Magic Missile question?

[danielxcutter]

Okay, so I was chatting about a Swiftblade with someone on a Discord server, and Magic Missile came up - from the wording, it sounds like even Evasive Celerity might not work, because unless the target has total concealment or total cover it automatically hits, apparently? Is this right? Would the same be said about Blink?

[tiercel]

Magic missile does defeat any concealment less than full, but the Swiftblade’s Evasive Celerity instead states “individually targeted spells have a 20% chance of failing against you. This spell failure chance increases by +10% at 6th, 7th, and 8th level.” This isn’t concealment, it’s targeted spell failure, and magic missile is a targeted spell. As far as I can see, Evasive Celerity should work fine.

Blink, on the other hand, shouldn’t affect magic missile since MM defeats concealment and, as a force effect, affects ethereal targets just fine.

[danielxcutter]

Magic missile does defeat any concealment less than full, but the Swiftblade’s Evasive Celerity instead states “individually targeted spells have a 20% chance of failing against you. This spell failure chance increases by +10% at 6th, 7th, and 8th level.” This isn’t concealment, it’s targeted spell failure, and magic missile is a targeted spell. As far as I can see, Evasive Celerity should work fine.

Blink, on the other hand, shouldn’t affect magic missile since MM defeats concealment and, as a force effect, affects ethereal targets just fine.

So a "specific trumps general" thing here?

[tiercel]

So a "specific trumps general" thing here?

I’d argue that the actual missiles of MM “can’t miss,” but Evasive Celerity doesn’t foil the missiles produced by MM, it foils the spell itself due to its wording. I’d agree that specific does trump general but in this case I’d go so far as to say that EC is more than that even.

[Crake]

So a "specific trumps general" thing here?

There's no specific over general. MM says the missiles can't miss, but evasive celerity says the spells fail, not that they miss.