My understanding is that the rule is "Make an attack on an object, if the attack deals double the damage required to destroy the object the attack counts as having only taken a free action to perform. You may perform this attack while moving and if it is successful you may continue with your move action"
What happens if you use it on constructs, animated objects, held objects, alchemists fire, acid flasks, thunderstones, or beads of force?
Most of those are non-issues. Constructs aren't objects, you can already drop acid flasks and beads of force as a free action (and the cost to splash damage ratio is pretty bad so no one bothers), and that really just leaves attended objects from your list - you don't really want everyone to have a killer combo where they can nudify anyone as part of a move if they do enough damage.
But really the core issue is that this is really only intended to apply to barriers, which are already a category and it could simply be left that way. You can attempt to burst a barrier by moving into it, and if you super succeed you just keep moving. That can really just be the end of the rule.
Vebyast wrote:Here's a fun target for Major Creation: hydrazine. One casting every six seconds at CL9 gives you a bit more than 40 liters per second, which is comparable to the flow rates of some small, but serious, rocket engines. Six items running at full blast through a well-engineered engine will put you, and something like 50 tons of cargo, into space. Alternatively, if you thrust sideways, you will briefly be a fireball screaming across the sky at mach 14 before you melt from atmospheric friction.
I was on kirthfinder, at the bottom of the first page.
Vebyast wrote:Here's a fun target for Major Creation: hydrazine. One casting every six seconds at CL9 gives you a bit more than 40 liters per second, which is comparable to the flow rates of some small, but serious, rocket engines. Six items running at full blast through a well-engineered engine will put you, and something like 50 tons of cargo, into space. Alternatively, if you thrust sideways, you will briefly be a fireball screaming across the sky at mach 14 before you melt from atmospheric friction.
Just resolve it with an Athletics check the same way you would use Tumble to move through enemies or into difficult terrain, i.e. as part of the move action instead of the standard action. So the Barbarian moves 10 feet to the door, makes an Athletics check to break down the door, and then continues the remainder of his movement.
The question of when can they do this without rolling is the same as any skill check: Roll only when the roller can potentially succeed and potentially fail, and when failure would change something going forward. If they can't succeed, they auto-fail, if they can't fail, auto-succeed, if failure wouldn't change anything, they just keep doing it until they succeed.
This doesn't help the Tarrasque's odds, though. To do that you have to either create an Athletics check in 3.5 and give the Tarrasque an appropriate bonus there, or let the Tarrasque apply it's grappling size modifier (+16) to knocking-down-door checks. Or both. Once you do either or both of those, combined with making overcoming barriers part of a move action, then the Tarrasque can walk through the strongest door without ever rolling, and has a 95% chance of walking through 1-ft.-thick stone walls and a 20% chance of walking through three feet of solid rock unimpeded. That's more Godzilla-like (though a Tarrasque isn't really anywhere near Godzilla-size).
For attacks in a line, you could just do what 5e does and let everyone break up movement between attacks. To avoid the Goblin Conga Line, just rule that a successful AoO ends the target's movement (possible instead of doing damage, possibly in addition to)
Antariuk wrote:So +20 DC for reducing a task from 1 minute to 1 standard action... how is that even useful? At levels where you care about stuff like this there is no way to beat thise DCs, even with pumping your bonuses like crazy.
Also, using this table would only increase the problems with the above example of kicking in a door since we already have to deal with a DC that, as of now, even a character with 20+ Strength will fail at quite often.
We've established that the way to go with wall breaking is through damage. This was meant for other skills and abilities. I was wondering if something good could come from the idea, perhaps with lower DCs.
fectin wrote:Isn't that just the jokebook clause?
Is it? I didn't see anything like that in the SRD and haven't read the actual book yet.
Last edited by radthemad4 on Fri Oct 03, 2014 6:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
Vebyast wrote:Here's a fun target for Major Creation: hydrazine. One casting every six seconds at CL9 gives you a bit more than 40 liters per second, which is comparable to the flow rates of some small, but serious, rocket engines. Six items running at full blast through a well-engineered engine will put you, and something like 50 tons of cargo, into space. Alternatively, if you thrust sideways, you will briefly be a fireball screaming across the sky at mach 14 before you melt from atmospheric friction.
virgil wrote:Lovecraft didn't later add a love triangle between Dagon, Chtulhu, & the Colour-Out-of-Space; only to have it broken up through cyber-bullying by the King in Yellow.
FrankTrollman wrote:If your enemy is fucking Gravity, are you helping or hindering it by putting things on high shelves? I don't fucking know! That's not even a thing. Your enemy can't be Gravity, because that's stupid.
This is an old conceptual void for both TTRPGs and vidya games.
Speaking solely from locksmithing experience, if you don't have to worry about damaging the door or its surroundings, then opening said door is not a question of "if" but "when". And once you take into account people who can shoot magical acid out of their fingertips and superhumanly strong barbarians with adamantine hammers, it's not a question of "when" but of "how awesome". Remember, you don't have to destroy the entire door, just the (usually small) bits that attach it to the walls.
How to represent that in rules? I dunno, man. Maybe it would be more a thing where the rules give a suggestion of various types of situations and DCs for various approaches.
Omegonthesane wrote:a glass armonica which causes a target city to have horrific nightmares that prevent sleep
JigokuBosatsu wrote:so a regular glass armonica?
