Guntermench |
SuperParkourio wrote:Why would letting Strike target unattended objects turn the world into wet cardboard? The Material Statistics section still says that sturdy structures are of higher Hardness and Hit Points than the table suggests, and it points to the Urban section saying that structures that are sturdier still require downtime to break down. If you down want your players to destroy the dungeon, just say the Hardness is too high.Mainly because you quickly find that the 'higher hardness structures' are meaningless in the face of higher damage from strikes and adamantine items [like a pickaxe] that cuts such hardnesses in half. Unless you say every item/structure is make out of adamantine, players are going to be able to damage them unless you plot armor them and that's pretty feels bad. Give a Giant Instinct barbarian an adamantine oversized pick and let them rage/strike something and even if every single thing is made of iron, their rage bonus alone gets through it's hardness [9 since it's halved]. Now make it an adamantine Earthbreaker instead and you add even more damage. Then we make it a goblin with Vandal and the harness drops more...
So, no one is REALLY going to believe 'it's too hard to break through', especially when it happens repeatedly. And you can buy an adamantine miner's pick at 8th level...
By the time that that's realistically a problem you have people flying and teleporting and jumping 30ft in the air, or jumping 50ft+ horizontally.
It's not unreasonable for people at such a point to be able to break down a door or cut a table in half if they so choose.
Besides the rules say to just plot armour them after a point. That isn't a problem, hacking your way into a castle through the 10ft stone wall is the dumbest way you could potentially do that. Cutting down the door, however, is entirely reasonable.
graystone |
No, I'm talking about structures so reinforced that the values on the table won't suffice. Halving the Hardness of a reinforced stone wall won't do much good if the Hardness is only lowered to 100 or more. Only downtime will work against these.
I 100% understood that when I made my comments. Even if you're doubling or triple the hardness of hewn stone walls [28 or 42], it's still not immune [14 or 21 with adamantine]. If you move it to plot armor levels [100's of hardness], then there isn't a downtime activity that would work on it so it wouldn't apply to the rule section referenced. There just isn't a realistic argument for denying attacking [and damaging it] it if you can attack other objects: you should note that is gives an example of a reinforced wall, hewn stone, and it's hardness is only 14 and iron is 18, far from "100 or more". Also, hardness doesn't change for thickness: an iron door, wall or portcullis all have an 18. At best, you can inflate the hp to extent the time it takes but that's not moving it to downtime unless you make it a comically absurd and unrealistically high amount.
By the time that that's realistically a problem you have people flying and teleporting and jumping 30ft in the air, or jumping 50ft+ horizontally.
People are teleporting at 8th?
It's not unreasonable for people at such a point to be able to break down a door or cut a table in half if they so choose.
Who's talking about that? I replied to a comment on structures not tables.
Besides the rules say to just plot armour them after a point. That isn't a problem, hacking your way into a castle through the 10ft stone wall is the dumbest way you could potentially do that. Cutting down the door, however, is entirely reasonable.
Not the dumbest at all: doors can have traps, guards ect. Tunnels through walls can bypass huge sections of an adventure and the obstacles there.
SuperParkourio |
Do you mean that as long as a Strike doesn't damage an object with its maximum roll, it can never do so even in downtime? I think it's more that the damage that a single Strike does to an object whose Hardness is too high is just so small that even the loss of a single Hit Point would overstate the impact. But over a period of downtime, it adds up, and you've got yourself a nice tunnel.
Guntermench |
SuperParkourio wrote:No, I'm talking about structures so reinforced that the values on the table won't suffice. Halving the Hardness of a reinforced stone wall won't do much good if the Hardness is only lowered to 100 or more. Only downtime will work against these.I 100% understood that when I made my comments. Even if you're doubling or triple the hardness of hewn stone walls [28 or 42], it's still not immune [14 or 21 with adamantine]. If you move it to plot armor levels [100's of hardness], then there isn't a downtime activity that would work on it so it wouldn't apply to the rule section referenced. There just isn't a realistic argument for denying attacking [and damaging it] it if you can attack other objects: you should note that is gives an example of a reinforced wall, hewn stone, and it's hardness is only 14 and iron is 18, far from "100 or more". Also, hardness doesn't change for thickness: an iron door, wall or portcullis all have an 18. At best, you can inflate the hp to extent the time it takes but that's not moving it to downtime unless you make it a comically absurd and unrealistically high amount.
Guntermench wrote:By the time that that's realistically a problem you have people flying and teleporting and jumping 30ft in the air, or jumping 50ft+ horizontally.People are teleporting at 8th?
Guntermench wrote:It's not unreasonable for people at such a point to be able to break down a door or cut a table in half if they so choose.Who's talking about that? I replied to a comment on structures not tables.
