Maybe this isn't a rules discussion topic, since there's no raw I don't think. But I'm curious; for those ancestries with feats that grant natural armor, how would one adjudicate damage done to said armor? I'm about to start a new campaign soon and I love the idea of a bakuwa iruxi with bony plate hide, but I thought of damage to armor and it gave me pause for a moment.
I'm not saying it's common, I know you can't generally attack armor directly, but there are definitely a number of monsters, items and spells that can damage armor. Some of it might need gm fiat, like withering grasp (does natural armor count as an item?) but others raw definitely damage armor.
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how would one adjudicate damage done to said armor?
I wouldn't.
I’m in agreement with Ravingdork. Any player who has their character’s armor damaged (or weapons for that matter) is likely to not be very happy. If you do that with natural armor you are asking for someone to get really angry. And that’s aside from the question of, how exactly does one ‘repair’ natural armor?
Yeah that's sort of what I was thinking. Might be easier to just handwave it, or have the character take the extra damage maybe?
There are very few published means of damaging armor.
While you could implement house rules to make it more common...you would need to house rule so many other things to make that not awful to play with.
Like at high levels, you're going to be destroying armor and weapons in 1 or 2 hits. Fights against the party become the NPCs just trying to destroy the PCs weapons first so they can't fight back, and then destroying their armor. Or maybe armor first since that makes them easier to hit all around.
Like...there are just so many problems if you go down this path.
I think the handing such, as mentioned above, should be done with care. If you have something that is supposed to be able to do damage to someone's armor. And that comes into play, and it should be damaging the character's natural armor. I'd pick an appropriate value for how many HP the armor should have. (and it being natural, can probably have greater HP as the person levels up) The natural armor can take damage, and if 'broken' could make the natural armor ineffective. But the damage wouldn't just be passed on to the player's HP. It would be tied to the natural armor. Presumably, such natural armor would be allowed to probably heal naturally, although I'd probably allow a heal check or crafting check to help move it along faster than they probably would want to wait for it to simply heal naturally.
But damage to armor is rare, so each one probably is worth independent review, if dealing with the armor damage is actually beneficial to the story/conflict or not. A case like a rust monster doing damage to armor, would almost assuredly have no impact on natural armor on any biological creature, but could of course affect a clockwork, or metal golem.
The Ankhrav has an Armor-Rending Bite which applies damage to the target's armor instead of the PC and the acid bypasses the armor's Hardness. This is a normal, low-level monster one wouldn't be surprised to encounter.
The Bakuwa Lizardfolk Heritage (as one example) says, "Your plates are medium armor...", not simply "act like" or similar language.
In that instance it seems straightforward the plates get damaged...which I'd then apply to the PC whose body it is since the plates have no hit points. If an ability damaged both armor & creature equally, then yeah, that's a conundrum. For consistency I reckon that'd be double damage to the creature (!) especially if the ability took extra actions. As a player I think I'd prefer that.
Aren't there also abilities which apply the Broken condition to armor? If so, I'd have the penalties be the same and I'd let Medicine act like Craft (and maybe Craft still) to repair it using a typical medium armor (for the Bakuwa) as reference (breastplate most resembles its stats, though scale mail feels apt too).
If Destroyed I'd have to gauge the long-term impact. If wrapping up a PFS scenario, then go rehabilitate & regrow your shell, Runes intact. If time's short, I'd try to balance it with how severe it'd be for a PC (and whether there's spare armor available which I'd let the Bakuwa wear while its natural armor's effectively removed).
And in no instance would I add or create such creatures & armor/weapon-destroying creatures intentionally without deep reflection and accounting for potential loss beforehand (which I wouldn't want to bother with when there are more fruitful ways to develop adventures).
If Destroyed I'd have to gauge the long-term impact. If wrapping up a PFS scenario, then go rehabilitate & regrow your shell, Runes intact. If time's short, I'd try to balance it with how severe it'd be for a PC (and whether there's spare armor available which I'd let the Bakuwa wear while its natural armor's effectively removed).
If a GM pulled this amount of house-ruling on me in a PFS game I would likely complain and possibly never return to that lodge again. I’m not sure how I would react in a home game, but it would likely depend on how much I was being penalized for having natural armor. Is it easier or harder to ‘repair’ than natural armor? Etc.
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I dunno if I'd call it a "house rule". It's an unclear situation and the GM has to make a decision on how to handle it. There's multiple ways to interpret it that I think are reasonable.
1) You could say that since it's clearly like a particular armor, that you use the stats for that kind of armor. But since it's a part of your body that can't be removed, it can't be destroyed, only broken. To repair it, you could do anything that could restore hit points to a creature (like Treat Wounds or Heal) and target the body armor.
2) You could rule that it can't be separately targeted, and just deals HP damage to the character.
2a) If the effect would normally deal damage to both the character and the armor, you may decide that you only do damage once. Similar "both targets in the area" situations like a summoner and eidolon also only take damage once.
3) You could rule that it just doesn't work that way. It's not real armor and doesn't get damage that way. Sometimes, a PC just happens to have the perfect ability to deal with that kind of enemy. You don't have to block that.
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If we imagine a hypothetical scenario where an effect deals damage to natural armour, I would probably allow a party member to make a medicine check with the effect of Repair.
Something like, they have to meet the standard DC for that character's level to repair 10HP to the natural armour, etc etc. I'd probably just model the HP of the armour off a similar armour of the same type.
I am in agreement with everyone else though that this probably isn't worth bothering with and I'd just have the player take the damage the armour would have taken, or ignore it outright.
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Creatures that damage or break armor do exist. And their existence has been a problem for the entire time that PF2 has been around.
The resources needed to buy and upgrade armor is a large percentage of a character's wealth. Armor and weapons (and more notably their runes) are the majority of a character's total wealth.
