Incorporeality

[Max Caysey]

Hello...

I have some trouble understanding this type of creature or effect. It says the folowing about the ability:http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Incorporeality

In
Icorporeal creatures can be harmed only by other incorporeal creatures, by magic weapons, or by spells, spell-like effects, or supernatural effects. They are immune to all nonmagical attack forms. They are not burned by normal fires, affected by natural cold, or harmed by mundane acids.

Even when struck by magic or magic weapons, an incorporeal creature has a 50% chance to ignore any damage from a corporeal source—except for a force effect or damage dealt by a ghost touch weapon.

So does one actually hit an incorporeal cruature 100% of the time with the above mentioned weapons and abilities, but then it only has 50% chance to take damage or do one only hit an incorporeal creature 50% of the time and then deal damage 100% of the time, or is there both 50% miss chance and a 50% chance to damage, effectively giving one only 25% chance of effecting an incorporeal?

So how does one affect an incorporeal creature?

:smallbiggrin:

[Siosilvar]

For starters, use d20srd (http://www.d20srd.org/) as your SRD source; it's laid out better and has less chance of getting you confused by mistaking homebrew for official material.

General summary (some exceptions may exist, but will be noted as such):
Force effects (e.g. magic missile), ghost touch weapons, and attacks by other incorporeal creatures are always effective.
Magic attacks (magic weapons, fireball, etc.) have a 50% chance to have no effect.
Nonmagical attacks have no effect.


Assuming your attack roll or whatever succeeds, you still hit, but 50% of hits are completely negated. You don't roll the 50% twice.

[Psyren]

Sio's summary is correct. And note that all that stuff happens after you roll to hit, so you might just plain miss even before worrying about whether your weapon is magical, force etc.

[Melcar]

Sio's summary is correct. And note that all that stuff happens after you roll to hit, so you might just plain miss even before worrying about whether your weapon is magical, force etc.

When you say: "roll to hit" you mean AC right?

[ArcturusV]

Well, AC and Miss Chances via things like Blur, Concealment, Invisibility, etc.

[Evolved Shrimp]

So, in practice, it works like this:

Force effects, ghost touch, etc.: You resolve the attack the same way as with a corporeal target.
Magic weapons etc.: You resolve the attack as with corporeal targets. If a hit is indicated, you roll d100, and only if you exceed 50 does the attack actually have an effect. (Or roll above 3 on a d6 etc.)
Non-magical attacks always fail - no dice roll required.

[Psyren]

When you say: "roll to hit" you mean AC right?


Well, AC and Miss Chances via things like Blur, Concealment, Invisibility, etc.

Yep and yep.