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PF1 had a two handed weapon superiority problem. people touted two weapon fighting on paper... and then scenarios happened. While a small part of the monster manual creatures with DR you can't get through at this level, hardness, and Dr/ Ha ha nothing gets through this, those monsters wound up being VERY popular with adventure writers.
It made two weapon fighting builds, which were already struggling on paper, vastly inferior two barbarian with two handed beat thing in practice.
hardness extends that even to spellcasters. You can't get around hardness like you can with DR by killing it with fire.
hardness 5 or even 10 is pushing kinda works when the expected damage is 2d6+6 from a barbarian with a greatsword. it absolutely stops anyone with a pistol plinking away for 5 points of damage or throwing a first level spell for 2d6 and a save. For starfinder levels of d6 or d8 damages, with no expected bonus, hardness of 1-3 gets the point across without shutting people out of combat.
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I don't think it's a class build or weapon damage issue I think it's more of an encounter design issue, because if you scale damage to deal with hardness then the players are doing too much damage to creatures without hardness.
Some way for GMs to scale hardness to the Party might be useful too.
Dealing with it from the player's side, weapons, spells, and abilities that deal with hardness, could have some way to bypass or reduce hardness but then still do their normal damage.
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Although I do think damage reduction still works in Starfinder's gun-based combat, I agree that the lower base damage of guns means that they get shut down much harder by Hardness and resistance, especially at lower levels. I agree with the OP's suggestion that Hardness and weakness ought to be tuned around a lower benchmark than Pathfinder's specifically to avoid this, and in general I think enemy defenses ought to generally be lower than in Pathfinder so that they die in around the same amount of time. This would have the benefit of making the Solarian feel much stronger too, as they'd be able to cut through those enemies like a hot knife through butter.
I hardly see Resistance being a problem in a game where guns deal a lot of different types of damage. Especially when you are forced to have backup weapons as there is no way to rune your main weapon.
For hardness, on the other hand, nothing can get through it easily. But at the same time Hardness is in general eliminated through a critical hit and getting to half hit points, which happens rather easily.
So I wonder if it's that much of an issue past the very first levels.
You have to crit and do damage to crack the walnut. So someone with just a d6 pistol crits for 2d6 and has a 1 in 13? chance of getting through the hardness 10. That REALLY incentivizes some static damage. You're not going to get it TO half hit points any time soon.
Leaving at least one energy type immune from the hardness would greatly incentivize the knowledge checks.
People have to get through these levels without quitting the game or quitting their character.
We noticed the same problem when we played a converted mummys mask at low levels. Things with hardness or DR are just not damageable with pf1 numbers but only pf2 damage.
There are a few creatures with problematic Hardness, I agree. Normally, the numbers for resistance is level + 2 being considered "high resistance". So getting anywhere above that (like the Animated Armor) is beyond the chart. Especially for Hardness which, unlike Resistance, can't be circumvented.
But for me it's a creature design issue, not a problem with Hardness as a whole.
Also, what's this 2d6 damage? If you are an Operative, you should Aim. As an Envoy you should Get'em. As a Soldier you should not use Pistols. So I feel your example is flawed, most characters will deal significantly more damage.
There are a few creatures with problematic Hardness, I agree. Normally, the numbers for resistance is level + 2 being considered "high resistance". So getting anywhere above that (like the Animated Armor) is beyond the chart. Especially for Hardness which, unlike Resistance, can't be circumvented.
I almost always see hardness in increments of 5. 5 or 10 at first level.
But for me it's a creature design issue, not a problem with Hardness as a whole.
The renthardness is too damned high!
Also, what's this 2d6 damage? If you are an Operative, you should Aim. As an Envoy you should Get'em. As a Soldier you should not use Pistols. So I feel your example is flawed, most characters will deal significantly more damage.
The Mystic and Witchwarper are either stuck with pistols or burning 2d6 damage spells that the creature is likely to save against.
The Envoy is doing a d6+1 or +2. Better odds but not great.
I almost always see hardness in increments of 5. 5 or 10 at first level.
5 or 10 at first level Oo
The guideline is max 3...That's clearly an issue, and the issue is not just for ranged weapons but for absolutely everyone.
Constructs, including robots, have Hardness, so while they're not ubiquitous, they're likely to be fairly common, and appear quite a few times in A Cosmic Birthday. I feel that for Starfinder, it would help to set a new minimum for resistances to one-third of a creature's level and the maximum to about two-thirds, so that it becomes less likely for a party to have their entire damage negated by an enemy even when dealing max damage on a regular gun hit.
Yeah, with all the robots expected in a science fantasy setting I think taking a 'hard' look at hardness now is important.
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Constructs, including robots, have Hardness, so while they're not ubiquitous, they're likely to be fairly common, and appear quite a few times in A Cosmic Birthday. I feel that for Starfinder, it would help to set a new minimum for resistances to one-third of a creature's level and the maximum to about two-thirds, so that it becomes less likely for a party to have their entire damage negated by an enemy even when dealing max damage on a regular gun hit.
I think that's a good idea for any creature without any weaknesses to have a maximum hardness guideline. Then each weakness added or how severe the weakness is could allow for more hardness to be reasonable.
To me my first reaction to the GM saying you hit but your attacks seem less effective or does no damage is a good time to start doing recall knowledge checks to find a weakness. This is kind of a puzzle fight, but if the creature also has high damage output it can be hard on a party to solve the puzzle in time to survive the encounter.
If a creature has both high hardness and high damage then it better have low HP or take lots of damage from its weakness to make up for it. I like in Heroscape how all the Deathwalker robots had high defense but a single hit killed them.
Also, on that note, just how many creatures have hardness?
I've checked the adventure I have and robots don't have hardness. The only creature I've found with it is a level 3 Animated object with hardness 6 (that you face at level 1 so it stays an issue but normally you should be able to destroy it's hardness in case of a critical hit).
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Also, on that note, just how many creatures have hardness? This thread's making it sound like a pervasive problem, which I definitely appreciate, but, like I said, I can't think of many creatures that have hardness as opposed to specific resistances.
Other than A Cosmic Birthday which seems to be a hazard/hardness playtest, not a lot maybe 1 to 3 between all the other playtest adventures. Wheel of Monster has some objects with hardness.
A Cosmic Birthday has between 11 to 13 I forget the exact count but it has a lot of encounters with hardness, most of those are hazards and have ways to disarm them, usually skill checks. Most of the creatures have ways around their hardness. I drove one off with an intimidate check followed by a nature check to command it to flee. One creature with hardness uses hardness like a shield so can be worn down.
The toughest creature with a hardness to fight has a way of leading it to help the party fight another encounter, but the chance of the party figuring that out is extremely low unless there are clues somewhere else in the adventure (I just read the creature descriptions seeing which had hardness, so may have missed if there are clues.)