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I believe the title says it all. At my table we have been applying it at step 4 right before a character/creature would take damage and I believe that is correct based on page 272 which states, "Every item has a Hardness value. Each time an item takes damage, reduce any [emphasis added] damage the item takes by its Hardness. The rest of the damage reduces the item’s Hit Points."
This topic has come up a few times also in relation to some of the creatures I have used in my campaign that have Hardness listed in their stats. There is some (well...more that some) debate here if hardness acts like a resistance to all. I do not believe that is the case based on the description of hardness in the core rule book and the bestiaries. If that were true then there would not be hardness AND resistance.
In my readings thus far, Hardness (whether item or creature) is based on what a thing is made of. Something natural like wood, types of metal, leather, cloth, etc have a hardness. Resistances are a type unnatural/magical damage resistance usually with much more specificity, though sometimes very broad. Hardness specifically says "...any damage..." in its description.
There does seem to be quite a bit of confusion here and on the internets and it would be nice to get am official clarification from Paizo.
Thanks.
I believe the title says it all. At my table we have been applying it at step 4 right before a character/creature would take damage and I believe that is correct based on page 272 which states, "Every item has a Hardness value. Each time an item takes damage, reduce any [emphasis added] damage the item takes by its Hardness. The rest of the damage reduces the item’s Hit Points."
I'd say step 3 when you check resistances.
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There does seem to be quite a bit of confusion here and on the internets and it would be nice to get am official clarification from Paizo.
Unlikely, but would certainly be nice. This isn't even close to the highest war-inciting ambiguities in the rules.
In the mean time, I can offer my unofficial interpretation.
This topic has come up a few times also in relation to some of the creatures I have used in my campaign that have Hardness listed in their stats. There is some (well...more that some) debate here if hardness acts like a resistance to all. I do not believe that is the case based on the description of hardness in the core rule book and the bestiaries. If that were true then there would not be hardness AND resistance.
That there are two different descriptions and sources for the damage reduction means that there should be two terms for it. Even if they have the same mechanical effect.
Personally, I can't see any mechanical difference between 'reduce any damage the target takes by a specified value' and 'when a target takes damage of multiple types, reduce each damage value by the specified amount separately'.
The other time that this would come into play is with Shield Block. For that case though, Shield Block has its own rules for how to reduce damage and how much damage to apply to the shield item.
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I would say that hardness’s resist any applies only once to a given Strike or source of damage. Add them up and then apply hardness.
I always run it at the beginning of step 4. This is the only place when when damage is actually taken. All steps prior are calculations.
If that was so, you'd do resistance there too.
Resistance
Core Rulebook pg. 453
If you have resistance to a type of damage, each time you take that type of damage, you reduce the amount of damage you take by the listed amount (to a minimum of 0 damage).
Item Damage pg. 272
Each time an item takes damage, reduce any damage the item takes by its Hardness.
They both reduce the damage you take.
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I recently experienced an effect that dealt damage to my PC's armour : part physical and part acid. The effect specified that hardness did not reduce the acid damage.
So I guess that hardness applies separately to each type of damage.
Note that before encountering this effect, I thought hardness would apply to the total damage and not to each type separately as it apparently does.
I recently experienced an effect that dealt damage to my PC's armor : part physical and part acid. The effect specified that hardness did not reduce the acid damage.
So I guess that hardness applies separately to each type of damage.
Note that before encountering this effect, I thought hardness would apply to the total damage and not to each type separately as it apparently does.
Care to link the ability? Depending on some of the details of the ability it may not be relevant here. It's kind of hard to tell just based on that summary.
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This topic very quickly comes up against the game term 'instance of damage' which is used in the rules for Resistance and Weakness to damage. But as far as I am aware, isn't actually defined as a game term. It is just assumed that we all know what it means since it is written in English.
Unfortunately I am not sure whether the same attack dealing two different types of damage counts as two instances of damage or only one.
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Found it : "The ankhrav makes a mandibles Strike; if the Strike hits, the target’s armor takes the damage and the acid damage bypasses the armor’s Hardness."
