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I was thinking that the ability of Adamantine Weapons to bypass hardness applied to objects and creatures. I was looking at adamantine today and noticed it only specified objects.
Was I just initially mistaken?
Edit: I was specifically curious about adamantine and construct hardness.
Mined from rocks that fell from the heavens, this ultrahard metal adds to the quality of a weapon or suit of armor. Weapons fashioned from adamantine have a natural ability to bypass hardness when sundering weapons or attacking objects, ignoring hardness less than 20. Armor made from adamantine grants its wearer damage reduction of 1/— if it's light armor, 2/— if it's medium armor, and 3/— if it's heavy armor. Adamantine is so costly that weapons and armor made from it are always of masterwork quality; the masterwork cost is included in the prices given below. Thus, adamantine weapons and ammunition have a +1 enhancement bonus on attack rolls, and the armor check penalty of adamantine armor is lessened by 1 compared to ordinary armor of its type. Items without metal parts cannot be made from adamantine. An arrow could be made of adamantine, but a quarterstaff could not.
Weapons and armor normally made of steel that are made of adamantine have one-third more hit points than normal. Adamantine has 40 hit points per inch of thickness and hardness 20.
Creatures do not usually have hardness. If one does, apply adamantine until creature is now a pile of objects. In other words: If it has hardness, of less than 20, adamantine cuts through it. When adamantine was created as a material in D&D, there were exactly zero creatures that had hardness instead of DR, so there was no reason to put in a line that it effected them as well.
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Well, I was specifically asking because I'm playing in the Iron Gods AP, I have an Adamantine Sword but my GM was saying since it specifically says "objects" that it wouldn't apply.
But I've seen people on here talk about using Adamantine to fight robots.
I was trying to find a ruling (or a dev post, errata, FAQ, etc) that says that Adamantine applies to creature hardness. If such a thing exists.
Some monsters - notably objects animated with the animate objects spell or permanent animated objects using the same rules, plus a few others - can have actual hardness, but it's not super common. Animated objects, robots - I can't think of any other examples off the top of my head, actually.
Overall it is much more common for monsters to have damage reduction than hardness, but for golems and clockwork creatures and the like, that damage reduction does tend to be DR/adamantine anyway.
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I don't think the devs ever considered that someone would interpret creature!hardness as working differently from object!hardness, considering that the only creatures that have hardness are those that are also objects.
Hardness is only defined in the rules in terms of its effects on objects. So, your GM is saying that the rule for adamantine ignoring hardness is a rule about objects and not about creatures. Well, by the same argument, the rule for subtracting hardness from damage dealt to objects is a rule about objects and not about creatures. If he looks in the universal monster rules, and in the specific rules of the robots, there's no rule saying to deduct hardness from damage, so unless he's applying the rules from attacking objects in the CRB, he shouldn't be doing that either.
Of course, this may not sway him if he's convinced this is the way it's supposed to be, but you might be able to make the point to him if you ask him to show you the rule that hardness decreases the damage done to robots and other such creatures, without reference to the Additional Rules chapter of the CRB.
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I don't think the devs ever considered that someone would interpret creature!hardness as working differently from object!hardness, considering that the only creatures that have hardness are those that are also objects.
Hardness is only defined in the rules in terms of its effects on objects. So, your GM is saying that the rule for adamantine ignoring hardness is a rule about objects and not about creatures. Well, by the same argument, the rule for subtracting hardness from damage dealt to objects is a rule about objects and not about creatures. If he looks in the universal monster rules, and in the specific rules of the robots, there's no rule saying to deduct hardness from damage, so unless he's applying the rules from attacking objects in the CRB, he shouldn't be doing that either.
Of course, this may not sway him if he's convinced this is the way it's supposed to be, but you might be able to make the point to him if you ask him to show you the rule that hardness decreasaes the damage done to robots and other such creatures, without reference to the Additional Rules chapter of the CRB.
Is this actually stated or are you drawing that conclusion because it's only things like golems that have hardness?
DR - for creatures.
Hardness - for objects.
Some creatures have HARDNESS instead of DR (animated objects).
If You hit them with admantine sword - You will bypass the hardness, that is less then 20.
Also You can bypass DR/Adamantine.
Why DM thinks, that you can bypass the hardness of statue that is NOT alive, and absolutely can not bypass hardness of the SAME statue, beacuse it was animated round ago?