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it even takes a lightsaber a while to break through a thick door :D (see episode 1)
I'd let a adamant greatsword do full damage to a wall, but walls have lots of health, it'll take some time.
15 hp per INCH of thickness. so 3ft thick wall is 540 as said above. That takes some work to get through.
if someone is getting silly about it, you could easily say the walls are 5' cubes (since everything else is a 5' cube). giving 5ft wall sections 900 health/ Granted as long as players are being reasonable about it there isn't much need for this distinction. ALSO it's damned loud :D
Smashing an Object
Smashing a weapon or shield with a slashing or bludgeoning weapon is accomplished with the sunder combat maneuver. Smashing an object is like sundering a weapon or shield, except that your combat maneuver check is opposed by the object's AC. Generally, you can smash an object only with a bludgeoning or slashing weapon.
Also this gets rid of whips and rapiers. non-lethal damage can't harm objects :D. Flails would work, they are basically big hammers with extra momentum (see wrecking balls).
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I'm with Kyle on this. Certain weaopn just will no cut through a door or a wall no matter what they are made of. Players use common sense and quit trying to rules lawyer.
In a nother genre of RPG My GM gave my barbarian of smaash a two handed great hammer that had a unique property that it deal a lot of extra damage to doors and walls so the barabain gleefully went through the dungon for seveal levels bypassing traps and doors walls etc until he came to the a holow core door packed with contact explosives and went boom luckly for him by that time we hade a cleric in the party that had death breaker and the barbarian was brought back for being blown up.
The Barbarbain learned his lesson he had the thief check the doors for traps and what not after that.
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Can an adamantine greatsword damage a wall? Yep. Is it going to be a lightsaber and just slice through it? Nope.
Open question for everyone. Let's say a wall has X hitpoints. If someone deals X damage to it over several rounds with their weapon, how big is the hole? The size of the weapon or the entire 5-ft square?
It's breached and no longer effective as a wall. I've said in the past that it has a Small-size hole in it and a similar amount of effort will make this a Medium-size hole.
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Where does it say that a wall that has been breached is only breached for small creatures - and needs to be re-breached for mediums?
To be perfectly honest, I was most concerned at the time whether a Small NPC rogue could jump through a hole made at head height (as specified by the player) by a single blow of an earth-breaker and just remarked that a Medium creature might have a bit more trouble.
Can a Medium creature fit thru a Small breach by squeezing?
Yes, that would follow.
is there an Excape Artist check to clear a small breach?
Medium - not required
Large - DC 30 (CRB p. 96, 194)
but claiming that an adamantine greatsword cannot cut through a wall pretty easily is ignoring the rules of adamantine.
i am just refuting that kyle's claim that they do not, is incorrect.
what rules of adamantine are over-ruling this:
Ineffective Weapons: Certain weapons just can’t effectively deal damage to certain objects. For example, a bludgeoning weapon cannot be used to damage a rope. Likewise, most melee weapons have little effect on stone walls and doors, unless they are designed for breaking up stone, such as a pick or hammer.
Adamantine weapons ignore Hardness 20 and nothing else.
So yes, they ignore the Hardness of Rock Walls, but still may not effectively deal damage anyways, per GM adjudication based on weapon type (pick and hammer being specific examples which can deal damage normally... it's a GM call, but it seems plausible that the GM would find signifigant the fact that the most common fantasy weapon, a sword, wasn't mentioned there, and rule that swords and other slashing weapons aren't effective damage dealers here, along with any weapon that doesn't resemble a hammer, pick, or other mining implement).Adamantine is still the best property, generally speaking, especially if you plan on keeping this one weapon and continually upgrading it.
Most melee characters will eventually want extra Enhancement To-Hit bonuses anyways, which eventually cover the other DR types. (Silver/Cold Iron)
Silver/Mithril/ColdIron really only have a niche in the time period when you can afford the special material weapon but can't afford a +X weapon. Barbarians pass that window quicker than anybody, with Furious weapon enchants. If you AREN'T planning/hoping to continually upgrade the weapon (which is the most economically efficient option in PFS), then choosing a Mithril/ColdIron weapon IS very useful during that 'window', but it is a limited time-span of benefit.
