Are an adamantine golem's natural attacks treated as adamantine?

[Isonaroc]

Does an adamantine golem's slam bypass hardness like an adamantine weapon would? It makes sense that it would, but I don't see anything about it in the stat block. Thoughts?

[Bob Bob Bob]

No. Because it doesn't say it does. Heck, its attacks don't even bypass DR/adamantine. Because they would say if they did. As to why, well, because they're not adamantine. They're:

Adamantine Golem Construction wrote:

A adamantine golem’s body is made of more than 4,000 pounds of adamantine, mithral, gold, platinum, and other metals worth a total of 100,000 gp.

Additionally, the rules for bypassing DR for monsters only apply to magic, epic, and alignment subtypes. Not materials.

[Isonaroc]

Bob Bob Bob wrote:

No. Because it doesn't say it does. Heck, its attacks don't even bypass DR/adamantine. Because they would say if they did. As to why, well, because they're not adamantine. They're:

Adamantine Golem Construction wrote:

A adamantine golem’s body is made of more than 4,000 pounds of adamantine, mithral, gold, platinum, and other metals worth a total of 100,000 gp.

Additionally, the rules for bypassing DR for monsters only apply to magic, epic, and alignment subtypes. Not materials.

But they ARE adamantine (just not entirely adamantine), but yeah, I get you. Personally, I'd probably house rule it to have adamantine natural attacks.

[jbadams]

I'd agree with Bob Bob Bob: they aren't, because the stat block doesn't say they are, and because even the fluff text/description easily allows for them to logically not be.

If you want to house rule otherwise that's of course your decision, but do take a look at the difference that makes before deciding: you're taking an already very powerful enemy and making it even more dangerous to your players. This is an enemy that doesn't need adamantine slam attacks to be very dangerous.

[Bob Bob Bob]

Sure, and as a houserule that's fine. This is Rules though, so we have to stick by what's actually there. And what's there doesn't provide any kind of allowance for anything. Unlike the Iron Cobra which has the Cold Iron version that says:

Cold Iron Cobra wrote:

This cobra’s natural attacks count as cold iron for the purpose of bypassing damage reduction.

Similar to the golem though, the adamantine version does not get that.

Adamantine Cobra wrote:

This cobra is more solidly built than others. Its natural armor bonus increases to +12, it gains +5 hp per HD, and it gains DR 10/—.

From a fluff perspective I have the feeling that adamantine is only ever treated as a reinforcing material and rarely as the weapon/striking surface.

[Avoron]

Think about it this way: an adamantine golem's body is worth less than 25 gp per pound. Adamantine is worth 300 gp per pound. So even if all non-adamantine parts were worthless, the golem is at most about 8.3% adamantine.

In practice there's even less, because parts of the golem are made of gold (50 gp per pound) and parts are even made of platinum and mithral (500 gp per pound), so there has to be even more iron and whatnot to make the overall body worth as little as it is.

So based on the rule that "if you make a suit of armor or a weapon out of more than one special material, you get the benefit of only the most prevalent material," I'd say the adamantine is spread much too thinly to override hardness and damage reduction even from a purely flavor standpoint, especially if significant amounts of adamantine make up its protective armor.

[_Ozy_]

Yeah...but all of the other non-adamantine stuff is on the inside!

:D

[Isonaroc]

jbadams wrote:

I'd agree with Bob Bob Bob: they aren't, because the stat block doesn't say they are, and because even the fluff text/description easily allows for them to logically not be.

If you want to house rule otherwise that's of course your decision, but do take a look at the difference that makes before deciding: you're taking an already very powerful enemy and making it even more dangerous to your players. This is an enemy that doesn't need adamantine slam attacks to be very dangerous.

It's also a CR 19 monster, which means the party that encounters them will likely have 9th level spells available. A well equipped party of 19th level characters won't be seriously affected by adding adamantine attacks.

Honestly, the reason I would make it's attacks adamantine has less to do with combat and more to do with industry. Mining, to be specific. Granted, it'd probably be faster and cheaper to make iron golems with adamantine tools, but I'm dealing with a party who have essentially unlimited time and resources and they want to be fancy.

EDUT:

Avoron wrote:

Think about it this way: an adamantine golem's body is worth less than 25 gp per pound. Adamantine is worth 300 gp per pound. So even if all non-adamantine parts were worthless, the golem is at most about 8.3% adamantine.

Unless you got your adamantine by melting down adamantine chain shirts, in which case it's 204/lb :-P

[lemeres]

Avoron wrote:

Think about it this way: an adamantine golem's body is worth less than 25 gp per pound. Adamantine is worth 300 gp per pound. So even if all non-adamantine parts were worthless, the golem is at most about 8.3% adamantine.

In practice there's even less, because parts of the golem are made of gold (50 gp per pound) and parts are even made of platinum and mithral (500 gp per pound), so there has to be even more iron and whatnot to make the overall body worth as little as it is.

