In that theoretical case adamantine would override masterwork.
All adamantine weapons are masterwork but not all masterwork weapons are adamantine, making adamantine more specific.
Otherwise it's a case by case basis and specific examples are needed. Very rarely does this actually come up in my experience.
I don't think it's very easy to have conflicting specifics. Conflicts almost always arise from a situation where "X does Y" and something else says "THIS X actually does Z".
In this case, the specific of the second trumps the general of the first. I can't think of an example of two things that would affect eachother without one being a more generalized rule.
Hmm, I've never noticed that "line of sight rule" for ranged attacks before, or at least never put that together with the total concealment rules.
Anyway, in this case [ranged attacks] are a subset of [attacks] so their specific rules about line of sight trump the general ones about attacking a concealed square.
Anyway, in this case [ranged attacks] are a subset of [attacks] so their specific rules about line of sight trump the general ones about attacking a concealed square.But [attacks into full concealment] is ALSO a subset of [attacks], it is horizontal on any hierarchy to [ranged attacks]. I.e. they are both subsets of [attacks], yet neither is a subset of the other. You don't have to be doing either to be able to do the other.
So neither is more specific than the other.
The most specific group is not a tie between [attacks into full concealment] and [ranged attacks]. It is [ranged attacks into concealment].
[attacks]->[attacks into full concealment]->[ranged attacks into concealment]
The general rule is that when attacking into full concealment you can guess a square and flail. The specific rule for ranged attacks is that line of sight is required. and so you cannot guess a square.
The ranged rule isnt actually incompatible, though. A normal attack targets a character, except when concealed, it targets a square in attempt to hit the character.
Ranged attacks only change that you are targeting that character at range, and that you need line of sight to your target. Concealment means you are now targeting that square, and you need line of sight to that square.
I think a better way to put it is that in game terms, it's better understood as line of effect, which simply means there cant be anything obstructing the path to your target.
The ranged rule isnt actually incompatible, though. A normal attack targets a character, except when concealed, it targets a square in attempt to hit the character.
Ranged attacks only change that you are targeting that character at range, and that you need line of sight to your target. Concealment means you are now targeting that square, and you need line of sight to that square.
I think a better way to put it is that in game terms, it's better understood as line of effect, which simply means there cant be anything obstructing the path to your target.
But line-of-sight and line-of-effect are both game terms with different meanings.
For instance, looking at someone through a wall of force you have line-of-sight and so could cast an enchantment spell on them, but you do not have line-of-effect so you couldn't shoot your bow at them.
Likewise concealment is mostly about breaking line-of-sight while cover is about breaking line-of-effect.
From the entry on total concealment:
"You can't attack an opponent that has total concealment, though you can attack into a square that you think he occupies. A successful attack into a square occupied by an enemy with total concealment has a 50% miss chance
So you arent attacking the original target, but rather the square he occupies. Question of if you have line of sight is irrelevant, because you do have line of sight on the target square. In this situation, i dont think i actually see a specific vs general conflict, because you're still following the rules of attacking, just with a new target as directed by the rules of total concealment. Though i guess that might qualify...
So to summarize, then, the general is "any attack goes for the target" and the general is "total concealment means you target the square and gain a 50% miss chance."In fact i think melee attacks need line of sight too, going by this.
Also, i was indeed incorrect that line of sight and line of effect are the same. I tend to speak before i think from my phone. However i think my current analysis is correct.
You can’t attack an opponent that has total concealment, though you can attack into a square that you think he occupies.
With a ranged weapon, you can shoot or throw at any target that is within the weapon’s maximum range and in line of sight.
Normally you would target a creature with an attack, but since you do not know the precise location of a creature with total concealment you must simply attack wherever your best guess is. To use a ranged attack you must have line of sight to your target. Since most concealment effects break line of sight, you cannot fire into such a concealed area.
So when action B is your only option, but your weapon type is specifically banned from taking option B, you have no options left.
Also Johnny_Devo's answer (if I'm understanding it right) is based on a slight misunderstanding of line-of-sight v.s. line-of-effect. No offense. I'm always very nervous about giving offense over the internet where tone is difficult to be conveyed.
