Blink

Conjuration (Teleportation)
Level: Bard 3, Sor/Wiz 3
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Touch
Target: Creature touched
Duration: 1 round/level (D)
Spell Points: 5

The creature vanishes and reappears at a maddening rate.

The subject “blinks” back and forth between the Material Plane and the Ethereal Plane, spending roughly half his time on the Material Plane and half on the Ethereal Plane. He looks as though he’s winking in and out of reality very quickly and at random (the blinking can be controlled by neither the caster nor the subject).

Blinking has several effects on an opponent’s chance to hit, as follows¹:

• Physical attacks against the subject have a 50% miss chance. The Blind-Fight feat doesn’t help opponents, since he is ethereal and not merely invisible.

• If the attacker is capable of striking ethereal creatures, but not seeing ethereal creatures, the miss chance is only 20% (for limited concealment). The miss chance is less than that offered by true invisibility, because the subject of the spell is perfectly visible half the time.

• If the attacker can see ethereal creatures, the miss chance is also only 20%. This is because even though the attacker can’t hit the subject while he is ethereal, attacks can be timed to mostly hit while the subject is on the material plane.

• For an attacker that 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.

Augment: If you spend 4 additional spell points, the subject can perfectly predict its own blinking, although it still cannot control it. This negates the 20% effective miss chance the subject suffers on attacks, as well as the chance of its spells accidentally going off on the ethereal plane.