I'm reading through the skill and saw the part where it says "with a high enough result, you can even smash through walls."
I see the checks required for doors but obviously nothing for walls themselves. Are they in another part of the book? What am I missing here?
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You mean in the force open action? There are more rules relating to that in another section of the book;
But when it mentions smashing through walls there, it mostly refers to making an attack against them to break them down rather than using the force open action, so I think that they wrote that smash through walls line at a different stage where they intended for Athletics to break walls, then forgot to change it when they settled on it being something reserved for attacking. It is confusing however that the bashing charge ability for the barbarian specifically references using force open on obstacles (with walls as one of the examples listed), but there are no DCs for it anywhere in the book I can find.
I would probably refer to the table for force open of the door of the same material that the wall is made of, then apply the very hard difficulty adjustment (+5 to the DC) to represent how much stronger walls are compared to doors of the same material.
As an example, lets say it is a house made out of sturdy wooden walls with a sturdy wooden door. To force through the door, that is the Master DC of the force open action (DC 30). To force through the walls, that would become that same DC+5 (DC 35).
Another way would be to just increase the DC to the next level (if you want the difference to be more pronounced), in which case the above example goes from the Master DC of 30 to the Legendary DC of 40.
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Thanks for the response. You pretty much said everything I needed to read. Yeah, the athletics section is a little messy.
I also find it odd that they mention that you can't break sturdy walls with out tools and downtime, yet provide HP, hardness, and BT anyway. It's like they had no idea how they wanted players to interact with walls and the section just ended up being a bunch of mumbo jumbo.
Thanks for the response. You pretty much said everything I needed to read. Yeah, this whole thing on athletics is pretty messy.
I also find it odd that they mention that you can't break sturdy walls with out tools and downtime, yet provide HP, hardness, and BT anyway. It's like they had no idea how they wanted players to interact with walls and the section ends up being a bunch of mumbo jumbo.
I have always found that "How do I break this object or structure" tends to be a difficult question to answer in most systems. I recall having a very hard time when I first ran PF1 figuring this kind of stuff too.
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I would probably refer to the table for force open of the door of the same material that the wall is made of, then apply the very hard difficulty adjustment (+5 to the DC) to represent how much stronger walls are compared to doors of the same material.As an example, lets say it is a house made out of sturdy wooden walls with a sturdy wooden door. To force through the door, that is the Master DC of the force open action (DC 30). To force through the walls, that would become that same DC+5 (DC 35).
Another way would be to just increase the DC to the next level (if you want the difference to be more pronounced), in which case the above example goes from the Master DC of 30 to the Legendary DC of 40.
?
Normally walls are often easier to break through than doors. Seriously. Doors are reinforced. Walls are mostly panelling and maybe a filler material.
But if you are talking about something that is less of a wall and more of a fortification then yes, it needs to be a DC higher if you are going to allow it at all.
So much depends on the construction used.
But please don't take this as a criticism. Thanks for reminding us of the rules.
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I also find it odd that they mention that you can't break sturdy walls with out tools and downtime, yet provide HP, hardness, and BT anyway. It's like they had no idea how they wanted players to interact with walls and the section just ended up being a bunch of mumbo jumbo.
I believe the intention was to prevent certain players from abusing the capability of breaking walls during exploration of let's say the rooms of a haunted house (Malevolence adventure F.T.W.). I interpret it as something more similar to "it's in the GM's rights to tell you that you can't break every wall in the game".
As for providing HP, hardness and BT, it could be useful for a downtime activity too. Let's say, the GM decides that a "smash the wall" downtime activity takes 1 hour and at the end of each hour you make an attack roll and you compare your result with the wall's characteristics in order to deduce how much damage/progress you have made. You can also rule that if one day has passed (24 downtime activities, 1 hour duration each, 24 * size of party total attack rolls) and no sufficient damage has been made, then an event is triggered.
At least that's how I would do it.
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I would probably refer to the table for force open of the door of the same material that the wall is made of, then apply the very hard difficulty adjustment (+5 to the DC) to represent how much stronger walls are compared to doors of the same material.As an example, lets say it is a house made out of sturdy wooden walls with a sturdy wooden door. To force through the door, that is the Master DC of the force open action (DC 30). To force through the walls, that would become that same DC+5 (DC 35).