From the entry on total concealment:
"You can't attack an opponent that has total concealment, though you can attack into a square that you think he occupies. A successful attack into a square occupied by an enemy with total concealment has a 50% miss chanceSo you arent attacking the original target, but rather the square he occupies. Question of if you have line of sight is irrelevant, because you do have line of sight on the target square. In this situation, i dont think i actually see a specific vs general conflict, because you're still following the rules of attacking, just with a new target as directed by the rules of total concealment. Though i guess that might qualify...
So to summarize, then, the general is "any attack goes for the target" and the general is "total concealment means you target the square and gain a 50% miss chance."In fact i think melee attacks need line of sight too, going by this.
Also, i was indeed incorrect that line of sight and line of effect are the same. I tend to speak before i think from my phone. However i think my current analysis is correct.
Line of Effect: A line of effect is a straight, unblocked path that indicates what a spell can affect. A line of effect is canceled by a solid barrier. It’s like line of sight for ranged weapons, except that it’s not blocked by fog, darkness, and other factors that limit normal sight.
Also, the OP's question doesn't specify whether we are shooting into a square on the edge of the fog/darkness/whatever or whether we're shooting into the very heart of it. I agree, shooting into an edge square is probably kosher, shooting into the middle not so much.
Question of if you have line of sight is irrelevant, because you do have line of sight on the target square.Says who? For purposes of this thread, the square I am guessing about is one in the dead center of a giant football field full of fog clouds.
So when action B is your only option, but your weapon type is specifically banned from taking option B, you have no options left.ORRR
My weapon type is banned, but then I add in a situation of concealment that gives me a new option again on top of that.
Again... you're just picking one of the two arbitrarily and coming to a conclusion due to your arbitrary choice of order. Neither need apply "first" or "second" because they're at the same level of rules hierarchy.
But it's not really giving you a new option, it's giving you a backup less efficient way to do the normal thing when the normal way fails. Similar rules apply to attacking an invisible opponent, you can always flail or shoot wildly into a square to see if you hit something. But a ranged attack requires line of sight, the concealment rules aren't lifting that ban.
Ah, i was more thinking invisibility, not a big cloud. Now comes the question on whether a square can benefit from full concealment. However, thats a different can of worms, i think.
My point is, Attacks as a whole follow general rules, and exist in separate categories but on equal level. In this case, any attack, not just a ranged attack, require line of sight and line of effect to make a normal attack. When you have line of effect but not line of sight, it now must follow the specific rules of concealment.
Let me attack this from a slightly different angle.
Attacking a square is always a standard option, not unique to concealment. Whether attacking an invisible opponent, throwing a splash weapon, or just for the heck of it, you can always decide to attack a space rather than a creature.
The total concealment rules simply explains how the attacking a square rules interact with the situation of having an unseen creature in that square.
No new permission is being given for a new action, an existing action is simply being explained.
So,
EXPLANATION -> DENY
DENY -> EXPLANATION
which always results in a denied action.
I think that this means these rules are actually talking past eachother, then. You arent ever attacking the total concealment creature, so needing line of sight to the target is irrelevant. Instead, you're attacking into the square you think he occupies and suffering the normal miss chance.
But a ranged attack requires line of sight, the concealment rules aren't lifting that ban.You just finished saying it gives me a backup method if the normal way fails... Well... the normal way just failed. I am now using my backup. Or did you not mean that?
(Hint: there's no answer)
Answer: The failure mentioned was referring to the specific one described in the concealment rules. The failure to know your opponents location is overcome by attacking their square anyway (hopefully). The failure to attack despite the ranged line of sight rules is not addressed and therefore not resolved. There are two things getting in the way here for ranged attackers and the "attack a square" option only resolves one of them.
Answer: The failure mentioned was referring to the specific one described in the concealment rules. The failure to know your opponents location is overcome by attacking their square anyway (hopefully). The failure to attack despite the ranged line of sight rules is not addressed and therefore not resolved. There are two things getting in the way here for ranged attackers and the "attack a square" option only resolves one of them.But a ranged attack requires line of sight, the concealment rules aren't lifting that ban.You just finished saying it gives me a backup method if the normal way fails... Well... the normal way just failed. I am now using my backup. Or did you not mean that?
