Werll heres the thing, I think even the steel weapons cut through a little quick.
I don't think theres many/any people on Earth that could manage 3' per 10 minutes through stone with a steel pick.
@Mike yeah I saw your post.
Perhaps you saw mine, where I pointed out that Adam just isn't that good, and that despite it being harder tahn steel it is only maringally better than Mith, yet no one is claiming Mith has superpowers. Similarly the protective nature of this awesome stuff is just not that great either, and at the end of the day when I bang a guy in iron armour with it, it isn't much better than banging him with a flea market iron equivalent.
So lets not get too set on turning Stone Golems into rubble as being proof. Seems to fall down on just about any other test.
If Mithril ignored hardness up to its own it would be said to do these things to anything of that hardness or less your not looking at all the properties just the ones that fit your arguement.
The rules for armor apply even if i'm swing a wooden stick at the guy which would probably break but its only a model not a scientific simulation.
Also instead of attacking the guy sunder his armor guess what your a lot closer to touch ac now.
Unenchated steel fullplate has 45hp power attacking him with a Adamantine katana at 5th level(once again earliest you could expect o have one) with 18 str and a fighter so +3 wp spec and training you deal an avg. 19.5 so in two hits his armor is broken and in two more its gone. if that a regular katana make that 8 total rounds. If you max damage even once with adam you can break his armor in 3 rounds. Thats the power of Adamantine.
I'm not debating that Adamantine isn't good, indeed it is fabulous stuff.
It just isn't this mythical amazing material that cuts through iron and steel like paper etc etc. It just doesn't do that at all.
It certainly is quite effective against objects, and as you rightly point out, can sunder up armour twice as quick as a cheapo iron longsword from the corner shop, but thats about the extent of its wonderstuff.
That is a looooooooooooooong way from going gold mining with a katana.
So as I say, it is good gear and worth the 3000gp, but lets not get carried away by giving it 'internet katana story' status.
ROMAVD and RAGM and merry christmas its time to go home and watcha small child open goodies.
To each GM his own and good luck however either presented stance taken to extremes will lead to its own brand of silliness.
If you ever find your self at my table know that while it is not a super material Adam is well worth its price and is more than a vanity material.
As for mining apparently you cant get through stone as picks can't be used for mining looks like no metals ever actually get mined per raw except maybe with a wizards. until tomorrow my friends.
And a Merry Christmas to you too.
I'm reckoning the picks they have as weapons aren't mining picks, but rather the smaller one handed ones for trying to attack armoured opponents.
Have a good one :)
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The main point is, can it damage a stone wall? Yes, it can. A wall has hit points, an adamantine weapon takes those away. It's not all that fast, a stone wall has a lot of hit points, but you can do it. I can make it through a wall with an icepick, it will take years, but I can do it. A hero with a weapon made of a fantastical metal should be able to do it, at least before they reach old age.
Adamantium darts ftw!
A hero with a weapon made of a fantastical metal should be able to do it, at least before they reach old age.
But probably not before his morning coffee got cold, which is the problem we are seeing.
As you say, you could use a lot of things and get there eventually, they aren't the right tools for the job though, and neither is your Katana.
So yeah you probably could, but it is not what the burst/break rules reflect, which is more about tearing through quickly.
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This just in:
Famous adventurer Lamey McWeakSauce escaped from Prince Humperdink's dungeons using naught but his adamantine sewing needle!
Internet-witness news reports that McWeakSauce left a 5' wide tunnel, burrowed through the 20' of solid stone castle foundation to reach the inner bailey.
Mord, head gaoler, is at a loss to explain the miraculous escape. "Well, uh, Mord no know whut happen. Me suppose Lamey McWeakSauce convinced GM that adamantine ignore all stone hardness.."
