Situation:
You are riding your bronze griffon wondrous figurine 100ft in the air when suddenly a giant rock falls out of the sky and kills it. The bronze griffon reverts to statue form. You are not a caster.
How do you prevent the statue from breaking upon impact with the ground?
Dive for it? Its still got hardness and it IS a magical item. It is a tiny object so at most it would take maybe 4 points of damage from the fall.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/environment/environmental-rules#TOC-F alling
Dive for it? Its still got hardness and it IS a magical item. It is a tiny object so at most it would take maybe 4 points of damage from the fall.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/environment/environmental-rules#TOC-F alling
How do you figure? I thought the object would take 10d6 damage.
The falling objects table refers to objects falling on you.
My mistake. The falling rules state it for falling characters.
"Note that a falling object takes the same amount of damage as it deals."
Think of a penny. A penny dropped from a skyscraper doesn't explode when it hits the ground right?
In any case, a Make Whole spell from a wizard or cleric would fix it anyways.
But going off the quote. A tiny object would deal 1d4 damage if it falls from a height less than 150 ft. It states it takes the same amount of damage as it deals so 1d4.
The bigger problem I see here is how you will survive as a PC. It will depend on the height from which you falling from.
Just reach out and grab it as you are falling, put it in your bag of holding or handy haversack to protect it and worry about how you will survive :P
At 100ft up he hits the ground before he can do much. I believe you fall at 500ft per round. I would allow a reflex save to grab the item so that it doesn't hit the ground itself, DC 15? Of course, now you have to worry about that sudden change in acceleration.
It's not the distance that kills you, it's the dv/dt that gets you.
"Rocks fall, your bronze griffon dies."
Hmmm...
I'm with nerd here. You got other problems than stopping your wondrous figuring from breaking.
@Claxon - Debatable due to if the PC has done their turn or not. Each round is about 6 seconds of combat, so assuming that the rock kills the griffon at the top of the round and there are 4 party member still able to do whatever they want, the PC in question can grab for the statue that is falling at the same speed and at the same location that he is. As a GM I'd rule he could take that grabbing of the statue and placing in his magical bag as his actions for that round.
Some kinds of damage just cannot hurt some objects.
For example, suppose the OP's situation, the griffon rider is holding an iron bullet in his hand when he has his accident with the giant falling rock and he drops the bullet in the collision.
The rider, the statue, and the bullet all fall to the ground which happens to be a recently plowed farmland. Soft dirt. Everyone and everything takes 10d6 damage.
That bullet has hardness 10 and 30 HP (or less, actually - probably only about 15 HP since it's about half an inch thick). In any case, the GM rolls 45 damage. Somehow the soft plowed field utterly destroys the iron bullet.
Seem plausible?
No. Not at all. Even if that bullet hit a huge rock lying in the field, that fall should not destroy it. Not even close.
The griffon's rider should take the 10d6. That much is clear. But the iron bullet should be able to ignore this fall and remain unaffected.
What about the bronze Figurine of Wondrous Power? Should a soft, plowed field break a 1" solid bronze Figurine? Probably not. Maybe a dent, if it did hit a rock, nothing more. 10x more true since the Figurine is magical; not even a dent now, I'd assume.
Now, none of the above is RAW. RAW says all those falling people and things should take their 10d6 damage.
Or does it?
Consider 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.
So, knowing that, any GM could easily rule that the ground "just can't effectively deal damage" to the falling bullet or the falling Figurine of Wondrous Power. And this wouldn't exactly be "Rule Zero" or "GM Fiat" since the rulebook already explicitly gives the GM this wiggle room to decide what kinds of objects are immune to what kinds of damage.
Aside from what I just wrote, there definitely seems to be room for a REF Save or a DEX Check for the rider to grab the griffon figurine before they both fall (or while they're falling). Heck, he had his hands on the dang thing when it happened (he wasn't riding "hands-free" was he?).
I assume all magic items are created by somebody who likes his items to be convenient. Nobody crates inconvenient magic items. Therefore, I assume something like a Figurine of Wondrous Power would be created such that, if you're touching it with your hand when it reverts to being just a figurine, it would do so in your hand. Otherwise, it would be inconvenient to have to pick it up - no wizard would want to make an inconvenient Figurine of Wondrous Power.
If I were GMing this, and the player had at least one hand on the griffon in flight when the giant rock killed the bronze griffon, I'd rule that it becomes a figurine in his hand. That should make grabbing it almost automatic. If he didn't have a hand on it, all bets are off, but I'd still let him make a REF save to grab it. And if he missed, it would be some very rare rocky ground, infused with veins of adamantium, before I'd let the fall do enough damage to destroy the Figurine.
Then again, I'm a fairly lenient GM.
My mistake. The falling rules state it for falling characters.
"Note that a falling object takes the same amount of damage as it deals."
Ah, I missed that line. That helps me a lot actually, thanks. Okay, thread over.
Just reach out and grab it as you are falling, put it in your bag of holding or handy haversack to protect it and worry about how you will survive :P
If I could afford a bronze griffon figurine, I could probally afford a ring of feather falling or boots of the cat :P
Also thanks Blake for going through that effort.