What can effect a dancing weapon

[Bookeater]

I dont understand the exact meaning of "The weapon is considered wielded or attended by the activating character for all maneuvers and effects that target items. "Will a weapon with dancing rune benefit from feats or special ability of class?

[shroudb]

Edit: you are referencing the pathfinder 1 dancing weapon, not the pf2.

For pf2:

Quote:

The weapon’s abilities that automatically trigger on a hit or critical hit still function, but the weapon can’t be activated or benefit from any of your abilities while dancing.

[breithauptclan]

It is also a bit odd that PF2 doesn't mention anything about what the enemies can or cannot do to the dancing weapon. Attacking items isn't really a thing, but disarm is - even if it is pretty bad.

But it is not clear what happens if an enemy critically succeeds at disarm against a dancing weapon. Do they grab the weapon out of the air and prevent it from further attacks, or does the weapon wrench itself out of their hands and continue attacking them?

[Lia Wynn]

You can attack an item. Every item has hardness and durability. It's super rare you see it used, IME, except for shields and sometimes doors, but everything has one.

You find the rules on pg 577 of the CRB. A sword has a hardness 5, hp 20, BT 10. I'd use the PC's own AC for the sword's AC unless Dancing gave an AC in the rune write-up.

It's probably more effective to go after the owner, but nothing stops a monster from just trying to break the dancing weapon.

[breithauptclan]

Lia Wynn wrote:

You can attack an item.

That is hotly debated for unattended items. You should be able to attack them, but there are no rules for doing so. It is clear that you cannot target attended items. And would a Dancing weapon still be an attended item?

Lia Wynn wrote:

Every item has hardness and durability.

Yes.

Lia Wynn wrote:

I'd use the PC's own AC for the sword's AC unless Dancing gave an AC in the rune write-up.

There's the problem. The Dancing rune doesn't give an AC. Using the controlling character's AC is a good houserule, but that isn't going to be consistent at every table.

So if it is ruled that a Dancing weapon is still an attended item, then you can't attack it at all. And if it is not an attended item, we still don't have official rules for attacking it.

[Lia Wynn]

You don't need a rule for everything. Have you ever punched a wall or door or something when mad? There, that's proof you can attack an unattended item. Part of GMing is making judgment calls, as it is impossible for any rule set to cover everything a PC might do in every game everywhere in the world.

I would argue that the fact that sword is one of the examples given in the hardness table indicates that you can attack an unattended item. If you cannot, why list hardness, HP, and BT for items? If you can't attack them in the first place, they don't need those stats. But, the stats exist and that says to me that players can, indeed, attack them.

Now, I agree my own use the wielders AC would be for my table, and not everyone would agree. That's fine. It's ok for tables to be different. It's one of the things that makes this hobby so much fun.

[Themetricsystem]

Using the Strike rules to target and determine damage for objects and environments is completely inappropriate, even applying hardness and giving generous HP to everything under the sun, it creates a situation where anything not made of hardened steel or stronger material can be destroyed in a trivial amount of time when not in encounter mode by anyone with a d6 Weapon and a positive STR score, walls, floors, ceilings, and obstacles are effectively meaningless if there isn't a creature there to stand guard and protect it. Within combat, it's nearly just as bad too once you're dealing with someone with a fair bonus to Damage added to Strikes and similar specific Attacks such as a Barbarian who even at level 1, if you allow Strike to target objects despite the RAW, can destroy an entire 5 ft section of wall per Action.

Damage to objects via attacks is TOTALLY reasonable and should be possible but the rules as they are written are not the way to do it, they don't have AC, and their "defenses" are trivially low when it comes to HP and Damage reduction compared to what is intended to be used against creatures in combat. They never actually put in the work to define a proper system and set of rules to handle this, the fact that failure exists though doesn't mean the "next best thing" is to use the Strike rules, instead, that would be to narratively and reasonably adjudicate on a case by case basis.

As for the topic at hand: I'd say treat it as an Attended Object/Wielded Weapon. It is functioning as if it were Wielded and moving around and allowing it to simply be swiped/stolen/disarmed without so much as even an opposed Check DC makes Dancing insanely easy to just handle and shut down.