Wizard Shooting Ray Spells into Combat

[Sarrah]

Do spells suffer the same -4 to hit penalty that ranged/thrown weapons suffer when shooting into combat?

[King of Vrock]

Yes, all ranged attacks suffer the same penalties.

[Gullyble Dwarf - Lvl 7 DM]

Yep, soft cover, hard cover, and concealment all apply to rays as they're a ranged attack. This is also why they can potentially qualify for sneak attack and have various ranged feats apply to them.

[_Ozy_]

If you're a ray specialist, precise strike is your friend.

[Lifat]

Not only do you suffer -4 from shooting into melee, but you can also suffer -4 from the enemy having soft cover because of your allies (or other obstacles). If you are going to be throwing around lots of rays you either should make sure you win initiative so that you can get one ray of before everything crowds up or you should take some of the ranged feats (such as precise shot) to mitigate some of the penalties to hit.