Another way would be to just increase the DC to the next level (if you want the difference to be more pronounced), in which case the above example goes from the Master DC of 30 to the Legendary DC of 40.
?
Normally walls are often easier to break through than doors. Seriously. Doors are reinforced. Walls are mostly panelling and maybe a filler material.
But if you are talking about something that is less of a wall and more of a fortification then yes, it needs to be a DC higher if you are going to allow it at all.
So much depends on the construction used.
But please don't take this as a criticism. Thanks for reminding us of the rules.
Modern doors/walls compare that way because they are generally made of different materials. Doors these days are reinforced because historically the door was the obvious point of attack, because if you make a door from the same material as a wall, it generally being thinner than the wall the doorframe is inset into, and it having hinges (a structural fail point) makes it structurally weaker than a solid wall of the same material which is thicker and has no moving parts. This is why battering rams generally target the gate or door instead of walls (note that even today in non-fortified houses, battering rams (mostly used by police) primarily target doors).
A wooden house with a reinforced door would be represented by a house with standard wood walls and a sturdy wood door (two different materials in the rules with different DCs).
Also, the house I live in has thick brick walls with a wooden door. The back door in particular is of a type pretty common in older houses here in Australia that is even thinner than standard interior doors. I am not particularly strong but could probably kick it open, something which I cannot do to most walls.
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Also, when breaking through a wall it will usually just be a small section, too small to move through. You would have to expand the hole enough to get through. Meanwhile, a door is already large enough to go through, and all you need to do is break the latch or then hinges and you're in.
I also find it odd that they mention that you can't break sturdy walls with out tools and downtime, yet provide HP, hardness, and BT anyway. It's like they had no idea how they wanted players to interact with walls and the section just ended up being a bunch of mumbo jumbo.I believe the intention was to prevent certain players from abusing the capability of breaking walls during exploration of let's say the rooms of a haunted house (Malevolence adventure F.T.W.). I interpret it as something more similar to "it's in the GM's rights to tell you that you can't break every wall in the game".
As for providing HP, hardness and BT, it could be useful for a downtime activity too. Let's say, the GM decides that a "smash the wall" downtime activity takes 1 hour and at the end of each hour you make an attack roll and you compare your result with the wall's characteristics in order to deduce how much damage/progress you have made. You can also rule that if one day has passed (24 downtime activities, 1 hour duration each, 24 * size of party total attack rolls) and no sufficient damage has been made, then an event is triggered.
At least that's how I would do it.
It's a fine suggestion, to make up for what doesn't seem to really exist in the rules.
I was in a PF1 game years ago and had a GM do something similar to this. It's what he had to resort to since the rules for smashing walls in PF1 is just as confused and unsure of itself as it is in this game. Basically it was just dealing damage over a long span of time as you basically put it.
The issue I had is that we were all 16th level and it felt so out of place. Here we are smashing gigantic constructs and golems harder than rock, only to get caught up on a wall and struggling to chip it away for hours of in game time. We didn't have disintegrate on hand or any weapons that were appropriate, and since the game thought it was appropriate to blanket all other weapons of all qualities from effectively doing so, that's how we ended up doing it. It was something that I still remembered, but didn't bring it up since it's very awkward in high level games.
Honestly, the best solution, imo, is to basically highlight the part were it says you absolutely needs tools and downtime, delete it, and make it part of another skill that deals with construction and carpentry of some sort. I would add something more flexible such as "most low level weapons and other forms of attacks are ineffective against particularly sturdy walls, such as a stone wall" and have it be GM discretion if "higher level weapons and attacks" would affect the wall as normal, such as a magical weapon of some kind or a breath weapon from a rather sizable dragon. The text can be cleaned up, but hopefully I'm getting my point across.
Perhaps that would lead to emphasize too much a part of the rules that will not often come into play. In my humble (due to my severely limited experience) opinion, your GM should have just allowed you to smash the walls or find an excuse other than "you can not tear down this wall because the rules say so". As far as I can tell, the Rule of Cool takes priority over anything else.
In other words, I think the "common sense" you describe (16th level characters, practically superheroes among mortals, should be able to demolish walls with ease unless, at the GM's discretion, another resolution mechanism should be applied that is narration wise much more exciting) is fairly enough for this situation, not hard to come up with and too situational for having a specific rule being tailor-made for covering it.