Item hardness is not listed by item, it's listed by material in the "Treasure" section (p.354).
Wooden hardness is 5, iron or steel is 9.
According to a note about Shields under the "armor and shields" section (p.177) there is says, "...you can use the Shield Block reaction to reduce damage you take by the shield's Hardness (3 for wooden shields or 5 for steel).
Do you guys think this is a typo (ie. one thing didn't get updated while the other did) or do you think shields are an exception from the hardness rules?
Item hardness is not listed by item, it's listed by material in the "Treasure" section (p.354).
Wooden hardness is 5, iron or steel is 9.According to a note about Shields under the "armor and shields" section (p.177) there is says, "...you can use the Shield Block reaction to reduce damage you take by the shield's Hardness (3 for wooden shields or 5 for steel).
Do you guys think this is a typo (ie. one thing didn't get updated while the other did) or do you think shields are an exception from the hardness rules?
I think they're using the 'thin wood' and 'thin iron/steel' values for shields, at least basic ones.
It's another area that needs a clear definitive answer.
And materials/special materials need a declaration of what falls into the 'thin' category or not. By item type, not a measurement.
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Some digging around and working backwards from item quality, special materials and magical items might give a clearer picture.
For example, the sturdy shield (magical) on page 411. Gives a hardness value for a bunch of shields. expert light wooden shields are 6, expert heavy wood shields are hardness 8. light and heavy steel shields are 8 and 10.
We know an expert quality item gives +1 to hardness (page 190, table 6-19).
If the magic property of sturdy gives 2 hardness, the light wooden and steel shields match up... but that leaves the heavy shields as having two more hardness, which isn't mentioned anywhere in the basic item description.
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Not sure which area is being inconsistent. Frankly each shield entry just needs to list its hardness. There is zero reason not to and it would be a definitive answer.
And the sturdy shield magic item should list how much hardness the magic is adding. Guessing games and trying to reverse engineer how the system is supposed to work isn't appropriate. And the amount of cross reference is super annoying- I had to flip through half a dozen sections to get an answer of 'eh?'
Never mind I found my answer.
"Use the thin Hardness for shields and thin items and the regular Hardness for sturdier objects such as armor."
Rules for shields are spread across 3 different chapters.
