Last night the alchemist in the group was Blinded and his target became Hidden to him. He threw a bomb but failed the flat check. Does the bomb still land in the target's square as if he had simply missed the target?
The splash trait requires you to "fails, succeeds, or critically succeeds"
The flat check means it outright misses at targeting and doesn't proceed to degrees of success. So no splash RAW.
Think of it like you would a critical miss which would also not hit anything with splash.
Thanks for the quick reply. I guess the next question is where did it land then?! For simplicity's sake, I have no problem saying 'nothing to see here' and moving along, though the 1e GM/player in me has the urge to generate a table to randomly determine the landing spot and slow my game down...
I would have that fall into the category of 'the GM determines the effect of attacks on the terrain and unattended objects.'
A table would probably work, but it would be risky since you may end up rolling a section that has targets there. A better option might be to just have the bomb sail past the intended target and splatter on some empty section of terrain to no effect other than a really cool narrative description.
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That's why I think until now that the Splash mechanic was a mistake of designers trying to make an uniq mechanic to a thing that could be just a 5 ft burst basic save.
You could use a D8 for the scatter around the Target square..So, that's kind of what I was originally thinking, but then I realized it would probably give an unrealistic and unintended advantage to an alchemist by letting him still do automatic damage to a target he can't see. And if that target has a weakness to certain bombs, then it's even worse.
I think it'll just miss everything and/or get an appropriate narrative.
If it helps, just because a bomb hits something doesn't mean it is going to break. If they were that fragile they would be breaking on your person and be suitable to carry as a weapon.
Think of it as the bomb hitting at the wrong angle or cracking and spilling its contents in an ineffectual way mostly on the ground.
Or you could do the miss check and attack roll anyway where if they roll a hit/crit and there is a target in that square it will deal splash to the target and all others but not the primary bomb effect and nothing on a mjss (imo more sensible than a scatter die approach in this case)
If it helps, just because a bomb hits something doesn't mean it is going to break. If they were that fragile they would be breaking on your person and be suitable to carry as a weapon.
Think of it as the bomb hitting at the wrong angle or cracking and spilling its contents in an ineffectual way mostly on the ground.
I did exactly that for my description of a crit-failed Bomb Strike once. Here, specifically.