The prince's CSI (Corerules Stretching Incident) detectives have been more forthcoming. They report that the 20' thick stone wall had something called 'hit points' in a total value estimated at around 3600. They furthermore believe that Lamey McWeakSauce used the needle hidden somewhere upon his person to dig at the wall in units of time they refer to as 'rounds', which this reporter is informed to be roughly 6 seconds. Furthermore detectives stress that they have no proof, but believe that the sewing needle was 'wieded two handed' for something called 'one and a half strength bonus'. Even managing only '1 hp per round' of damage, CSI detectives estimate it took about 360 hours of attacking the wall, or roughly 15 days of work. Mord has gone on record to state that 'it good thing Lamey didn't have adamantine katana instead.'
Prince Humperdink has not commented on the escape, except as follows. "If Lamey McWeakSauce were as good a regular lawyer as being a rules lawyer, he never would have found himself convicted and incarcerated in the first place..."
This just in:
Famous adventurer Lamey McWeakSauce escaped from Prince Humperdink's dungeons using naught but his adamantine sewing needle!
Internet-witness news reports that McWeakSauce left a 5' wide tunnel, burrowed through the 20' of solid stone castle foundation to reach the inner bailey.
Mord, head gaoler, is at a loss to explain the miraculous escape. "Well, uh, Mord no know whut happen. Me suppose Lamey McWeakSauce convinced GM that adamantine ignore all stone hardness.."
The prince's CSI (Corerules Stretching Incident) detectives have been more forthcoming. They report that the 20' thick stone wall had something called 'hit points' in a total value estimated at around 3600. They furthermore believe that Lamey McWeakSauce used the needle hidden somewhere upon his person to dig at the wall in units of time they refer to as 'rounds', which this reporter is informed to be roughly 6 seconds. Furthermore detectives stress that they have no proof, but believe that the sewing needle was 'wieded two handed' for something called 'one and a half strength bonus'. Even managing only '1 hp per round' of damage, CSI detectives estimate it took about 360 hours of attacking the wall, or roughly 15 days of work. Mord has gone on record to state that 'it good thing Lamey didn't have adamantine katana instead.'
Prince Humperdink has not commented on the escape, except as follows. "If Lamey McWeakSauce were as good a regular lawyer as being a rules lawyer, he never would have found himself convicted and incarcerated in the first place..."
ROMVORD
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ROMVORDThis just in:
Famous adventurer Lamey McWeakSauce escaped from Prince Humperdink's dungeons using naught but his adamantine sewing needle!
Internet-witness news reports that McWeakSauce left a 5' wide tunnel, burrowed through the 20' of solid stone castle foundation to reach the inner bailey.
Mord, head gaoler, is at a loss to explain the miraculous escape. "Well, uh, Mord no know whut happen. Me suppose Lamey McWeakSauce convinced GM that adamantine ignore all stone hardness.."
The prince's CSI (Corerules Stretching Incident) detectives have been more forthcoming. They report that the 20' thick stone wall had something called 'hit points' in a total value estimated at around 3600. They furthermore believe that Lamey McWeakSauce used the needle hidden somewhere upon his person to dig at the wall in units of time they refer to as 'rounds', which this reporter is informed to be roughly 6 seconds. Furthermore detectives stress that they have no proof, but believe that the sewing needle was 'wieded two handed' for something called 'one and a half strength bonus'. Even managing only '1 hp per round' of damage, CSI detectives estimate it took about 360 hours of attacking the wall, or roughly 15 days of work. Mord has gone on record to state that 'it good thing Lamey didn't have adamantine katana instead.'
Prince Humperdink has not commented on the escape, except as follows. "If Lamey McWeakSauce were as good a regular lawyer as being a rules lawyer, he never would have found himself convicted and incarcerated in the first place..."
I just wanted to let you know that I love you, in a very special way, for that. I have continually struggled to get any type of non-spellcaster to be able to do anything special. Want to have your tenth level fighter do a heroic combat trick slightly outside of rules as usual? Make me 19 separate skill checks, and if you fail any of them you fall prone. For three rounds.
