OgreBattle wrote:Are the rules in D&D for breaking shit via strength checks or hitting things with hardness good, or do they need revision?
Generally I don't like the idea of breaking a stone wall and killing a stone golem to have different rules, as the wall has hardness while the golem has AC even though both are solid stone.
3e's are functional in their own way. Doors have no AC and much less HP than the monsters, so you full PA them to destruction immediately, adamant vault doors simply do not stand up to two-handed lance charges. The strength checks to break stuff is where you take two minutes and do that. So Conan can go anywhere and through anything from quite low level, as everything is butter to his adamant blade, except for magic force.
The Golem has DR 20/adamant, and the statue has Hardness 20 that you ignore with adamant, the difference is the Golem has a lot more hit points and also some AC by virtue of fighting back. Or it would work that way if the designers cared enough.
Now, break checks in combat time don't normally work, and monsters having to claw their way into your secure shelter can take a lot of rounds, so it's both insanely quick to get through things but also too slow for actual combat, and a thousand tiny men probably can't break open even an iron door while your Barbarian can. Locks (and traps) don't stop powerful people, they just make it obvious that you've been in, it takes a real sneak to get in and re-lock the door on the way out.
I guess you could rule that tunnelling through thick walls with a sword doesn't actually work, because you're not removing the collapsed wall, nor securing the load above, you don't have a tunnel speed. Most things should just collapse on your head for some megadamage and suffocation, so safer to drop them from a distance with artillery.
The bigger issue is that monsters can break your magic weapons as a weapon-user. A return to the 3.0 rule that you need a +2 weapon or better to damage a +2 weapon helps a little, at least only the boss giants can ruin you, but it's not a fun game event when the game no longer supports keeping a lot of backup weapons.
PC, SJW, anti-fascist, not being a dick, or working on it, he/him.