Help with creatures in Half Dead City

[Folkish Elm]

Hi all

Quick question about the enemies in tomb of akhentepi (spoilers). I'm a newish dm and want to double check how things work:

Spoiler:

for the warrior dolls and the false sarcophagus, how does the hardness rating relate to the vulnerability to either fire or cold? I 'think' it works like this. All weapon damage is reduced by the hardness score (5) and the rest applied to hit points. Energy damage would normally be halved (as these are objects) and then hardness applied a? But if the energy matches the vulnerability it should not be halved but instead increased by 50% and then I apply the hardness? Or does it also ignore the hardness?

Any help clarifying would be much appreciated! It seems to be one of those times where you have to look at several entries in the crb and bestiary

Many thanks!

[Demiurge 1138]

This appears to be a bit of a blind area in the rules. If my memory serves me correctly, Jim Groves has stated his intent was that the vulnerabilities should ignore hardness on a different thread, but I can't pull up the reference at the moment.

[Robert G. McCreary]

The animated objects are constructs, so they are now creatures, not objects. As creatures, energy damage is not halved against them (in effect, becoming a creature trumps the normal object rules). So they take full damage from energy attacks (150% if they are vulnerable to that energy type), then hardness is applied. However, page 174 of the Core Rulebook states (under "Vulnerability to Certain Attacks") that "Certain attacks are especially successful against some objects.In such cases, attacks deal double their normal damage and my ignore the object's hardness."

Even though the animated objects are no longer "objects," I would still apply this rule about overcoming hardness to them in this adventure (but the 150% creature vulnerability trumps the double damage to an object part of the rule), as hardness can be quite difficult to overcome for low-level PCs. So if the PCs use fire against the warrior dolls, for example, it would deal 150% the normal damage, and ignore the hardness. Other energy damage would deal full damage which would ten be reduced by hardness, the same as for any other attack against it.

[Folkish Elm]

Great stuff! That's all clear now. Many thanks both!