In home games, you can use Mithril/ColdIron as soon as you can afford to (before you can afford the higher Enchants to overcome those DR) and then just ditch the weapon and it no longer counts as 'wealth' towards your WBL, so it isn't penalizing you after the point you CAN afford a high +X weapon. Going with Mithril/ColdIron MW Weapons before you even get a Magic Weapon can make some sense as well (and in a PFS context, is less money to eat).
I suppose you could go for a +1 Brilliant Energy/etc Weapon made of Cold Iron, but that isn't useful vs. Natural Armor type enemies (many of which are the ones to have DR/Cold Iron in the first place), so that kind of reinforces the point.
I do think that there is a good amount of flexibility in PFS, and you DON'T need to take the 'most economically efficient' option in order to survive and succeed on the missions, so if you want to take a Cold Iron Weapon and enhance it earlier on, that's OK, although you may later either want to sell it for an Adamantine weapon of higher +X, or maybe just pick up an Adamantine weapon that is non-magical or of lower +X for when you encounter Adamantine DR. It's also pretty easy to overcome even Heavy Adamantine DR, so if you don't worry about it too much, it's not that big of a deal either.
Adamantine also has the unique benefit of giving the item more HPs, protection against Sunder or other damaging effects.
I do/have used Mithril for characters with low-ish STR scores, it can definitely help keep Encumbrance low.
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If Player A buys a Adamatine weapon, let's say a hammer, expecting to be able to remove a door - only to play for a judge that rules in the middle of the game "Axes are the only weapon that that works on wooden doors, so it has DR 8 vs. your weapon ... and the monster now knows you are knocking." This is not a good outcome. It gets worse when he plays his next game and the judge has the monster rip a door down with a +4 weapon ("...which works just like Adamatine!"). YMMV at it's best.
Making up arbitrary examples does nothing to help the situation, especially when they contain content no one has suggested. Are you looking for an argument here?
If you want a hard and fast "only what the text says," then only hammers and picks can take out a wall since they're the only ones listed.
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I'm with Kyle on this, great swords are generally ineffective against stone walls no mater what material they are made of.
I did have a player complain to me once that the only reason they paid for adamantine was so they could cut through everything, I admit I did not have a lot of sympathy for them.
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If Player A buys a Adamatine weapon, let's say a hammer, expecting to be able to remove a door - only to play for a judge that rules in the middle of the game "Axes are the only weapon that that works on wooden doors, so it has DR 8 vs. your weapon ... and the monster now knows you are knocking." This is not a good outcome. It gets worse when he plays his next game and the judge has the monster rip a door down with a +4 weapon ("...which works just like Adamatine!"). YMMV at it's best.
What rules are we playing with?
Really, what rules ARE we playing with?
The 'appropriate weapon for damaging an object' rule NOWHERE invokes DR vs. non-appropriate weapons.The rules give examples of what is appropriate for damaging a rock wall.
If a weapon is not appropriate, it CAN'T damage the object at all, regardless of Hardness or DR.
Ultimately, it's a GM call (with Hammers and Picks vs. Rock Walls the only given guidance)
That's what the rules say, similarly to how Free Actions work. That is the rule, that it is a GM call.
The rules leaving it up to the GM is no less strong of a rule than others, even if you're used to the rules specifying everything in game terms.
In this case, it's specified to be a GM call, of what constitutes 'most melee weapons' that aren't Picks/Hammers.
...So nobody should expect a certain function independent of GM. Sure, a GM could be a dick just because,
but if you pick a weapon that reasonably is similar to tools used to destroy that object type, that should generally be allowed.
If the GM is truly set on being a dick, they can do so so many other ways 'within the rules', so why get hung up about it here?
Since battering rams are used to break down doors, which are basically bludgeoning, I don't see why hammers would be ruled as ineffective weapons vs. wooden doors, as they are basically small one/two-handed battering rams... So, that example is particularly non-impressive to me.
'Strictly following the rules' is recognizing that the rules state that certain weapons aren't effective at destroying certain objects, and Adamantine does nothing to change that. Hammers and Picks are given as examples of effective weapons vs. walls. GMs may interpret other weapon/object cases however they may, but nobody should be surprised for a weapon to be ruled ineffective. I wouldn't be surprised if swords were ruled ineffective vs. a rock wall, and sure, nothing in the RAW says you are wrong if you as a GM rule that they ARE effective, but nothing suppports that they are, either... and certainly, the rules suggest that some (actually, MOST) weapons are ineffective at destroying such objects. For anybody playing PFS, the conservative option (hammers or picks for destroying rock walls) is generally a better bet.
that is not buying it under different rules, it is buying it under different (wrong) understanding of the rules.
