A Discussion on Sundering

[Vnonymous]

Something that springs to mind here is that one of the biggest problems is the ease of sundering, as the angelic wank squad highlights.

This seems somewhat silly to me. Super amazing magical weapons, the sort that can't be replaced in a few seconds by a wish or some such, should be hard to destroy. It doesn't exactly break verisimilitude to say that a magically enchanted, super-powerful sword(especially when the cost of the "sword" part is some .5% of the total cost) is not going to be something that you can just whack a few times with a hammer and break. When magic is making items better, it isn't a big leap to say that it makes them tougher to boot.

Magical items being somewhat hard to break has a bit of a history in Fantasy(thanks Tolkien), and applying the same sort of thing to the player's gear isn't that much of a stretch.

Sure, you can smite the mass-produced cure light wounds wand, and it won't have much of an impact. But when someone shoots an arrow at Eruidror, the Last Sword of the Hierarchs, it really shouldn't be breaking at all. Important equipment, the sort that the pcs are going to be caring about, shouldn't be destroyable in combat outside of very rare cases.

Simply making items that are really useful to the players(and presumably powerful) hard to break(or simply making them require special circumstances - You can only destroy the Sacred headband of the Forgotten Sages in the temple it was made, etc etc) fixes the problem of angelic wank squads, and doesn't remove sundering from the game. In a game where WBL is so emphasised, making that wealth something noticeable and an important part of your character makes sense.

While weaker stuff should be breakable, it shouldn't be as easy to break as it is now. From what I can tel, sundering seems to be so broken because it lets you smash items that do an incredible amount for the player characters very easily(well, far more easily than it should be to deprive the pcs of that sort of advantage). It acts like a save-or-suck, and we all know the problems of that.

Making mundane equipment stay easy to break(at that level, it probably isn't worth sundering), to making the easily-replaceable items somewhat more difficult to sunder, to the point where when you can do it with any amount of regularity, they're easily replaceable. And then, when you reach the super-powerful equipment that can mean life-or-death for the pcs, its' as much of a challenge to destroy it as it is to just kill the wielder.

There's probably a few huge glaring mistakes that I haven't noticed, but this seems like a reasonable compromise to me. And it just doesn't feel right to me that the Ancient Ruinblade of Arnor can be broken in combat so easily.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Something that springs to mind here is that one of the biggest problems is the ease of sundering, as the angelic wank squad highlights.

Why would easy sundering be a problem? It's barely worthwhile as a single action.

[Vnonymous]

Why would easy sundering be a problem? It's barely worthwhile as a single action.

Well, the angelic wank squad problem. A squad of angels teleports in where you can't see them, and fires off enough arrows to turn all of your equipment into so much scrap metal/fabric.

I suppose by easy I mean the fact that it can be done in combat at all to weapons that are worth so much in the world and mean so much more to the players. You shouldn't be able to smash a weapon you can't replicate with a wish so easily - that sort of weapon has a history behind it(somebody made it, and for a reason), and the destruction of one of these items should be just as momentous.

The fact that people are just breaking or smashing some item which should have a story and a history behind it in the middle of a fight to gain a tactical advantage just strikes me as wrong, and the 7 page argument that came about because of that(and the whole angelic wank squad thing) made me think about this too much.

If someone has the Epic Greatscythe of Myth France, then you should have to take it back to where it was forged, or devise some special ritual to destroy it, not just gate in a bunch of archons and have them shoot it for 6 seconds. This is already in the game for artifacts, but valuable magical items(i.e. non wishable) should really have the same sort of protection.

[Roy]

And instead of angels teleporting in, it's skeletons or humans or whatever walking up. Bows still have range measured in hundreds or thousands of feet, thus easily allowing them to remain undetected if for no other reason than the -50 or so you're taking to see them while they hide.

Again, 'angelic wank squad' is a straw man, because any Sundertard does that.

[IGTN]

And instead of angels teleporting in, it's skeletons or humans or whatever walking up. Bows still have range measured in hundreds or thousands of feet, thus easily allowing them to remain undetected if for no other reason than the -50 or so you're taking to see them while they hide.

Again, 'angelic wank squad' is a straw man, because any Sundertard does that.