Want to make a spell to do the same? ...alright, seems reasonable that your 3rd level wizard should be able to get a +8 to his grapple checks for the next 30 rounds. Then the monk in the back wearily raises his hand, quietly begins to utter a request only to hear "SHUT UP! Your flurry of blows now uses your intelligence to hit, and the average of your charisma and wisdom modifiers are what you add to your AC!"
Meanwhile, Superstar McAnimepants walks in chugging a 2 liter of Mountain Dew, wanting to try this new Half-dragon halfling that he has affectionately dubbed a "Dragonling" who wields a ten foot long katana made of depleted uranium, playing a cleric of a deity he wrote up who he can only describe as "Awesome."
...is it possible to be racist against gamers as a whole? There are days I think I get close.
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Well not to say that caster vs martial balance isn't a potential issue worthy of discussion.
But let's leave those sentiments to the many other threads dedicated to such discussions.
Whether or not martial classes need some boosting shouldn't be relevant to whether or not adamantine weapons ignore appropriateness for damaging objects. In my opinion, anyhow.
I find it humorous that people can cite RAW on here about the properties of adamantine, and they're just written off as "mythical." I seriously smirked at that and "lol'd" on the inside (because that's what we really mean when we say 'lol').
Making an analogy of rock to paper when referencing hardness ratings in Pathfinder is perfectly acceptable, and here's why: there is no better way to make that comparison. Mohs scale of hardness only applies to minerals, whereas Pathfinder has to find a massive range of hardnesses for objects made of tons of materials, from fibers such as cotton or silk, to paper and wood, to soft metals like gold, to ultrahard metals like the fictional adamantine. Writing that simple effect off for fear of breaking your personal fear of a player hurting a castle wall makes adamantine weapons nothing more than novelty items.
Your play is taking the time chop away at a wall that's going to take 36 hours of in-game time? "Well dang; sorry Ragnar, the castle guards heard you banging your blade against the stone and they've come to investigate the noise. Roll initiative!"
No one has even considered magically treated walls yet. That adds hardness and HP (not that the hardness matters).
I would also like to know who in the world thinks hitting s stone wall with a blunt hammer is more effective than hitting it with something with some sort of edge or point. Granted the pick has been cited as what should be the best, but the hammer has come up as well, and not only as part of the hammer vs rope argument. I would agree that a hammer hitting A stone, like a creek rock or something... that would be effective. But a hammer on a stone wall? That's dumb, and would take ages to get anywhere, adamantine or not.
A stone, like a creek rock or something... that would be effective. But a hammer on a stone wall? That's dumb, and would take ages to get anywhere, adamantine or not.
I can attest to this to an extent, as I have had the opportunity to take a solid sledge to a wall in my basement for a while. After about ten minutes, I didn't have the energy to go anymore, but I had barely dented the wall. Admittedly, my strength at the time was below average, for I was a 15 year old nerdling.
My stance on it? Adamantine is a specialty material, much like mithril or cold iron, with specific properties and rules to govern them, the ability to bypass an item's hardness in particular. The question to me in this instance is not so much the ability of the sword to damage the wall. As the rules are written, it appears reasonable from my understanding. With that in mind, this to me does not seem to be just a question of damage, it is a question of accomplishing a specific task, that of cutting through a stone wall. As it would admittedly take an amount of time not fitting to combat, it seems to me putting it in terms of combat would be improper.
Personally, I figure roughly ten attacks per minute, each one dealing damage accordingly. Then, figuring rough size of hole needing to be cut, I'd figure the hit point total needed to get through on the appropriate number of sides. Why? Because to me, a stone wall having 540 hit points is pretty much straight through to a sword. My thinking is, if you take a pineapple and slice through it with a katana, you've cut it neatly in two. Now you're doing the same thing to a small chunk of stone, however, it's still connected to stone all around it, and it's not going anywhere with one swing. I'd probably require the character to do the damage at least twice, if not three times. So that puts it to 8 to 12 minutes to cut a hole through a three foot thick wall with a weapon worth over 3000 gp, all the while making a fair bit of noise. I don't see a problem with this. In a fantasy game of this sort, I think exceptional characters with exceptional tools should be able to do exceptional things.
deusvult: I apologize that my message came off that way, you're right, this is about the matter at hand, the katana question. I tend to view things in broader strokes, and this is one of them to me.