(Hint: there's no answer)
I think what woukd resolve it is if we can find the rule on attacking into a square, and if it needs line of sight. So far all i know of is under total concealment, which seems to offer it as an option instead of the usual situation where you cant attack if you have line of effect but no line of sight.
Attacking a square is always a standard option, not unique to concealment.Where are you getting that from? Quote? Specifically "just for the heck of it" one, that's the only one that might matter. The splash weapons and such are just other equally ranked subhierarchies and aren't important here. Where does it allow you to do this in general?
Where does it say you can't attack empty space? Sure, the combat chapter always talks about attacking an opponent, but in that case how do you attack inanimate objects? And if "the air in front of me" is not a valid target, what happens when a player asks to attack it? Are they physically incapable of swinging their weapon when not trying to draw blood?
As an aside, there is always a correct answer for specific vs general, but its only applicable after you follow the correct logical path to get to that point.
Can a character attack an empty square because he has a hunch there might be something there? If yes, what stops him from attacking that square when he doesn't think something is there?
Okay, so to summarize how i feel about it:
Step one: i am making a ranged attack against my target. I require line of sight and line of effect.
Step two: oh no! i do not have line of sight! I cannot make an attack against this creature.
Step three: Oh, i have determined that i still have line of effect after i used perception to pinpoint his square. I now know i have line of effect, but i do not have line of sight.
Step four: enter the more secific rule of attacking into total concealment. Because i have line of effect but not line of sight, while i cannot make an attack at the creature, this rule specifically states that i can attack at the square he occupies, and gain a 50% miss chance.
And thats the basic summary. I argue that the act of making the attack is more general because you can make attacks in lots of other circumstances, but only a few of those circumstances secifically involve attacking into total concealment.
EDIT: I also think that you dont have to be correct. If a charcter believes about a pinpoint location, whether it be from a failed erception or a wild guess, i think it still applies that he can fire at the square. Sometimes you think you pinpoint something and are wrong, you know?
Can a character attack an empty square because he has a hunch there might be something there?Unless you have a relevant quote, then no, not by general rules.
An invisible creature is counted as having total concealment. By the total concealment rules we are all aware of by now, you can attempt to attack a creature with total concealment by attacking a square of your choice. Therefore in a brightly lit room with no cover or concealment an archer could randomly fire around all over the place in an attempt to pin down an invisible opponent. However in a situation where there is cover or concealment involved and the archer doesn't have line of sight to some of the squares then those squares are not valid targets for his attacks due to the rules on ranged attacks.
I would love to continue this for another hour but it just hit midnight where I am and I need to go to bed. Hopefully by the time I wake up some other people would have chimed in.
Heres where i think the reasoning is flawed. You need to start at the action you're taking, then consider the circumstances.
A ranged attack is a ranged attack, and then the fact that the battlefield happens to be covered in fog is a secondary concern. All ranged attacks made into concealment are ranged attacks, but not all ranged attacks are ranged attacks made into concealment.
Do you see what i mean here? I think that the idea of organizing everything into tiers of specificness is incorrect, because its more dependent on the rules interaction itself.
The priority is not, in my opinion, arbitrary between any person. Now, there isn't actually any written rule in the pathfinder books about specific trumping general, so I can't pick that apart piece-by-piece for you, but the general idea is that when you're handing an exception-based rules set, the exceptions are what you handle after the specifics of the rule is established.
What I mean is, There is a very skeletal core to everything that you're trying to do, and then something else can swoop in and provide exceptions if the situation so applies. In this situation, the very skeleton, right at the top of the list, is that you are trying to make a ranged attack against your target.
This very general concept covers literally every situation where you, the attacker, want to target the enemy with some kind of ranged attack roll.
The rules of this very basic action are: You require line of sight, you require line of effect, and you must make an attack roll against the target's AC.
