Hi everyone.
I am looking through the Player Core searching for answers regarding Hardness but there is only a section in the Damaging Objects and Shields that doesn't really explain this: does it apply to damage dealt as a whole, or does it reduce each type of damage separately? I have read on the forums about this and I don't know if it has been clarified or not. I assume it is only applied once, as when shields block damage.
For example, lets say an Animated Colossus (Hardness 15) receives an attack that deals 20 bludgeoning and 20 fire damage. How much damage of each type does it take after applying Hardness? 5 bludgeoning and 5 fire, or 5 bludgeoning and 20 fire?
Related to that question, does a shield's hardness allow it to mitigate other types of damage besides physical? (bludgeoning, slashing and piercing). The trigger for Shield Block requires taking physical damage from an attack, but doesn't specify in the descripcion that it can only block those three types of damage: "You snap your shield in place to ward off a blow. Your shield prevents you from taking an amount of damage up to the shield’s Hardness. You and the shield each take any remaining damage, possibly breaking or destroying the shield."
Thanks!
Bumping this once in case someone can help.
I have been recently convinced that Hardness operates as its own rule. The rule is Hardness isn't like resistance. It is a number that designates a material or objects overall ability to withstand damage. So you add up all the damage, then apply Hardness against aggregate damage regardless of type.
The trigger is a separate event with Shield Block. The Shield Block can only trigger off a physical attack (B,P, or S), but the hardness applies to the aggregate damage incoming from all sources.
If someone hits with you a physical damage effect, then you add up all the damage from that source and then subtract hardness. You will multiply for a crit before applying hardness. You will apply Hardness before applying resistances, weaknesses, or immunity.
That is how I do it after much debate on these forums and no clear answer provided by Paizo.
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Yeah, there are too many edge cases that aren't covered by the rules to be able to give an authoritative answer on this.
I don't think Shield Block works like Resist All where if you get hit by an attack that that somehow does multiple physical damage types that you get to reduce all of them separately by the hardness.
Spell damage from spells that only deal energy damage clearly doesn't work.
But spell damage from spells that deal physical damage are questionable. Especially if that spell deals damage in an AoE with a save instead of single target against AC.
Most of the time, numerically it won't matter if the shield blocks the hardness's value in only physical damage or a mix of physical and energy damage. That would happen on things like a sword with a flaming rune - and normally the sword is still doing more physical damage than it is energy damage. Or at least enough physical damage to exceed the shield's hardness all by itself.
It does become an interesting edge case to ponder about on this forum if a sword with +1 potency but no Striking rune has a Flaming rune on it and a +0 Strength character hits for 1 point of slashing damage and 5 points of fire damage, how much of that damage can be blocked by a Shield Block. Only the 1 physical damage? Or up to the shield's Hardness from the aggregate damage? I expect table variation on this.
Thank your for the contributions. As I expected, there is table variation about this and no answer from the designers.
I think I'll run hardness as applying once against the total aggregate damage, whatever types it includes.
As for Shield Block, I'll allow it to block physical damage only. I'll assume the triggering damage types are those that can be blocked.
We can also argue about what counts as an "attack" for the SB trigger, on that front I think I'll allow the players to block things that have attack rolls and deal physical damage. So you can block a Strike or a Telekinetic Projectile but not a Trample or Swallow Whole.