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Does hardness provide double protection against weapons that deal additional energy damage?
I.e. If I stab a robot with hardness 5 with a flaming short sword do I deal d6+d6-5 or d6-5+d6-5?
A robot's hardness is not exactly the same as an object's hardness, as robots are creatures. That means you shouldnt halve the damage against robots (i believe).
That said, hardness doesnt absorb each damage type separatedly (fire resistance or DR would), you should roll both die, then subtract the hardness.
IMO, they should rename that ability to avoid confusion.
The question that is more important is energy damage halved for robots the way it is for object, and then applied against hardness?
Regardless, I do have the suspicion that energy damage should apply against hardness separately.
Does hardness provide double protection against weapons that deal additional energy damage?
I.e. If I stab a robot with hardness 5 with a flaming short sword do I deal d6+d6-5 or d6-5+d6-5?
Yes, just like how DR would apply the reduction to just the short sword damage while the fire would get past no problems. Hardness would affect both.
For a robot, (d6 weapon -5) + (d6 fire -5)
From the Year of the Sky Key Q&A, the developers of the game addressed the robot hardness issue. It's not just a PFS clarification.
How does hardness work for creatures? Does energy damage such as cold deal half damage to creatures with hardness (Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook 173-174) even before applying the flat numerical reduction?
When a creature with hardness sustains damage, subtract its hardness from the damage dealt. The rules for halving damage, doubling damage, dealing damage with ineffective tools, immunities, and the like only apply to damaging inanimate objects.
(This is apparently a question the Design Team has received a few times during the development of Iron Gods, so they were ready to go with an answer!)
For an object (d6 weapon -5) +(d6 fire/2 -5)
Energy Attacks: Energy attacks deal half damage to most objects. Divide the damage by 2 before applying the object's hardness. Some energy types might be particularly effective against certain objects, subject to GM discretion. For example, fire might do full damage against parchment, cloth, and other objects that burn easily. Sonic might do full damage against glass and crystal objects.
"Some energy types might be particularly effective against certain objects, subject to GM discretion."
This is why you use DR for creatures, to avoid the smashing/sundering rules which are different and allow GM to decide how energy does damage. If a robot has hardness listed instead of DR it must be a typo, unless robots are not creatures in which case they should be sunders are smashed then use those rules. which means the energy damage is effective by hardness however GM says they do ignore, half, whole or double ect.
Yeaaaaa all that would be house-rule talk. While most constructs, such as golems, have damage reduction; animated objects and lots of robots (a specific subtype of construct) however do use hardness rules. They're creatures and not objects, and not a lot of GMs are really gonna have a problems differentiating between the two categories.
I'm not convinced that the energy damage that is a rider on weapon damage has hardness applied to it separately. The Year of the Sky Key FAQ doesn't really clarify. It says when damage is dealt, not that each component of the damage ought to be considered separately.
So while it certainly may be true that hardness reduces each component of damage (effectively doubling the hardness against these types of attacks), I haven't seen a clear answer yet.
if you did 1d1 +1d6 fire against DR 10 and did the fire damage then hardness is applied twice. If instead the total attack didn't get through DR then hardness would be once. But since DR doesn't work against fire we can know that the first option is correct.
Energy damage and weapon damage are two different damage factors that can be reduced by effects that specifically state reduces those damage types.
Damage reduction applies to only the weapon but not energy damage, so a flaming sword's fire damage would be unaffected.
Energy resistance (fire) applies against the fire damage, but the sword's weapon damage would be unaffected by the spell.
Both energy damage and weapon damage are affected by hardness, so both factors get affected independently. The damage isn't all summed up into one damage attack for hardness just like it isn't summed up for one attack damage number when dealing with things affecting only one of the factors.
Energy damage and weapon damage are two different damage factors that can be reduced by effects that specifically state reduces those damage types.
Damage reduction applies to only the weapon but not energy damage, so a flaming sword's fire damage would be unaffected.