Seriously, did you even read the post above you? You look like a bot who found keyword: Angelic Wank Squad -> reply: you don't need angels. Your reply had seriously nothing to do with the posts above it. The discussion has moved on.

[Psychic Robot]

Angelic wank-squad isn't a strawman when the person attacking sundering used that to prove his point. Regarding the rest:

First of all, humans and skeletons have shitty BAB, and range penalties are going to leave them not hitting often. Second of all, you do shit for damage with ranged weapons against objects (half with slashing/bludgeoning, none with piercing), so good luck with that. Thirdly, you're going to be doing little damage with a bow anyhow, so don't expect to break through the object's hardness any time soon. Fourthly, you can sunder magical equipment like a cloak of charisma +6 fairly easily (no hardness, low HP), but you also need to look at the cost of repair: 9,000 gp, which is a drop in the bucket. Perhaps not immediately at the level at which you received the cloak, but you'll have made that up in short order. Even shorter if you take out a loan from your party members.

Fifthly--and most importantly--you need to look at the situation itself. Let's say you have 20 archers hidden in the woods, 200 feet away from the PCs. That means that, on average, one of them is going to score a hit. If you want to increase that to 400 archers, so be it. Now, what you have to do is decide which archers are targeting what, then roll damage for each item (we'll assume you're going to nix the attack rolls and say that 5% automatically hit, as rolling 20 to 400 of them is about as boring and unfun as you can get), and then track the hit points of each item. But let's say that the items you're attacking are the equivalent of minions in 4e, and they die in one hit. So you break one to twenty items.

Now, you have to consider what level the PCs are at. If they're low-level, you could have just targeted them with the attacks and killed them, meaning that you're just being an extra dick with the entire scenario. If they're high level, the PCs will be able to deal with 400 archers. Wind wall is the easiest solution, and that's at level five (or three). So let's take a few ways that the PCs can deal with the situation.

Haste. Everyone reaches the archers in one round, slaughter ensues. Solid fog, web, slow, rainbow pattern--archers can't retreat. Cloudkill, black tentacles, circle of death, even evocation spells like fireball and ice storm--everything dies. And that's assuming mid-levels only.

So now the enemies are dead. What do they have on their bodies? Well, the bows, for starters. We'll assume that you gave them heavy crossbows because they have the best damage, are simple weapons, and have a middle-of-the-road cost. (We'll just ignore the crossbow bolts, unless you insist on making them adamantine.) Now, were these creatures intelligent? If so, they probably have armor. If not, then I'm not sure they're smart enough to sunder, and they're definitely not smart enough to flee. Either way, you're looking at the PCs getting 1,000 to 10,000 gp for the items on the corpses of the sunderers. (And again, we don't know why the BBEG wants to sunder their items instead of keeping them, aside from DM dickery, but who knows? We'll go with it.)

Thus, the PCs have partially recouped their losses, and wasn't that a terribly fun exercise in pain-in-the-ass bookkeeping and screwing the players? All for the sake of the DM being a douche.

[Kaelik]

grr

[Kaelik]

Okay PR, now replace that with 4 level 8 humans who now automatically sunder 2-3 items per round each.

The part you are missing is that they don't have to worry about to hit rolls, because a ranged sunder on a level 20 character with high dex requires you to hit an AC of 20.

Yeah, seriously. It's fucking retarded how easy that is.

[Username17]

But what are you ranged sundering with? The vast majority of ranged weapons can't be used to sunder with at all. So where are you getting these 8th level characters with adamantium sling stones?

-Username17

[Roy]

And instead of angels teleporting in, it's skeletons or humans or whatever walking up. Bows still have range measured in hundreds or thousands of feet, thus easily allowing them to remain undetected if for no other reason than the -50 or so you're taking to see them while they hide.

Again, 'angelic wank squad' is a straw man, because any Sundertard does that.

Seriously, did you even read the post above you? You look like a bot who found keyword: Angelic Wank Squad -> reply: you don't need angels. Your reply had seriously nothing to do with the posts above it. The discussion has moved on.

Yes, and he's still going on about the damn angels.

PR: Fail. Outsiders will at best have 1 HD per CR, and often less than this. As they get full BAB, that gives them a maximum of 1 BAB per level... same as a humanoid beatstick. Skeletons get half that, but since they only need to hit 10 + size of item (max 8, more typically 1 or 2) + your dex (most likely +5 or less) they don't fucking care. And that assumes normal skeletons and not something like Bone creatures where you keep class levels and such and are thus better suited to being some necromancer's minions, just as the humans can be mercs or whatever and so forth.

