The description speaks to order of operations, and doesn’t explicitly state that hardness is ignored, which makes me think that maybe it isn't.
So which is it? Does the acid damage from the corrosive rune ignore the harness of armor, or doesn't it? Please walk me through the reasoning of your interpretation.
The fact that the description reads as:
"In addition, on a critical hit, the target's armor (if any) takes 3d6 acid damage (before applying Hardness); if the target has a shield raised, the shield takes this damage instead."
Makes me think that if they had intended for hardness to be ignored, they would have said "ignore Hardness" rather than "before applying Hardness".
Although I think there is a caveat somewhere in the rules about certain energy types ignoring the hardness of certain items, but I can't remember the exact phrasing of it and if it would still generally apply.
By default, I think hardness applies and the description of the corrosive rune doesn't override that.
But I think the general rule about sometimes ignoring hardness applies, at GM's discretion.*
*But I'd really like to find that text and I'm having trouble doing so.
This Corrosive Rune, yes? The one that says,
In addition, on a critical hit, the target's armor (if any) takes 3d6 acid damage (before applying Hardness); if the target has a shield raised, the shield takes this damage instead.
And the question is if this damage ignores hardness...
TL;DR: Yes, the 3d6 damage ignores the hardness of the armor or shield. But that damage is never applied to the target of the weapon attack.
Let's consider a +1 Striking Corrosive Longsword. Its listed damage is 2d8(slashing) + 1d6(acid).
If that weapon is used to Strike a goblin with a shield and the goblin uses Shield Block, then the 2d8(s) + 1d6(acid) is the amount dealt to the shield before applying hardness. The hardness of the shield is deducted from the amount of damage rolled and any remaining is dealt to both the shield and the goblin.
Now, I worded it that way because it shows that the critical effect of the Corrosive rune doesn't need that bolded parenthetical if all it was doing was saying the same thing - that the 3d6 acid damage is the amount of damage dealt to the armor or shield before deducting the item's hardness. The Longsword doesn't have that parenthetical note that the 1d8 base damage is 'before applying hardness'.
So I am interpreting the bolded parenthetical note in the Corrosive Rune's critical effect is meaning something else - that the damage listed is dealt to the armor or shield without applying hardness. The item's hardness will still apply to any other damage from the Strike that gets applied to that item.
Some examples using that +1 Striking Corrosive Longsword:
Regular hit: 2d8(slashing) + 1d6(acid) damage to the target.
Regular hit that gets shield blocked: 2d8(slashing) + 1d6(acid) - shield's hardness damage to both shield and target.
Critical hit: (2d8(slashing) + 1d6(acid))x2 damage to the target, 3d6(acid) damage to the armor ignoring hardness.
Critical hit that gets shield blocked: (2d8(slashing) + 1d6(acid))x2 - shield's hardness damage to both shield and target, 3d6(acid) damage to the shield ignoring hardness.
Edit: Re-reading the Rune description, the target would only need to have the shield raised in order for the shield to take the damage instead of the armor. This would be a separate case than the Shield Block case, but the effect would be similar to the no-shield case.
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Balance considerations:
The Corrosive Rune's critical effect doesn't deal extra damage to the target - only their equipment. Against enemies that don't use equipment, this is a bad choice - a different energy rune would be preferred.
There is an alternative ruling that the parenthetical note about the damage being before applying hardness is redundant with the general rules. At that point, the 3d6(acid) damage is the value rolled, but then the item's hardness applies normally.
Against armor, my ruling would ignore the hardness of the armor (meaning that you don't need to look up the armor material stats for it to determine what hardness it has), and it will do a bit more damage than the alternate ruling that reduces the damage dealt to the armor by its hardness. It may or may not make a difference depending on which type of armor it is and what value is rolled for the 3d6.
Against a shield, I don't think it makes much difference. Since all of the damage applied to the shield is from the same Strike action, I would be combining all of the damage applied to the shield and only reducing it by the hardness once. It is very unlikely that the doubled damage of the sword is less than the shield's hardness. However, in that rare low damage case, then my ruling would not have the remaining hardness applied to the critical effect's damage. In the alternate ruling, the damage would be combined first and then have hardness deducted from the total, so it would do very slightly less damage.
There is also a third possible interpretation where the critical hit's normal damage and the Corrosive Rune's crit effect are separate instances of damage and both would have the shield's hardness deducted separately. But that feels like double-dipping the hardness of the shield.
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"Before applying Hardness" means that you apply the armor's Hardness to the acid damage, so no, the acid damage from a corrosive rune does not ignore Hardness.
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"Before applying Hardness" means that you apply the armor's Hardness to the acid damage, so no, the acid damage from a corrosive rune does not ignore Hardness.
This is the only answer that makes any sense to me. There's no reason to say "before applying hardness" if you're not supposed to apply hardness.