GM'ing a home game, i am amenable to be understanding of that sort of thing (although in home games, operating under WBL, losing an item makes that WBL newly available, while PFS doesn't use WBL you just have the income you have, and if you lose an item you bought, that wealth is lost), but i don't see a reoourse in PFS for that. unless the player actually ends up signifigantly below WBL though, it doesn't really seem like a problem.
wooden doors, or ice, don't have specific guidance on what is appropriate/inappropriate weapons to destroy them, but they still are subject to the inappropriate weapon rule, it's just wholly a GM call as to what is appropriate/inappropriate for those materials. i'm sure most GMs won't have a problem making some decision there... that there isn't a consistent ruling across the board for PFS is maybe somewhat unfortunate, but i don't think a crucial issue for the game, each GM can continue to make their calls, even if it conflicts with a previous GM.
So, at your table the stone wall has DR as well as hardness? How much are you reducing the damage the greatsword by?
The wall has XX damage. Hit it with a greatsword that does YY and the wall XX - (YY-hardness) left. UNDER THE CURRENT RULES.
The current rules say that some weapons are ineffective against objects. It mentions (but is not restricted to) blunt weapons vs ropes, or using only picks and hammers vs walls. So your 12th level halfling fighter with piranha strike, greater weapon specialist and weapon training in the Bladed Scarf can't take down a wall with a glorified piece of cloth, no matter if YY>hardness and can do XX damage in ZZ rounds.
For exactly the same reasons he can't cut a rope with a club, even if the rope has few hp and no hardness at all.
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To be honest, for a weapon trying to destroy a wall, I would look at the underwater combat rules, and use them in relation to the weapon in order to determine the damage done.
Item designed to work with rock (mining tool)? Full damage
Item designed to bash or slash its target (mace or sword)? Half damage
Item designed to pierce its target (rapier)? Quarter damage
Adamantine would, of course, bypass hardness less than 20, but, in any case, all else being equal, a tool designed for the job at hand works better at the job than something improvised. A pick or hammer are tools designed to work in stone. Swords are designed to work with flesh, bone, and miniscule amounts of metal.
Oh, and to the poster who said that whips and rapiers couldn't harm the wall because they do non-lethal:
1) Rapiers are lethal weapons, just a very small area where the damage is applied.
2) My PC has the Whip Mastery feat, and can, therefore, do lethal damage with a whip. It wouldn't be quick, but it could still, with the proper setup, do enough lethal damage to get past that 8 hardness...
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I wouldn't object to greatswords used to tear down walls. Though I admit the method would be different. You'd have to create "windows" with the sword, and I'd imagine that requires a little more than mindless bashing.
It's hard to imagine a material that would somehow *ignore* hardness, as if a sword made of the material would treat steel and iron as ordinary flesh. But flesh normally has bones! Those would stop a normal steel sword, right? So a sword would always create a small slash in the stone wall, but would thus be rather ineffective.
This is a great derail. I learned a new thing about the rules though, so thank Baird!
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Whoa, I didn't mean to derail this with my first comment. I am more referring to a generalized scenario where a party would be locked away for an indefinite amount of time (say a dungeon or crypt.) If you've got a Cleric who can conjure food and water, it's good to know you're not utterly dead because of the large stone door. Are you hacking away at a stone slab for a week or two? Yeah. Is it EFFECTIVE? Not terribly so. Are you gonna get to the other side eventually? Yeah, at least that's my take on it. Just hope you don't starve/dehydrate/see the Wizard die to ghoul fever.
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Adamantine states that it bypasses hardness. It does not state that it makes the weapon "designed for breaking up stone."are you saying that only hammers and picks are the only ones capable of damaging a wall? that an adamantine item has no chance because it was not specifically designed to go through a wall? my argument is that the specific case of adamantine trumps the broad rule of weapons damaging objects.
Actually I disagree on what is considered the general and what is considered the specific in this case.
