I'd have no problem with this, Sunder is valid tactic. I would increase the wealth though. Just keep the players at the guideline for WBL, if +2 sword is sundered and destroyed (actually not easy task but can be done) then that player now has 8000 GP in wealth you can distribute in encounters. If you increase the wealth you will run into issue with CR encounters. If you do this increase the APL of the party by 1.
Also if it were me in you game I'd play a fighter and crank my CMD against sunders using the Favored class bonus and grab improved sunder/greater sunder for 50 CMD against sunder and trips. Good luck sundering anything on that guy.
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There's a fine line between coddling and being a jerk, but discounting perfectly interesting situations because your more numbers-focused players might pout for a bit (until they replace their lost item almost instantaneously due to any number of repair methods/buying a new one/crafting a new one/finding a better one) is doing them a disservice.
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The great dragon smaug is making his way toward the human line, slaughtering as he goes. Bard, the great bowman and future king of Dale, draws the arrow back to his cheek.
‘Black Arrow! I have saved you to the last. You have never failed me and always I have recovered you. I had you from my father and he from of old. If ever you came from the forges of the true king under the..."
Random nameless barbarian runs by and sunders the black arrow. Smaug proceeds to kill everyone. The end.
Nope. No reason for a pc to be upset at all.
This only makes sense if the GM was literally engineering a "rocks fall, everyone dies" situation. We're talking about the GM potentially destroying one or two of a 12th-level party's countless magic items.
“….it is just a great tactic to ruin the magic items of anyone who could be a threat”. Not if they kill you while you’re doing it, or if they can replace the items overnite or if a simple spell can repair them.
So, not so much.
But it is great you talking to the players first, that should work to minimize shock and hurt feelings.
ummmm how many fighters can fight without a sword? and if you read, he has backup as well, so crippling defensive capabilities also hurts the pcs for the encounter“….it is just a great tactic to ruin the magic items of anyone who could be a threat”. Not if they kill you while you’re doing it, or if they can replace the items overnite or if a simple spell can repair them.
So, not so much.
But it is great you talking to the players first, that should work to minimize shock and hurt feelings.
Back up weapons. Improved Unarmed Combat. In any case, the weakness lasts for one combat and the spellcasters are infinitely more dangerous.
I cleaned up some posts. Don't be jerks.
The website deleted all of my stuff, here's a rundown. Yes, do it. I'd do it in a low wealth campaign.
It's something the NPC would do anyway. If it's stupid, then tearing at the closest stuff to it (the PC's shiny, cold skin) is reasonable. If it's smart, then it uses tactics. It adds flavor to an encounted and makes it memorable. It's better than "the barbarian hits you with his axe. And does it again."
PF did not continue the long standing fireballs force item saving throws. Most DM's never did it but imagine if every time a fireball or such ripped through the party potenially items could be destroyed.
Nothing is more terrifiying than level draining monsters at least back in 2e.
If that is the purpose of the sundering I do not see why there is a problem. I would not do it multiple times.
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Like I said, it depends on the kind of players you have. If they are more into role-playing than power-gaming then they would like this scenario. If it's the other way around, then they'll start to whine and cry about it and how unfair it is.
If they role play the whine and crying will be comeing from most of the characters.
So, to the OP, my experience with this sort of gamemastering is that you create a paranoid group of players who start to desperately seek for tactics to protect their stuff as their first and most important priority.
Good luck with keeping them engaged in your campaigns.
Believe it or not, having a GM rip my stuff up and then say "but look! I gave you lots of cool NEW STUFF!" doesn't really appeal to me. Besides making me have to readjust my expectations, all it does is remind me that the GM is God and my PC is totally and completely at your mercy.
Not a great way to encourage me to want to play.
But maybe that's just me.
PF did not continue the long standing fireballs force item saving throws. Most DM's never did it but imagine if every time a fireball or such ripped through the party potenially items could be destroyed
Off topic, but I experienced the utter ridiculousness of that first-hand. Our DM made all party magic items roll a Fort save when subjected to damage, but she took it one better and added that all magic items that break EXPLODE with a force relative to their power. We were all 20th-level characters, so we were carrying around millions of GP worth of magic items, of course. We were walking in a cavern when we were hit with a simple fireball trap.
"Everyone roll FORT saves for your items."
We all started poring over our characters sheets, making rolls. 90% of the items made it, but for those few that broke, the DM started to roll handfuls of d6 dice for subsequent explosions. Then those explosions forced us to make all new FORT saves, and of course a few items failed, so those items exploded, causing us to make a new round of FORT saves, causing those items to explode, and so forth until almost everyone in the party was dead (one or two people survived with a handful of hit points) and nearly all our magic items were gone.
And, of course, all the nearby drow were alerted by the sound of all those explosions...
Not the greatest moment. At first it was annoying, then it was funny, and then it was annoying again. >:(
As for the OP, I see nothing wrong with this. Hell, I'd give the Barbarian a weapon that forces rapid entropy on every item...akin to Rust Monster Rust Touch...first strike causes item automatically loss half its HP and become broken, with the Second strike resulting in the item becoming destroyed. You could even make it the weapon suffers its own entropic effects without destroying something with it or once it falls from the Barbarian's hands.
Of course, I've made it a point with every game I've run, to let my player's know to NOT get too attached to magic items...the game is about the characters, not their toys.
Putting together a gear list for a high level character takes a long time. For some characters it could be the most time consuming part of the character creation process. If I spend the several hours putting that together only to lose all that stuff inthe first encounter I wouldn't care if I was refunded, I wouldnt want to have to sort through it again. The accounting part of this game is my least favorite part by far.
This is the biggest issue I have with the scenario. You gave them more money than usual, which increases the already-lengthy time they have to spend purchasing gear. Then you're going to destroy said gear. You are literally wasting your players' out-of-game time, which is simply rude. It is similar to telling them the game starts at 2:00, and then not showing up until 4:00.
I am in favor of using sundering in a game, but sparingly, and only in a game that has been active for some time. As has been said repeatedly, having your stuff destroyed often takes the fun out of the game, even if the players are mature about it; remember that even if you're lucky enough to have a mature group, something like this can still ruin their enjoyment of the game. I've been in a similar situation, and though I didn't throw a fit I lost interest in the campaign almost immediately. I can't speak for the other members of the group, but we sort of fell apart after that. I do know we all pretty much stopped prioritizing the game because we no longer looked forward to it. We no longer had any drive; why kill monsters, take their stuff, and become stronger when all your effort can so easily be destroyed? Two of the group lost interest in tabletop RPGs entirely, and the rest of us ended up leaving the hobby for several years.
To sum things up, your players might be angry, they might not. Either way you risk spoiling the hobby for them; I'd recommend scrapping your sunder-all barbarian and telling your story in a different way.