The damage for this attack is : "Damage 1d8+4 piercing plus 1d6 acid"
Okay, yeah, that would have to be written that way even if it wasn't dealt with separately. Even basic metal armor has a hardness of 9. It's very possible for the piercing damage to be less than 9, causing the acid to be blocked by the hardness without the line "the acid damage bypasses the armor's hardness" regardless of the interpretation of whether the hardness would normally be separate or not.
This topic very quickly comes up against the game term 'instance of damage' which is used in the rules for Resistance and Weakness to damage. But as far as I am aware, isn't actually defined as a game term. It is just assumed that we all know what it means since it is written in English.
Unfortunately I am not sure whether the same attack dealing two different types of damage counts as two instances of damage or only one.
Agreed. Personally I see it as one instance, and I can point to things that back that up, but I've seen plenty of other things that I think are valid reasons to think that each damage type is tracked separately as well.
Hopefully that will be clarified at some point.
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And some things seem to go out of their way to say that they are not creating a separate instance of damage (unfortunately without actually using that game term). For example weapon striking runes, precision damage, and a lot of other things that add to existing damage.
Other things seem to be deliberately creating a separate instance of damage. Such as the Flame Wisp spell.
And a bunch of things are in a bit of a gray area. Such as a Flaming rune on a weapon, or the Ice Storm spell.
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The problem is that Hardness isn't defined properly. The best explanation we have is that anytime an item or creature with Hardness takes damage, you reduce it by the Hardness value. There's no dedicated rules entry explaining Hardness.
To me this means you calculate everything else first to get the final damage value, and then apply hardness to that value. Things like the Ankhrav mentioned earlier would have any acid damage ignored when determining the damage dealt. This does mean you would only apply Hardness once, and damage types usually don't matter. So if someone was striking with a Flaming sword and you wanted to block it, you would add the slashing and fire damage together before applying your Shield's hardness to the attack.
To me this means you calculate everything else first to get the final damage value, and then apply hardness to that value. ... This does mean you would only apply Hardness once, and damage types usually don't matter.
That works. It is certainly valid. I don't think it is the only way to interpret things though.
Alternatively the sentence:
Each time an item takes damage, reduce any damage the item takes by its Hardness.
applies to each 'instance of damage'. And each damage type on a single attack is ruled as a separate instance of damage. Which effectively makes hardness equivalent to resistance(all).
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Hardness is not defined enough, so both rulings are fine. It speaks of "any damage", but it's hard to know if it speaks of all instances of damage at step 3 or if it speaks of the total damage at step 4.
I personally apply hardness only once. First because hardness values are sometimes high and applying it multiple times can completely negate some characters' damage, which is too strong for an effect in my opinion. Second because, unlike Incorporeal Undeads, there's no way to bypass Hardness (there's often a way to destroy it through critical hits, but it has more to do with luck than with an actual strategy).
Example of Hardness:
Level 7 Giant Animated Statue: Hardness 10
Level 7 Specter: Resistance All 5
GMG Resistance at level 7: between 5 and 10
The Animated Statue hardness is super high, applying it to all damage with no way to bypass it seems too strong to me.
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I run hardness like resistance to all.
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Just like SuperBidi mentioned, Hardness values are usually much higher than Resist All values. If they wanted it to be Resist All they would just use Resist All, so it's definitely something else.
I can't imagine it being a matter of game and enemy design balance to always expect that every attack from the players will be dealing different types of damage.
Because that is the only time that the difference between the two candidate rulings becomes important to the number of rounds that it takes to destroy an enemy. If all of the players are dealing a single type of damage with all of their attacks and spells, then it becomes identical whether you run hardness as being the same as resist all vs. running hardness as only applying to the total.
Just like SuperBidi mentioned, Hardness values are usually much higher than Resist All values. If they wanted it to be Resist All they would just use Resist All, so it's definitely something else.I can't imagine it being a matter of game and enemy design balance to always expect that every attack from the players will be dealing different types of damage.