Ranged Sundertards presumes the use of the Ranged Break Own Stuff feat, and those arrows that do full damage to objects... of course, since pretty much anything that isn't a weapon or shield has only a very small amount of HP because it is an amulet or a cloak or whatever and thus not made of a durable substance they don't need to do more than hit to destroy it.

Even using your example, which isn't even right... some mook breaks your Cloak of Charisma +6. Had you instead died NINE TIMES, you'd be no worse off. Except it takes a hell of a lot more to even kill you once. See the problem?

Haste doesn't let you close 200 feet in one round, nor do they need to be that close. They hide from 500 feet away and snipe at you. DC is 30 + their check result, which means even if you're using dumbfuck warriors they don't get seen. Of course this is a douchebag move, that's the whole fucking point of being a Sundertard.

So yes, Sundertardation is in fact made of Fail, be it Angel Fail or Human Fail or Boner Fail.

What is your fucking point?

[Psychic Robot]

Okay PR, now replace that with 4 level 8 humans who now automatically sunder 2-3 items per round each.

Level 8 NPCs should have what, 13.5k in gear? So they sunder, die, and then the PCs loot them.

The part you are missing is that they don't have to worry about to hit rolls, because a ranged sunder on a level 20 character with high dex requires you to hit an AC of 20.

Yeah, seriously. It's fucking retarded how easy that is.

I agree, it's ridiculously easy.

However, if we were to go with the strictest RAW interpretation of the rules...

You can use a melee attack with a slashing or bludgeoning weapon to strike a weapon or shield that your opponent is holding. If you’re attempting to sunder a weapon or shield, follow the steps outlined here. (Attacking held objects other than weapons or shields is covered below.)

You can't sunder a weapon with a ranged weapon at all, and you're still doing half damage (or no damage) to it even if you could.

[Roy]

9,400. And of course since all they really need is a composite bow to be a Sundertard, they can burn the rest on consumables or whatever.

[Psychic Robot]

PR: Fail. Outsiders will at best have 1 HD per CR, and often less than this. As they get full BAB, that gives them a maximum of 1 BAB per level... same as a humanoid beatstick.

Right. And you're still on the angelic wank-squad, and we're going to pretend that doesn't exist, because it's a huge douchebag move for the DM to do. Humanoid beatstick with full BAB = class levels = NPC or PC wealth. And we're still assuming that the BBEG doesn't want to keep the equipment intact for whatever reason, since I've already proven that you have to pay to repair broken magical equipment.

Skeletons get half that, but since they only need to hit 10 + size of item (max 8, more typically 1 or 2) + your dex (most likely +5 or less) they don't fucking care. And that assumes normal skeletons and not something like Bone creatures where you keep class levels and such and are thus better suited to being some necromancer's minions, just as the humans can be mercs or whatever and so forth.

Skeletons are probably taking a -4 nonproficiency penalty on their attack rolls, unless the BBEG is specifically raising fighters/warriors, and even then it doesn't answer the question of why the BBEG is making his own NPCs weaker.

Bone creature is another template, and if you want a competent one, you're statting out an NPC with NPC wealth.

Ranged Sundertards presumes the use of the Ranged Break Own Stuff feat, and those arrows that do full damage to objects... of course, since pretty much anything that isn't a weapon or shield has only a very small amount of HP because it is an amulet or a cloak or whatever and thus not made of a durable substance they don't need to do more than hit to destroy it.

Have you seen the pre-reqs for that feat? Again, you're looking at NPC wealth of a moderate level.

Even using your example, which isn't even right... some mook breaks your Cloak of Charisma +6. Had you instead died NINE TIMES, you'd be no worse off. Except it takes a hell of a lot more to even kill you once. See the problem?

Yes, there's a problem with the WBL system. We're well aware.

Haste doesn't let you close 200 feet in one round, nor do they need to be that close. They hide from 500 feet away and snipe at you. DC is 30 + their check result, which means even if you're using dumbfuck warriors they don't get seen. Of course this is a douchebag move, that's the whole fucking point of being a Sundertard.