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"Before applying Hardness" means that you apply the armor's Hardness to the acid damage, so no, the acid damage from a corrosive rune does not ignore Hardness.
Yeah, otherwise it would say after hardness or the usual "ignores" language.
However it is unclear and redundant language. Still miss that faq button.
For what it is extremely broken in humanoid heavy games if run as ignoring hardness. I tend to rule in players favour when things are unclear and ran it that way for AoA when I was first running the game... it was extremely potent on the flurry ranger with a bow.
Banning things like Tailwind Wands removes that psycho-pressure to take such feats.
What psycho-pressure?
Like, just don't take them. No one is holding a gun to your head.
If you are being pressured into it by other roleplayers, or are so caught up on eaking out every possible advantage that you miss the point of the game, then it seems to me that you have larger issues to deal with wholly unrelated to the rules of the game.
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"Before applying Hardness" means that you apply the armor's Hardness to the acid damage, so no, the acid damage from a corrosive rune does not ignore Hardness.This is the only answer that makes any sense to me. There's no reason to say "before applying hardness" if you're not supposed to apply hardness.
I think the trouble is there's no reason to say it at all. Like that's just how damage works. It doesn't even make sense as a clarifying redundant statement. So it has to mean something, right? I mean why would they put it there? What's the point?
But clearly "before hardness" does not mean "ignoring hardness" in any way you can possibly parse it.
Who put it there? What were they thinking?
How does an item even take damage before hardness? If you apply the damage first, then there's nothing to apply hardness to; the item has already taken the damage.
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"3d6 damage before hardness" is like "$250,000 before taxes". Nothing in there implies that the hardness won't apply.
"Before applying Hardness" means that you apply the armor's Hardness to the acid damage, so no, the acid damage from a corrosive rune does not ignore Hardness.This is the only answer that makes any sense to me. There's no reason to say "before applying hardness" if you're not supposed to apply hardness.
I think the trouble is there's no reason to say it at all. Like that's just how damage works. It doesn't even make sense as a clarifying redundant statement. So it has to mean something, right? I mean why would they put it there? What's the point?
But clearly "before hardness" does not mean "ignoring hardness" in any way you can possibly parse it.
Who put it there? What were they thinking?
Agreed. I think it would have avoided the confusion if it said "applying Hardness as usual" instead. That is explicit that this works normally and has no ambiguity at all.
I suspect someone was worried about the question "does hardness apply to this?", wanted to preemptively answer it, and it just kind of went from there.
... What were they thinking?...
I suspect someone was worried about the question "does hardness apply to this?", wanted to preemptively answer it, and it just kind of went from there.Yes, I suspect it was something like this: "We wrote '3d6 acid damage to armor'. Oh, no! Someone would just think that it simply applies through hardness! And it's acid, it only makes this seem more likely as the image of acid burning through everything is so popular in movies! We need to fix this! ' (before applying Hardness)' Done, now it looks like normal damage."
And... ba-dum-ts! Now we have a phrase which some interpret as ignoring hardness.
That is actually quite likely the answer... since the object damage rules outside of shields are not in a single localised place.
Specifically it makes it clear that armour has hardness and hp values that should be looked for, because for someone who hasn't read materials (which is now in the GM core for extra opacity)... that isn't clear.
Although it really begs the question, why not put the values with the items like shields...
Pertaining to armor, it makes no logical sense as written. Maybe the phrase was added as they were thinking about shields. On a critical hit, it is intended to do full 3d6 acid damage to the shield potentially breaking it before the shield can be used to shield block the hit. That would be a cool effect.
Why hasn't it been mentioned in errata? Was the wording so bad that they can't make heads or tails of what was intended, and no one remembers how it was supposed to work so they're not bothering? I don't know. I will err on the side of the player on this one. It's so situational, I would feel bad to try to limit the rune against the player.
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Pertaining to armor, it makes no logical sense as written. Maybe the phrase was added as they were thinking about shields. On a critical hit, it is intended to do full 3d6 acid damage to the shield potentially breaking it before the shield can be used to shield block the hit. That would be a cool effect.
What doesn't make sense about it? Armor has hardness and HP. Amor can be broken and destroyed. Destroying nice armor an NPC is wearing is a rather unfortunate risk of using this rune, but breaking it lowers their AC and makes winning the fight easier.
Why hasn't it been mentioned in errata? Was the wording so bad that they can't make heads or tails of what was intended, and no one remembers how it was supposed to work so they're not bothering? I don't know. I will err on the side of the player on this one. It's so situational, I would feel bad to try to limit the rune against the player.
Considering the things that haven't gotten errata that are a much bigger deal (Arcane Cascade is a core class feature that literally did not function as written for years before it finally got errata, Remaster Oracle's several poorly worded/outright contradictory parts that are still waiting/etc), I doubt this ever makes the errata cut.
It's so situational, I would feel bad to try to limit the rune against the player.
Fighting enemies in armour is situational? It is pretty common in my experience.