Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
ThorOdinson, your Deles rice reading of the rules can be used to reach the conclusion that a short sword deals 1d6 damage, because it says it does, and if one ignores the rest of the rules for attacking, one need not roll to hit to deal -d6 damage with a short sword.

You are ignoring most of the rules for attacking and quoting a small portion of them as if the rest were not there. This is a house rule, because you are removing rules from the text to achieve your interpretation.
I am not ignoring context and you still have to follow the surrounding rules. But the rule definitively associates the attack roll with the attack. And if I have a question as to when exactly what you are doing counts exactly as the attack well the rule tells me the attack roll. So per RAW an attack roll counts as an attack.

Interestingly, this works out exactly as you would expect.

Attacks are semantically speaking attempts at striking a target. An attack roll is exactly and precisely that attempt.