Question about the spell Blink

[Yggdrasil jester]

Blink

If the attacker can see invisible creatures, the miss chance is also only 20%. (For an attacker who can both see and strike ethereal creatures, there is no miss chance.) Likewise, your own attacks have a 20% miss chance, since you sometimes go ethereal just as you are about to strike.

Any individually targeted spell has a 50% chance to fail against you while you’re blinking unless your attacker can target invisible, ethereal creatures. Your own spells have a 20% chance to activate just as you go ethereal, in which case they typically do not affect the Material Plane.

While blinking, you take only half damage from area attacks (but full damage from those that extend onto the Ethereal Plane). You strike as an invisible creature (with a +2 bonus on attack rolls), denying your target any Dexterity bonus to AC.

You take only half damage from falling, since you fall only while you are material.

While blinking, you can step through (but not see through) solid objects. For each 5 feet of solid material you walk through, there is a 50% chance that you become material. If this occurs, you are shunted off to the nearest open space and take 1d6 points of damage per 5 feet so traveled. You can move at only three-quarters speed (because movement on the Ethereal Plane is at half speed, and you spend about half your time there and half your time material.)

Since you spend about half your time on the Ethereal Plane, you can see and even attack ethereal creatures. You interact with ethereal creatures roughly the same way you interact with material ones.

An ethereal creature is invisible, incorporeal, and capable of moving in any direction, even up or down. As an incorporeal creature, you can move through solid objects, including living creatures.

An ethereal creature can see and hear the Material Plane, but everything looks gray and insubstantial. Sight and hearing on the Material Plane are limited to 60 feet.

Force effects and abjurations affect you normally. Their effects extend onto the Ethereal Plane from the Material Plane, but not vice versa. An ethereal creature can’t attack material creatures, and spells you cast while ethereal affect only other ethereal things. Certain material creatures or objects have attacks or effects that work on the Ethereal Plane. Treat other ethereal creatures and objects as material.

Does this spell make you incorporeal? In the spell it says as an incorporeal creature. Am i just reading this wrong or right?

[name_here]

Technically you're on the ethereal plane during a blink, which for most intents and purposes is the same as being incorporeal.

So you're incorporeal roughly half the time as far as most mechanics are concerned.

[Ice9]

It's not quite the same thing; the only things that are common between them are moving through solid objects and being affected by [Force] effects.

Incorporeal is another state on the material plane. Ethereal is a whole separate plane. That means, for example, that Ghost Touch does jack shit against ethereal creatures, as do non-[Force] spells without Transdimensional Spell. And while Incorporeal creatures can use abilities against material stuff just fine, Ethereal creatures can't (except for [Force]), although they can see it - which is why Blink gives you a miss chance. You also can't see Ethereal stuff from the material plane, without something like True Seeing.

The issue is confused by Ghosts, which are Incorporeal creatures that can also switch to and from the Ethereal plane at will.

[Yggdrasil jester]

so you are incorporeal do you get the incorporeal subtype benefits as well or just blink spell?

[Kaelik]

You are not incorporeal.

Some creatures on the Ethereal plane can manifest as incorporeal creatures on the Material. You are not one of them. You are either on the Material or Ethereal plane at any given moment, and you are never incorporeal on either plane.

If you wanted to claim you were incorporeal on the material when you were on the ethereal, then you would have no miss chance, because casting spells is still totally possible for incorporeal creatures.

[Wiseman]

I always thought with blink that you went the Astral not the Ethereal?

[Kaelik]

Read the very first sentence of the spell description.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/blink.htm

[Wiseman]

D'oh!

[Damocles]

'While blinking, you can step through (but not see through) solid objects. For each 5 feet of solid material you walk through, there is a 50% chance that you become material. If this occurs, you are shunted off to the nearest open space and take 1d6 points of damage per 5 feet so traveled. You can move at only three-quarters speed (because movement on the Ethereal Plane is at half speed, and you spend about half your time there and half your time material.)

Since you spend about half your time on the Ethereal Plane, you can see and even attack ethereal creatures. You interact with ethereal creatures roughly the same way you interact with material ones.

An ethereal creature is invisible, incorporeal, and capable of moving in any direction, even up or down. As an incorporeal creature, you can move through solid objects, including living creatures.'

That last bit... its not referring to something we can do while blinking?

[Kaelik]

That last bit... its not referring to something we can do while blinking?

The statement "An ethereal creature is invisible, incorporeal, and capable of moving in any direction, even up or down."

is false.

