Sundering magical weapons / armor

[w01fe01]

I have had a couple people tell me you cant sunder a magical weapon lest you have a bonus on your weapon equal or greater then the enemies weapon/armor.

But ive also heard that its a 3.5 rule and doesnt exist in pathfinder.

But so far ive been unable to find the rule itself!

[Cerberus Seven]

I don't think that's a rule in Pathfinder. What they do instead is give magic weapons and armor a +2 to their hardness and ten additional hit points per inch of thickness for each point of enhancement bonus it has. So, if you have a +3 steel longsword, it has a hardness of 16 (10 base + 3 x 2) and 60 hit points (30 base + 3 x 10).

[SwiftyKun]

Cerberus is correct.

Sunder:

Sunder

You can attempt to sunder an item held or worn by your opponent as part of an attack action in place of a melee attack. If you do not have the Improved Sunder feat, or a similar ability, attempting to sunder an item provokes an attack of opportunity from the target of your maneuver.

If your attack is successful, you deal damage to the item normally. Damage that exceeds the object's Hardness is subtracted from its hit points. If an object has equal to or less than half its total hit points remaining, it gains the broken condition (see Conditions). If the damage you deal would reduce the object to less than 0 hit points, you can choose to destroy it. If you do not choose to destroy it, the object is left with only 1 hit point and the broken condition.

Hardness and Hit points:

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/additionalRules.html#_smashing-an-object

The chart at the bottom of the Hardness and Hit points link tells you what item has what hardness and hit point value, as well as how to modify them based on their magical enhancement level. You do not need a magical item to break another magical item. You must simply hit it hard enough.

[w01fe01]

i thought as much

[Skizm]

Pfff...hardness.

[Claxon]

Yes it was a 3.5 rule. It was removed from Pathfinder, and many people continued to play that way because there was no mention to the contrary (in fact all mention was removed).

Now, as noted, magical enhanced armor and weapons have increased hardness and HP to make the more difficult to destroy, but you can still (attempt) to sunder that +5 adamantine greatsword with your non-magical axe. You just wont get very far with it.

[Nefreet]

Your friends probably have 1st Edition printings of the CRB. It was a 3.5 rule that got transferred to Pathfinder and quietly removed in printings since.

[w01fe01]

thanks for the clarification everyone, this makes my barbarian and his adamantine lucerne hammer quite happy ^^

[KainPen]

As Claxon and Nefreet said your friends have older version of the books I believe the 3rd printing of the book is the one that removed it. Have your friends go to Core rule book on paizo main page and they can down load all the rule up dates in Errata based on what printing of the book they have. Now if you the Gm want to use a certain printing of rule set not much you can do about it.

they can check all books they own for updates that way.