Mask contributors to line-edge roughness (LER) have recently been shown to be an issue of concern for extreme ultraviolet lithography both in terms of the accuracy of current resist evaluation tests and in terms of the ultimate LER requirements for the 22 nm production node and beyond. More recently, it has been shown that the power spectral density of the mask-induced roughness is markedly different from that of intrinsic resist roughness and thus potentially serves as a mechanism for distinguishing mask effects from resist effects in experimental results. However, the evaluation of stochastic effects in the resist itself demonstrates that such a test would only be viable in cases where the resist effects are negligible in terms of their contribution to the total LER compared with the mask effects. Moreover, the results presented here lead the authors to the surprising conclusion that it is indeed possible for mask contributors to be the dominant source of LER while the spatial characteristics of the LER remain indistinguishable from the fractal characteristics of resist-induced LER. (C) 2010 American Vacuum Society. [DOI: 10.1116/1.3509437]