Planar Focus (Cold) inquiry

[Shroud]

So, Planar Focus (Cold) causes 1d4 cold damage per two levels to anyone who attacks the Hunter and/or their companion while it's active. The way it reads is that it inflicts this damage on every attack, whether or not they even hit. So a 10th lvl Hunter / companion with Cold up who is attacked by something with 3 attacks is going to inflict 15d4 cold damage to the attacker even if they miss by a mile with their melee attacks.

This seems hideously broken and overpowered to me. I've scoured the forums trying to find some kind of clarification about this. It makes far more sense to me that the damage only gets inflicted if either A) the attacker actually hits you, or B) the damage is only inflicted once a round on each attacker regardless of the number of attacks made.

Is there an official ruling on this that I just haven't found yet? I am including the exact wording of the ability below for the sake of clarity:

"Cold: Creatures that attack you with natural attacks or
melee weapons take 1d4 points of cold damage for every
2 class levels you possess."

..... now that I re-read it, it seems to be pretty indicative of a 'once per round' damage per attacker....but that they do not need to actually hit you. Opinions?

[Claxon]

No official ruling, but the intention is very likely that the damage should only apply when struck. Not when missed.

[Lorewalker]

There are a few creatures with spines in the game and they use logic similar to that.
For example, the spine dragon.
"Spines (Ex)

A spine dragon’s body is covered with long, crystalline spines. It can fire up to four of these spines per round as a full-attack action (or one as a standard action). A creature that attacks a spine dragon with a melee weapon, unarmed strike, or natural weapon must make a DC 20 Reflex save or take 2d8+11 points of piercing damage from the spines. The save DC is Dexterity-based."

The usual ruling I've seen for such abilities is that the attack must hit to count.

But by pure raw, an attack is any time you roll a d20 to perform an action that falls under an attack action. That would be each d20 rolled in such a fashion in a turn and not once per turn.