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Abilities that can directly target weapons or armor exist, but are comparatively rare. They're also often ill-conceived, if they aren't very low level, because there's no scaling of item durability to match up with the scaling in damage numbers. (Only precious materials have scaling at all.)
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No. It's way too easy to destroy items and weapons now. Magic items don't have increased hardness. So you could have a level 20 suit of steel armor and it will get wrecked if hit. So I don't do it. It's cruel.
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You generally can't. You need specific abilities that allow you to directly attack an attended object. (Even attacking unattended objects isn't that well supported in the rules.)
I think it's a deliberate design choice in the game to discourage attacking gear. It's hard to balance properly, because either it doesn't really work, or it works too well. Items don't have the sort of AC, hardness and hit points that make sense if they were really something that people could target directly and attack.
You can see in the Disarm action that it's supposed to be pretty hard to actually disarm someone outright.
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No. It's way too easy to destroy items and weapons now. Magic items don't have increased hardness. So you could have a level 20 suit of steel armor and it will get wrecked if hit. So I don't do it. It's cruel.I always thought that was a curious change. I mean, I can get why it wasn't implemented, if you're not intending weapons and armor to be targeted very often then inserting a section on how hardness or HP/BT increase with runes is more bloat text than helpful rules, but it was still a nice storytelling tool. Why are there so many ancient magical weapons rattling about? Because the process of making them magical enhances their durability and makes them better able to withstand the passage of time.
I've toyed with re-implementing the increase in hardness based upon runes, but as indicated above, the juice mostly isn't worth the squeeze. Perhaps we'll implement it as a one-off rule if the party are ever fighting creatures that can destroy armor, because that really, truly does suck. It'd be a different matter if weapons and armor of an appropriate level were easily replaceable, like if we were using ABP, but not otherwise.
I would go with Invested items getting the same amount of HP as the character who invested them.
And allow magical weapons and armors to be invested just for this.
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No. It's way too easy to destroy items and weapons now. Magic items don't have increased hardness. So you could have a level 20 suit of steel armor and it will get wrecked if hit. So I don't do it. It's cruel.I always thought that was a curious change. I mean, I can get why it wasn't implemented, if you're not intending weapons and armor to be targeted very often then inserting a section on how hardness or HP/BT increase with runes is more bloat text than helpful rules, but it was still a nice storytelling tool. Why are there so many ancient magical weapons rattling about? Because the process of making them magical enhances their durability and makes them better able to withstand the passage of time.
I've toyed with re-implementing the increase in hardness based upon runes, but as indicated above, the juice mostly isn't worth the squeeze. Perhaps we'll implement it as a one-off rule if the party are ever fighting creatures that can destroy armor, because that really, truly does suck. It'd be a different matter if weapons and armor of an appropriate level were easily replaceable, like if we were using ABP, but not otherwise.
I found out the hard way that runes did nothing for hardness when my runed up armored clothing on my monk was obliterated by an acid weapon rune. +2 armor rune with +2 resilient just wasted. That was when we learned the clothing getting wasted didn't mean the runes were wasted. I had to wait to transfer them to new clothes and go most of the adventure without my runes. That was not fun.
If you make runed items harder to destroy, your players will be happy.
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You generally can't. You need specific abilities that allow you to directly attack an attended object.
You have better rules support for Stealing their armor than attacking it.
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No. It's way too easy to destroy items and weapons now. Magic items don't have increased hardness. So you could have a level 20 suit of steel armor and it will get wrecked if hit. So I don't do it. It's cruel.
This is why I don't as well. If something can actually do it, you need to tune the damage of that effect VERY conservatively, because it's really not that hard to destroy items that aren't shields in a single attack. You can absolutely ruin someone's day that way.
It also made a Balor a very nasty enemy because 3d6+10 weapon damage when you hit it is a pretty serious problem. The only time one of my parties fought one of those, the Fighter had an artifact sword which ignored it.
The Balor's ability at least has some counterplay, because of it being fire damage. A Resist Energy spell protects a character's gear, as well as their person, and that resistance on top of the hardness actually can keep up with the comparatively tame damage numbers on that ability.
