How the heck does Pool Ray work with Ranged Spellstrike?

[Michael Haneline]

The Pool Ray Magus Arcana does the following:

"Benefit(s) The magus can expend 1 point from his arcane pool as a standard action to infuse a ranged weapon with elemental power. As a free action while making an attack roll with the infused ranged weapon, after the attack roll has been made but before the results are revealed by the GM, the magus can release the charge and cause his attack to deal 1d6 points of energy damage (acid, cold, electricity, or fire, chosen when he spends the arcane pool point to activate this ability). If he misses with this attack, the charge is lost and the effect is wasted. If the magus has the ranged spellstrike class feature (such as through the myrmidarch archetype), he can use this ability with ranged spellstrike to treat it as its own ranged touch attack. At 6th level and every 3 levels thereafter, the amount of damage dealt by this attack increases by 1d6."

The part I'm confused about is:

"If the magus has the ranged spellstrike class feature (such as through the myrmidarch archetype), he can use this ability with ranged spellstrike to treat it as its own ranged touch attack."

What does that mean, exactly? Someone explain how that plays out mechanically to me like I'm a child, please.

[avr]

It looks like a myrmidiarch with the pool ray arcana can spend an arcane pool point as a standard action to make a single ranged touch attack (doing magus level/3 d6s of elemental damage) without using a weapon, and can include a ranged touch spell as a rider on that ranged touch attack via ranged spellstrike. Does that make sense?

Edit: and an eldritch archer also gets ranged spellstrike, if it matters. IMO the various 'pool' magus arcanas aren't worth getting.

[UnArcaneElection]

The Touch Attack part doesn't make sense, given that the text says that you have to infuse a ranged weapon, unless the intention is that having Ranged Spellstrike lets you off the hook for needing to infuse a ranged weapon. If the latter is correct, then this becomes a way to get Ranged Touch Attack Spellstrike, which would make Ranged Spellstrike passable without needing to dip in Gunslinger or something similar. Now I wonder if you could get a Combat Maneuver to work through this . . . .

[Michael Haneline]

UnArcaneElection wrote:

The Touch Attack part doesn't make sense, given that the text says that you have to infuse a ranged weapon, unless the intention is that having Ranged Spellstrike lets you off the hook for needing to infuse a ranged weapon. If the latter is correct, then this becomes a way to get Ranged Touch Attack Spellstrike, which would make Ranged Spellstrike passable without needing to dip in Gunslinger or something similar. Now I wonder if you could get a Combat Maneuver to work through this . . . .

OH, I get it, it lets you treat your ranged spellstrike as a ranged touch attack. That's not bad.

[avr]

It's an arcane point each attack to add roughly your level in elemental damage to a ranged touch spell. It's a separate source of damage so energy resistance applies separately, and unlike using a gun or something you can't add enhancement bonuses etc

It's not amazing either.

[Michael Haneline]

avr wrote:

It's an arcane point each attack to add roughly your level in elemental damage to a ranged touch spell. It's a separate source of damage so energy resistance applies separately, and unlike using a gun or something you can't add enhancement bonuses etc

It's not amazing either.

I think you are interpreting it different and I'm still not following your interpretation. Ranged spellstrike normally lets you make an attack with your bow as part of the action of casting a ranged touch spell. You basically add your weapon damage to the spell but you are making it against normal AC.

Pool Ray seems to say that if you have ranged Spellstrike, you can use Pool Ray to turn your spell-enhanced bow attack against touch AC instead.

At least that's my understanding after UnArcaneElection's post. Maybe I'm still getting it wrong.

[UnArcaneElection]

^I'm still not sure I understand it correctly either.

[Kurald Galain]

Wow, talk about confusing wording! What I think is meant is that it allows you to shoot your bow and attach both a spell and the pool ray simultaneously. Given the cost involved this is a pretty bad ability.

However, your interpretation is also possible, i.e. that you can use a standard action to fire a pool ray and attach a spell to that. Since the myrm's ranged spellstrike already requires a ranged touch spell, the ability basically means "all your RT spells deal +1d6 damage", which again is pretty bad. However, the eldritch archer's ranged spellstrike works on any ranged attack spell, so this would let an EA use ranged spells as RT spells. Now that sounds pretty cool, but it turns out there aren't any good spells to use it with, so once again this is pretty bad.