Question about Hazard Immunities

[Malikor]

I am curious as to why hazards have critical and precision immunity.

Constructs, for instance, only have normal object immunities, and already have hardness to help mitigate damage. And every other object that can be damaged only had the base object immunities.

[NorrKnekten]

Precision immunity I believe is rather self-explanatory as to why its common on hazards. Most simply lack vulnerable parts while constructs may have joints, limbs and so on.

Critical immunity however, I don't have a clue as even stinging nettles are immune to critical hits.

[YuriP]

Is there a general rule about hazards having a common immunity?

[NorrKnekten]

YuriP wrote:

Is there a general rule about hazards having a common immunity?

The general rule is only for object immunties as far as I am aware, But the amount of hazards that do have both Precision and Critical immunities far outnumber the ones who do not.

I dont think the player core or GM core features any such hazard that lacks those two while at the same time having object immunities, but I do know Dark Archive does have a handful of examples. Such as Clone Mirrors

[YuriP]

We haven't a general rule about hazards immunities.

In general, only traps and some environment hazard that can be attacked (have HP, AC and Saves).

Most trap have object immunities because they are objects. But curiously most traps from GMC/CRB also have both critical and precision immunities while most non-core hazards have only object immunities (like many DA and GG traps).

My theory is that is some kind of conceptual heritage from PF1e when the designers made the CRB hazards while they still have the concept that most objects was immune to precision and critical damage and this concept was abandoned in later phases of the game developed after the hazard are already made, and probably they just didn't want to rebalance them at all and kept as it is.

This explains why traps made after CRB doesn't have such immunities.

[NorrKnekten]

I had to look it up again now that you said it, and apparently we do have it as a general rule.

GM Core pg. 99 2.0 Damaging a Hazard wrote:

Hazards' AC, applicable saving throw modifiers, Hardness, HP, and BT are listed in their stat blocks. A hazard that doesn't list one of these statistics can't be affected by anything targeting that statistic. For example, a hazard that has HP but no BT can't be broken, but it can still be destroyed. Hazards are immune to anything an object is immune to unless specifically noted otherwise, and they can't be targeted by anything that can't target objects. Some hazards may have additional immunities, as well as resistances or weaknesses.

That said, That reeks of the same issue as undeads with Bleed Immunity which was only fixed during the remaster. It also goes without saying that a hazard without HP/AC/Saves also cannot be affected by conventional means so immunities don't really make sense in those scenarios.

It also sounds plausible that Critical and Precision immunities were baked in as the default early on and I might need to check my old playtest material for that.

[NorrKnekten]

YuriP wrote:

My theory is that is some kind of conceptual heritage from PF1e when the designers made the CRB hazards while they still have the concept that most objects was immune to precision and critical damage and this concept was abandoned in later phases of the game developed after the hazard are already made, and probably they just didn't want to rebalance them at all and kept as it is.

This explains why traps made after CRB doesn't have such immunities.

Yup, You were absolutely spot on.

Pathfinder Playtest PZO2100(2018) p.343 wrote:

Hazard Format/Immunities and Resistances

Physical hazards are immune to critical hits and precision damage, as well as the immunities common to objects. Other immunities a specific hazard has is listed in this entry, followed by any resistances or weaknesses.

[Malikor]

NorrKnekten wrote:

Precision immunity I believe is rather self-explanatory as to why its common on hazards. Most simply lack vulnerable parts while constructs may have joints, limbs and so on.

Critical immunity however, I don't have a clue as even stinging nettles are immune to critical hits.

Neither does a sword, and it is not immune to critical hits or precision damage.

[NorrKnekten]

A sword can have vulnerable parts, attachment points and so on.

Either way I believe that Yuri's theory proved it was not as self-evident as I thought it was, and that the evidence of physical Hazards having both critical and precision immunity was default when they were written during the playtests best answers your question.

The CRB hazards were made with these immunities as that was the default for them at the time, then simply retained these immunities when the rules changed in the game's release.

[Deriven Firelion]

Seems to be standard and likely for balance as hazards would get wrecked if you could crit them. Though giant barbarians or magus wreck them anyway. A starlit span magus is better than a rogue for taking care of hazards so long as you spot them the way hardness works. I spotted and wrecked so many hazards with my starlit span magus. Made life easy.

[YuriP]

All that said, I need to remember that many of currently environment and almost all haunts hazards can't be damaged using brute force at all.

So probably the best way to deal with hazards still is using your skills instead of try to destroy it by force. Damage a hazard usually is the last desperate resource.

[Deriven Firelion]

YuriP wrote:

All that said, I need to remember that many of currently environment and almost all haunts hazards can't be damaged using brute force at all.

So probably the best way to deal with hazards still is using your skills instead of try to destroy it by force. Damage a hazard usually is the last desperate resource.

I usually wipe out traps from range. Haunts depend on what hurts them. A lot of haunts require brute force if your skills are not high enough.

[Ascalaphus]

I think it's more a case of people having mental holdovers than an actual rule. They've seen an object once that had crit immunity and now think all objects should have crit immunity. I really dislike it.

There are object things like wall spells that have really low AC and immunity to crits. That's very reasonable. But if a hazard has high AC and significant hardness and HP, it needs an actual good reason for having crit immunity.

This is PF2, the design paradigm of things having lots of immunities "just because" should stay in PF1/D&D3.x

[NorrKnekten]

Ascalaphus wrote:

There are object things like wall spells that have really low AC and immunity to crits. That's very reasonable. But if a hazard has high AC and significant hardness and HP, it needs an actual good reason for having crit immunity.

This is PF2, the design paradigm of things having lots of immunities "just because" should stay in PF1/D&D3.x

Which is probably another reason as to why they removed the rule of hazards being crit/precision immune unless otherwise stated shortly before the game's release.

[Teridax]

Malikor wrote:

I am curious as to why hazards have critical and precision immunity.

Constructs, for instance, only have normal object immunities, and already have hardness to help mitigate damage. And every other object that can be damaged only had the base object immunities.

My guess is that precision and critical damage are meant to reflect hitting a creature in a particularly vulnerable spot, like a major artery or an internal organ. Because objects don’t really have those vulnerable spots, many hazards are made immune to those additional damage effects.

I will say, though, that this shouldn’t have to be the case every time. Many contraptions have delicate mechanisms and even walls can have structural weaknesses, so there may be a degree of legacy design in those immunities. Personally, I also feel objects could do with functioning more like the Necromancer’s thralls and lean on Hardness: the trouble with objects isn’t hitting them in my opinion, since they’re a very easy target, but hitting them hard enough that you damage their structural integrity. Unfortunately objects aren’t really standardized in this way, but I think it could make sense for objects as a general rule to be automatically hit by attacks, and have enough Hardness to negate damage from exceptionally weak hits.