Likewise, I can't imagine it being a matter of game and enemy design balance to always expect that every attack from the players will be dealing a single damage type. Not every attack needs to be dealing multiple damage types for it to become relevant, just some of them. Moreover, at higher levels it is highly likely for weapon attacks to include multiple damage types due to runes like flaming, corrosive, etc., so I would be surprised if it wasn't at least somewhat taken into account by the devs.
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Likewise, I can't imagine it being a matter of game and enemy design balance to always expect that every attack from the players will be dealing a single damage type. Not every attack needs to be dealing multiple damage types for it to become relevant, just some of them. Moreover, at higher levels it is highly likely for weapon attacks to include multiple damage types due to runes like flaming, corrosive, etc., so I would be surprised if it wasn't at least somewhat taken into account by the devs.Just like SuperBidi mentioned, Hardness values are usually much higher than Resist All values. If they wanted it to be Resist All they would just use Resist All, so it's definitely something else.I can't imagine it being a matter of game and enemy design balance to always expect that every attack from the players will be dealing different types of damage.
Yeah, damage runes are an expected part of character progression by mid-high levels of the game.
Yeah, damage runes are an expected part of character progression by mid-high levels of the game.
If the game was balanced around it, then it should at least have a note in ABP about making sure that it is included somehow for low-magic games.
And in any case, the argument that Hardness 'must obviously and definitely' be intended to be different than Resistance(all) is a lot more debatable than you are giving it credit for.
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Yeah, damage runes are an expected part of character progression by mid-high levels of the game.If the game was balanced around it, then it should at least have a note in ABP about making sure that it is included somehow for low-magic games.
It does.
If you choose to eliminate runes entirely, this can reduce the PCs’ damage since they won’t have runes like flaming or holy.
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The argument that hardness is high isn't much of a reason as to why resistance all and hardness is different. Golems are often completely immune to magic with only a handful of types of magic affecting them. This pretty much negates casters or severely limits them.
And some resistance all of higher level incorporeal creatures is as bad as hardness with no real way to lower it other than really specific abilities like Destruction Domain aura.
And certain classes do have a way to lower hardness like a barbarian.
I don't see how aggregate damage would bypass hardness. Why would a flaming rune and a sword who do different types of damage really affect hardness in a combined fashion? No where does it say to add up all damage and apply it to hardness.
Hardness could use some clarifications such as alignment damage when using shield block.
But there's not much reason to think it is anything but like resistance all. Resistance All with immunity to precision damage is far worse on incorporeal creatures in my opinion.
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Such defenses aren't in a vacuum where one can compare Hardness to Resist All. Other stats factor in like AC, Saves, Immunities, and hit points. As DL noted, Incorporeal creatures are also getting immunity to precision damage which combined shuts down most Rogues and Precision Ranger Archers.
Specter: AC 25, 95 h.p., Saves 13/17/15, Resist All 5 (w/ exceptions)
Statue: AC 26 (breaks to 22), 100 h.p., 17/10/9. Hardness 10
So yeah, that statue starts much tougher than the Specter, but halfway through (or earlier w/ a crit), its AC plummets and it loses that Hardness. So yeah, we're looking at Hardness 10 for half its hit points (or less) vs. Resist All 5 for all its hit points. That's even IMO, albeit frontloading has its benefits. And the statue's quite likely to crit fail a Ref save which should overshadow the reduction from Hardness. Meanwhile the mobile Specter uses flight as a defense, maybe even hiding in a wall, and it can catch up on h.p. w/ one Spectral Corruption Strike.
I know my choice of enemy would depend quite a lot on the PCs involved, which IMO makes for good balance.
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It does.
If you choose to eliminate runes entirely, this can reduce the PCs’ damage since they won’t have runes like flaming or holy.
Ah, so it does. It just doesn't do anything to add it back in by itself.
Still, the argument about the relative values of hardness vs resistance(all) is not overwhelming. It is solid though.