The reason I argue that you need a logical order is because if you don't establish a logical order and instead choose one thing or the other, you get the kinds of conflicts that you're making examples of. My argument is that you only know where to start in that logical order once you know the context of exactly what you're trying to do.
To provide an example, see the "seeking" enchantment, which is only available on ranged weapons.
A seeking weapon veers toward its target, negating any miss chances that would otherwise apply, such as from concealment. The wielder still has to aim the weapon at the right square. Arrows mistakenly shot into an empty space, for example, do not veer and hit invisible enemies, even if they are nearby.
This quote seems to confirm my assessment on the proper logical order of consideration of these rules.
EDIT: Additional relevant rules, under handling invisibility
If a character tries to attack an invisible creature whose location he has not pinpointed, have the player choose the space where the character will direct the attack. If the invisible creature is there, conduct the attack normally. If the enemy's not there, roll the miss chance as if it were there and tell him that the character has missed, regardless of the result. That way the player doesn't know whether the attack missed because the enemy's not there or because you successfully rolled the miss chance.
This seems to suggest that after the player has declared a ranged attack, he always has the option of directing his attack at a square even if he doesn't know that there's a target there.
Amusingly, this means that "I cast magic missile at the darkness" is almost a legal option.
To answer the posted question, rather than the discovered one, Lex Specialis is used besides Lex Posterior (later rules trump earlier ones) and Lex Superior (higher law trumps lower law).
The point I was making with the seeking example is that it gives evidence that a character can, in fact, attack into concealment, which lends evidence to the fact that the other interpretation you view as equally valid is, in fact, incorrect. Indeed, what I'm saying is that at any given point there is only one correct interpretation, and it is our job to find the correct order of most general to most specific.
As for the invisibility example, it is pointing to even more evidence that, in this situation, it is correct to start with the assumption that you are making a ranged attack.
One may be able to argue that an ATTACK is skeletal first (maybe), But certainly not RANGED. I see absolutely no intuitive nor RAW justification for why you would choose ranged-ness over Concealed target first vs. second.
Okay, let me go even further.
Step one: I am taking a standard action. I follow all the rules, specifically the rule that I must have a standard action available to take on this turn.
Step two: The standard action I am taking is "Attack". The rules of this are that I make an attack roll against my target's AC. The available attacks are "melee" and "ranged".
Step three: The attack type I choose is "ranged". The rules for ranged is that I can attack from any distance as allowed by the range of the weapon, and that I require line of sight.
Step four: Complication: The enemy is under total concealment, and thus I do not have line of sight. The rules for this interaction is that I cannot make a normal ranged attack, but I can make a ranged attack into concealment. I pick the square that I believe he is in, and roll my attack normally, now including a miss chance.
Basically, the argument that I'm making is that you don't even think about the status of the target until you know what kind of attack you're even making. You don't make a nebulous "attack into concealment", because concealment is too many steps down the chain of logic for that point. Thus, I think the flowchart should look something more like this:
--------------/Melee attack \
Declare attack............... X attack into concealment.
--------------\Ranged attack /
I think this may seem confusing at first, because it looks like the "single" thing at the end is more general than the two things in the middle, but it's what happens when you have rules that split and converge. The best way to put it is that the rules for handling concealment is a specific rule that happens to apply to more than one mode of attacking.
To answer the posted question, rather than the discovered one, Lex Specialis is used besides Lex Posterior (later rules trump earlier ones) and Lex Superior (higher law trumps lower law).Both of the rules in the example were published in the same book CRB. Although that is good to know and would resolve a good chunk of the issues. Do devs state this somewhere?
As for the Lex Superior, that sounds like the opposite of what everybody always says and how it would have to work to be sensical here, of specific > general (seems like Inferior to me)??
That's how lawyers and judges juggle contradicting rules. In PF, Lex Superior is almost entirely subordinate to Lex Specialis. But not entirely; if a Core Hardcover and a Player's Companion/Setting Book published at basically the same time contradict each other on a rules issue, the Core Hardcover should take precedence.
Sure, by that argument step 3 can be "attack into concealment", but what does that make step 4?
By this example, you have the very non-specific "attack" and 3 things that can stem from it, all apparently equal priority.
