Magic Missile vs. Animated Object


Rules Questions

The Exchange

1 person marked this as FAQ candidate.
Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Sanity check

after having a game with some animated objects and frustrated low level characters.

magic missile states it does not effect objects.

an animated object is still just an object for this purpose, right? its immune to magic missile damage? and with a Hardness of say stone ( 8 ) , you treat energy damage as described in the core book on breaking stuff, to determine damage ?

ie. you can freeze off a lock in Pathfinder with a cantrip, the lock has a hardness 10 ( metal ) , and the cantrip deals 1d3 cold. which is halved when applied to an object, and then applied to hardness, so you'd need to deal an excess of 20 points of cold damage to start to get through a lock's hardness, and then you'd be able to deal 1/2 damage to the lock itself. ?

a fireball going off in a wooden house would have to overcome a hardness 5 for wood ( deal at least 10 points of damage ), and then deal half damage to the house after that. so if the walls had say 10 hp, a 30 pt fireball would be required to incinerate the house itself, and a 12 point fireball would be needed to scorch the walls at all ?

Silver Crusade RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16

Seraphimpunk wrote:

Sanity check

after having a game with some animated objects and frustrated low level characters.

magic missile states it does not effect objects.

an animated object is still just an object for this purpose, right? its immune to magic missile damage? and with a Hardness of say stone ( 8 ) , you treat energy damage as described in the core book on breaking stuff, to determine damage ?

ie. you can freeze off a lock in Pathfinder with a cantrip, the lock has a hardness 10 ( metal ) , and the cantrip deals 1d3 cold. which is halved when applied to an object, and then applied to hardness, so you'd need to deal an excess of 20 points of cold damage to start to get through a lock's hardness, and then you'd be able to deal 1/2 damage to the lock itself. ?

a fireball going off in a wooden house would have to overcome a hardness 5 for wood ( deal at least 10 points of damage ), and then deal half damage to the house after that. so if the walls had say 10 hp, a 30 pt fireball would be required to incinerate the house itself, and a 12 point fireball would be needed to scorch the walls at all ?

You're mostly correct. However, there's a line in the Hardness description that returns sanity to the game, but only at the GM's discretion:

Hardness rules wrote:


Vulnerability to Certain Attacks

Certain attacks are especially successful against some objects. In such cases, attacks deal double their normal damage and may ignore the object's hardness.

Now, there are no specifics listed here, here for example a GM could say that the fireball bypasses the hardness of the old, dried out wood, because it makes sense that it would.

In our home game, we had this come up last night where we had an animated chair (animated by our wizard), and one of the enemies had a handaxe as a weapon. The GM ruled that the handaxe would bypass the chair's hardness (but not deal double damage) because it's an axe vs. wood.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

Animated objects are contructs, which are creatures. They are just treated as objects for certain purposes.

The Exchange

Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

would magic missile be one of these purposes? lol.
I know constructs tend to be immune to things that require a fortitude save, unless they also state they work on objects. So would a spell that says it specifically doesn't work on objects, work on a construct?

Also just noticed, Constructs aren't immune to Nauseated condition?? So you could Sicken an animated chair possibly or make it Nauseated??


When it says simply an object, it means something inanimate. A construct is a creature and animate. Magic missile would hit is just fine. Against constructs like golems, it would be useless because it allows SR(unless otherwise stated in the golem description).
As for the fortitude save, Magic Missile doesn't allow a fortitude save so it will still hit even with that rule.
I would agree that it couldn't be sickened either. But most way to sicken something requires a fort save anyway so it would be immune anyway.


Twisteminds wrote:
When it says simply an object, it means something inanimate. A construct is a creature and animate. Magic missile would hit is just fine...

I would say that Twist is correct because an animated object in the Bestiary is a 'construct', and construct is a creature type. Even though an animated object is created from a mundane object, the rules that govern it treat it as a creature.

It is worth noting here that Pathfinder doesn't really expand upon what counts as an object for the purposes of being affected by spells that ignore objects such as Magic Missile. I suppose that they expected communal sound judgement coupled with a firm grasp of the CRB to prevail. In my experience many of our fellow gamers see the Pathfinder rules in a binary language though, so good luck with the common sense approach! :-D

The Magic Missile spell just needs to be re-worded.

The Exchange

Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

i'll say "object" needs to be clearer. since the only difference between a bucket, and an animated bucket, is the magic causing it to animate an attack

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/spells/animateObjects.html

it just brings some semblance of life to the objects.

A case could be made that constructs and undead, lacking a con score, are just objects that move around with some semblance of life. And for some reason Magic Missile with its force effect, effects actual creatures, which was defined by SKR when i asked about what would be effected by a channel energy, as anything with a con score.

just because its a "creature type" and has game stats, doesn't mean its necessarily a "creature" in every sense of the word.

Silver Crusade

1 person marked this as a favorite.

http://paizo.com/paizo/blog/v5748dyo5lghy?Year-of-the-Sky-Key-QA

How does hardness work for creatures? Does energy damage such as cold deal half damage to creatures with hardness (Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook 173-174) even before applying the flat numerical reduction?
When a creature with hardness sustains damage, subtract its hardness from the damage dealt. The rules for halving damage, doubling damage, dealing damage with ineffective tools, immunities, and the like only apply to damaging inanimate objects

Sczarni

Was there a reason you felt the need to bring this thread back after 2 years?

I noticed you did the same for an even older thread. Just trying to gauge your motives.


Oh. I created a long comment on this topic before realizing that it was a very old thread. Oh well. I'll post it anyway.

In case anyone still cares...:

First of all, it is pretty clear that in general, constructs and undead are "creatures" as far as the pathfinder rules go. The description of undead says, "Undead are once-living creatures animated by spiritual or supernatural forces. An undead creature has the following features." The description of constructs says, "A construct is an animated object or artificially created creature." If the rules are referring to creatures other than constructs or undead, they say "living creature." This is specified on page 215 of the Core Rulebook, which says, "Many spells affect “living creatures,” which means all creatures other than constructs and undead."
The question, however, isn't whether animated objects are creatures, it's whether they are objects. The very fact that many spells have creature as their target but magic missile also specifies that it does not affect objects implies that the two terms might overlap. I would be tempted to believe that animated objects are both objects and creatures, if it weren't for the information on pages 174-175 of the Core Rulebook.
Under the "Immunities" section, it says, "Objects are immune to nonlethal damage and critical hits. Even animated objects, which are otherwise considered creatures, have these immunities." This seems to mostly match up with the quote Mars Roma posted, and the immunities difference is probably due to a context other than animated objects.This to me is what shows that they are not considered objects.
Later, it says "Animated objects count as creatures for purposes of determining their Armor Class (do not treat them as inanimate objects)." Sure, this isn't about Armor Class, but I think the principle is the same.

Silver Crusade

Nefreet wrote:

Was there a reason you felt the need to bring this thread back after 2 years?

I noticed you did the same for an even older thread. Just trying to gauge your motives.

For this one, it seemed more relevant to help address any questions a new player might have. Also had an argument with another GM about this.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Rules Questions / Magic Missile vs. Animated Object All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.