As is the similarity between how shields work with the ruling that hardness applies to the total damage being done.
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I go with
Damage - hardness = damage the player takes ( assuming no resistances).
There are a large group of creatures able to deal X different types of damage with a single strike ( 1 vs 1/3+1/3+1/3, for example), and it's unlikely they meant to block the full damage with a shield.
Actually, It's the first time I read about somebody using it as it was "resistance to all damage".
I think they did mean you to block the full damage with a shield. It's once per round, maybe twice. It will destroy your shield if it gets hit too much. If you have a shield build, you often do very low damage and your sole purpose is defense.
I think treating hardness as something other than resistance all greatly weakens shield builds. It's one of the reasons why I would not play it any other way. Shield builds give up a lot of damage for defense. That defense should be every bit as good as powerful offensive abilities.
Casters only get to use to shield block once per 10 minutes. If that shield block isn't very good, not a great spell at all.
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I go with
Damage - hardness = damage the player takes ( assuming no resistances).
There are a large group of creatures able to deal X different types of damage with a single strike ( 1 vs 1/3+1/3+1/3, for example), and it's unlikely they meant to block the full damage with a shield.
Actually, It's the first time I read about somebody using it as it was "resistance to all damage".
I think they did mean you to block the full damage with a shield. It's once per round, maybe twice. It will destroy your shield if it gets hit too much. If you have a shield build, you often do very low damage and your sole purpose is defense.
I think treating hardness as something other than resistance all greatly weakens shield builds. It's one of the reasons why I would not play it any other way. Shield builds give up a lot of damage for defense. That defense should be every bit as good as powerful offensive abilities.
Casters only get to use to shield block once per 10 minutes. If that shield block isn't very good, not a great spell at all.
Actually, given these examples, hardness = resistance to all becomes TGTBT in my game.
Raising a shield already gives +2 to AC.
For me the strongest piece of evidence is how shields work. Regardless of how Hardness usually works it explicitly says that it can only prevent an amount of damage "up to its hardness", which implies, but doesn't outright state, that that's how hardness typically works. Is a strong point imo. Though, it technically doesn't prove that that's how hardness works, since the rules for shield block are separate from hardness in general.
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I go with
Damage - hardness = damage the player takes ( assuming no resistances).
There are a large group of creatures able to deal X different types of damage with a single strike ( 1 vs 1/3+1/3+1/3, for example), and it's unlikely they meant to block the full damage with a shield.
Actually, It's the first time I read about somebody using it as it was "resistance to all damage".
I think they did mean you to block the full damage with a shield. It's once per round, maybe twice. It will destroy your shield if it gets hit too much. If you have a shield build, you often do very low damage and your sole purpose is defense.
I think treating hardness as something other than resistance all greatly weakens shield builds. It's one of the reasons why I would not play it any other way. Shield builds give up a lot of damage for defense. That defense should be every bit as good as powerful offensive abilities.
Casters only get to use to shield block once per 10 minutes. If that shield block isn't very good, not a great spell at all.
I think you're misunderstanding Resistance to All Damage. This means you resist every individual damage type individually, so if you have Resist All 12, say from a Champion reaction, and an attack does 20 slashing and 10 fire, you apply resistance to both types, meaning you only take 8 slashing damage. Meanwhile, if you had only your shield with a hardness of 13, you would add all the damage together to get 30 damage total, then subtract hardness, leaving 17 left over. Type doesn't matter for Hardness since we're already past the point weakness and resistance applies.
If you treated it like Resist All, you would not be able to combine an Allies Champion Reaction with Shield Block, meaning the Champion Feat Shield of Reckoning would be useless.
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I'm not seeing too much confusion, here exactly. You'd just apply the hardness value against a single source of damage. A flaming sword, which would deal two types of damage, is still a single source of damage. They aren't somehow separate. That's also how it worked in PF1, and I don't see any indication that this changed.
