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Area is not a factor. The wall has a number of hit points. You do that many hit points, you have taken out the wall...Except I can't finding anything in the rules stating that Acid Splash doesn't get it's damage halved. Or that hardness is ignored for that natter.
A walls hardness is 15, (as I remember), and Acid Splash is simply too wrak for the kind of work you propose.
There is nothing stating that Babau slime doesn't get it's damage halved or ignores hardness. But you said you would advise using the 3.5 rules for acid, to make Babau acid more effective, and we were trying to explain why doing that would make acid splash very powerful indeed.
Or rather, it works about as well as any other barrier system I've ever seen.
There's a (now defunct) game out there called Alpha Omega. Armor had damage reduction, as well as its own hit point track (structure). Every point of damage it reduced cost it 1 structure, reduced by its own hardness.
Barriers (i.e. walls) used basically the same rules: they provided (a lot) of armor to anyone behind it.
Some weapons and ammo types would have armor piercing, meaning it would reduce the DR value of the armor, effectively bypassing it.
This worked really really well until you got to explosives. Which had a lot of armor piercing and a lot of damage. There were no rules as to what happened to a wall when two kilos of C4 went off at point blank range...the explosion...bypasses the wall (ignores the armor rating) and deals no damage to it, but chunky-salsas the guy on the other side...
The slime does nothing! Lol.
Correct. The slime is a nearly inert substance, only slightly more acidic than the normal beverages found at gaming tables. LOL.
I have played both TSR versions of the game, and at least "energy" damage had a different impact on equipment accordingly to energy-type and equipment material. Also, they helped the GM keep the amoumts of magic items held by the players down on a respectable level. I kind of liked them.
There is nothing stating that Babau slime doesn't get it's damage halved or ignores hardness. But you said you would advise using the 3.5 rules for acid, to make Babau acid more effective, and we were trying to explain why doing that would make acid splash very powerful indeed.Area is not a factor. The wall has a number of hit points. You do that many hit points, you have taken out the wall...Except I can't finding anything in the rules stating that Acid Splash doesn't get it's damage halved. Or that hardness is ignored for that natter.
A walls hardness is 15, (as I remember), and Acid Splash is simply too wrak for the kind of work you propose.
Yes, I understand what you were telling about Acid Splash, but since the Acid Slime of a Babau Demon is otherworldly/supernatural, I see nothing wrong with making an exception in this case regard acid and hardness and so on, but keeping to the normal rules in other cases.
Just because we make a houserule for one case if acid damage, I can't see why a mere cantrip should gain the same powers.
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Honestly, it's a very crappily written ability in more ways than one. Because it's so damn annoying having to roll reflex saves all the frakkin' time, and then rolling damage even though it has a hard time affecting anything, even if you don't halve the damage.
I'm hostile to abilities that involve so much unnecessary dice rolls.
If I were to re-write it, I'd make it something like this:
Protective Slime (Su)
A layer of acidic slime coats a babau's skin. Any creature that strikes a babau with a natural attack or unarmed strike takes 2 points of acid damage from this slime, whether they hit or miss. If they use a melee weapon the weapon takes the damage instead (do not halve the damage for being elemental). If the attacker rolls a natural one, it or the weapon instead take 2d6 damage. A weapon damaged by this ability gains the broken condition. Ammunition that strikes a babau is automatically destroyed after it inflicts its damage.
So on most attacks, no extra dice rolling is involved, and normal weapons won't break. But if you roll a natural one there is a very real chance of hafted weapons breaking, and even non-magical blades risk it.
Trying to tie hardness rules into making real world sense is futile. A strong miner, with straight 15, according to the rules cannot break stone with his mining pick (1d6+2).
Which is yet another reason Power Attack should be a basic combat option rather than a feat ;P
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Trying to tie hardness rules into making real world sense is futile. A strong miner, with straight 15, according to the rules cannot break stone with his mining pick (1d6+2).
1d6 is the damage of a heavy pick, that is a one handed martial weapon, not a mining tool. The closest item in that table to a the mining tool id a Mattock, a 2 handed weapon that do 2d4 damage.
So our str 15 miner using it against a piece of stone, DR 8, will do 2d4+3 damage. Rolling damage he will do some level of damage to the stone 6/16 of the time. 10/16 HP of damage/round. He will turn to gravel a 1x1x1 cube of solid rock in: 90/10*16= 144 rounds, 864 seconds, 14 minutes and 24 second.
A 4x4x2 hole in a day of work.
It seem reasonable.
Add:
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.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.
and you will see that almost certainly a pick has a bonus against the DR of a piece of stone.
Only extremely strong acids will hurt metal (especially steel) enough to materially damage it in 6 seconds.
Well, a few years back when asked what kind of acid is acid damage, James Jacobs did say:
It's probably molecular acid.
I mean... it's supposed to eat through anything, right?
;)
EDIT: Lol, ninja'd by 3 hours. That's what I get for leaving with the window open.
Trying to tie hardness rules into making real world sense is futile. A strong miner, with straight 15, according to the rules cannot break stone with his mining pick (1d6+2).
Which is yet another reason Power Attack should be a basic combat option rather than a feat ;P
Though of course, for a mining pick we could treat it as a Large Heavy Pick; it is two-handed after all. Sure, a -6 attack penalty, but since you're able to auto-hit as a full-round action that hardly matters. That brings the damage to 1d8+3, so in eight rounds you'll make an average of 6 damage. Bringing down a masonry wall thus would take an average of 120 rounds, or 12 minutes.