So based on the rule that "if you make a suit of armor or a weapon out of more than one special material, you get the benefit of only the most prevalent material," I'd say the adamantine is spread much too thinly to override hardness and damage reduction even from a purely flavor standpoint, especially if significant amounts of adamantine make up its protective armor.

In all likelihood, it probably is just running around like wolverine, with an adamantine skeleton.

And when adventurers fight it, they knock off the bits made of other metals piece by piece, and then they eventually strip it enough that they can just knock the skeletal arm off.

[Gurior]

_Ozy_ wrote:

Yeah...but all of the other non-adamantine stuff is on the inside!

:D

Funny, but i kind of agree with that.

For exemple, Weapon blanch . It's a consumable that only coats a weapon with a little adamantine, yet suffices to treat the weapon as adamantine for the purpose of overcomming DR.

Plus, I'm surprised nobody quote that rule on Monster DR :
Apparently, that was back in 3.5, not PF.

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2ow2u?Overcoming-your-own-damage-reduction

[LazarX]

There was a 3.X rule that said that possessing X DR would allow you to bypass DR on other creatures having the exact same type of DR.

I have not seen any sign that this was carried over into Pathfinder.

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

LazarX wrote:

There was a 3.X rule that said that possessing X DR would allow you to bypass DR on other creatures having the exact same type of DR.

I have not seen any sign that this was carried over into Pathfinder.

It holds for DR/magic and DR/epic only.

Universal Monster Rules: Damage Reduction wrote:

Some monsters are vulnerable to magic weapons. Any weapon with at least a +1 magical enhancement bonus on attack and damage rolls overcomes the damage reduction of these monsters. Such creatures' natural weapons (but not their attacks with weapons) are treated as magic weapons for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction.

A few very powerful monsters are vulnerable only to epic weapons—that is, magic weapons with at least a +6 enhancement bonus. Such creatures' natural weapons are also treated as epic weapons for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction.

[Maezer]

LazarX wrote:

There was a 3.X rule that said that possessing X DR would allow you to bypass DR on other creatures having the exact same type of DR.

I am curious can you link that rule? As far as I was aware it was handled the same way. Creatures with DR/Magic pierced magical DR. Creatures with an aligned subtype pierces DR/subtype. And creatures with DR/epic pierce DR/epic.

But no DR/slashing meaning you automatically pierce DR/Slashing. Or piercing, bludgeoning, silver, cold iron, or adamantine.

[Diego Rossi]

Fuzzy-Wuzzy wrote:

LazarX wrote:

There was a 3.X rule that said that possessing X DR would allow you to bypass DR on other creatures having the exact same type of DR.

I have not seen any sign that this was carried over into Pathfinder.

It holds for DR/magic and DR/epic only.

Universal Monster Rules: Damage Reduction wrote:

Some monsters are vulnerable to magic weapons. Any weapon with at least a +1 magical enhancement bonus on attack and damage rolls overcomes the damage reduction of these monsters. Such creatures' natural weapons (but not their attacks with weapons) are treated as magic weapons for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction.

A few very powerful monsters are vulnerable only to epic weapons—that is, magic weapons with at least a +6 enhancement bonus. Such creatures' natural weapons are also treated as epic weapons for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction.

That has in interesting consequence: the attacks of a adamantine golem are a epic weapon, so they bypass DR as +6 weapon.

They don't count as adamaintine against hardness, but they aren't hindered by the wizard stoneskin.

[Bob Bob Bob]

So the way it works now is as already posted for magic and epic (I don't agree with "epic" meaning "+6 weapon", but that's an entirely different debate). The other one that exists is:

Damage Reduction Universal Monster Rules wrote:

Some monsters are vulnerable to good-, evil-, chaotically, or lawfully aligned weapons. When a cleric casts align weapon, affected weapons might gain one or more of these properties, and certain magic weapons have these properties as well. A creature with an alignment subtype (chaotic, evil, good, or lawful) can overcome this type of damage reduction with its natural weapons and weapons it wields as if the weapons or natural weapons had an alignment (or alignments) that matched the subtype(s) of the creature.

Which says that if you have an alignment subtype, you bypass that DR with wielded and natural weapons. No idea how that interacts with throwing weapons, and too much of a headache for me to care.

But yeah, material is specifically excluded from overcoming your own DR, presumably because a werewolf's claws shouldn't count as silver.

[Alric Rahl]

Sorry but I have to disagree. I think this was more of an "it's so blatantly obvious it should be common sense, so there is no need for text, so we can save ourselves page space", situation

Though the description of the Adamantine Golem says its made up of others metals, then why is it called an ADAMANTINE Golem, why not Precious metal Golem, Ore Golem, or just simply Metal Golem.

The Adamantine Cobra is specifically called out as Adamantine Armor plates. However the Adamantine Golems Description is

Quote:

The vast amount of adamantine required to build even one of these destructive golems is so much that most PLANETS don't even have the necessary resources

Therefore its pretty clear that this Golem is almost completely covered in Adamantine, its Slams would bypass hardness and DR/Adamantine, as its Slams are its fist which are basically just oversized Adamantine Warhammers, which do bypass hardness and DR/Adamantine.