Fragile quality and hardening spell


Rules Questions

Silver Crusade

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Considering hardening.

When does a material lose its fragile quality? How hard must it get?

I know this is probably hard to answer, because this Pathfinder spell is a remnant from 3.5 days, but since it is Pathfinder, perhaps we can answer it :)

The Exchange Owner - D20 Hobbies

1 person marked this as a favorite.

I'd rule as soon as it's hardened, it's no longer fragile without looking it up. Just on the word use.

If you disagree, post the relevant rules and maybe we can dissect it more.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

The fragile quality has nothing to do with the items hardness.

Quote:

Fragile: Fragile weapons and armor cannot take the beating that sturdier weapons can. A fragile weapon gains the broken condition if the wielder rolls a natural 1 on an attack roll with the weapon. If a fragile weapon is already broken, the roll of a natural 1 destroys it instead.

Armor with the fragile quality falls apart when hit with heavy blows. If an attacker hits a creature wearing fragile armor with an attack roll of a natural 20 and confirms the critical hit (even if the creature is immune to critical hits), the armor gains the broken condition. If already broken, the armor is destroyed instead. Fragile armor is not broken or destroyed by critical threats that are not generated by natural 20s, so if a creature wielding a weapon with a 19–20 or 18–20 critical range scores a critical hit on the wearer of this armor with a roll of less than a natural 20, that critical hit has no chance to break or destroy the armor.

Masterwork and magical fragile weapons and armor lack these flaws unless otherwise noted in the item description or the special material description.

Masterwork items (usually) remove the fragile quality. Masterwork items have the same hardness as non-masterwork items. By the rules, increasing the hardness will do nothing to the fragile quality.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I agree with Jeraa. You could theoretically have a fragile adamantine weapon (the fact that adamantine weapons are considered inherently masterwork, not withstanding). The hardness is a separate issue from the fragile quality. Sometimes even with a hardened object, if they just take a hit wrong or get used improperly they just shatter (break, crumble, etc.)


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Jeraa is absolutely correct on RAW. If you are attempting to follow RAW, that's the decision.

James Risner wrote:
I'd rule as soon as it's hardened, it's no longer fragile without looking it up. Just on the word use.

As a GM, I'd tend to go this way as well, but that's not how the rules work. As a result, you can look to Pizza Lord for concepts of how that might function as an in-character explanation of what's happening.

(Hardness, in real life, is very different from hardness in PF, but the two things are similar enough that you could presuppose a brittle-izing effect on even hardened items, due to faulty construction, and be within a solid realm of plausibility).

Silver Crusade

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Masterwork removes fragile?
I had totally missed that!

I'm getting closer to cool bone or glass armor :)


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Masterwork usually removes fragile, unless something says otherwise. Which bone does.

Bone wrote:

Masterwork bone weapons also have the fragile quality, but magic bone weapons do not.

[...]
Masterwork bone armor also has the fragile quality, but magic bone armor does not.

Not sure what kind of glass you'd be using.


Hardness and fragility aren't the same thing. Diamonds, for example, are extremely hard but brittle. Increasing hardness doesn't (and shouldn't) affect the fragile quality at all unless the effect's text states otherwise.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Rules Questions / Fragile quality and hardening spell All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Rules Questions