Actually that seems fairly reasonable, for someone who's just a strong guy with no special training.
Someone who's been a miner a long time would probably have the power attack feat, which would mean they did 1d8+6, which would allow them to tear down the wall very quickly.
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Trying to tie hardness rules into making real world sense is futile. A strong miner, with straight 15, according to the rules cannot break stone with his mining pick (1d6+2).Which is yet another reason Power Attack should be a basic combat option rather than a feat ;P
Though of course, for a mining pick we could treat it as a Large Heavy Pick; it is two-handed after all. Sure, a -6 attack penalty, but since you're able to auto-hit as a full-round action that hardly matters. That brings the damage to 1d8+3, so in eight rounds you'll make an average of 6 damage. Bringing down a masonry wall thus would take an average of 120 rounds, or 12 minutes.
Actually that seems fairly reasonable, for someone who's just a strong guy with no special training.
Someone who's been a miner a long time would probably have the power attack feat, which would mean they did 1d8+6, which would allow them to tear down the wall very quickly.
I haven't seen this before, where does it come from?
I haven't seen this before, where does it come from?
Look under the armor class section of the "damaging objects" section.
"if you take a full-round action to line up a shot, you get an automatic hit with a melee weapon"
Original 1E rules were that items exposed to acid made a save or were damaged/destroyed. Babau slime was MUCH more dangerous then.
3E, acid damage was not halved against most materials, esp metal. But only sonic tended to bypass hardness completely.
==Aelryinth
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I totally support the acid ignoring hardness up to 10 (heck, even 15) and doing full damage. I'm not sure why there's so many cries of "oh, you must love broken weapons" with that.
Babau demons are a CR 6. So we can assume the party is around 6th level when fighting them.
At 6th level, players should have around 16,000 GP of gear. It's more than reasonable to assume a player has a +1 weapon (if fighting these in melee) and a cloak of resistance +1 (fairly standard finds in most modules/APs).
If the player has a good Reflex, then that's 6+DEX for their modifier. If bad, 3+DEX.
A +1 longsword has base 5 HP, +10 for being a +1 sword, bringing it up to 15.
On average, that acid will do 4.5 damage per hit. That's *if* the PC fails the Reflex save. Assuming just an average DEX, they need to roll a 12+ if a good save, or a 15+ if bad. 30%-45%.
In short: Assuming one hit a round, the acid will deal an average of 2.475-3.15 acid damage a round. It would thus take around 2-3 rounds to wear a +1 longsword down to broken, and another 2-3 rounds to wear it to "destroyed".
Make whole, a 2nd-level spell, can fix any weapon broken/destroyed in this way, even a +1. The caster level of a +1 weapon is 3, so the caster of make whole needs to be 6th. Not unreasonable if they're facing a babau.
So, yeah. Is the ability annoying? Maybe. However:
A. It only really hurts those in melee.
B. Magical weapons have a lot more HP.
C. They get a Reflex save to avoid the effect.
There are a *lot* worse abilities out there. Don't be afraid to break or even destroy your player's weapons. Thanks to make whole, it isn't nearly as hard to repair them these days.
FAQ'd.
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RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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In short: Assuming one hit a round, the acid will deal an average of 2.475-3.15 acid damage a round. It would thus take around 2-3 rounds to wear a +1 longsword down to broken, and another 2-3 rounds to wear it to "destroyed".
if this damage penetrates the weapon's hardness, the weapon gains the broken condition.
Your math forgets to account for the whole "1 point = broken" thing.
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Ahhh. I missed that line. Well, either:
1. Deal with it. Broken is a -2. That's not horrible, certainly not worse then a lot of monsters that make them shaken, or nauseated, or any other number of penalties. Make it auto-broken (despite the HP) for the remainder of the combat, and then only worry about it further if the damage is enough to destroy the weapon.
OR.
2. Ignore the auto-break if you're also ignoring hardness.
Arguably a strenght 10 miner can bring down a wall with a heavy pick 1d6 damage.
Walls are helpless he full round Cou de gras.
Though that may make it TOO easy to bring down a wall :)
Objects are immune to crits and therefore don't have the damage multiplied. They also don't need to make Fortitude saves against destruction unless they are attended and targeted, or magical.
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Honestly, it's a very crappily written ability in more ways than one. Because it's so damn annoying having to roll reflex saves all the frakkin' time, and then rolling damage even though it has a hard time affecting anything, even if you don't halve the damage.
I'm hostile to abilities that involve so much unnecessary dice rolls.
If I were to re-write it, I'd make it something like this:
Protective Slime (Su)
A layer of acidic slime coats a babau's skin. Any creature that strikes a babau with a natural attack or unarmed strike takes 2 points of acid damage from this slime, whether they hit or miss. If they use a melee weapon the weapon takes the damage instead (do not halve the damage for being elemental). If the attacker rolls a natural one, it or the weapon instead take 2d6 damage. A weapon damaged by this ability gains the broken condition. Ammunition that strikes a babau is automatically destroyed after it inflicts its damage.So on most attacks, no extra dice rolling is involved, and normal weapons won't break. But if you roll a natural one there is a very real chance of hafted weapons breaking, and even non-magical blades risk it.
Yes!
Something to note, as demonstrated here. However much you like the rules or believe they should be followed, we all can with considerable thought and measured efforts, re-write the rules to be simply better. The designers had deadlines and varied their efforts with more attention in some places than others, but the broken or clunky parts can always be re-written.
Nice job Gaber.
Well thank you :3