1)Melee attack
2)Attack into concealment
3)Ranged attack
Now, the problem here is that once you go with attack into concealment, it simply does not make logical sense to go deeper into ranged or melee attack, because ranged and melee aren't sub-rules of attacking into concealment, they're subrules of attacking period. Meanwhile, it DOES make sense for concealment to be a subrule of ranged or melee attacks, because it's simply a rule that affects all forms of attacks.
The point I'm trying to make is that even though you argue that there are multiple interpretations of which rule is the more general one in X situation, there is literally only one correct interpretation. It is our job, when determining the rules, to determine what "order of operations" is correct, and we are expected to apply a certain level of logic to it.
From my viewpoint, the only logical conclusion is that you're first deciding to make an attack, then deciding the mode of the attack, then deciding if that attack is subject to concealment. As another example, "attacks" is 100% of attacks, "melee" is 50%, "ranged is 50%", but "concealment" is only 10%. The question may be "how do you decide what to apply first", but the best answer I can give you is "It's obvious". In fact, I now argue that in this situation, it's so obvious that they didn't even feel the need to waste space in the book clarifying it.
When we come to a situation where it is not obvious, which has obviously happened, we FAQ the discussion and wait for official word to be created.
These are the kind of questions that make devs not want to give official responses anymore.
If there are no correct interpretations, then you necessitate that the rules are broken.
now, i kinda get the feeling that you are trying to imply that, but this is where I am saying that you must apply logic to it.
I argue that for it to work, there must be only one correct interpretation, and it is our job to find that correct interpretation, or else the rules just crumble around us.
I think the term most often used for people who try to rearrange these tiers of "general" and "specific" as performing mental gymnastics.
Such an order of operations does not exist. The rules are not structured to be solved by an equation. They are much more complex than that.
Your question makes as much sense as asking "Do rules on even or odd pages take precedence?"
There is no right answer. It depends on the rule.
You cannot categorically graph the rules. It requires human interpretation. No, it's not perfect. Take it or leave it.
1) I am shocked you didn't already know that.
2) Doesn't exist. Just doesn't. Period.
You cannot categorically graph all* the rules. Or even the majority of them for that matter.
Have you ever actually read an FAQ? Quite a lot of them also mention "use GM discretion". Literally their response is "apply human interpretation, there is no solid answer for this".
There is no answer to your question because the question is flawed. Good day.
You know, I never even noticed the line of sight rule on ranged attacks. Now as far as to which rule to follow first, I'd say that ultimately that that is what the GM is for. As I have understood it, the GM is always the one to make a ruling for his table on unclassified, confusing, or obscure rules. These are what is known as house rules for the most part.
We have RAW - The rules as written (but not necessarily interpreted correctly)
We have RAI - The rules as intended by developers (which are few and far between)
We have Common Sense - The last resort as not everyone has this, or even if they do, it can vary person to person. One man while making a sandwich will think it's obvious to always cut off the crust, while a woman of a completely different ethnicity will have developed a toasting technique to make the crust extra crispy and delicious (to her palate). The insides of the sandwich are even subject to change.
Now, I don't think I need a venn diagram or a chart for how to rule this. You are using a standard action to attack, you are attacking, you are using ranged, the enemy has concealment. This is where the rules get fuzzy for everyone. It's nothing before this point. So, here's how I would see it.
Fog Cloud City - No attack. As even most basic fog effects are treated like the spell fog cloud, you cannot see more than 5 feet in front of your face in this case.
Invisibility - Total Concealment does state that you can attack a square you THINK an enemy is in. But ranged attacks state you can only attack a target you have line of sight to. Do you have line of sight to the square you are attacking? Yes? Then attack. No? Then don't attack.
Standard Concealement as per Dim Lighting - You can see the opponent but he is covered in shadows, you may attack.
Concealment from blur - You can see the target, he just appears fuzzy. You may attack.
There is no order to consider as you have to look at the rules like an older wind-up pocket watch with it's gears exposed. The main winding mechanism being the combat rules in general in this particular case. The rules don't necessarily turn in order, but they do turn in unison.