Run = times four move speed = 30 feet + 30 feet = 60 feet times four = 240 feet. If they're 500 feet away, then they're taking penalties to their attack roll. And the average D&D team is going to have someone who can spot. Of course, if you're using a team of fighters, you automatically fail anyway, so the point is moot. Not to mention the fact that people are going to have a rough idea of where they're being attack from. An arrow to the back is an arrow to the back, thanks very much. Move in that direction, reduce spot penalties, spot the snipers. Game over, man. Game over.

So yes, Sundertardation is in fact made of Fail, be it Angel Fail or Human Fail or Boner Fail.

Yes, we agree on this. Sundering doesn't work well in the 3e system. My point is that it's not nearly as bad as you make it out to be.

9,400. And of course since all they really need is a composite bow to be a Sundertard, they can burn the rest on consumables or whatever.

Which is, of course, silly, given that the typical NPC isn't going to be thinking in the sense of, "MY EXISTENCE IS BASED UPON MY ABILITY TO SUNDER WEAPONS." He's going to have armor because not having armor is dumb.

And you still can't sunder from a range, unless you manage to prove the rules wrong.

[Akula]

PR: Fail. Outsiders will at best have 1 HD per CR, and often less than this. As they get full BAB, that gives them a maximum of 1 BAB per level... same as a humanoid beatstick. Skeletons get half that, but since they only need to hit 10 + size of item (max 8, more typically 1 or 2) + your dex (most likely +5 or less) they don't fucking care. And that assumes normal skeletons and not something like Bone creatures where you keep class levels and such and are thus better suited to being some necromancer's minions, just as the humans can be mercs or whatever and so forth.

Skeletons don't get feats and thus cannot sunder at range.

Ranged Sundertards presumes the use of the Ranged Break Own Stuff feat, and those arrows that do full damage to objects... of course, since pretty much anything that isn't a weapon or shield has only a very small amount of HP because it is an amulet or a cloak or whatever and thus not made of a durable substance they don't need to do more than hit to destroy it.

If the players are high enough level to be deeply effected by this tactic they should have access to hardness increasing spells and probably a contingent Wind Wall effect.

Even using your example, which isn't even right... some mook breaks your Cloak of Charisma +6. Had you instead died NINE TIMES, you'd be no worse off. Except it takes a hell of a lot more to even kill you once. See the problem?

This assumes that revivify was prepared NINE+ times, that is stupid, if you had died more than once or twice in an encounter you would just be dead.

Haste doesn't let you close 200 feet in one round, nor do they need to be that close. They hide from 500 feet away and snipe at you. DC is 30 + their check result, which means even if you're using dumbfuck warriors they don't get seen. Of course this is a douchebag move, that's the whole fucking point of being a Sundertard.

So they can see you with a -30, and hit you consistently with a -7 (-5 range, -2 rapid shot) to their attack rolls? I want to see these warriors that auto destroy all your gear at low to mid levels.

[Roy]

And now we're just back to generic Sundertard Fail. Congrats PR.

[Username17]

And we're still assuming that the BBEG doesn't want to keep the equipment intact for whatever reason, since I've already proven that you have to pay to repair broken magical equipment.

Granted. But the rules say that it costs no more to repair magical items as it does to repair unenchanted items. So while you are interpreting this to mean that you pay the same fraction of the magic item's total cost - I submit that a much more valid seeming reading would be that you pay the same fraction of the cost of the material object - which is to say ass wipe money at virtually any level.

You don't provide materials costs to make a masterwork sword with Craft, why would you have to provide magical reagents to repair the magical sword with Craft?

As far as I can tell, the RAW and RAI is that recovering magical weapons from sundration uses up both the evening and the service fee that you had intended to give to a local hooker and nothing more. Which means that Sunder should be evaluated only in terms of being a battle-long debuff. Which it is occasionally useful for, but still always going to be relegated to obscurity. Much more so than even Bullrush, because Sunder pretty much always requires a fair amount of investiture to get any utility out of at any level - while Bullrush has battlefield conditions that favor its use regardless of character investment. If there are man sized opponents and spheres of annihilation around, Bullrush retains functionality even for untrained characters a near epic levels. Sunder is always only useful in the hands of someone who has spent resources on being good at it.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

However, if we were to go with the strictest RAW interpretation of the rules...