It's not as bad as something like the Shuln having no real precautions you can take.
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I really wonder what the PF2 devs were going for. Item defenses rarely scale, so they're trivial to destroy with higher level abilities... and PF2 characters are basically helpless without their core magic items... and those items tend to take up a monstrous amount of your overall wealth budget, weapons and armor with full sets of runes are expensive! From a mechanics only perspective it honestly might be less punishing to just die, since replacement characters come with starting wealth.
So, especially at mid or higher levels, you kind of need to ensure the character can get replacement gear quickly, and if you're giving them a replacements right away what as even the point.
The Balor's ability at least has some counterplay, because of it being fire damage. A Resist Energy spell protects a character's gear, as well as their person, and that resistance on top of the hardness actually can keep up with the comparatively tame damage numbers on that ability.
It's not as bad as something like the Shuln having no real precautions you can take.
It does, except they didn't know it was there until they stumbled into it, were in the middle of nowhere with no access to shops and no practical way to leave/come back, and they didn't have a prepared caster to swap out spells to get it.
So they did the fight without it, and that was that. So yes, while it does have a way to deal with it at least, that doesn't help if you don't have it when you run into one.
It would have been REALLY rough without the artifact sword.
Abilities that can directly target weapons or armor exist, but are comparatively rare. They're also often ill-conceived, if they aren't very low level, because there's no scaling of item durability to match up with the scaling in damage numbers. (Only precious materials have scaling at all.)
Yeah, generally speaking there aren't a lot of abilities (NPC or PC) that do it. The game starts to fall apart if you start target PC/NPC equipment (assuming they rely on it). PCs because equipment represent a large part of both offensive and defensive capabilities. NPCs, because technically their weapons and armor are decorative and GMs have to improvise what their stats are if PCs break or destroy their weapons/armor.
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Kinda glad this topic came up because it addresses a concern I had. I have a character that I want to give heavy wooden armor purely to keep up with a druidic ascetic but it seems like the downside should be its lack of durability. If it's common practice to just ignore equipment durability, is taking the lighter bulk and benefits of the wood armor group just cheesing the system at that point? Is this something I should be concerned about? I'd rather not influence the use of exploits.
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Kinda glad this topic came up because it addresses a concern I had. I have a character that I want to give heavy wooden armor purely to keep up with a druidic ascetic but it seems like the downside should be its lack of durability. If it's common practice to just ignore equipment durability, is taking the lighter bulk and benefits of the wood armor group just cheesing the system at that point? Is this something I should be concerned about? I'd rather not influence the use of exploits.
Meh. Wooden armor is generally more about aesthetic.
Compare a wooden breastplate to a breastplate, and they're balanced against one another (IMO).
It's not so much that durability gets ignored, it's that there's not a lot that interacts with it. And lighter bulk and "benefits" of wood aren't huge. For instance, a wooden breastplate has the same bulk as a breastplate. And the small amount of damage for being critically hit is...not terrible but not great either. It's a fair trade off is what I'm saying.
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Doubling rings and spare weapons FTW.
Doubling Rings don't work on 2h weapons and when you're at the point of having Major Striking, keeping a second one of those around is hugely expensive. You can have a spare Greater Striking around, but when you haven't needed it the entire campaign then suddenly at level 20 something goes "lol I destroyed your weapon", it's... not great. Especially when at that point they were on a timer and couldn't just head back to town to go get a new one.
In a campaign where weapons are fair game the entire time and its happening regularly, players are going to act differently* than if you suddenly spring it on them out of nowhere after 80 game nights of never doing it.
* By which I mean "players will ask for ABP so the problem goes away."
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Doubling rings and spare weapons FTW.Doubling Rings don't work on 2h weapons
They don't work on armor either.
