The bug
Bows can be used to attack through thin surfaces such as doors, fences and glass panes. This also applies to other projectiles, such as tridents, snowballs, eggs, ender pearls, fireballs, and fishing bobbers.
How to reproduce
Attract a zombie, spider, or angry zombie pigman to a closed door. (These mobs will press right up against the door rather than just standing on the adjacent block.)
Fire a charged arrow at the door. (Back out of right-click range or turn aside at first so that you don't open the door instead.)
The arrow may hit the mob. (It can depend on how the exact distance and power; it is more reliable with doors than fences.)
I would expect the arrow to always hit the door, as melee attacks do.
Linked issues
is duplicated by 6
relates to 4
Attachments
Comments 47
The mobs hit box is likely going through the door itself. You should also be able to punch the mobs through the door. other wise it could be a problem with the arrow hit box going through the door itself. Testing now.
This is specific to arrows. Clarifying the description a bit. (There is a case where you can melee-hit mobs through diagonal corners, which is not what I'm reporting here.)
From my point of view this is a very cool feature and not a bug. I can shoot through doors! How awesome is that?
This is an issue that affects most, if not all projectiles. You can reproduce this with arrows, tridents, snowballs, eggs, ender pearls, shulker bullets, small fireballs, or even the fishing rod's bobber (haven't tested llama spit).
As someone noted previously, part of the fired projectile's hitbox sits inside the block it intersects, and thus it intersects the entity that is behind the other side of the block, getting hit. This might also be the cause of MC-2164.
The expected here would be that the projectile hitbox would only collide and stop at the very boundary of the block so it doesn't get any further, this is how most entities behave when colliding with blocks.
Can confirm. Not sure it's a bug though...