Inspire Courage and Charnel Touch

[Brennan1612]

Would both the to-hit and damage bonus from a bard's inspire courage be applied to special touch attacks like the Dread Necromancer's Charnel Touch or the Walker in the Waste's Desiccating touch?

[Gruftzwerg]

Would both the to-hit and damage bonus from a bard's inspire courage be applied to special touch attacks like the Dread Necromancer's Charnel Touch or the Walker in the Waste's Desiccating touch?

Simple and short answers/play advice: Yes

But if you where looking for a strict RAW dissection:
Touch attacks qualify for the "attack bonus". But it is questionable if they qualify for the bonus to "weapon damage", since they aren't weapons, nor natural attacks (which are called out as weapons) but sole Special Attacks.
Special Attacks can be from "weapons" but it's not the default assumption here.
At least I can't recall any general rule that lets touch attacks count as weapons. If anyone has a quote on that, pls let me know^^

[Crake]

Attack bonus, yes, damage, no. Charnel touch is not a weapon, and thus its damage roll is not a weapon damage roll.

[Saintheart]

More pointless technical discussion:

The problem arises because WOTC started with a rigorous definition of what damage is, but didn't stay rigorous.

Per the PHB, damage comes in 3 categories: lethal, nonlethal, and ability damage.

On top of that, where relevant, the type of damage done is specified, and this runs the gamut of types from positive, negative, energy, and weapon damage (the latter of which has two subcategories - melee and unarmed). But the reason the type is included, at least per the glossary, is for the purposes of working out what has resistances or immunities to that specific type of damage.

It didn't go quite so far as to say "this form of attack always does this type of damage", or "this form of attack always does lethal or nonlethal damage, as opposed to ability damage", or "swords and all other melee weapons always can be taken to do weapon damage." In most cases you could argue that this wasn't needed because it needed a very short leap of logic: you could probably assume that unless otherwise stated, a good longsword does weapon damage when it hits.

And so the problem with Inspire Courage: it applies a bonus to "weapon damage", when weapon damage is just a type of damage for working out resistances or immunities. You (or your DM rather) has to take the leap of logic and say that a special attack is an attack with a weapon that does damage of the type specified by the PHB as "weapon damage".

As it is, I'd argue there is an available solution here: bardic inspire courage might apply to the attack roll, but doesn't apply its damage bonus to Charnel Touch ... because inspire courage applies to the type of damage known as "weapon damage", but the Dread Necromancer's touch deals negative energy - even down to healing undead. Negative energy is a separate type of damage to weapon damage; absent some explicit indication that the Charnel Touch does both types of damage, the indication that the Charnel Touch deals negative energy damage, not weapon damage, is enough to exclude inspire courage on it.

Walker in the Waste's Dessicating Touch can be resolved similarly: it explicitly deals "dessication damage", not weapon damage, and therefore inspire courage does nothing for the damage roll (albeit the attack roll is another question.)


But hey, if this seems unsatisfactory, content yourself with the fact you're not asking about how Charnel Touch works with Knowledge Devotion. That sucker doesn't even confine its bonuses to weapon damage, it's "attack and damage rolls" against a given creature type.