I admit, this is my opinion. I also believe in a similar light, a character should be able to grab a big enough dragon's leg and hang on for dear life while it's flying, and possibly even be able to attack with small weapons and such. I say it's a game, and creative players should be able to use their ideas, and suffer the consequences for them. The dragon jockey in my previous example? Take a guess who isn't getting a reflex save from the breath weapon?
I find it humorous that people can cite RAW on here about the properties of adamantine, and they're just written off as "mythical." I seriously smirked at that and "lol'd" on the inside (because that's what we really mean when we say 'lol').
Making an analogy of rock to paper when referencing hardness ratings in Pathfinder is perfectly acceptable, and here's why: there is no better way to make that comparison. Mohs scale of hardness only applies to minerals, whereas Pathfinder has to find a massive range of hardnesses for objects made of tons of materials, from fibers such as cotton or silk, to paper and wood, to soft metals like gold, to ultrahard metals like the fictional adamantine. Writing that simple effect off for fear of breaking your personal fear of a player hurting a castle wall makes adamantine weapons nothing more than novelty items.
Your play is taking the time chop away at a wall that's going to take 36 hours of in-game time? "Well dang; sorry Ragnar, the castle guards heard you banging your blade against the stone and they've come to investigate the noise. Roll initiative!"
No one has even considered magically treated walls yet. That adds hardness and HP (not that the hardness matters).
I would also like to know who in the world thinks hitting s stone wall with a blunt hammer is more effective than hitting it with something with some sort of edge or point. Granted the pick has been cited as what should be the best, but the hammer has come up as well, and not only as part of the hammer vs rope argument. I would agree that a hammer hitting A stone, like a creek rock or something... that would be effective. But a hammer on a stone wall? That's dumb, and would take ages to get anywhere, adamantine or not.
I'm not saying anything written above is wrong, or even that I disagree, but we've gotten so far from the OP's question that now there's a separate thread asking for faq/errata...
Apparently making attack rolls on a wall is superior to rolling Profession (architect/engineer/miner) and an adamantine katana is a masterwork tool.
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This thread has gotten very silly.
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I've finally figured out why this thread bothers me.
Anyone who has played 3.5 will tell you specific always trumps general.
Adamantine specifically states that an adamantine anything is a lightsaber. Anything you attack under 20 hardness is cheese versus you. It doesn't fit physics because physics for this does not exist. There is nothing that says under a given ultimate material strength it treats everything the same.
Ineffective weapons is general. It says this weapon might not apply if your dm says so. General, and purposely unclear.
So this thread is completely whether the generic,unclear, "its up to your dm" rule trumps the specific "adamantine says you're no different than cheese. period" rule. As someone who plays in pfs for the sole purpose of limiting gm power I'm going to vote for the exact specified ruling over the generic unclear one every time.
<The Price is Right audience-meter-goes-to-11 wild cheer>
I also like PFS for that exact reason: consistency -- You buy the game, and you actually get to play what you bought.
(While I love home games, I love them not so much when a DM declares my book was a waste of my money.)
= = = =
(And I so want to play a fancy-pants bard named Lamey McWeakSauce now...)
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As someone who plays in pfs for the sole purpose of limiting gm power
Possibly the singularly most concerning comment I have read on these boards to date.
What a horrible mindset to have to play with.