[tussock]

They're incorporeal on the Ethereal plane aren't they? Which is not the same as being incorporeal on the Material plane like the description of incorporeal assumes, but it's true.

In that everything on the ethereal plane is insubstantial and not-quite-there, you included. There's probably clarification somewhere in the section on the planes and how they work.

A traveller on the Ethereal Plane is invisible, incorporeal, and
utterly silent to someone on the Material Plane. This makes the Ethereal Plane very useful for reconnaissance, spying on opponents, and other occasions when it’s handy to move around without being detected.

So during your blink, you are incorporeal, but you're also on the ethereal so no one really cares because that's doing a better job of protecting you anyway. The spell rules how the mixture of movement and whatnot works well enough, going material pops you into an open space and makes you fall (for half damage).

[RadiantPhoenix]

A traveller on the Ethereal Plane is invisible, incorporeal, and
utterly silent to someone on the Material Plane. This makes the Ethereal Plane very useful for reconnaissance, spying on opponents, and other occasions when it’s handy to move around without being detected.

So during your blink, you are incorporeal, but you're also on the ethereal so no one really cares because that's doing a better job of protecting you anyway.

Nope, it says right there in the quoted text:

To someone on the material plane you are:

• Invisible
• Silent
• Incorporeal

It says nothing about the ethereal, so to someone on the ethereal plane you are:

• Visible
• Audible
• Corporeal

[tussock]

Right you are. I seem to have carried that idea all the way from Planescape in 2nd edition. Heh.

[Kaelik]

The problem is that if that is true, all the specific text of Blink is false.

If you are incorporeal on the Material plane, then how do your spells miss them? You are always present on the Material Plane, so your spells can always hit targets on the material.

If you are incorporeal on the Material Plane why do you have a 20% miss chance to people who see invisible. If they can see you they can attack you with their attacks because you are there.

[name_here]

Checking the SRD entry on being ethereal, it looks like it's just a straight-up error that might be left over from a change partway through development.

Essentially, replace

An ethereal creature is invisible, incorporeal, and capable of moving in any direction, even up or down. As an incorporeal creature, you can move through solid objects, including living creatures.

with

Ethereal creatures are invisible, inaudible, insubstantial, and scentless to creatures on the Material Plane. Even most magical attacks have no effect on them. See invisibility and true seeing reveal ethereal creatures.
[...]
Ethereal creatures move in any direction (including up or down) at will. They do not need to walk on the ground, and material objects don’t block them (though they can’t see while their eyes are within solid material).

[Username17]

The Blink spell has several errors in it. All references to Incorporeality are an error. The description of how Incorporeality and Ethereality work at the end is also an error. It's basically a mishmash of copypasta from earlier contradictory drafts.

Then there's the issue that the actual physics of the whole situation are not well explained. At all. For example: did you know that while you are blinking, that your arrows and thrown flasks have no miss chance? It's true, because the spell affects you and by extension all your attended objects. When an arrow or alchemist's flask leaves your person, it stops blinking, and reverts to its original plane of existence in full. So while you suffer a 20% miss chance when swinging a sword, you don't have that miss chance when throwing a rock.

Then there's the issue that what's supposed to be going on is that you are partially intangible and partially invisible, and this adds up to a full concealment's worth of protection. Like how if you're partially concealed you get a 20% miss chance and if you're fully concealed you get a 50% miss chance. Meanwhile, anyone who can deal with either the intangibility or the invisibility bumps you back down to partial and only has to deal with the 20% miss chance. And you personally get to see everyone normally, but you're still phasing and have to deal with a 20% miss chance. But there are many obvious shenanigans that modify that for which the rules do not give explicit answers.

The first question is what happens when you add actual concealment to the mix. No one knows. Seriously, if you're in a fog bank and partially concealed, but you're still invisible half the time and partially intangible as well, what the fuck happens? There is no extension of the chart to what happens when you are three partials of not being available as a target. And how would that change if you were under invisibility and thus were invisible all the time but only intangible some of the time? Again, the concealment chart doesn't go up that high.

The second question is what happens when you have a Ghost Touch Longsword yourself. Again, no one knows. The issue of whether and how a Ghost Touch sword can strike from an ethereal character to a physical opponent is not addressed anywhere in the rules. Even the rants about Wraiths picking up Ghost Touch swords and stabbing fools with them don't specifically address this point. Thematically it should probably work, but you're not on solid ground with any position you take.

The most information about how Blink works is actually in the Arms and Equipment Guide, where there's a rant about attuning Rings of Blink to Blink Dog mounts. And that doesn't address... most things you'd want to do with the spell.

-Username17