

Afraid so. Came up here yesterday actually.

[Benchak the Nightstalker]

That said, if I were GMing, I'd make an exception. It's a light spell vs a creature made of darkness. Good enough for me.

[Deylinarr]

Can you call my GM and convince him?

Thanks for the quick response, seems silly they didn't write one of those exception sentences into the spell for this scenario but dems da breaks I s'pose.

[Nefreet]

It's not that the spell is corporeal, it's that the caster is. If the caster was incorporeal himself, you'd be fine.

[Kayerloth]

Oh my ...

That's one that falls under GM overruling/fiat for me then because I'm thinking "focusing divine power" and "channeled energy" are about as synonymous as one can get

[meatrace]

Yeah, we houseruled this a long time ago.
I mean, it's searing LIGHT and it's hitting a creature who takes extra damage from light...

I mean, if searing LIGHT doesn't kill SHADOWS what use is it?

IMHO this is all because PF changed how incorporeal worked. In 3.5 it was a 50/50 miss chance instead of half damage.

[Gherrick]

meatrace wrote:

IMHO this is all because PF changed how incorporeal worked. In 3.5 it was a 50/50 miss chance instead of half damage.

And it was a good change. I hated that miss chance; little is as depressing as using your best spell and have it be 100% ineffective because of a bad roll.

[Ascalaphus]

It's funnier with Lantern Archons. Their light rays do nothing against Shadows because they're Extraordinary powers.