Adamantine is a general rule. Weapon Types vs. Stone Walls is a specific rule.
Are you saying you can cut a rope with an adamantine hammer?i'm sorry i thought we were talking about adamantine greatswords. are you saying that an adamantine greatsword cannot damage a wall? that was my point. a big 2 handed adamantine any-weapon should do damage to a stone wall. not just hammers or picks.
The concept still matters. If you say that an adamantine Hammer can obviously not cut a rope, why should it be any different for a wall and a sword? It still an object and how it is affected by a specific damage type.
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Needed to bypass hardness - adamantine.
Items with hardness - Animated objects, and walls (and lots of other things).
How to "cut" thru walls - damage.
SO... best way to get thru a wall is with an adamantine item that does lots of damage. Best item for that (under the current rules system) is the greatsword.
SO... best digging tool in the game? Adamantine Greatsword - that's why all those dwarven miners use it.
Don't like it? we need to change the rules....
Why would an Adamantine Greatsword, by the rules, be the best weapon for cutting through a stone wall?
The rules for cutting through a stone wall says that a Greatsword would suck at it.
So why would you ignore that rule, because another rule that doesn't talk about damage type, says that adamantine ignores hardness?
Why do people take rules as stand alone statements, instead of figuring out how they apply in context with the rest of the rules of the game?
And now this "fix" makes Wall spells that much better. Does the BBEG have a hammer or pick? No? Wall him in.
And until we work out the fine points, there is going to be a lot of YMMV issues. One judge allows Morningstars - while another...
This isn't a fix. It's how the rule has always been. You've apparently been ignoring the rules.
There isn't working out any fine points. Beyond specific cases mentioned by the rules, it's left up to GM fiat.No discussion will ever establish how other cases are treated on a RAW basis, because the RAW leaves it up to the GM.
As mentioned, STR checks are definitely an option in many cases. One less reason to ignore rules you don't like.
yeah, like I said, I think Adamantine is the best deal if you plan on keeping and upgrading the same weapon,
and are playing under PFS constraints where selling equipment for less money actually impacts the wealth you should be expected to have (vs. WBL in home games), and you should probably be aiming to upgrade it to +2 and +3 and +4 weapon as soon as you can - Barbarian Furious Weapons make that easier. Over-all, there are really alot more creatures that have Silver/Cold Iron DR (compared to Adamantine DR) but the normal +X enhancements will overcome those. The higher HPs/Hardness is a benefit of it's own for a magic weapon you want to keep and continually upgrade without losing money by selling for less gold/starting over.
In general, most GMs will probably let you do damage to a wall with an adamantine sword, the only question is how long it will take to make an appreciable hole. Be prepared for table variation and all that.
I once had my gunslinger make a bullet door with a musket, a massive amount of attacks per round, and an effectively inexhaustable supply of adamantine bullets courtesy of an Abundant Ammunition spell. It took quite a while though. I didn't care, we had alternate means of bypassing said wall, it was the style of the thing. At least the GM handwaved the process rather than make me roll.
-k
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I am glad this came up. At a convention game, I saw a PC charge a door/wall on a mount, and hit it with an adamantine lance. The right feats came into play, and it was a ton of damage to the obstacle. Which I found more cheezy than dramatic. It would make sense to argue that the lance skewers through the wall and the pc and mount crash into the thing in a big heap!
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I am glad this came up. At a convention game, I saw a PC charge a door/wall on a mount, and hit it with an adamantine lance. The right feats came into play, and it was a ton of damage to the obstacle. Which I found more cheezy than dramatic. It would make sense to argue that the lance skewers through the wall and the pc and mount crash into the thing in a big heap!
+1 :)
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But with the use of Wall spells I can see PCs just shutting down encounters.
Drop the bad guy in a pit, then cover with a wall of stone cap (shaped like a box). Does he have a hammer or pick? no? come back tomorrow after you have healed/recharged.
The PCs are meant to win, you know...
Oh noes, they're using high-level spells to effect the baddies...
How is this a problem?
And, overall, how does it really differ from using a Pit spell, drop the enemy in it, one way or another, then cast a Wall spell as a cap on it, so that the target gets squished when the Pit ends, and tries to lift it back to ground level, but runs it into the Wall instead?
