Ranged Attacks VS Ranged Weapons

[Chess Pwn]

Thank you, I've asked repeatedly for something like this and now I finally have some support for that view.

[Arcwin]

James Risner wrote:

Chess Pwn wrote:

Can you provide any of these comments

I could provide 50 posts, if I felt the time was needed or would be appreciated. I'll provide one more post:

Any spell or ability takes the penalties and provides the benefits, so long as it takes an attack roll and deals hit point damage.

Edit: Since this was the post right after on my search, I'll Mark Seifter saying that it is intentional that wizards must have Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot to avoid the penalties.

Its a nice link but it only argues for the RAI side of things. I think nearly everyone agrees with SKR on this, that its how it should work. Its just not how its written in the rules at present.

[graystone]

Squiggit wrote:

(thrown weapons or projectile weapons) that are not effective in melee.

This is the meaning of ranged weapon for the weapon charts. It's just that 'ranged weapon' has different meaning/definitions depending on what you're looking at much like wield. In one case it's meant to be a category of weapons that 'are not effective in melee' but are in ranged combat, while in other places it seems to means an ranged attack with a weapon.

[_Ozy_]

James Risner wrote:

Snowlilly wrote:

Acid Splash should suffer from penalties, but are unable to benefit from feats.

That doesn't make sense.

Past developer comments (now rendered "unofficial" by the SRM post) made it clear that if you roll an attack and you deal damage, that spell or ability would be considered a ray and as such a weapon.

While I agree that any spell attack using a ranged touch attack should be considered a 'weapon' with regard to penalties and feats that affect ranged weapons, I don't think that all ranged touch spells should be considered rays.

There are a few abilities that are specific to rays, that probably don't apply to other ranged spell attacks, like the Magus 'Close Range' arcana.

[Rub-Eta]

James Risner wrote:

I've always interpreted it as...

Ranged weapons are:

• thrown weapons
  
• projectile weapons that are not effective in melee
  
• spells and supernatural abilities using ranged touch attacks

I wouldn't really agree on the last one, since rays are specifically called out to be a weapon. But just looking at it now, it seems like it should be treated as such (since everything that probably should also apply seems to refer to weapons). I guess the difference would be that rays can be selected with Weapon Focus, while a spell like Acid Splash can't (or afaik, you can't).

Otherwise I'd say that all references to "ranged weapons" probabyl are wrong (which is weird if they messed it up in all those instances).

[James Risner]

Arcwin wrote:

Its a nice link but it only argues for the RAI side of things. I think nearly everyone agrees with SKR on this, that its how it should work. Its just not how its written in the rules at present.

The whole rules system has a lot of RAI that is based on unwritten rules.