Wall of Stone Hardness and Multiple Damage Types, Criticals

[Ardencroft]

Several questions about Wall of Stone.

Each 5-foot-by-5-foot section of the wall has AC 10, Hardness 14, and 50 Hit Points, and it's immune to critical hits and precision damage.

First question - I cast a Wall of Stone. if an enemy has a flaming rune, a shock rune, and a striking rune. They Roll 2d8, dealing 12 slashing, 6 fire, 4 electricity damage. Do all the damages pool before applying hardness, dealing 8 actual damage to the wall, or does it reduce the damage of each source first, dealing effectively 0 damage to the wall?

Second question - If the person has a +25 to attack, and rolls a natural 1 when attacking the wall of stone, the nat 1 reduces the success by 1 step, but being 10 over it's AC, it would still be a critical success. However, Wall of Stone specifically states it is immune to critical hits, so would that 26 result on a natural 1 roll still hit the wall, or would it be a miss?

[thenobledrake]

It's not explicitly stated, but I believe hardness is intended to be handled as if it were resistance to all damage - so I think rather than totaling up the 12 slashing, 6 fire, and 4 electricity from your example and dealing 8 damage to the wall of stone, I think it'd be 0 damage.

I think that because the Item Damage rules says "Each time an item takes damage, reduce any damage the item takes by it's Hardness."

A natural 1 reduces what the math says the result would be by one category, so if 1 + your modifier = critical success, your actual result is success.

Being immune to critical hits doesn't play a roll in determining the success level - all it does is make the target take normal damage instead of double damage.

[Kennethray]

I agree with thenobledrake. I run the hardness that way cause shields. Not 100% sure if that is the way it was intended to work.

[Atheosis]

Kennethray wrote:

I agree with thenobledrake. I run the hardness that way cause shields. Not 100% sure if that is the way it was intended to work.

Seemingly that is not the way it was intended to work if I'm reading this right.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/474043975376961546/67620140652455527 4/Screenshot_20200209-170236.png

[Atheosis]

thenobledrake wrote:

It's not explicitly stated, but I believe hardness is intended to be handled as if it were resistance to all damage - so I think rather than totaling up the 12 slashing, 6 fire, and 4 electricity from your example and dealing 8 damage to the wall of stone, I think it'd be 0 damage.

I think if hardness was treated as resistance to all damage it would say so in the rules, and if you look at the ruling in that discord snip it would suggest the opposite is true. The real question is whether or not other objects follow the same rules as shields, and I don't see why they wouldn't. It's unfortunate the core book isn't more thorough in explaining this though, no doubt about it. Mark's post doesn't actually seem to be based on anything in the book, but simply a statement of their intentions as designers.

[thenobledrake]

Mark's comment there makes sense for a shield, but only because Shield Block clues us in to what step it must happen at and resistance naturally comes before that step.

But as a general case, Hardness is lacking a clear assignment of what step of resolving damage it happens in. The best I can see as far as text pointing at the intention of Hardness applying at step 4 of damage resolution all the time is "...reduce any damage the item takes by its Hardness. The rest of the damage reduces the item's Hit Points."

I'm happy to have that be the case, but it's pretty hard to get there from the text in the book as it currently stands - might be a good case for errata or at least a FAQ entry for clarity.

[Atheosis]

thenobledrake wrote:

Mark's comment there makes sense for a shield, but only because Shield Block clues us in to what step it must happen at and resistance naturally comes before that step.

But as a general case, Hardness is lacking a clear assignment of what step of resolving damage it happens in. The best I can see as far as text pointing at the intention of Hardness applying at step 4 of damage resolution all the time is "...reduce any damage the item takes by its Hardness. The rest of the damage reduces the item's Hit Points."

I'm happy to have that be the case, but it's pretty hard to get there from the text in the book as it currently stands - might be a good case for errata or at least a FAQ entry for clarity.

It definitely needs an errata, but the "pooled-together damage" bit of that snip seems to make it pretty clear to me that hardness is meant to take all the damage from an attack as a single sum, and not like it's resistance to all damage types.