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An often-heard complaint is that Sunder is useless, or unfair, or destroying your own loot. Even though the flavor is cool, people will yell at you if you use it.
So here's a thought: what if you could Sunder the Natural Armor of monsters? It's taking the idea of Sundering a hydra's head to the general case: opening up a soft spot on the monster for the rest of the party to make use of. It the case of some monsters (giant crabs, scorpions) this makes a lot of sense.
Basically, if the NA gets to Broken, the monster's defense starts to get impaired; and when the NA is Destroyed, well, the monster gets a whole lot easier to hit.
You'd need a formula to determine the NA's hp and hardness. Factors should probably be Size, NA itself maybe, and maybe Constitution?
Likewise you might sunder a natural weapon. Hit the creature's claw, bash its teeth out, or whatever. Do enough damage and it effectively gains the Broken condition and so gets -2 to hit and basic x2/20 crit. As most natural weapons only get x2/20 crit anyway that's probably not so significant, but for those others it makes some sense - you've lopped the end off its spike or whatever.
What if we gave natural armor hp based on size and hardness based on material, with materials like Hide, Fur, Chitin, Scales and Shell? Let a creature's damage reduction protect its armor too.
Have damaged armor heal at the same rate as the creature and make it a valid target for healing magic.
I thought about that too, but it might work if it was just applied after hardness. I'm not really sure which would be better.
...so i just had an awkward thought about sundering fey...
Yar!
I've always been a fan of this kind of thing as well. Intentionally breaking someone's arm, cutting the tops of their fingers so they can't hold any weapon well anymore, etc.
The Called Shot optional rules work for those instances now.
However, there still is the circumstances outlined in the OP: Cracking the shell of a tough beast to open a gap in their natural armor for you and others to exploit.
I'm undecided if a new entry for called shots would be the way to go, or if figuring out the HP value of said natural armor (most likely a separate value from the creatures normal HP) and using Sunder would be the way to go.
*contemplates this some more*
~P
This would seriously improve the rules for called nutshots.
... Sorry, had to be said. Dotting this for later ideas :P
You are adding a lot of utility to Sunder. It's sunder not sever for a reason. In addition, given the general abstraction of armor in D&D / PF and the even more abstract "natural armor" I can foresee difficulties. Is the "natural armor" the result of a hard shell, tough flexible hide, bristles / fur, scales / plates, a padded fatty layer, etc. I can see your idea working with some of these (as well as with some natural weapons) and with others not so much. In which case you might have to further define "natural armor" by type... it could get messy / complex. Kind of like the old weapon type of piercing / slashing / blunt damage v. specific man made armors. It might be more "realistic" but it added a layer of further complexity to combat for little actual benefit.
What would sundering a Korred entail?
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You are adding a lot of utility to Sunder. It's sunder not sever for a reason.
It certainly adds utility, but I think that's a desirable result; currently Sunder has very low utility because the only things worth sundering are things you want to loot. As for "sunder" vs. "sever", I think that Sundering is a bit broader actually than severing; severing implies a slashing weapon, sundering just implies general destruction (to me).
If you were to implement some system to crack open the shells of critters, chop off heads of hydras or the tails of giant scorpions, I think it would be stranger if it DIDN'T use Sunder, because you're basically doing the same things just on a living target.
In addition, given the general abstraction of armor in D&D / PF and the even more abstract "natural armor" I can foresee difficulties. Is the "natural armor" the result of a hard shell, tough flexible hide, bristles / fur, scales / plates, a padded fatty layer, etc. I can see your idea working with some of these (as well as with some natural weapons) and with others not so much. In which case you might have to further define "natural armor" by type... it could get messy / complex. Kind of like the old weapon type of piercing / slashing / blunt damage v. specific man made armors. It might be more "realistic" but it added a layer of further complexity to combat for little actual benefit.
Yes, that could be tricky, but like with normal armor, it doesn't have to stop you. You can Sunder a Hide Armor or Padded Clothing armor with a hammer too; don't ask me how that works but the mechanics cover it. Also, you can Sunder a hammer with a rapier.
So I don't think this is getting any weirder than the current rules...
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dotting
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Yar!
I've always been a fan of this kind of thing as well. Intentionally breaking someone's arm, cutting the tops of their fingers so they can't hold any weapon well anymore, etc.
The Called Shot optional rules work for those instances now.
However, there still is the circumstances outlined in the OP: Cracking the shell of a tough beast to open a gap in their natural armor for you and others to exploit.
I'm undecided if a new entry for called shots would be the way to go, or if figuring out the HP value of said natural armor (most likely a separate value from the creatures normal HP) and using Sunder would be the way to go.
