| 1 person marked this as FAQ candidate. |
At what point do you use the sunder rules and attack a character's CMD, and at what point do you attack an object's AC?
There seems to be some overlap within the rules, and I'm looking to find where that line is drawn.
Attended and unattended.
An attended object is anything touched, grasped, held, or carried. This is clearly defined in the rules. Here are some other rule excerpts...
The former seems to allow you to sunder any held or worn item of your opponent. In this case you target CMD, not AC.
The latter, however, seems to limit sunder attempts only to weapons or shields. In this case, you use CMD for weapons and shields, and AC for everything else.
When an item is unattended, you clearly use its AC.
However, when you target an attended magical item, its AC changes. Specifically...
...a held item gains your Dexterity bonus to its AC.
So I ask again, at what point are you supposed to target AC, and when are you supposed to target CMD?
As a rules thread, I was hoping for some hard answers, not opinions.
It's very badly written, but nothing contradicts attended/unattended being the sole distinction.
The Smashing an Object rules don't limit the distinct Sunder rules to only Weapons and Armor,
for one because Sunder already allows any attended item to be Sundered, and secondly because Smashing an Object mentioning weapons and armor doesn't EXCLUDE other objects, you can indeed sunder weapons and armor, but that doesn't conflict with also Sundering other types of attended items.
Smashing an Object literally says it is smashing OJBECTS multiple times, without restricting itself to weapons or armor. Saying it is like Sundering weapons or armor doesn't change that. The rule should really be titled Smashing an UNATTENDED Object, but as you can see, there are bigger problems.
The Magical Item Description part is exceptionally badly worded, but as it happens, per RAW, an item having it's AC modified when held doesn't in fact force one to target that AC when sundering it, the rules that attended objects are sundered vs. CMD and not AC still apply. I'm not really sure what other effects would possibly care about the item's AC, but if one exists, the item still technically has an AC while attended, and this AC is modified as described (if this section didn't exist, the attended object would still technically have an AC, in any case).
I think some of the language was due to the changes to Sunder from 3.5, which only targetted weapons AFAIK. Somebody knew that Sunder was being expanded in utility, so they wrote in 'and armor', even though Sunder was/is even more broad than just 'weapons and armor'. As I said, on a RAW basis, these poorly edited sentences don't actually impede the normal function of Sunder as it presents itself.
Some like hard liquor, some like hard rules debates... ;-)
Do you always use CMB when sundering (or more specifically, attacking an object)? I ask this because if it doesn't apply with spells and spell-like abilities, maybe that's another case when AC would come in instead of CMD.
?QUE? I just wrote: you use CMD with Sunder (attended objects), AC with Smashing (Unattended) Objects. Period.
I don't understand what you are saying about spells, if it's a (melee) weapon-like spell you can Sunder vs. CMB with it,
ranged weapon-like spells can't Sunder (unless you have some ability that says otherwise, i'm only aware of Archer Fighters being able to Ranged Sunder and that is only with Bows) so although they could target AC of unattended objects, such spells simply couldn't target ATTENDED objects at all.
Otherwise, lots of spells can target objects by some other non-attack roll means, which usually allow a Saving Throw for the wielder, e.g. for Grease, since the wielders' Saving Throw 'umbrella' applies to all their attended objects (for area spells, all unattended bjects are unaffected UNLESS the wielder rolls a Natural 1, in which case the objects are affected normally, although they can roll their own Saves then).
I think many of the references to an attended item's AC is a holdover from previous editions. I honestly believe the intent is that attacking any attended item first requires a combat maneuver (unless done so with a target spell or similar ability meant to target objects).
Sunder is strong great and fun.
Always sunder, and then laugh at the party member desperate for more loot, so they can craft even more.
Then sunder an expensive magic item and laugh as a man or woman, free of magic item tyranny.
?QUE? I just wrote: you use CMD with Sunder (attended objects), AC with Smashing (Unattended) Objects. Period.
I don't understand what you are saying about spells, if it's a (melee) weapon-like spell you can Sunder vs. CMB with it,
ranged weapon-like spells can't Sunder (unless you have some ability that says otherwise, i'm only aware of Archer Fighters being able to Ranged Sunder and that is only with Bows) so although they could target AC of unattended objects, such spells simply couldn't target ATTENDED objects at all.
Otherwise, lots of spells can target objects by some other non-attack roll means, which usually allow a Saving Throw for the wielder, e.g. for Grease, since the wielders' Saving Throw 'umbrella' applies to all their attended objects (for area spells, all unattended bjects are unaffected UNLESS the wielder rolls a Natural 1, in which case the objects are affected normally, although they can roll their own Saves then).
I was just asking a simple question. Spells often change how things work so I figured I would throw it out there. Are there spells that target just the AC of something that you would be able to sunder with in some convoluted way (RD would probably want to know anyway for his next character, like using an archer fighter/arcane archer with some AoE spell imbued into his arrow that targets only AC and he wants to sunder several objects at once). If there aren't any, then the question is moot. RD comes up with some crazy stuff and now he's got me thinking of crazy stuff.
| 1 person marked this as FAQ candidate. 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Yeah, Archer Fighter Archetype m-classed with a spellcaster is the only way I can think of a Ranged Sunder with Spells.
There could be some other option, I'm not THAT deep in all the crunch splat :-)
Melee Touch Attack spells could work for Sunder though. I don't think most spells really specify 'this targets AC',
they just say if it's an attack or not, or a touch attack or not.
Either would target CMD if you Sunder with it (normally melee only).
I'm sorry if you took offense at my response, I really didn't quite understand the question about spells (although it seems like I addressed what you were interested in), the relation to the first question wasn't clicking with me, probably not helped by the first question pretty much ignoring (or confusing) my previous post which said that you DON'T use CMB for attacking objects (unattended use AC), but only when sundering 'attended' objects.
EDIT: Rusting Grasp is a special case, it just needs a Touch Attack to affect metal armor, but it isn't really using Sundering/Object Smashing rules in any way, it just specially notes that it destroys 1d6 AC, but the armor still has full HPs per RAW. I think that per RAW, you can't use normal 'repair' techniques on said armor, since the Armor isn't broken or even destroyed, the AC was just reduced.
Yeah, Archer Fighter Archetype m-classed with a spellcaster is the only way I can think of a Ranged Sunder with Spells.
There could be some other option, I'm not THAT deep in all the crunch splat :-)
Melee Touch Attack spells could work for Sunder though. I don't think most spells really specify 'this targets AC',
they just say if it's an attack or not, or a touch attack or not.
Either would target CMD if you Sunder with it (normally melee only).I'm sorry if you took offense at my response, I really didn't quite understand the question about spells (although it seems like I addressed what you were interested in), the relation to the first question wasn't clicking with me, probably not helped by the first question pretty much ignoring (or confusing) my previous post which said that you DON'T always use CMB for attacking objects (unattended use AC), but only when sundering 'attended' objects.
I didn't take offense. I simply misunderstood the tone. We're good. I'm reading through these forums while following a family of close friends of mine on Facebook who just lost their mother last night so I may miss something. You did answer my question about spells.
Ranged sunder goes way back into 3.0. I think the feats first came out with the sherwood campaign in Dragon, along with ranged pin.
Ranged sunder goes way back into 3.0. I think the feats first came out with the sherwood campaign in Dragon, along with ranged pin.
IIRC the all the Ranged Sunder feat did was let you do full damage to objects with ranged weapons.
You still couldn't sunder weapons at range, and you could always target attended objects.
Nope, you could, it just went down by half (which doesn't matter much against certain light weapons).
http://dndtools.eu/feats/complete-warrior--61/ranged-sunder--2359/