For me the strongest piece of evidence is how shields work. Regardless of how Hardness usually works it explicitly says that it can only prevent an amount of damage "up to its hardness", which implies, but doesn't outright state, that that's how hardness typically works. Is a strong point imo. Though, it technically doesn't prove that that's how hardness works, since the rules for shield block are separate from hardness in general.
Yes, however you rule on hardness of items in general, the rules for shield block are very clear.
It only works on physical attacks.
You first calculate how much damage the character is going to take.
The player decides if they are going to block with the shield.
The amount of damage (total at this point) that the character would take is reduced by the hardness of the shield.
The remaining damage is dealt to both the character and the shield.
The only possible question would be if the hardness of the shield would still apply separately and reduce the damage that the shield actually takes. But there is nothing in the rules that suggests that this is the case.
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I go with
Damage - hardness = damage the player takes ( assuming no resistances).
There are a large group of creatures able to deal X different types of damage with a single strike ( 1 vs 1/3+1/3+1/3, for example), and it's unlikely they meant to block the full damage with a shield.
Actually, It's the first time I read about somebody using it as it was "resistance to all damage".
I think they did mean you to block the full damage with a shield. It's once per round, maybe twice. It will destroy your shield if it gets hit too much. If you have a shield build, you often do very low damage and your sole purpose is defense.
I think treating hardness as something other than resistance all greatly weakens shield builds. It's one of the reasons why I would not play it any other way. Shield builds give up a lot of damage for defense. That defense should be every bit as good as powerful offensive abilities.
Casters only get to use to shield block once per 10 minutes. If that shield block isn't very good, not a great spell at all.
I think you're misunderstanding Resistance to All Damage. This means you resist every individual damage type individually, so if you have Resist All 12, say from a Champion reaction, and an attack does 20 slashing and 10 fire, you apply resistance to both types, meaning you only take 8 slashing damage. Meanwhile, if you had only your shield with a hardness of 13, you would add all the damage together to get 30 damage total, then subtract hardness, leaving 17 left over. Type doesn't matter for Hardness since we're already past the point weakness and resistance applies.
If you treated it like Resist All, you would not be able to combine an Allies Champion Reaction with Shield Block, meaning the Champion Feat Shield of Reckoning would be useless.
I understand it all. I don't think that example changes anything.
I think you don't realize how high the damage is at higher level. How often creatures critical hit and even using an ability like Shield of Reckoning will not often reduce the damage sufficiently to eliminate it and will still rip apart a lot of shields.
Let's take like a Balor.
A balor does 4d8+17 damage with 1d6 evil. You're wielding a sturdy shield supreme with shield ally, cleric emblazon armament, and have the level 20 shield ability.
Total Hardness 25.
So he hits your buddy and does on average 35 plus 4 evil.
So you block 22 with Champion's Reaction and the 4 evil, then the 12 with your shield. Nothing happens to your shield. You're good.
Now the guy critical hits your buddy for 70 plus 8 evil. Your champion reaction blocks 22 negating the damage down to 48 slashing and 0 evil.
Your shield takes 48 damage with you and the shield taking 20. You can do this once or twice a a round if both your buddy and the Balor are within 15 feet.
In this instance, the shield does nothing to block the evil damage as the Champion's Reaction does it all. It absorbs a lot of physical damage but not all of it.
What is the point of this illustration? That if you are using Champion's reaction, the protected target is highly unlikely to take any minor additional damage from excess from a separate source.
In those few instances where this does happen and it would be very, very few, I'm completely ok treating hardness like resist all but different. Shield builds are very focused, there is only a handful of truly good shields that won't get wrecked quickly if used to block, and it is costly to keep them up when they get wrecked such as blocking damage from a powerful creature's critical hit.
It is also hard to keep both an ally and a target within 15 feet, especially if flanking a huge or larger creature using reach or a highly mobile creature or do so in groups.
So in those few instances where the shield is used to protect either yourself or an ally, I have zero trouble allowing hardness to act like resist all. I want shield users to feel powerful given they do far less damage than offensive builds. Makes them feel worth playing.