It depends Shifty on his reason I've had DM's who allowed or disallowed at a whim some examples
Feather fall suddenly kept arrows from hitting the target
You can only melee one target in a round unless you have cleave
Paladins can't flank or gain sneak attack
Wizards can cast spells from their book as if it were prepared
Invisibility doesn't keep you from being seen if your feet are displacing anything
Players cant take 10 on a climb check but can take 20 to disable traps
You can't gain 1.5 str with two handed weapons since thats how your supposed to wield them.
and my favorite
Healing spells dont heal damage from magic spells.
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Well, the most important part is, and I cannot stress this enough, is to have fun. If people are not having fun, then you are doing it wrong. Sometimes people forget this core fact, and as such, should be reminded of it. If being a jerk, whether as a player or DM, is your idea of fun, then you are playing the wrong game. When someone is impeding on your enjoyment of the game, you let them know that you want them, as well as yourself, to have fun.
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People do not talk it out because roleplaying is supposedly not something you do but something you ARE, and as such any criticism is taken very, very personally. Rather than risking this, people do things like kill tons of PCs, ad hoc well known rules, and so on. Fear the "you're destroying my fun, WAAAH!"
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Give and take, avoiding a discussion of any problem is doomed to fail. Being vindictive within the game is a passive aggressive move that only brings upon more disaster. Seriously, talking it out is the best solution, and the least amount of bad consequences. Just be civil, and ask that others do the same. This is why I play table top rpgs, and not WoW, for personal human interaction.
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Dear god, I mean no offense, but I dread the idea of playing with someone who plays like this. This is a roleplaying game, and you seem to despise roleplaying, and human interaction. You might as well be playing with yourself. I cannot wrap my head around playing a game in which I hate over 50% of what is in it.
Damn, there has to be something that suites you better.
I know being passive aggressive doesn't help, but not everyone understands that. So they keep doing these things to themselves and their groups.
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I know being passive aggressive doesn't help, but not everyone understands that. So they keep doing these things to themselves and their groups.
This is what talking it out is for, to let it be known that you are uncomfortable with this behavior. I mean, if I am doing something that makes my fellow players upset or uncomfortable, I surely want to know about it.
I'm spotting the trend that GM's all have one thing in common... the player?
Perhaps your style just rubs people the wrong way, and your disdain for the 'human' elements makes them gank you just so they can get back to the game?
Three years? Wow. :-) Me, it's closer to 23. I understand how some people like the ruleset and getting their characters to grow stronger, but for me personally just playing combat feels like a stale slog. I know exactly how to design encounters for the right CR, but I never had the energy to memorize the feat tables. In fact, those masses of rules options make my head hurt. And, if I get to choose, I by far prefer to see someone roleplaying well in a dangerous situation to seeing them killing some massive beastie. Different strokes. That said, I understand how the situations you describe can be frustrating.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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I am friends with my DMs, I figured most people were. Who has friends like the above examples? Does no one talk it out?I was friends with those dm's. the first one the player she killed was her husbands little brother.
A bit drastic, no?
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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@Talonhawke,
I think you hit on a point that has been overlooked by the 'katana aren't appropriate' crowd. That ruling is in the hands of a GM. So you're 'adamantine makes it appropriate' is just as legal as 'katana don't make good wall cutters'.
@deusvult
I think a needle is a light weapon, and doesn't get the two handed bonus. ;-)
OP requests thread CLOSED.
-.- Hijackers be hijacking.
A couple clarifications and to right the ship.....
A first level fighter with 18 str does 2d6+6 to that stone wall with a simple iron pickaxe... I don't know if people just dont go looking for these rules, but a pick axe on stone does 2x weapon damage and ignores all hardness, same with any other tool suited to the job.
2ndly, if you don't think a sledge hammer is better at breaking stone than any other pointed thing, you have never tried. I have broken up a lot of stone and concrete with sledges of varying size, and while it isn't easy work, it does work well.
What page is this on? This interests me
I reckon hardness and hp of objects is way off.
When players can routinely one round their way through a castle gate and portcullis, or the walls of a fort, the game gets a bit stupid.
