weapon focus question

[IRuleAll]

when you look at weapon focus it says if you are a caster you can take melee or ranged TOUCH attack. only the touch part is highlighted and purple, not the ranged or melee part. but there is no ranged touch attack focus in the choices, only touch attack, does that cover both?

[forkofspite]

Weapon focus ray exists - at least, it used to. Not sure if it covers all ranged spell attacks, though.

[gmwaddington]

Weapon Focus Ray will allow you to get Improved Critical (Ray) to expand your critical range for Hellfire Ray (as well as the Trickster Critical feats).

[IRuleAll]

Originally posted by gmwaddington:

Weapon Focus Ray will allow you to get Improved Critical (Ray) to expand your critical range for Hellfire Ray (as well as the Trickster Critical feats).

so in DnD 3.5e rays and ranged touch attacks were two different things. rays were spells that gave a description of ray, such as polar ray or scorching ray, but things like orb of fire were not rays, they were just ranged touch attacks. how do they work in this? is weapon focus ray just weapon focus for all ranged touch attacks? or is it like DnD 3.5e, and weapon focus ray will only work on ray spells, not all ranged touch attacks?

[Max Kojote, M.SC]

Originally posted by IRuleAll:

Originally posted by gmwaddington:

Weapon Focus Ray will allow you to get Improved Critical (Ray) to expand your critical range for Hellfire Ray (as well as the Trickster Critical feats).

so in DnD 3.5e rays and ranged touch attacks were two different things. rays were spells that gave a description of ray, such as polar ray or scorching ray, but things like orb of fire were not rays, they were just ranged touch attacks. how do they work in this? is weapon focus ray just weapon focus for all ranged touch attacks? or is it like DnD 3.5e, and weapon focus ray will only work on ray spells, not all ranged touch attacks?

Nope. Still like 3.5. Or it should be anyway, I can't verify as to how it was coded.

As I recall, RAW you can't take weapon focus in touch attacks in Pathfinder. But I believe that's an ongoing argument and I'm not sure I want to sift through 20 pages of arguments on the Paizo forums for that. :P It doesn't look like an FAQ ever resolved it.

[IRuleAll]

Originally posted by Max Kojote, BIE:

Originally posted by IRuleAll:

so in DnD 3.5e rays and ranged touch attacks were two different things. rays were spells that gave a description of ray, such as polar ray or scorching ray, but things like orb of fire were not rays, they were just ranged touch attacks. how do they work in this? is weapon focus ray just weapon focus for all ranged touch attacks? or is it like DnD 3.5e, and weapon focus ray will only work on ray spells, not all ranged touch attacks?

Nope. Still like 3.5. Or it should be anyway, I can't verify as to how it was coded.

As I recall, RAW you can't take weapon focus in touch attacks in Pathfinder. But I believe that's an ongoing argument and I'm not sure I want to sift through 20 pages of arguments on the Paizo forums for that. :P It doesn't look like an FAQ ever resolved it.

but there is weapon focus touch attack in the options for weapon focus. which is what started this whole thing for me. because when you look at spells or the description of weapon focus. the ranged part in ranged touch attack is always written with standard text. but the TOUCH part of ranged TOUCH attack is bolded and purple. so i wasnt sure if weapon focus touch means all touch attacks, both melee and ranged, and weapon focus ray was strictly for ray attacks not all ranged touch attacks.

[Drake]

In the game specifically, touch focus is triggered by str attack touch rolls (if you have weapon finesse, your spell still register as str touch, even if you're effectively overriding it with dex), ray by dex attack touch rolls (because default dex touch attacks are always ranged).

This actually works in real time. Like if for any reason you can use a melee touch attack at range (I know there is a feature that does it, can't remember which one), it will use ray focus instead of touch focus.

[IRuleAll]

thx