Abilities that can directly target weapons or armor exist, but are comparatively rare. They're also often ill-conceived, if they aren't very low level, because there's no scaling of item durability to match up with the scaling in damage numbers. (Only precious materials have scaling at all.)Yeah, generally speaking there aren't a lot of abilities (NPC or PC) that do it. The game starts to fall apart if you start target PC/NPC equipment (assuming they rely on it). PCs because equipment represent a large part of both offensive and defensive capabilities. NPCs, because technically their weapons and armor are decorative and GMs have to improvise what their stats are if PCs break or destroy their weapons/armor.
This is a point that is not brought up in these kinds of discussions often enough.
Frequently, a character or monster's stats are not dependent on its gear, so removing it from its gear makes little to no difference whatsoever.
That said, I do recall seeing some loose guidelines for what a GM should do if, say, an NPC knight's sword is destroyed. Perhaps in the monster creation rules?
It's in the Gear section of Bestiary and Monster Core.
Gear Some creatures rely on gear, like armor and weapons. You might need statistics for such a creature that has lost its gear. For example, a creature could be Disarmed, it might be ambushed while it’s out of its armor, or one of its worn magic items could be disabled with dispel magic. In most cases, you can simply improvise, but if you want to be more exacting, use these guidelines for weapons and armor.
If a creature loses its weapon, it might draw another weapon or use an unarmed attack. If it uses a Strike it doesn’t have listed in its stat block, find a Strike entry for the creature that most closely matches the substitute, reduce the attack modifier by 2, and use the damage dice for the new Strike. If the creature needs to make an unarmed attack and doesn’t have one listed in its stat block, it uses the statistics for a fist (Player Core 277). If the creature loses a weapon with a weapon potency rune, you usually should reduce the attack modifier by 2 plus the bonus granted by the weapon’s potency rune for the new weapon. For example, if the creature is Disarmed of its +1 mace, then you would reduce the attack modifier by 3 instead of 2 for the new Strike.
If a creature doesn’t have its armor, find the armor in its Items entry, and reduce the creature’s AC by that armor’s item bonus (Player Core 273). If the armor has an armor potency rune, increase the reduction as appropriate; for example, if the creature has a suit of +2 chain mail in its statistics, and the characters catch the creature without its armor, you would reduce the creature’s AC by 6 instead of 4. If the armor has a resilient rune, reduce the creature’s saves based on the rune’s type (1 for resilient, 2 for greater resilient, or 3 for major resilient).
Hmm. That doesn't seem to address striking runes, or attacks that deal multiple damage dice.
A frost giant disarmed of his axe isn't going to be stuck doing 1d4 damage with his fists.
The other guidance that is in the monster building rules just tells you to put in an unarmed attack in advance if you think this is likely to come up.
This is a topic that annoys me a lot, in a few ways. On the one hand, I'm glad that a generic strike or other common action can't damage armor and or weapons. On the other hand, because of this, item durability/dependence on items is neglected from a character options standpoint. Only not all devs got the memo. I've only played in a couple aps so far, but I've probably encountered a dozen or so monsters that break (or otherwise make items unuseable) armor or weapons, shuln mentioned is this thread being one of them. It feels super lame to not only feel useless, but the adventure grinds to a halt as you have to find a way to fix your items (usually turning tale mid dungeon and going back to town). It's so stupid. That's part of why I have little desire to play martials in this game, sticking to casters/kineticist for the most part.
Edit: special shout to inventor of all classes, who can't make their innovation more robust via special materials.
There are a lot of foes built like PCs, and specifically name their weapons as their strikes, like "Melee: morningstar +36 ..." which are vulnerable to disarmament.
A fellow player during an AP kinda opened this cognito hazard up for everyone.
The Spell Detonate Magic explicitly does not require the target item to be unattended, so it can be cast upon any weapon (or armor!) being wielded against the party. If the counteract passes, then the item is rendered mundane* for the remainder of the fight.
Moreover, noticing the spell means players can also learn about the tactic of using Dispel Magic for the same function, just without the explosion.
While by RaW Dispel requires a Disarm/etc first, Dispel is common while Detonate is uncommon. Furthermore, there are other common spells like Command that can cause foes to lose hold of their weapons.
