- There is a safe the PC's will need to crack in order to obtain an artifact that lies inside. They are in posseeion of some acid and a scroll of Shatter. Can either of these be used to damage the safe? (Shatter can cause Sunder but I'm not it sure if it applies here). The safe is Hardness 10 and HP 30.
Another way to open the safe would be to guess the combination, but I am considering all the options.
The rules for damaging items with acid, sonic, and other types of energy are pretty vague.
"Energy attacks deal half damage to most objects. Divide the damage by 2 before applying the object's hardness" - which makes it impossible to damage a safe with ordinary acid - but "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."So it's really up to you if you want to say that the acid is strong against metal and ignores hardness.
Though any PC with a two-handed weapon and moderate strength should be able to get through hardness 10 eventually.
- I have a high level Wizard NPC that had a magical mishap and managed to turn himself into an owl. A wise owl, since he can still speak and think, he is just in the form of an owl.
You could say he got hit with a version of Baleful Polymorph?
The polymorph rules are pretty complicated but it is possible to work out the combat stats for an owl wizard if you think you'll need them. Druids change into birds all the time so it's nothing new.
Not sure if mentioned already; it's said in the Core Rulebook that when a creature passes beyond 0 they have to keep making constitutions saves to either stabilize or continue to loose health. It's also said creatures not being assisted with these checks (such as heal checks) and left on their own have a very low chance of surviving. This way you can assume the monster is dead without the PC's finishing it off. However an intelligent creature coming back at the PC's with some scars and a deadly grudge later on could be a cool twist...