Guntermench wrote:Besides the rules say to just plot armour them after a point. That isn't a problem, hacking your way into a castle through the 10ft stone wall is the dumbest way you could potentially do that. Cutting down the door, however, is entirely reasonable.Not the dumbest at all: doors can have traps, guards ect. Tunnels through walls can bypass huge sections of an adventure and the obstacles there.
A monk can teleport at level 7.
The ability to cut a table or door in half is the same as hitting a wall. It's the whole point of this thread.
Unicore |
This reminds me of conversations people have about the chase rules. People will say “ why can’t I just resolve this with move actions in encounter mode? I have these feats and spells, my success is a foregone conclusion.”
Some times there can be multiple ways of doing the same thing so that the GM can use the system that makes the situation that is supposed to have the dramatic tension be the dramatic situation
Deriven Firelion |
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I don't mind breaking things being GM fiat. I'm not going to waste my time looking up rules if someone wants to smash a chair. I'm not going to let a rapier user stab through a stone wall because they do enough damage.
If a player has a weapon appropriate to crush objects or what not, then I let them hammer through items or objects.
You hope you don't have players trying to do ridiculous things because they read the hardness rules or something and can do enough damage. That can be annoying to deal with as a DM.
Ascalaphus |
I think the problem in this discussion is that people are saying two different things:
1. "There are all these abilities that imply that striking objects is possible. And it's just absurd that you couldn't try to smash a table or door with an axe." Maybe with a side helping of "The rules don't really talk much about striking objects because it isn't expected to be that common, 99.99% of the time you're striking creatures. If an object is expected to be attacked, it probably has AC (traps, wall spells)."
2. "If characters could just attack any object, it would invalidate dungeon design because they'd go through the walls instead of dealing with expected encounters" with a side helping of "there is no mention of striking objects because you're not supposed to; therefore you can't, unless the object specifically allows it, like wall spells and traps with AC"
Because one of them is talking from a "what makes sense that I could do as a character" perspective, and the other from a "what do I need for my game to work well" perspective, it's really hard to convince the other side.
Ascalaphus |
My personal take on perspective 2 is that this should change over levels. A level 15+ PC is a bit like a Marvel superhero and we don't think the Hulk inflicting structural damage on buildings is wrong. If you're watching a Marvel movie and bad guys are holed up in their fortress waiting to ambush the heroes. They've got their guns trained at the door. Suddenly the Hulk smashes in through a wall from the side. Then we don't go complaining that the encounter was invalidated; we cheer because it's cool.
I also think there's some give and take here. As players we're used to monsters being wondrously static, waiting in their appointed encounter area, not reacting too much to noise from other rooms, and not moving up the timetable while the players heal up. And as heroes, we're not expected to tunnel through the walls directly to the boss room.
That's one particular "market equilibrium" for it. You could also have a campaign where monsters are more dynamic, but the players also try to come at the adventure from unexpected angles. If the players start digging tunnels to go through the dungeon diagonally, it's fair for monsters to hear all that noise and go move around as well. Of course then the players could also try to anticipate that and maybe make a lot of digging noise in one place, to distract monsters so they can launch a surgical strike elsewhere.
It's not for everyone, but it can be a fun playstyle for some groups.
Madhippy3 |
The way I see it is Strike is an Encounter Mode action anyways. This might come up in an encounter and you have to adjudicate but a lot of the examples I am seeing I think happen more often in Exploration Mode where we intentionally don't get stuck in the weeds about specific actions.
I don't think many of these feats such as Shattering Blows, suggest the text for Strike is wrong. I think you can certainly still attack things in Exploration Mode without following strictly the rules for Strike. If the GM wants that to be Force Open thats understandable because they rules are more clear, though personally I think Feats like Shattering Blows does suggest making Attack Rolls as if they were skill checks is intended. Downtime of course also doesn't care about the particulars of Encounter Mode. Demolish a house with a sword? Well honestly I expect I would tell my players this is more likely to end in a damaged sword than a properly broken house, but more importantly you cannot look at that Downtime Activity in a vacuum. Thats Kingmaker and the Critical Failure effect makes it clear you have workers who presumably are not all adventurers with greatswords.
SuperParkourio |
2. "If characters could just attack any object, it would invalidate dungeon design because they'd go through the walls instead of dealing with expected encounters" with a side helping of "there is no mention of striking objects because you're not supposed to; therefore you can't, unless the object specifically allows it, like wall spells and traps with AC"
The main issue I see with perspective 2 is that characters CAN attack any unattended object, provided that the attack being used is allowed to target unattended objects. Such attacks include the spells hydraulic push and disintegrate. If the GM doesn't permit Strike to target unattended objects, then that only prevents those lacking object-targeting attacks from attacking unattended objects. And seeing as there are rules for awarding XP for bypassing encounters, maybe bypassing some expected encounters isn't a big deal. If treasure is provided in enough encounters, there's still an incentive to explore the whole dungeon anyway.
