[RPG] Touch Spells; Cast, move & attack in one round

The reason things are worded so badly lies in the 3.0->3.5->PF transition. See below for that! I believe chill touch is still resolvable using the RAW, though.

Chill Touch

The answer to the chill touch question lies in the rules for holding the charge:

Touch Spells and Holding the Charge: In most cases, if you don't discharge a touch spell on the round you cast it, you can hold the charge (postpone the discharge of the spell) indefinitely. You can make touch attacks round after round until the spell is discharged. If you cast another spell, the touch spell dissipates.

Most touch spells discharge after a single successful attack, but chill touch makes it clear that this isn't the case. Instead, you get one touch per level. So the quoted rule allows chill touch to be used across multiple rounds; there's no need for the spell to explicitly state it. (Though it probably should, just for clarity.)

Willing targets

The rules do explicitly state that you can't hold the charge on multiple targets, so no help there! That seems to be the simplest solution, though.

As an aside, an effect that changes the range of touch spells would "unlock" the full number of targets, so there is a technical difference between the current state and your alternate wording. :P

A little bit of history

So why are the RAW in this state? Well, I did a bit of digging, and this thread was very helpful, especially this post by Hypersmurf. (Who I remember from when I posted in the enworld rules forum far too often -- thanks Hypersmurf!)

1. In 3.0, you could touch 6 willing targets as a full round action, or one as a standard. There was no restriction on touching all the targets the round the spell finished -- in this context the 6 target limit played well with multi-target spells.

2. In 3.5, the Magic Overview section was changed: the limit of 6 was removed, but the requirement of touching the targets in a single round was added. However, the rules for touch spells in combat left the old restriction of 6 targets in place. The text here directly contradicted that of the overview section. If you assume that the wording of the overview section was what the designers intended, this would still cause no problems with touch spells targeting multiple willing creatures.

3. In PF, both limitations are included in the overview. I would assume that someone was trying to reconcile the contradiction mentioned in 2, without realizing that it was a holdover from an intended 3.0->3.5 shift. The result? Accidental nerfing of multi-target touch range buffs.

Likewise, the wording of chill touch has been essentially unchanged since 3.0. It's been edited a little to make the wording less clumsy, but not updated to account for the changing touch attack rules. This explains why it doesn't explicitly call out that it carries across multiple rounds.

No, touching an ally does not provoke AoO.

Pathfinder SRD, Combat (emphasis mine):

"Armed" Unarmed Attacks: Sometimes a character's or creature's unarmed attack counts as an armed attack. A monk, a character with the Improved Unarmed Strike feat, a spellcaster delivering a touch attack spell, and a creature with natural physical weapons all count as being armed

Armed melee attacks do not provoke an AoO.

This is explicitly repeated in Touch spells in combat section:

Touch Attacks: Touching an opponent with a touch spell is considered to be an armed attack and therefore does not provoke attacks of opportunity. The act of casting a spell, however, does provoke an attack of opportunity.

The exception to this is a full-round action to touch 6 allies, which always provokes an AoO.