Monks punching through castle walls is equally stupid. Really? He can punch a 5'x5' cube out of a castle wall?
I think they need to revist this part of the game, or define exactly what the damage means. Does overcoming the hardness and hp of a wall leave a 5' hole in it? or does it just make a bunch of smaller holes and cracks? What are the odds of structural collapse?
Annoyingly cheezy.
Here's a few things I wanted to say, the first of which is that this kind of things should depend on character level, since I could actually see a high-level Monk punching through walls with ki-infused fists. You call it cheesy, I call it anime-styled. Then again, I might have been watching too much DBZ or something to be saying that. And I think there's also the fact that some players want to feel mighty as hell regardless of actual level.
One thing I've noticed about this thread:
Nobody, except the "ineffective weapon" crowd, has invited the comparison of an adamantine katana to a lightsaber.
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It just isn't this mythical amazing material that cuts through iron and steel like paper etc etc. It just doesn't do that at all.
Except that it absolutely does.
Let's say there's two walls, each with 300 hit points. One is steel, the other is paper.
Destroying the steel wall with a steel weapon, if you deal 15 points of damage per hit, will take 60 hits. Destroying the paper wall with the same weapon dealing the same amount of damage will take 20 hits.
Let's say you have an adamantine weapon dealing the same amount of damage. The steel wall will be destroyed in 20 hits. The paper wall will also be destroyed in 20 hits.
Please explain to me how the adamantine weapon does NOT cut through the steel wall as if it were paper.
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stuff about a wall of paper that has 300 hit points
The thing you're willfully ignoring is that, unless you specifically state that it is a wall of paper that is also 10 feet thick with 300 hit points, the image that comes into mind when someone says "wall of paper" is a single sheet. Especially when you refer to a sword cutting through it.
Please explain to me how the adamantine weapon does NOT cut through the steel wall as if it were paper.
Paper wall with 300hp = 150" thick.
Stone wall with 300hp = 20" thick.So you could cut through 150" of paper, or only 20" of stone.
As 150" =/= 20", we can happily say it fails the test enormously, and by a factor of 7.5:1
Happy to have explained that to you.
PS, Steel was 15:1.
Paper wall with 300hp = 150" thick.
Stone wall with 300hp = 20" thick.So you could cut through 150" of paper, or only 20" of stone.
As 150" =/= 20", we can happily say it fails the test enormously, and by a factor of 7.5:1
Happy to have explained that to you.
PS, Steel was 15:1.
I must have missed the post where I, or anybody else, implied that the walls were the same thickness. In fact, I specifically stated in an earlier post that ease of cutting =/= speed of cutting. In other words, if you assumed that I or anyone else meant that one inch of one material = one inch of another material, then you were the one that was mistaken. To an adamantine weapon, HP are HP. Material is material. It's exactly like I said earlier- nobody invited a lightsaber comparison except the people trying to disprove it. Anyone who feels like going back to my earlier posts and actually reading them will see that what I'm saying now is consistent with all of them. It's not MY fault if you misunderstood the issue at hand.
My point still stands. Cutting through a wall of stone or steel or mithril is just as easy with an adamantine weapon as cutting through paper or cloth or flesh or ice or clay. If you incorrectly assume you know what that means, well... that's your own problem. It doesn't invalidate the point.
The thing you're willfully ignoring is that, unless you specifically state that it is a wall of paper that is also 10 feet thick with 300 hit points, the image that comes into mind when someone says "wall of paper" is a single sheet. Especially when you refer to a sword cutting through it.
I'm "willfully ignoring" the fact that you made an assumption that I neither stated nor implied? In every one of my posts I've stated the exact same thing I stated in this one here.
(And for the record, in all of my posts but the previous one, I typically used cheese or flesh as an example. But even with paper, the core rulebook itself gives HP per inch, not per sheet. If you imagine a single sheet of paper when someone says a wall, then the problem is on your end.)