You can use a melee attack with a slashing or bludgeoning weapon to strike a weapon or shield that your opponent is holding. If you’re attempting to sunder a weapon or shield, follow the steps outlined here. (Attacking held objects other than weapons or shields is covered below.)

You can't sunder a weapon with a ranged weapon at all, and you're still doing half damage (or no damage) to it even if you could.

However if we were to go with the strictest RAW they would have the Ranged Sunder feat which explicitly overcomes that restriction.

EDIT: Also, wtf, you guys have to stop responding to stuff that isn't aimed at your particular sunder rules, because I can't conditionally set up responses because you ignore my conditionals, and you have totally different sunder rules in play.

[Psychic Robot]

And now we're just back to generic Sundertard Fail. Congrats PR.

This sort of thing is amusing on the WotC forums, where having a legitimate debate is meaningless. I expect more from you here, Roy.

Frank:

I agree that sunder should be a battle-long debuff only, at least in a game where wealth is power. Sunder just doesn't work well in D&D, and I'm in full agreement with everyone else on this issue. The permanent investiture of character resources into a less-than-marginally-useful tactic is ridiculous.

My point is that people like Roy and Kaelik spam nonsense on the issue, proving their arguments with such intelligent points as "sundertard," "epic fail," and "angelic wank-squad." The first two are just stupid, and the last is something that just won't happen.

No matter the rules interpretation of how repairing broken magic items works, you have a situation that leaves sunder as largely useless but keeps the game's verisimilitude intact.

1. If sunder costs you a chunk of gold to repair, then the BBEG is going to want to keep the gear unbroken--wealth is power, so more wealth is more power.

2. If sunder costs you virtually nothing to repair, then the BBEG has no reason to send the angelic wank-squad after you because the only resource it's going to cost you is a little bit of time.

[virgil]

Doesn't the ranged sunder feat require the archer being within 30' to actually function? And if you're using non-piercing ranged weapons to sunder from farther than 30', the range increment in utter crap and you're within 100' at best (with horrendous attack penalties).

Granted, this is still happening, because they only need one round to do their job.

[Akula]

But,

You must be within 30’ of your target to use this feat.

So you cannot have the warriors from 500 feet away sundering all your gear.

[Crissa]

So if you're going to fight a reoccurring villain, Sunder is probably not as good an idea as if you're fighting a running battle and don't want them to pick up the evil sword while you're busy with minions.

-Crissa

[Psychic Robot]

However if we were to go with the strictest RAW they would have the Ranged Sunder feat which explicitly overcomes that restriction.

The funny part is that the Ranged Sunder feat sucks ass, rules-as-written. (Moreso than normal sunder.)

When attacking objects, you deal full damage (instead of half damage) with slashing or bludgeoning ranged weapons. You can make ranged sunder attempts with piercing weapons, such as arrows, but you only deal half damage; divide the damage dealt by 2 before applying the object's hardness. (See the sunder special attack on page 158 of the Player's Handbook, as well as page 166 for the hardness of common substances and items.) You must be within 30 feet of your opponent to make a ranged sunder attempt.

Read perfectly literally, the feat only allows you to make ranged sunder attacks with piercing weapons--slashing and bludgeoning ranged weapons can be used to destroy objects, but not sunder them. (WotC's writing sure is something else, isn't it?)

However, this is completely tangential to the topic at hand, and we're going to assume that RAI takes precedence over RAW, so you can do full damage to objects at range with slashing arrows. More importantly, though, you have the stipulation--bolded for emphasis--that you must be within 30 feet to perform a ranged sunder. Which means that all of the nonsense about the angelic wank-squad and the bone archers from 500 feet away are completely moot, and we're back to square one.

Is it too easy to sunder equipment? Yes. Is there a problem with the entire WBL system, which leads to the issues with sundering? Yes. Are there ways to deal with sundering that lessen its detrimental effects? Yes. Does the use of sunder break verisimilitude? No.

[Roy]

Ok. But since they only need a bow to do it, they do their Sundertard thing with Rapid Shot and whatever. Then you kill them, but since all they have lootable is an ordinary composite bow as they used the rest on consumables and hookers and whatever you still take a huge loss.