The existence of options like Command & Dispel create a catch-22 for GMs
If the GM is more RaW, then it may be invalid to cast Dispel upon a held weapon, but that also makes low cost abilities that remove/disarm foe weapons waaay stronger.
As soon as any PC grabs ahold of a dropped weapon, all that "attended item protection" now works for the PCs, and a stolen weapon may even be swung against the foe.
If the GM is a little more loose with attended rules, they might allow Dispel Magic to target the weapon while still in the foe's hand. That version honestly might be less problematic for balance, as it means dedicating high, if not top R slots for a chance to counteract the weapon's magic. Much more opportunity cost from the PC if they spend such magics for the strat.
If the caster cannot disable a foe's weapon like that, then they might just use R5 Command to see how many foes drop their weapon, and PC #2 can use tactics to get & keep the unattended items away from foes. Spells like R3 Antlion Trap can even move items around during foe turns, as soon as it hits the sand.
While I honestly love that such off-the-wall plans can be valid from a payoff standpoint, I do agree that pf2 in general does not have enough things that interact with attended items to help GMs to work with this.
This tactic is in a "Goldilocks" spot in terms of being an issue. It takes too much prep for foes to improvise a response on the fly, and it's too reliable and easy once the heroes learn the rules. Should a caster collaborate with an open handed martial not worried about their own runes, Command + [Ready: snatch] alone is a serious hazard. A single failed Will save + Ready from the martial is enough to disarm the foe for the rest of the fight.
A lot of this honestly stems from Disarm itself being unable to reliably, ya know, disarm a creature. It's supposed to be the universal and foe-available, but needing a crit where spells often just need a reg fail makes this discrepancy a problem.
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*P.S. on Detonate Magic. The spell also does 6d8 damage to the target & in a little emanation. This is sooo much more powerful than it seems at a glance. An example entry of material stats is "steel armor" with 9 hardness, and a BT threshold of 18.
I swear this must be dev intentional, because the avg damage of the spell 8d6 is exactly 28, when 27 will insta-break the armor. Which would drop the AC/saves by all the runes, plus however much of the AC was armor-based, while still imposing the dex cap.
A unique level 19 foe from Stolen Fate is in +2 grtr res full plate. On PC counteract success, he looses 2 AC/saves from the runes, and an average damage roll means -5 more AC, for a total of -7 AC in a single spell cast.
It's not just armor though, as any sort of magical tools are eligible targets. If steel armor is a 50/50 chance of being broken, most gear is very likely to get one-shot.
"Tree trunk" is hardness 5, BT 10. It's less than a 1% chance to avoid the "trunk breaking" <15 dmg. Staves, handwraps, spellbooks, boots, apex items, etc, are all screwed.
This spell seems designed to not simply shut off magic, but specifically to break any magical tool and render it unusable in a single cast.
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P.P.S.
The remaster's Disarm change buffed the crap outta Magnetic Attraction. It's honestly a great spell now, as you don't need a crit to for it to provide benefit. Great when it's uncommon circumstance is relevant, making it a nice pick for staff, imo.
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I think you might be drawing too strong a conclusion from Detonate Magic. It's a rank 9 spell, going from that to "the GM should allow Dispel Magic against attended items at all levels, because you can do that with a rank 9 spell" is a big jump.
I also think it's possible the intent behind Detonate Magic was that the emanation was from the item, but not to include the item itself. It's an emanation, there's quite a few emanation effects that only blast outward. This one doesn't say so explicitly, but it might have been intended. If the damage from the explosion nearly always destroys the item, it would be redundant to say that the spell disables the magic on the item or destroys it on a critical counteract.
If the GM is a little more loose with attended rules...
I think maybe you meant to say "If the GM is more than a little loose with attended rules..."
XD
A lot of GMs don't like the narrative jank that arises from the strict attended/unattended binary. At that table, the GM allowed Dispel Magic to work on foe weapons.
The player did not then pivot into using Dispel on armor or other items, but that is what such a ruling opens the door to.