I go with
Damage - hardness = damage the player takes ( assuming no resistances).
There are a large group of creatures able to deal X different types of damage with a single strike ( 1 vs 1/3+1/3+1/3, for example), and it's unlikely they meant to block the full damage with a shield.
Actually, It's the first time I read about somebody using it as it was "resistance to all damage".
I think they did mean you to block the full damage with a shield. It's once per round, maybe twice. It will destroy your shield if it gets hit too much. If you have a shield build, you often do very low damage and your sole purpose is defense.
I think treating hardness as something other than resistance all greatly weakens shield builds. It's one of the reasons why I would not play it any other way. Shield builds give up a lot of damage for defense. That defense should be every bit as good as powerful offensive abilities.
Casters only get to use to shield block once per 10 minutes. If that shield block isn't very good, not a great spell at all.
Actually, given these examples, hardness = resistance to all becomes TGTBT in my game.
Raising a shield already gives +2 to AC.
+2 AC that doesn't stack with cover isn't very powerful. It's just ok. Monsters have very high hit rolls, especially boss monsters. Shield users do far less damage than non-shield users.
Given they have to give up a reaction to block the damage, have a shield that slowly gets ablated, and can't use their reaction for Champion's Reaction or Attack of Opportunity as well as taking an action to raise a shield, I don't see it as TGTBT.
Your campaigns may differ, so hard to say. I just know in mine shield builds are rare. I haven't seen a problem with letting hardness act like resist all.
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Another problem I see is the interaction with weakness. If you have fire weakness, it is usually not that easy to also get fire resistance. But if you have a shield and block with it and hardness = resist all, voila : easy fire resistance.
Barkskin and shield FTW.
For 1 attack? What if you have five creatures around you hitting you 3 times each that do bonus fire damage? You fully block one attack, then the other 14 land on you taking advantage of fire weakness.
You have to look what shield block is overall. Generally it is 1 time per round. You can't use your champion's reaction with it most of the time. You don't get a second shield block until what? 8th level? 10th level? This lets you use a shield block twice? It only works exceptionally well if the monster does two or more types of damage. Otherwise, it just smashes you up and ruins your shield. And it requires that the monster attack you.
When I Dm in general the monster goes after the strongest offensive player or can attack multiple targets within melee range. So you protect one target with Shield of Reckoning if you pick up that feat and they are in range for one attack.
For that one attack it can be very powerful. But that's it. It's one attack. If it's attacking multiple targets at full attack bonus, so you protected one. It should be good protection.
I've been running it this way since I started playing PF2. It has not been an overpowered option in my experience. There are no real overpowered options in PF2. Monsters are just dangerous and generally hammer the PCs no matter what you try to do to stop them other than just not be within attack range.
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If Hardness were treated as resist all it would not reduce it further, it would replace the Resist given by the reaction. You only apply the greater value of any given Resistance.
I use level 10 as an example because that's where the Champion Reaction value and a Sturdy Shield's hardness are about equal.
An Adult White Dragon bites you for 24 Piercing and 7 Cold damage. A Champion uses their reaction on you giving Resist All 12. This would reduce the damage taken to 12 Piercing and 0 Cold.
If you ALSO Shield Block the attack, after calculating the Resistance you would take 12 damage, which is reduced by 13 from the Shield block, resulting in 0 damage.
If the Champion didn't use their reaction, you would take a total of 31 damage. After shield blocking, it would reduce to 18 damage, which both you and the shield take.
If you treat Hardness as Resist All, it would instead nullify the Cold damage, and reduce the Piercing to 11, which is better than the Champion Reaction, but would not stack with it.
THIS is what I'm trying to explain to you. You can not apply Resist All Damage twice on a single attack. Hardness must be something different, otherwise there would be no reason to have Hardness at all.
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If Hardness were treated as resist all it would not reduce it further, it would replace the Resist given by the reaction. You only apply the greater value of any given Resistance.
I use level 10 as an example because that's where the Champion Reaction value and a Sturdy Shield's hardness are about equal.