Energy resistance (fire) applies against the fire damage, but the sword's weapon damage would be unaffected by the spell.
Both energy damage and weapon damage are affected by hardness, so both factors get affected independently. The damage isn't all summed up into one damage attack for hardness just like it isn't summed up for one attack damage number when dealing with things affecting only one of the factors.
I understand the argument, but my point is I don't think its actually clarified that way in the rules.
What isn't necessarily clear to me (and it appears that Chess Pwn sees it the same way I do) is that when the FAQ referenced "damage" they meant that we should bifurcate damage caused by a weapon that also deals energy damage. They simply refer to damage caused. It's not clear to me that creatures with hardness don't treat all damage from one attack as one pool of damage or that they should apply hardness to each one. We already know that creature hardness is at least to some degree treated differently than object hardness.
No, I don't have the same issue you do
But since DR doesn't work against fire we can know that the first option is correct.(then hardness is applied twice)
Both energy damage and weapon damage are affected by hardness, so both factors get affected independently. The damage isn't all summed up into one damage attack for hardness just like it isn't summed up for one attack damage number when dealing with things affecting only one of the factors.
IMO, this should be the case for DR 5 plus fire resistance 5.
But if it's hardness, why does it matter if the damage is fire or physical? Hardness absorbs 5 damage, period. I dont think you need to split, just as you dont split the sneak attack die against hardness or DR, or the vital strike die against DR, and so on.The source of damage should matter only when the target has resistance to part of said the damage. Or if it is vulnerable to part of the damage.
Example: Clay Dolls have hardness 5 and fire vulnerability (+50% fire damage).
Does hardness provide double protection against weapons that deal additional energy damage?
I.e. If I stab a robot with hardness 5 with a flaming short sword do I deal d6+d6-5 or d6-5+d6-5?
d6+(1d6 fire/2)-5
Creatures with hardness still reduce the element before applying hardness in my view.
Hardness is frustrating enough without making it mitigate certain weapon enchantments.
I remember a Carrion Crown game where <minor spoilers> I was the only one capable of hurting an enemy because it had hardness 10. We just surrounded it and everybody assisted me. I had to slowly chip away at its hp 1-3 at a time, on a GOOD roll. Eventually the GM just took the numbers and automated 10 rounds so we could kill it.
The entire hardness mechanic for creatures is unnecessary and confusing. They should have just gave them DR.
[/rant]
No, I don't have the same issue you do
But since DR doesn't work against fire we can know that the first option is correct.(then hardness is applied twice)
Ah, read too fast. My bad.
EDIT: Grammar. herp derp
Does hardness provide double protection against weapons that deal additional energy damage?
I.e. If I stab a robot with hardness 5 with a flaming short sword do I deal d6+d6-5 or d6-5+d6-5?
d6+(1d6 fire/2)-5
Creatures with hardness still reduce the element before applying hardness in my view.
Not pursuant to the FAQ quoted above. The rule regarding halving energy damage, etc. due to hardness only applies to inanimate objects, not creatures with hardness.
So what I'm getting is that this is not a question with a generally resolved answer, since a tangentially related PFS FAQ appears to be as close as we've got to an official response.
So what I'm getting is that this is not a question with a generally resolved answer, since a tangentially related PFS FAQ appears to be as close as we've got to an official response.
That's the way I see it. When in doubt, err on the most conservative ruling which in this case is double-counting the hardness.
If I had to guess, they'll probably say to run it that way anyway. I don't really like it, but the way it reads now really could go either way. As was mentioned above, the real problem is that they made separate rules for creatures with hardness, rather than saying run it just like objects or simply giving them DR (and energy resistance, if they want it to work out that way).
You should always think of damage of the form (physical type A) + (energy type B) as coming in two separate packages. They're counted separately for DR, for energy resistance, for rounding, etc. Hardness treating each incoming damage type as a separate package like this is just applying the same rules foundation that you use everywhere else.