As far as Detonate and damage, I don't think it's a reasonable RaI interpretation for the item to avoid damage. While a whole lot of gear would reach the BT threshold, that's not the same as being destroyed.
That ~99.5% insta break on the tree trunk/staff example has a good chance of avoiding 0 HP destruction.
8d6 is not a lot of damage for an R9 spell, and does honestly seem chosen with item HP values in mind.
Guaranteed destruction on crit is a crazy rider, and is way more powerful. Don't forget that magic item levels are often static, and lag behind.
I'm not sure how to avoid the reality that most magical vehicles are in serious danger, lol. They have the HP to survive a fail, but that crit effect is nasty.
Nasty enough that the GM may want to improvise level scaling or some other alternative for vehicles, lol.
Detonate Magic damaging the item puts it pretty squarely in the realm of PF1's Disjunction: PCs are destroying their potential loot by using it, and GMs can wreak absolute havok on characters by using it on key items.
In PF1, groups I was in tended to have a gentleman's agreement where if the players don't do it, the GM won't do it either. Everyone was generally happy with this arrangement.
We'd likely come to the same conclusion with this. That makes it a decidedly meh spell but it also means the Fighter's +3 major striking greater flaming pick isn't getting exploded.
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A lot of GMs don't like the narrative jank that arises from the strict attended/unattended binary. At that table, the GM allowed Dispel Magic to work on foe weapons.
I have no idea if "a lot" of GMs have any feelings about it, it's a question that I rarely see come up.
The player did not then pivot into using Dispel on armor or other items, but that is what such a ruling opens the door to.
So you're saying that deviating from the standard rule opens things up to a situation that is unbalanced?
Don't do that then.
I'm Still curious about exampler's 'only the worthy' feat. Is it fair to break/destroy a weapon the PC pins an enemy with?
"Fair" is a table by table answer. Some tables would say that if you're actively pinning a creature with it and their best chance of escape is to attack it, then it's absolutely fair game.
Others would find that too effective vs the other escape methods (item durability doesn't keep up with damage at all) and thus it would make the feat unusable for that purpose.
At my tables, we generally avoid damaging items outside of explicit monsters/effects where that's the point (like rust monsters). So at my table, the players would definitely find attacking it unfair because it breaks the table consensus that we don't do that to each other. That doesn't extrapolate to the entire playerbase. You need to figure this out with your group.
For another example of table conventions on what is fair: we say familiars that are basically non-combatants are not treated as targets. So if you have a familiar that does things like aid Thievery out of combat? It's not being targeted and it won't take damage if its with you and you get hit by a fireball. We assume it's taking cover and protecting itself and it's not in the combat.
But you send it out to put up The Resentment on a boss? It's absolutely fair game to target it.
(broken armor -7)https://2e.aonprd.com/Conditions.aspx?ID=60&Redirected=1
Broken armor only ever reduces ac by -3 plus the loss of runes.
I'm Still curious about exampler's 'only the worthy' feat. Is it fair to break/destroy a weapon the PC pins an enemy with?
...A broken object can't be used for its normal function, nor does it grant bonuses— with the exception of armor. Broken armor still grants its item bonus to AC, but it also imparts a status penalty to AC depending on its category: –1 for broken light armor, –2 for broken medium armor, or –3 for broken heavy armor.
lol damn, nice catch on armor having a special rule. Very odd that Broken grants a status penalty, and does not lower the item bonus.
Also means that the Destroyed threshold and crit effect of Detonate Magic are that much more relevant.________
As far as Only the Worthy goes, I can find 0 text that grants ikons any special protections nor durability.
This oversight is genuinely a problem. The material example of "sword" is 5 hardness, BT 10.
If a foe is pinned by Only the Worthy, it seems that Striking the ikon will generally be superior to attempting to Force Open and escape it. It only takes 15 damage to break the ikon, rendering it unsuable for normal function. 25 damage will destroy the ikon. Which I think includes the runes, as they are mods to the item.
At that point, using Strike to end Only the Worthy's pin is the least of the feat's issues.
