Prismatic ray?

[RichGreen]

Hi,

I'm confused by this spell. Common sense and prismatic spray indicate that it should affect all creatures, with creatures with less than 6 HD blinded, but this is the wording from Spell Compendium, p.162:

You must succeed on a ranged touch attack with the ray to strike a target. On a successful attack, a creature with 6 hit dice or fewer is blinded for 2d4 rounds by the prismatic ray in addition to suffering a randomly determined effect:

[table follows]

Is this just a badly-worded description or a spell that only affects creatures with 6 HD or less.

Cheers


Richard

 

[Corsair]

I, and pretty much everyone I have ever met, use your interpretation.

 

[RichGreen]

I, and pretty much everyone I have ever met, use your interpretation.

Thanks. Doesn't make sense otherwise.


Richard

 

[Hypersmurf]

I don't have the book in front of me, but the sentence you posted indicates that it's a creature with 6HD or less who suffers a randomly determined effect. Unless there's other wording in the text to indicate that creatures with more than 6 HD suffer the random effect without being blinded, it appears that the spell has no effect on them.

Judging from that one sentence.

-Hyp.

 

[RichGreen]

I don't have the book in front of me, but the sentence you posted indicates that it's a creature with 6HD or less who suffers a randomly determined effect. Unless there's other wording in the text to indicate that creatures with more than 6 HD suffer the random effect without being blinded, it appears that the spell has no effect on them.

Judging from that one sentence.

-Hyp.

Yes, that's what it implies, and the same wording has carried over from Complete Arcane. Doesn't seem right though.

 

[Cheiromancer]

It's a fifth level spell, so you'd think it would work like prismatic spray, but for only one target.

The question was asked over at the wizards boards:

Prismatic Ray clarification please?

There's another link that is not coming through for me, but google has a cached version:

here

There someone said

It's the same rules for all prismatic spells. The blinding is only for the low HD critters, the spell's effects hit anything. Think about it - a 5th+ level spell that only affects 8HD creatures?

The question was about prismatic spray, but if green_yawgmoth is right, it means that prismatic ray is badly worded.

 

[Grymar]

Agreed, badly worded.

I have interpreted it to mean all targets of the ray get the random effects table, creatures 6HD or less are blinded along with the random table.