Post/Author/DateTime	Post
seahen 04-19-07, 03:53 PM	Hardness would be much more plausible if it depended on whether the attack was bludgeoning, piercing or slashing. Cloth and paper, after all, are easy to poke or cut but difficult to damage with blunt force. Glass, on the other hand, is easy to smash but difficult to slice through. Then, we wouldn't be using hammers to break down steel doors, wooden clubs to rip through paper screens or swords to break glass. (This also corresponds to real measures of hardness in material science -- impact hardness is versus piercing, scratch hardness is versus slashing, and rebound hardness is versus dropping, which is close enough to bludgeoning. So we'd know to look for real data if desired.) I also think the rules for fire damage to objects would be simpler and work better if we just gave various materials natural fire resistance. Cloth and rope would get no fire resistance, since they're almost as flammable as flesh. Inflammable materials, which fire can damage only by melting them, would get fire resistance of 6 or higher, making them immune to normal 1d6-per-round fire. How's this look? Hardness Fire resistance Material B P S Paper 10* 1 0 2 Cloth or rope 10* 3 0 0 Ice 0 0 5 2 Glass 1 1 10 20 Leather or hide 10 5 2 4 Wood 5 8 3 1 Stone 20 8 15 50 Iron or steel 20 10 20 20 Mithral 20 15 20 35 Adamantine 20 20 20 50 *Spiked clubs are treated as piercing when attacking these materials. Note that for all materials except wood, the lowest hardness corresponds to that on PHB table 9-9. Also note that piercing weapons won't give the worst results against anything except wood; I think piercing weapons performing generally well against objects (compared to how they perform against flesh) is realistic.
RobbyPants 04-19-07, 04:14 PM	Not a bad idea. I saw something like this in 2E before. I may have to "borrow" it :P EDIT: One note: the hardness vs. different types is lible to change with thickness. I would think that relatively thin metal would be vulnerable to piercing weapons, but once it gets to be so thick, it would be much more resistant to them.
JustinA 04-23-07, 01:59 PM	Then, we wouldn't be using hammers to break down steel doors, wooden clubs to rip through paper screens or swords to break glass. Because, of course, the bludgeoning damage from a battering ram was never used to batter down steel doors; wooden clubs are completely ineffective at ripping through paper screens; and smashing a sword against a pane of glass is oh-so-ineffective... ... hmm. I think piercing weapons performing generally well against objects (compared to how they perform against flesh) is realistic. Which is, of course, why loggers whittle trees down instead of using axes. I also think the rules for fire damage to objects would be simpler and work better if we just gave various materials natural fire resistance. Cloth and rope would get no fire resistance, since they're almost as flammable as flesh. Inflammable materials, which fire can damage only by melting them, would get fire resistance of 6 or higher, making them immune to normal 1d6-per-round fire. How's this look? Why single out fire? What do you do about all the other energy types? Justin Alexander http://www.thealexandrian.net