Overall, I'd say this thread is proving no one really knows what, exactly Sundertards are supposed to be doing, but as every take on it is made of Fail it doesn't matter how you spin it.

[Psychic Robot]

Ok. But since they only need a bow to do it, they do their Sundertard thing with Rapid Shot and whatever. Then you kill them, but since all they have lootable is an ordinary composite bow as they used the rest on consumables and hookers and whatever you still take a huge loss.

The characters need to be level 5 at the minimum to take the feat. If the party is at level 5, then they're fighting a CR 5 monster right there. If the party is higher, then you're looking at a level 5 character who is going up against a group of CR 5+ monsters, and he's going to get curbstomped. So even if you have a group of four level 5 fighters attack the party...

1. They're going to be seen/heard, so no surprise round.
2. Ranged attacks outside of 30 feet will nullify their tactic.
3. No equipment means surer death.

If they're higher level, then you're again looking at NPCs with NPC wealth, and they will need to have magical equipment. Why? Because we're assuming that they have leveled conventionally, not spawned at level 7 with full sundering action. They need that equipment to live, so they're going to be using it.

And again, this still doesn't answer the question of: Why is the BBEG sundering their equipment? Even if you go with Frank's ruling that turns sundering into a minor inconvenience, there's no reason for the BBEG to do so, unless he's in the middle of a fight with the PCs. So he has his mooks waste actions plinking away at the magical equipment of the PCs. The fighter is probably using a two-handed weapon, so they aim at his sword. Because it's magical, though, it has a ton of HP/hardness, so they're stuck plinking for piddly shit (as you put it) 1d8+7 or so against a hardness of 14 and HP of 30. Do the archers have adamantine arrows? Well, does the fighter have an adamantine greatsword? Probably. Meanwhile, the archers are wasting their actions and then dying horribly.

This scenario, of course, assumes that the fighter is retarded and hasn't brought along a back-up weapon and/or a ranged weapon.

Or the mooks can plink at the other equipment the PCs might have. Not their armor, since that can't be sundered. But perhaps their other items. If the wizard is smart, he isn't even an available target. The druid's mauling everyone in bear form, so he's a target, assuming that his gear isn't wild shape-melded. Hitting his Wis booster is useful, but it's not going to stop him from mauling you. Similarly, his Strength booster can be targeted, but that's not going to save you from him. Well, you could target the fighter's Con-booster, which is probably what will do the most damage to him. However, the fighter's not really going to be necessary for combat to succeed--at least at higher levels, when his Con-booster will give him a larger bump to his HP--since he has to put himself in danger of a full attack in order to full attack. At most, he's a speed bump to the enemies. A cloak of resistance is another possible target, but casters will generally have strong saves against save-or-loses, and the fighter is, yet again, a speedbump.

So while the sunderers are whittling down the fighter's effectiveness, the rest of the party is finishing combat.

And, at the end of the battle, when the PCs spend five minutes repairing their equipment (again assuming Frank's interpretation) and looting the BBEG's money plus the NPC wealth of the sunderers, the BBEG is going to wonder (in the afterlife) why he didn't just hire a few druids to help him out.

[Kaelik]

My point is that people like Roy and Kaelik spam nonsense on the issue, proving their arguments with such intelligent points as "sundertard," "epic fail," and "angelic wank-squad." The first two are just stupid, and the last is something that just won't happen.

Excuse me. What the fuckity fuckity fuck you asshole. I have never said Sundertard, or epic fail, and I do not use bullshit arbitrary wording to rephrase legitimate tactics as catch phrases I can bellow out.

This from the fucktard that actually invented the term angelic wank squad specifically to fucking discount my position with out arguing against it, just like Roy does, and then you have the temerity to accuse me of using three terms none of which I have ever used, and being the type of dickhole that you and Roy are?

Fuck you PR. You can fucking apologize. I deal with a lot of shit with you. Next time you pull shit like this I'm just putting you on ignore.

RE: Everyone referring to 30ft limit. Yes, exactly, which is why I never claimed 500ft.

Ambushes do occur at close range, especially with Invisibility Sphere in existence. The outsider attack squadron that can cripple you at 30ft report to boss is not crazy in a world where NPCs play intelligently, and sundering gear is not easily repaired.

I prefer to play a game where NPCs use the best tactics available to them.