So a creature destroying any or all of that is a significant problem and setback. The wealth by level system of PF2 is not designed to be able to handle that.
And doing it to natural armor just adds even more headaches to it. At that point it is giving me flashbacks to the discussions about permanently killing a Summoner character's Eidolon. Who, exactly, is thinking that this is a fun way to play the game?
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If Destroyed I'd have to gauge the long-term impact. If wrapping up a PFS scenario, then go rehabilitate & regrow your shell, Runes intact. If time's short, I'd try to balance it with how severe it'd be for a PC (and whether there's spare armor available which I'd let the Bakuwa wear while its natural armor's effectively removed).If a GM pulled this amount of house-ruling on me in a PFS game I would likely complain and possibly never return to that lodge again. I’m not sure how I would react in a home game, but it would likely depend on how much I was being penalized for having natural armor. Is it easier or harder to ‘repair’ than natural armor? Etc.
It'd be house-ruling to say that natural armor which calls itself armor works differently. If anything, allowing the Bakuwa PC to naturally heal their armor between scenarios is house-ruling...in the PC's favor. Hardly a GM pulling something on a player.
The breaking or destruction of the armor would come from something written into the PFS scenario (like say an Adamant Sentinel, not that PFS is that high yet, but maybe via an AP) and the Bakuwa armor IS armor. Note I'm not talking about natural armor taking hit point damage (where it's kinda ambiguous), but about abilities that explicitly & directly breaking or destroying, though the latter may have been removed (?).
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It'd be house-ruling to say that natural armor which calls itself armor works differently. If anything, allowing the Bakuwa PC to naturally heal their armor between scenarios is house-ruling...in the PC's favor. Hardly a GM pulling something on a player.
I'd partially agree.
Only partially because there are more options than just the two listed. Houseruling that creature abilities that damage or break armor are ignored is also houseruling in the PC's favor.
About the only thing that isn't in the PC's favor is trying to run the game by strict RAW - breaking the natural armor and then allowing no houserules for repairing it. Strict RAW is a troll ruling. Pick your favorite houserule that your table is happy with.
I feel like if 'broken' during the adventure, the player should have means to 'fix' it. Crafting via heal check, etc. If it takes so much damage it needs to be considered 'destroyed' then the player may do without their 'feature' for the rest of their scenario, but I would feel it within the scope of believe that care provided to the heroes between assignments should be sufficient to restore their natural state.
Is it:
1 Death (you must pay for resurrection or use an appropriate boon).
2 Permanent curses
3 Permanent negative effects, including things like:
a Petrification
b Permanent polymorph effects
c Other effects that have no expiration and leave the character impaired.
While you might be able to argue 3c, I think the reasonable answer is that taking enough damage to potentially 'break' your natural armor, may be enough to disable a benefit for the adventure. It does not 'remove' your feat/ability that granted it. Which means for purposes of the game you still have it. While you can argue a magic shield, when destroyed, you no longer have it. When your natural armor is 'mechanically' destroyed for purpose of the game/encounter, you still have the feat. And as a result, since there is no spell for 'restoring natural armor' that you could argue that they might need to pay for to remove the condition you either have to 'retire the character' or allow it to heal.
Since they still have the feat, I would argue, after their recovery time, they will again have use of the armor for their next assignment. We already have precedent for this. It is not unlike the fact that while most non-PC characters may effectively die at 0 HP unless story reason to track their continued status, animal companions and PC-Adjacent creatures do not. Even for instance if they are undead or constructs and would normally be destroyed at 0 hp. I think the same 'concept' would/should apply to the natural armor. While destroyed, and no longer helpful, it still is a part of the character. It will given an appropriate time of healing and care, will eventually be functional again. That capability is all that is required to allow PFS to allow it to be healed fixed in between assignments, per raw.
Well that would be my perspective on it. Otherwise you probably need to provide rules for retraining out of biological feats you no longer get use out of, etc. Which seems like a direction I wouldn't want to force people down.
Otherwise you probably need to provide rules for retraining out of biological feats you no longer get use out of
Or Retraining to restore the armor to functioning state.
Retraining is basically how you regain use of your Animal Companion feat, Pet feat, or plebeian Familiar feat when your companion dies. So there is some justification for that too.
Retraining is basically how you regain use of your Animal Companion feat, Pet feat, or plebeian Familiar feat when your companion dies. So there is some justification for that too.
I think they fixed that with new verbiage in the feat itself.
Special You can replace a pet or gain a new one by spending 1 week of downtime, releasing any previous pet you have. If you later gain a familiar or other companion that uses the Pet feat, you can immediately retrain this feat.
Otherwise you probably need to provide rules for retraining out of biological feats you no longer get use out ofOr Retraining to restore the armor to functioning state.
Retraining is basically how you regain use of your Animal Companion feat, Pet feat, or plebeian Familiar feat when your companion dies. So there is some justification for that too.
The problem with this is that as far as I can recall, most abilities that grant "natural" armor are not feats*, they're heritages, and heritages likely fall under intrinsic characteristics that the rules say you should not allow to be retrained without "extraordinary circumstances"
*Reinforced Chassis (Automaton) and Tough Skin (Kashrishi) are the only ones. And notably, Tough Skin specifically cannot be retrained out of or taken after 1st level.
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After delving a bit more on this in AoN, it is actually pretty simple.
In PF2, you can damage a creature or you can damage an object.
The latter has HPs, hardness, a Broken threshold and can get the Broken condition, which applies only to objects.
But "natural" armor is not an object. It has no HPs, no hardness, no Broken threshold and it cannot be Broken.
There is no way to damage "natural" armor on its own. You only damage the creature the usual way and that's it.