An Adult White Dragon bites you for 24 Piercing and 7 Cold damage. A Champion uses their reaction on you giving Resist All 12. This would reduce the damage taken to 12 Piercing and 0 Cold.
If you ALSO Shield Block the attack, after calculating the Resistance you would take 12 damage, which is reduced by 13 from the Shield block, resulting in 0 damage.
If the Champion didn't use their reaction, you would take a total of 31 damage. After shield blocking, it would reduce to 18 damage, which both you and the shield take.
If you treat Hardness as Resist All, it would instead nullify the Cold damage, and reduce the Piercing to 11, which is better than the Champion Reaction, but would not stack with it.
THIS is what I'm trying to explain to you. You can not apply Resist All Damage twice on a single attack. Hardness must be something different, otherwise there would be no reason to have Hardness at all.
I do not call it resist all. I run Hardness in the same way, not they're are the same.
My order of operations is:
1. Enemy attacks.
2. Enemy hits.
3. Player chooses to shield block. Apply hardness reducing each type of damage by hardness value.
4. Remaining value does damage to both shield and player equally divided with higher damage if odd applied to player.
5. Then apply resistance or any other defenses.
I have run it this way since Age of Ashes where we clarified how shield block works with regards to excess damage and when the shield block is applied before any resistances as the shield is interposed prior to the damage striking.
I have found zero issues with doing so. To me and my players who discussed this, it seemed like the most logical way to run shield block and hardness.
We even applied this logic to a wall of force or a wall of stone. Do we think the hardness of wall would suffer the aggregate damage of getting struck with a weapon with a flaming rune? We said no. The hardness would reduce each type of damage separately.
In our estimation, hardness operates like resist all, but is not resist all.
And what else have found during gameplay:
1. Hardness and resist all together are exceedingly rare.
2. Shield use is still not popular. I've only had two champions run a sword and shield style. No fighters and no other class.
3. There just isn't a lot of monsters that this applies to. If it does, being able to reduce one attack isn't going to change the might much.
Dragons as an example are often so large at higher level, you and your ally are not close enough when flanking or if it is flapping over your head to bein the 15 foot Champion reaction range.
Something people make seem all too easy, which it is not.
4. When fighting multiple opponents, blocking one attack out of a sea of attacks really doesn't change the outcome of the fight.
So we're going to keep running it this way until Paizo clarifies otherwise. There is no clear ruling that hardness doesn't apply to each type of damage. Inferences from other feats does not make for a clear ruling.
If you're having trouble with it running like this in your games, then run it in the more conservative fashion you want to run it.
I know that I'm 100% certain it is not overpowered, too good to be true, or even much of an issue if you run it as my group does. It just makes shield block worth using given the reduced damage you do and all you give up including the action and reaction every round to use shield block.
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Before I begin, please understand this is the Rules forum, so we need to go off RAW as much as we can. You are free to run however you like.
3. Player chooses to shield block. Apply hardness reducing each type of damage by hardness value.
4. Remaining value does damage to both shield and player equally divided with higher damage if odd applied to player.
5. Then apply resistance or any other defenses.
This is fundamentally wrong. The Shield Block reaction only triggers when you would take damage. Resistance is calculated in step 3, and if your resistance exceeds the damage rolled, you never take damage, and thus can't shield block. You have to get to Step 4 before Shield Block can trigger.
Second, you and the Shield take the exact same amount of damage, you don't split it in half. If you block an attack of 20 damage with a Hardness 13 shield, then both you AND the shield take 7 damage.
Third, the way you're running it is essentially applying Resist All damage twice, which as others have said is too good to be true.
I'm surprised shields aren't popular in your games. In PFS they're everywhere. Even without the Shield Block reaction it's a great use of a third action for the +2 AC. If you do have Shield Block, reducing the damage by even a small amount can keep you from going down. They're also very easy to repair, so it's unlikely your investment would get destroyed.
