Ocular spell+magic missile=how many rays?

[Zorgoth]

Do you get one ray per eye, or one ray per missile you would have cast? One ray per missile would be fun, given that rays count as weapons. You could get a ton of attacks and massively multiply some weapon damage bonuses without using any high-level spell slots.

[Doc_Maynot]

In combat, he can take a full-round action to fire off both scorching ray spells. He can fire each spell at a different target, and he gets all three rays from each spell.

So each magic missile spell could only target a single person, but it'd be a separate attack roll per missile.

[DarkSoul]

If the spell previously would have affected multiple creatures, it now affects only the creature struck by the ray.

Magic missile becomes a ray hitting one target for 5d4+5. You need to make a touch attack for it to hit, and it takes a 3rd level spell slot. It could be interpreted as multiple rays but they still have to all fire at the same target.

[Segev]

Magic missile becomes a ray hitting one target for 5d4+5. You need to make a touch attack for it to hit, and it takes a 3rd level spell slot. It could be interpreted as multiple rays but they still have to all fire at the same target.

Can you walk me thought the logic on this? I'm not saying you're wrong, but magic missile is one that has a weird structure compared to normal Occular Spell effects, so I'm curious how you work this one out. I'm honestly not sure how I would, but I'm not sure it's like this. Not saying I will disagree: I just can't follow the reasoning on my own.

[Mike Miller]

Why take an auto-hit spell and give it a miss chance? Just for a crit chance?

[DarkSoul]

Can you walk me thought the logic on this? I'm not saying you're wrong, but magic missile is one that has a weird structure compared to normal Occular Spell effects, so I'm curious how you work this one out. I'm honestly not sure how I would, but I'm not sure it's like this. Not saying I will disagree: I just can't follow the reasoning on my own.Because of the feat text I quoted, the multiple targets function of Magic Missile is removed. It would be removed for Scorching Ray too, which causes the example given to make very little sense to me.

Because it only hits one target, there's very little reason to have it require an attack roll per missile.

It's more swingy damage, but the there are better things to do with a level 3 slot than shooting magic missiles from your eyes.

[Doc_Maynot]

Why take an auto-hit spell and give it a miss chance? Just for a crit chance?

And for the "Full Round fire both ocular spells" thing, probably.

[Helluin]

Why take an auto-hit spell and give it a miss chance? Just for a crit chance?

Sneak attack damage, maybe.

That said, I don’t think RAW can give you any answers...

[Zorgoth]

Why take an auto-hit spell and give it a miss chance? Just for a crit chance?

For the potential to add damage more than for the crit chance. If it's ruled that you get 10 rays and your 10th level bard has, say, Dragonfire Inspiration and Good Hope, that just added 20d6+20 potential damage to the original 10d4+10. If you have a decent ranged touch attack, that's going to easily make up for the miss chance.

[Zorgoth]

Sneak attack damage, maybe.

That said, I don’t think RAW can give you any answers...

Yes, it's quite ambiguous. It does call out that Scorching Ray, which has 3 attacks that are rays, gets 3 rays, but that's somewhat different from Magic Missile, which has five attacks that are not rays.

If I was a DM, I might rule that you get 10 rays, but sneak attack specifically only gets counted once per eye. If you have any significant sneak attack damage, 10 sneak attacks at full BAB becomes an effective auto-win button against any one monster you can hit that's vulnerable to sneak attack. Also, Scorching Ray is ruled as only one sneak attack per casting rather than 3, though it benefits from other damage bonuses as usual, as far as I know.

[Mordaedil]

Doing this RAW might run the risk of reducing the damage per eye to 1d4+1 damage. I don't see the point in doing ocular spell for magic missile, it'd be a better fit for orb of force or something.