*contemplates this some more*
~P
I think coupling it to the Sunder maneuver makes a lot of sense; if you can effectively destroy plate armor then destroying an exoskeleton is rather similar, and using an entirely different game mechanic would be very odd.
I'm thinking you don't actually need to factor in size all that much; CMD is based on Strength so it's already harder to vivisect big critters because they tend to get size bonuses.
By that logic, giving natural armor/weapons a hardness based on Constitution or Constitution Modifier also incorporates both Size and particularly tough critters.
And then there's the final question: how much HP does the feature have? I think basing this on HD makes sense, keeps it scaling in line with the creature's ordinary hit points. Add the critter's natural armor (not just when sundering natural armor, also when trying to chop off tentacles and stuff; really tough meat is more work to cut off).
So, as an example: Natural Armor. Hitting it on CMD, it gets [Con Mod] hardness and has HD+Natural Armor hit points.
Damaging the NA with (full HP/2) >= (HP - damage) > 0 gives it the Broken condition, which will halve the NA; at damage >= full HP the NA is Destroyed and doesn't give NA bonus anymore.
You are adding a lot of utility to Sunder. It's sunder not sever for a reason.
It certainly adds utility, but I think that's a desirable result; currently Sunder has very low utility because the only things worth sundering are things you want to loot. As for "sunder" vs. "sever", I think that Sundering is a bit broader actually than severing; severing implies a slashing weapon, sundering just implies general destruction (to me).
I can miss looting anything that might kill me before I get the chance to loot it personally :) As it happens sunder and sever are synonyms meaning broadly the same thing although I agree that, to me, sever indicates cutting. Both mean to break or part something.
If you were to implement some system to crack open the shells of critters, chop off heads of hydras or the tails of giant scorpions, I think it would be stranger if it DIDN'T use Sunder, because you're basically doing the same things just on a living target.
I don't disagree; I just doubt the utility of it in an abstract combat system like D&D / PF. It would be a different story in a system that involved hit location like Runequest. Also, what about the hit points of the creature? How do you assign the hp of what might be severed v. what is not. Do different categories of natural things that might be severed get different hit point portions? Is something that's sundered going to include bleeding? This could get deep in brown smelly stuff pretty fast.
In addition, given the general abstraction of armor in D&D / PF and the even more abstract "natural armor" I can foresee difficulties. Is the "natural armor" the result of a hard shell, tough flexible hide, bristles / fur, scales / plates, a padded fatty layer, etc. I can see your idea working with some of these (as well as with some natural weapons) and with others not so much. In which case you might have to further define "natural armor" by type... it could get messy / complex. Kind of like the old weapon type of piercing / slashing / blunt damage v. specific man made armors. It might be more "realistic" but it added a layer of further complexity to combat for little actual benefit.Yes, that could be tricky, but like with normal armor, it doesn't have to stop you. You can Sunder a Hide Armor or Padded Clothing armor with a hammer too; don't ask me how that works but the mechanics cover it. Also, you can Sunder a hammer with a rapier.
So I don't think this is getting any weirder than the current rules...
Stop you, no, but there is a point of diminishing returns. And we're talking about a system that eliminated facing in a six second combat round because it was "too complex".
I use facing btw, and in vanilla 3.x I always picture people hopping around and looking in every direction like John Belushi in Animal House.
I mentioned bleeding already, and I'm sure there are a number of other related issues. For example, how do you assign hp to specific parts that might be sundered (there were tables for that in the Blackmoor 0E supplement which included a hit location system) etc and how does this effect the creature who's been "sundered"?
As a GM I apply a bit of logic to what can be sundered myself, blunt or slashing weapons work in certain cases, but that's just me. RAW tends to get a little weird, but that's why we have GMs.
I like this;
Sunder natural weapon: CMB vs CMD, HP equal to HD plus NA bonus. Can only give the broken condition, can not destroy.
Sunder natural armor: CMB vs CMD, HP equal to HD plus NA bonus. Can only give broken condition, can not destroy.
Hardness of 5 (bone) and additional HP equal to the con bonus may be considered after play testing.
I like the idea, but I think all the extra rules complicate things. Sunder armor, natural or otherwise, should probably just add a debuff temporarily - this encourages using it on man and monster alike.
While it is a mirror of certain MMO mechanics, we use it as: -1 + -1 per 5 points by which you exceed the opponents CMD and use 0 and the max you can reduce their armor to for a duration of 1/2 character level (min 1). Additional Sunders refresh the duration and replace the effect.
We're still working on tweaking it, but I've seen a lot more use of sunder and no more complaints about destroying loot.
@Ascalaphus, ya that is why I want to limit everything to broken penalties only. If anyone wants to sever body parts they can use called shots.