Also, just as something to think about:
Would you rather try to chop down a wooden door with an adamantine axe or adamantine sword?
Would you rather try to break open a stone or concrete wall with an adamantine pick or adamantine sword?
Sure, you could kill that Imp, maybe even in one shot, with a regular greatsword, you can easily do enough damage to overwhelm the poor thing's DR. But, while the maximum damage will be lower, all the damage you do would be applied with a silvered dagger.
Overall, trying to keep some verisimilitude is within RAW: "Some weapon will do better against certain targets than other weapons will." At least we don't have to track damage to weapons done by making attacks with them, nor damage to armor or shields due to preventing damage to the PC from an attack.
Tracking deteriorating equipment would be non-fun intensive.
So, can someone use this feat to do non-lethal damage with blunt arrows without taking the -4 to hit penalty?
RAW, yes. Logically? Maybe not.
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Hammers do fairly well breaking up stone. YOu can in fact get through a door with a hammer, so i understand your players puzzlement.
I think the problem is that you're saying that a pick is the right tool, the pick does full damage, anything less should do less. The categories are not just "normal" and "ineffective". There's also a third category:
Vulnerability to Certain Attacks: Certain attacks are especially successful against some objects. In such cases, attacks deal double their normal damage and may ignore the object's hardness.
A pick vs rock would fall into this category. A hammer would be normal, and an arrow would be ineffective.
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to nosig: I think the hammer vs sword argument is much more valid on walls than doors. For walls, I'll even use your analogy and say to try to cut a 5 foot thick block of styrofoam with a machete. There, a pick will be more effective.
Also, hardness 0 doesn't mean everything touching it acts like a lightsaber.
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And we should realize that even Styrofoam has more hardness than say jello. Or Icecream. If you want to dig into a vat of Ice cream, would you use a knife or a hammer?
I'd use a scoop.
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I have a mithril bastard sword, that has been guilded with adaminite, I went and reserched the price per weight of both materials and proposed it to my DM and he agreed to it,
incidentially my character is trying to make an artifact out of it. it has a silver core, and is intelegent, enchanted as a staff (shield, mage armor, protection from law/evil true strike) and is a +1 shocking, flaming weapon. enchanted with the recharging intelegent item property, and the impervious weapon property (dubles the bonuses for hardness among other things)
as it is mithril it bypases DR and regeneration as silver, and due to the guilding and enchantment bonus and the impervious property it is nigh imposible to sunder and bypasses DR as Adaminite (he ruled that it wouldn't bypass hardness were it not for the enchantment bonus to hardness and the bonus from impervious, and even with that it only does that when it deals slashing not piercing)
I also gave it a sharkskin grip
anyway, my point is, don't think linerally don't ask which one, ask why not both.
(also don't use silver, go mithril)
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It was stated earlier in this thread (and other threads) that you need to be careful with Adamantine weapons because of the Fame/Cost limitation. I decided to take a look at when that happened, how serious it impacted progression. I was surprised to find that it doesn’t. The way the max cost table lines up, there is no fame difference in being able to purchase a +2, +3, +4, or +5 weapon, whether you make it with Steel, Mythral, Cold Iron, or Adamantine.
Secondly, I don’t understand why people like Mythral weapons. Am I missing something? Mythral costs 800-900 more than a Silvered weapon. Silver does 1 point less damage, but not if you are using a Bludgeoning weapon, which you should have on your character anyway. The other benefit I see is that it weighs half as much, but that’s only a problem if you are a non-Strength based character using heavy weapon like a Lucerne Hammer. That does not seem very likely. I don’t see 2 less pound on you person as being worth the cost.
INappropriate weapon for walls vs sword is pretty simple...the sword gets stuck in the wall.
If you don't destroy the wall in one blow, then your weapon is stuck into the stone of the wall, and now you must get it free. You made a nice slice, but guess what? All of that stone is still in the same place it was.
Hammers and pickaxes rip a wall apart, throwing chunks of it all over the place...MAKING ROOM.
An adamantine sword will make a nice long slice and then get wedged into the stone, probably requiring a Strength check to get freed.
Miners don't use swords for a reason.
For a thin wall, yeah, adamantine sword might be useful...you'd slice out an opening. For a thick wall? You're going to be spending more time yanking your sword out of the wall then cutting into it.
==Aelryinth