BEAD OF FORCE vs. a ghost or other apparitional creature?

[adamadman]

Can it even hit him/her/it, i.e., be activated by impact with same? In this case, the thing is flying more than 10' from any solid surface, so the bead needs to hit it (and go boom) and not the ground, ceiling, etc.

My reading is that it *can* hold such a creature, once activated.

(Also, getting specific, if bad thing is captured, can the players all gather round and prepare attacks to launch the instant the sphere disappears...and can this be timed so it happens before said thing gets to attack? Asking for a friend.)

[Kaptin Keen]

Place something inside the ghost that's physical enough to trigger the bead. Like .. a Mage Hand, or a levitated jar of honey.

[Lord Haart]

In 3.5 at least, force effects by definition fully affect incorporeal creatures. So a bead of FORCE should just impact a ghost's "body" and proceed to explode as normal.

[Kaptin Keen]

In 3.5 at least, force effects by definition fully affect incorporeal creatures. So a bead of FORCE should just impact a ghost's "body" and proceed to explode as normal.

Well, that's highly debatable. There's nothing to indicate the bead itself is a force effect.

[Whyrocknodie]

You can hit ghosts and wraiths and whatnot with fire bolts, flasks of holy water, axes, javelins, fists - why would a bead of force be any different?

[Lord Haart]

You can hit ghosts and wraiths and whatnot with fire bolts, flasks of holy water, axes, javelins, fists - why would a bead of force be any different?

Highly dependent on the edition. I don't really know about 5e, and in 4e there's no such problem indeed (unless it's written specifically into monster powers), but in 3.5 axes, javelins and fists are firmly in the "can't hit" camp, if not magical (and even magical ones are 50-50), and holy water needs to be splashed about quite ineffectively instead of thrown directly.

[adamadman]

Highly dependent on the edition. I don't really know about 5e, and in 4e there's no such problem indeed (unless it's written specifically into monster powers), but in 3.5 axes, javelins and fists are firmly in the "can't hit" camp, if not magical (and even magical ones are 50-50), and holy water needs to be splashed about quite ineffectively instead of thrown directly.

This particular game is 1E (for some reason). Not sure what that changes.

(The solution of the DM was that the creature had to be in corporeal form to be captured in the bead's sphere of influence, so I had to wait until he attacked to hit him with the bead. Then, he was able to plane-shift out of the sphere; however, he could only appear in this physical plane again within the sphere. This meant he could not himself attack, but he could animate the corpse he had inhabited and call up wraiths and other evil things to keep the attack going.)

My read of the device is that it SHOULD be able to capture ghosts, but I can see where being able to shift planes would allow a means of escape (along with the Disintegrate spell and other things laid out in the literature).

[Psyren]

This particular game is 1E (for some reason). Not sure what that changes.

Do you mean D&D 1E, or Pathfinder 1E?