Sircowdog's page

The kicker to this problem is the Penetrating Strikes feat, which is reducing the effectiveness of DR by 5. The Cold Iron would still be the better DR, stopping the first 10 points of each attack.

The GM running the game is using the 'flavor' part of stoneskin being on the outside of the creature, and will still absorb damage. But we called the game before it became an issue(this was at the VERY end of the gaming session). Everyone agreed that it was somewhat of a strange situation, so I figured I'd ask the pros here what they thought.

OK, here is the situation:

A monster has DR 15/Cold Iron. A 12th level caster places stoneskin on this monster, giving it DR 10/Adamantite with 120 stoneskin hitpoints. A fighter attacking the monster with the Penetrating Strike using a +2 Mithral Elven Curve Blade.

How is this attack resolved? DR generally doesn't stack, only using the higher value. However, penetrating strike would ignore the first 5 points of DR. The weapon is neither Cold Iron or Adamantite, or carrying a +3 or greater enhancement bonus. So the DR 15/Cold Iron would reduce the damage from this Curveblade by 10.

Would the Stoneskin hitpoints not ever lose any value since the DR/15 Cold Iron is the better DR? Or would penetrating strike also effect the stoneskin DR, causing the Stoneskin to only absorb 5 instead of 10 hitpoints? Or would the DR/15 Cold Iron still take effect AND the stoneskin would absorb 10 hitpoints per hit?

This strikes me as a fairly unique situation, but I'm interested to know how stoneskin behaves when cast on a target that has a DR greater than 10.

Any input is greatly appreciated.