There's also no wording to protect the "flies back to your hand" bit, so it's a complete rules hole as to what happens if a foe is holding the ikon at the time.
Yeah, wow. That's a real fkup there. The GM kinda has to house rule some sort of defense or scaling numbers for the ikons.
Might want to *start* the homebrew with the ikon scaling HP/hardness in parallel to Sturdy Shields / Reinforcing runes.
I don't want to derail this, but only the worthy is a spammable level 4 feat that's often more disruptive than the spell slow. It's causing problems for me to create interesting encounters around. If I could easily break the weapon withouy risking destroying it, that would help balance some.
Honestly, destroy it once. If an NPC did something similar to me, using an item magically held in place to hold me in place, I'm probably spending one action to see if I can move myself (the athletics check) and a second action to attack (and maybe destroy) the object. Heck, I might even jump directly to trying to destroy the object.
So yeah, let the ikon get destroyed once and then see if you player is so cavalier about using this option.
But I do understand your concern. If you simply let Exemplar's use it without a risk of the ikon being destroyed, they can essentially get multiple uses of an ability that either robs an enemy of an action or often renders an enemy unable to meaningfully contribute to combat.
My recommendation is to allow just about any reasonable object to substitute for Force Open's "prybar," including a foe's sword, staff, etc.
After that, give the ikons auto-scaling HP/stats via Reinforcing rune effect, but not at a 1:1 level progression.
Instead, you should napkin path how many hits you think it should take to break to be balanced, then check what level of rune that matches. After that, see if the [level - X] set point will work to scale going forward as the PC levels up.
I might also try to play with the benefits of being Prone, such as standing PCs giving the Prone foe cover to the backline, etc.
I do admit that my sketched out Exemplar very much was looking to take that feat, though I'm a little surprised it's genuinely causing issues due to potency. It requires setup to get the first Prone, and the effect only blocks movement and locks Prone.
There are honestly a surprising amount of creatures that can fly, teleport, are immune to prone, etc.
Even before the "just strike the ikon" idea, the feat seemed like a niche sometimes thing.
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Bringing it back to the OP issue,
I also think the "everything has lagging Reinforcing runes now" idea can be used by GMs who want magic item durability to scale more generally. Something like all magic items by default use the material stats, but are boosted w/ a Reinforcing rune that's [level -5], etc.
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The trouble with Only the Worthy is that gear is so easy to destroy if you let it be targeted. The moment that becomes an option for the enemy the feat loses most of its mechanical value (and you might just ruin the exemplar depending on which ikon they dropped) and it's already somewhat of a niche thing.
I think you'd be better off just banning it ahead of time than surprise exploding a critical piece of gear.
Detonate Magic damaging the item puts it pretty squarely in the realm of PF1's Disjunction: PCs are destroying their potential loot by using it, and GMs can wreak absolute havok on characters by using it on key items.
Sort of. PF2 loot is pretty disjointed from enemy equipment though, since monster damage is standardized separate from loot. It was a big deal in PF1 because 'armed' enemies were expected to have some parity with PCs, but in PF2 it's not entirely rare to have enemies wielding mundane weapons that still hit like they have runes.
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My go to for breaking things is shatter.
A long while ago, while reading a forum discussion about the efficacy of the shatter spell, I decided to math it out and make a reference sheet for myself.
As I've since misplaced said discussion, I'm opting to share my findings here for your benefit. It shows what materials are most susceptible (for both becoming broken and getting destroyed) and at which spell ranks those conditions occur, assuming average damage.
Shatter Susceptible Materials (Excel Spreadsheet / PDF)
Sort of. PF2 loot is pretty disjointed from enemy equipment though, since monster damage is standardized separate from loot. It was a big deal in PF1 because 'armed' enemies were expected to have some parity with PCs, but in PF2 it's not entirely rare to have enemies wielding mundane weapons that still hit like they have runes.
Yep, personally if a PC is intent on disarming or breaking/destroying an enemy weapon I usually "modify" the NPC to have -2 to hit and downgrade weapon damage die one size, but that's just my personal way of handling it.