The other issue I have is that the second point just sounds blatantly wrong. The Damaging a Hazard rules don't say anything about the Strike action. In fact, hazards can't be targeted by anything that can't target objects, which is why Strike being able to target unattended objects is so important. I don't see any wall spells that talk about Strike either.
graystone |
What does Hardness have to do with downtime? Is there actually a defined downtime activity for tunneling through solid rock?
YOU said "Only downtime will work against these." The ONLY thing mentioned about downtime in that section is "Strong walls, such as well-maintained masonry or hewn stone, can’t be broken without dedicated work and proper tools. Getting through such walls requires downtime": the only difference between these and other structures is their hardness and hp. Once you can bypass enough hardness to do damage with every single action, we quickly move out of the downtime needing "dedicated work and proper tools". A 8th level barbarian with a pick and an 18 str is doing a d6 per attack on hewn stone and a d6+7 with an adamantine tool per attack. This means in a minute rage, they can deal up to 30d6+70 damage to the walls hp vs the walls 56 hp. this shows that even if you bump it up x10 the hp, it's an activity measured in minutes not days.
A monk can teleport at level 7.
I thought you were talking about Teleport, not any ability with the teleport trait: "You teleport up to a distance equal to your Speed within your line of sight." isn't super helpful getting through a wall/door that's blocking line of sight.
HammerJack |
Once you can bypass enough hardness to do damage with every single action, we quickly move out of the downtime needing "dedicated work and proper tools".
The entire purpose of that sentence you're responding to is for this statement to not be true. Saying that getting through such walls requires downtime is a statement that hardness and HP is not the only difference.
graystone |
Saying that getting through such walls requires downtime is a statement that hardness and HP is not the only difference.
If that was true, they wouldn't then give stats for hardness and hp for said structures but they do: you can't say "Strong walls, such as well-maintained masonry or hewn stone, can’t be broken without dedicated work and proper tools" and have it make even a little sense when the chart then gives you stats like every other structure [Hewn stone hardness 14, hp 56 BT (28)]. If you allow a stone door to be destroyed, there is no reason to deny a hewn stone wall as they have the exact same stats. Once you give it stats, how can you say they are meaningless and unusable and you need some other method?
Guntermench |
In the end it comes down to the rest of the books act as if striking objects is doable by default, unless your GM gives them plot armour. Which is fine, unless they do it to everything then it's just going to feel like playing a video game that has working doors after you hit them with a rocket launcher. Kind of breaks the immersion. A lot.
You can 100% cut a table in half, or a door, or break part of a wall. Especially since if you can't hit them why does Wall of Stone have an AC?
I thought you were talking about Teleport, not any ability with the teleport trait
I was talking about things that bypass obstacles like Fly is 4th level, Dimension Door is 4th level. More relevantly: Passwall is 5th level, Shape Stone is 4th level. You can make holes in walls regardless.
Once you give it stats, how can you say they are meaningless and unusable and you need some other method?
Well it's going to take a long ass time until you're at least level 12 regardless. Hardness 14 is more than a thin adamantine weapon until high grade so that'll disqualify most weapons.
SuperParkourio |
HammerJack wrote:Saying that getting through such walls requires downtime is a statement that hardness and HP is not the only difference.If that was true, they wouldn't then give stats for hardness and hp for said structures but they do: you can't say "Strong walls, such as well-maintained masonry or hewn stone, can’t be broken without dedicated work and proper tools" and have it make even a little sense when the chart then gives you stats like every other structure [Hewn stone hardness 14, hp 56 BT (28)]. If you allow a stone door to be destroyed, there is no reason to deny a hewn stone wall as they have the exact same stats. Once you give it stats, how can you say they are meaningless and unusable and you need some other method?
Why are you acting like all stone walls are created equal? Some walls rely on the statistics in that Material Statistics table, some surpass those statistics, and still others flat out require downtime. It's that simple. As long as the GM decides what it takes to bring down a wall, giving Strike the ability to target unattended objects isn't some sort of slippery slope that will turn your game into Wrecking Crew.
HammerJack |
HammerJack wrote:Saying that getting through such walls requires downtime is a statement that hardness and HP is not the only difference.If that was true, they wouldn't then give stats for hardness and hp for said structures but they do: you can't say "Strong walls, such as well-maintained masonry or hewn stone, can’t be broken without dedicated work and proper tools" and have it make even a little sense when the chart then gives you stats like every other structure [Hewn stone hardness 14, hp 56 BT (28)]. If you allow a stone door to be destroyed, there is no reason to deny a hewn stone wall as they have the exact same stats. Once you give it stats, how can you say they are meaningless and unusable and you need some other method?
Sure you can. It makes perfect sense to give reference stats for a bunch of materials but also lay out your caveat that the existence of reference stats does not actually slippery slope into a world of effortlessly tunneling through every mundane barrier at a rapid pace.