Smashing Dent as a debuffing move?

[Redblade8]

Hey,

So a while back I got to thinking about a Sunder-focused guy as a sort of debuffer. Just start whacking away at opponent's armor to make it easier for allies to hit. The problem came from the fact that you had to be able to inflict broken on the guy's armor in one shot, or it does nothing and isn't worth the action cost.

Enter Smashing Dent...

(brief pause for obligatory hug of my copy of Weapon Master's Handbook...)

...and the ability to mess a dude's armor up on any successful sunder. Starting to think the idea has some legs after all. Anyone tried this yet?

Later on,
Ghorrin Redblade

[Arachnofiend]

Sunder is a very good combat style now, yes. You'll want to be a Barbarian and take Crush Armor alongside Smashing Style; your weapon of choice is the lucerne hammer.

[Korlos]

The ability to knock them prone with Smashing Style (using all your sunder bonuses!) is huge, but spending another two feats for -1 AC per attack is rather minor. If you can't get their armor to broken in one or two hits, you really ought to be working on their hit points instead. Reducing the hardness is pointless; on a sunder build, the first thing you want is an adamantine weapon and at 3,000 gp it's comparable to a +1 weapon.

Weapon trick for Crush Armor is pretty nice, since each sunder attempt forces a save vs fatigue; breaking the armor forces them to save every round until they are fatigued or take off the armor. Since fatigue reduces dexterity and strength, then their CMD takes a double hit as well as a reduction in damage output, attack bonus, and AC.

[Alex Mack]

Arachnofiend wrote:

Sunder is a very good combat style now, yes. You'll want to be a Barbarian and take Crush Armor alongside Smashing Style; your weapon of choice is the lucerne hammer.

What is crush armor?

[Arachnofiend]

One of the choices for the Weapon Trick feat. Force a fortitude save (with DC based on your STR, thus the Barbarian recommendation) that upon failure leaves the enemy fatigued. With this and Smashing Style you're stacking a ton of unpleasantness on a single sunder maneuver.

[Redblade8]

Also, barbarians have that Rage Power that subtracts class level from a struck object's hardness. Mess stuff up, big-time...

[Alex Mack]

Also Barbairans have that archetype that let's them add half level to damage when sundering.

Despite all this I think I'd usually prefer to focus on dealing boatloads of damage to my opponent instead of his armor. Especially as lots of monsters don't wear armor...