Incorporeal + Evasion Question

[JSturm01]

Hello,

First time on here, thought it might be a good place to ask for a verdict.

I'm GM'ing a Pathfinder party of 5 at 5th level made up of a bard, a rogue/sorcerer, a wizard, a fighter, and an alchemist. I'm working on an encounter in Nidal and had the idea of putting them up against a monk with the Dread Shadow template as the boss.

My question here is how the evasion monk ability would interact with the incorporeal trait in terms of damage avoidance. From my understanding, incorporeal provides immunity to any non-magic damage and reduces damage by half from corporeal magic sources (i.e. magic weapons). Meanwhile, evasion allows you to dodge all damage on reflex saves if you're successful and halves the damage on failure.

So, am I understanding it right? Does an incorporeal monk avoid 50-100% of all damage from magic weapons and spells requiring reflex saves? Feel free to point out my error if I made one in my reasoning, I already had to be corrected by a friend on flurry of blows not combining with the strength damaging natural attacks of the Dread Shadow.

Thanks in advance.

[Fouredged Sword]

This is purely off the cuff, but I would treat this using the multiplication rules for stuff in DND. Doubling a double gets you 3x. Halving a half gets you 1/3rd

[shylocke]

Use evasion as normal unless it is a spell that can't hit incorporeal targets. If it can't hit then it can't hit. If it can and the monk is beside a wall, let him reflex to step through the wall and avoid all DMG if he rolls well enough

[Chronos]

Incorporeal doesn't cause the damage to be halved; it gives a 50% chance that the damage will be ignored entirely. This check is not a saving throw, so it does not interact with evasion in any way. The monster simply has two unrelated ways to potentially ignore some sources of damage.

[JSturm01]

Thanks for the replies. I had actually forgotten the multiplication rule, so that should bring some things up that I might have treated as 1/4 damage.

As to using the wall to dodge all damage, I like that. Should make positioning interesting if they have to keep trying to get him out in the open to stop some of his dodging. Thanks.

[Segev]

Incorporeal doesn't cause the damage to be halved; it gives a 50% chance that the damage will be ignored entirely. This check is not a saving throw, so it does not interact with evasion in any way. The monster simply has two unrelated ways to potentially ignore some sources of damage.

I'd like to emphasize that Chronos has the RAW right, here.

A ghost with Evasion in the AoE of a fireball first rolls a d100. On a 50 or less, he takes no damage. Then he rolls his reflex save. On a failure, he takes full damage. On a success, he takes no damage.

[JSturm01]

Thanks Chronos and Segev, I went back and looked at the rules and you're right, I completely misread miss chance as damage reduction in my haste. Thanks for that.

[Segev]

Quite welcome. It's always nice when the rules don't require extensive math to make them work. (In this case, you can use extensive math to calculate what the real odds are, statistically, or what the expected damage per round is, but it's not needed to use the rules. Just a bit of die-rolling.)

Anyway, glad to help!

[Drachasor]

Pathfinder changed how this works:


An incorporeal creature has no physical body. It can be harmed only by other incorporeal creatures, magic weapons or creatures that strike as magic weapons, and spells, spell-like abilities, or supernatural abilities. It is immune to all nonmagical attack forms. Even when hit by spells or magic weapons, it takes only half damage from a corporeal source (except for channel energy). Although it is not a magical attack, holy water can affect incorporeal undead. Corporeal spells and effects that do not cause damage only have a 50% chance of affecting an incorporeal creature. Force spells and effects, such as from a magic missile, affect an incorporeal creature normally.

Only non-damaging spells and effects have a 50% chance of working. It's half damage otherwise.

Normally people quarter damage if it is halved twice, but I don't think the rules are clear on this.

[Segev]

Pathfinder changed how this works:



Only non-damaging spells and effects have a 50% chance of working. It's half damage otherwise.

Normally people quarter damage if it is halved twice, but I don't think the rules are clear on this.

Honestly, while I applaud the effort to minimize need for rolling, introducing additional exception-cases to do so only some of the time is not a good idea when it comes to making easy-to-run rules.