You and your players seem to be severely undervaluing shields. It's rare that you are attacked by, as you say, 5 enemies at once, and even then they are usually spreading their attacks out among the party due to space. If you're constantly just ganging up on a single party member just because they "look" tanky, I would say you're running wrong. A smart enemy party would split up and make sure to harry the casters and healers so they don't get their good spells off, while making sure to not open themselves up to a flank. Even with a bunch of enemies attacking a single person, saving your one shield block for a lucky crit can save your life, since you know if it's a crit prior to having to declare that you're blocking.
As for general Hardness: The extra force granted by a strike by having a bit of extra heat behind it should help you to exceed the Hardness Threshold. Separating them makes no sense. Swinging a mace and dealing 10 damage to a wall with a hardness of 10, and doing no damage makes sense. Why would swinging the same exact mace with the same damage, but it's also on fire also not do any damage? The whole point of Hardness is that you need to so at least X damage all in the same instant before it would even make a dent, there's no reason to split the damage types and make it just as good as Resist All, when it's already pretty damned good to begin with.
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I think the example of the mace vs. the wall highlights rather than supports why the mace on fire shouldn't do any more damage.
Is this fire hot enough to damage this material? No.
Is the momentum of the mace enough to damage this material? No.
"What if we add them together?"
Eh...those don't add, not in that example and not if it were electricity, etc. The blow doesn't make the fire hotter nor does the fire make the blow stronger. That idea boggles me.
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Separately, I wouldn't call Hardness a Resist simply because it is different and thus should stack. That's supported by the fact it can occur at a different time. On these forums, exceptions have been detected for the order of operations re: damage, one of them being that the shield user gets to know what the incoming damage is, and incoming damage gets calculated by running it through Resistances/Weaknesses.
Also, I wouldn't apply Hardness to esoteric damage like Mental, so there's another difference.
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As for shield use, I certainly would expect to see it often, at least for those expecting to remain up front. But it's not too good IMO because it's costly, needing a hand, an action, and if you Shield Block, your Reaction. And most likely there's a weapon in your other hand making usage of consumables (et al) quite difficult. (That last makes me surprised shields are popular in PFS because of all those bonus consumables. Actually, given the randomness of group configurations, I could see shields seeing more use because damage mitigation would prove valuable when in-combat healing is unreliable.)
And sometimes you need to dish out the damage, like w/ Oozes and Swarms. Then using a shield gets really costly because you're not killing nearly as fast as you want even if you don't Raise Shield since your shield isn't helping you vs. Engulf or Swarm damage. Plus there are those abilities which are die-based, i.e. Power Attack, that can devastate a creature w/ Resistances, while a one-handed weapon chips away.
My order of operations is:
1. Enemy attacks.
2. Enemy hits.
3. Player chooses to shield block. Apply hardness reducing each type of damage by hardness value.
4. Remaining value does damage to both shield and player equally divided with higher damage if odd applied to player.
5. Then apply resistance or any other defenses.
I'm really not sure how you came to this conclusion.
Trigger While you have your shield raised, you would take damage from a physical attack.
#1 and #2 look good to me.
Your shield prevents you from taking an amount of damage up to the shield’s Hardness.
#3. Reduce the total damage by the shield's hardness value.
You and the shield each take any remaining damage
#4a. You take any and all remaining damage after the reduction from the shield's hardness.
#4b. Your shield also takes any and all remaining damage (the same value of damage that you took).
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There are a few debatable places in the rules and how they interact.
I could see an argument (based on the wording of the trigger) that the shield only blocks the physical damage. So if a sword with a flaming rune is shield blocked, the shield block only applies to the slashing damage, not the fire damage. That would be consistent with the idea that the shield can't block the fire damage from the Produce Flame spell either even though it also makes an attack roll against your AC.
It is also questionable if the shield block would stack with any other resistances that the character might have. Putting aside the discussion about multiple damage types: If a character with slashing resistance 5 and a shield with hardness 3 shield blocked an attack from a regular sword, would the shield block reduce the damage by 3 and then the slashing resistance also reduce the damage by 5?