You can buy my books, yes you can. Out of print and retired, sorry.
Yeah, I think that there's an issue where "lockpicking" (which has a valid niche) has expanded to cover all forms of "getting past barriers". While sometimes you want to be quiet, leave no evidence, etc, other times you just want to get through the door, and at that point your lockpicking skill is pretty much irrelevant.
Stat everything you want to "kill" like it's a monster, and have applicable skills and spells and things deal damage to such monsters.
So if there's a door, and it doesn't fight back, you use a free attack and kill it, off screen. Noise attracts monsters like a fight. If someone is shooting you from the side and/or there's a trap or whatever time or action pressure, there's already a handy mechanic for timing and damage outputs and target difficulty built into the "big stupid monster vs PCs" combat mechanics. Which people like. So use them.
Door: AC 15, 10 hit points, no anatomy etc. Engineering skill: +1d6 damage. Go.
PC, SJW, anti-fascist, not being a dick, or working on it, he/him.
Last edited by fectin on Sat Oct 04, 2014 3:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Vebyast wrote:Here's a fun target for Major Creation: hydrazine. One casting every six seconds at CL9 gives you a bit more than 40 liters per second, which is comparable to the flow rates of some small, but serious, rocket engines. Six items running at full blast through a well-engineered engine will put you, and something like 50 tons of cargo, into space. Alternatively, if you thrust sideways, you will briefly be a fireball screaming across the sky at mach 14 before you melt from atmospheric friction.
I'd just like to throw out that a kobold or some shit shouldn't be able to kick down a sturdy door. Not even on a Take 20. Neither should a Strength 8 Wizard for that matter.
For a minute, I used to be "a guy" in the TTRPG "industry". Now I'm just a nobody. For the most part, it's a relief.
Trank Frollman wrote:One of the reasons we can say insightful things about stuff is that we don't have to pretend to be nice to people. By embracing active aggression, we eliminate much of the passive aggression that so paralyzes things on other gaming forums.
hogarth wrote:As the good book saith, let he who is without boners cast the first stone.
TiaC wrote:I'm not quite sure why this is an argument. (Except that Kaelik is in it, that's a good reason.)
I think that break doors should be a yes no thing, not a rolling thing.
How much do you actually gain from having the raging berserker sometimes break in the strong oak door and sometimes fail the same exact door?
There are a lot of skill/ability check things that I think should be switched to not rolling and being flat based on ranks. I remember when a bunch of people whined at me about how it was impossibly terrible to do jump that way at some point. But breaking doors and walls definitely need to be like that.
If your strength + Size check is greater than X, then can break the wooden door. And greater than Y you can break the iron door, and greater than Z you can break the 1ft thick stone wall, ect.
Amen to that. RPGs in general would benefit from realizing when and when not to have the RNG show up. Especially for static things like breaking down doors and disabling locks/traps.
Last edited by Mistborn on Sun Oct 05, 2014 3:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Kaelik wrote:
How much do you actually gain from having the raging berserker sometimes break in the strong oak door and sometimes fail the same exact door?
In a static situation? Fuck it - yes/no is fine.
But the more dynamic the situation, the more relevant rolling becomes. How many times do you need to hit it?
Sure, if the creature that's hitting it is large with a 32 STR, that's easily 1 round. But on Average Joe, it may take him a few thrusts of the shoulder to make it happen ... aaaand now the torrent of water/lava/acid is rushing over you.
Again, "why is the door there?" needs to be answered before the scene is described.
Kaelik wrote:
How much do you actually gain from having the raging berserker sometimes break in the strong oak door and sometimes fail the same exact door?
In a static situation? Fuck it - yes/no is fine.
But the more dynamic the situation, the more relevant rolling becomes. How many times do you need to hit it?
Sure, if the creature that's hitting it is large with a 32 STR, that's easily 1 round. But on Average Joe, it may take him a few thrusts of the shoulder to make it happen ... aaaand now the torrent of water/lava/acid is rushing over you.
Again, "why is the door there?" needs to be answered before the scene is described.
No. If you can't break a door in 6 seconds, then you can't fucking break it in six seconds. Second tries with each compounding are handled by HP damage, not break checks.
If the process is just comparing two static numbers, then there is no second try. It's not that you can't break down the door in six seconds, it's that you just can't break down that door, period.
Kaelik wrote:How much do you actually gain from having the raging berserker sometimes break in the strong oak door and sometimes fail the same exact door?
You gain that the raging Berserker's player is going to take those odds into account as he decides what to do. If the door is just yes/no, then there's not a decision to be made. "Should we take a chance and try to break down the locked door to escape or keep going down the hall and hope for another exit?" is a question you will never ask because the berserker already knows he either can/can't break down a door of that description.
Stubbazubba wrote:If the process is just comparing two static numbers, then there is no second try. It's not that you can't break down the door in six seconds, it's that you just can't break down that door, period.
Yes, if you can't break it with a break check, then you have to attack the door to break it over a few rounds (or maybe in one round) instead of using a break check. There is one mechanic, HP in which damage last round increases your chances of breaking it this round. There is another mechanic, break checks, which does not. If what you want to model is successive attempt slowly breaking the door in to chunks, you have a fucking mechanic for that already, and so declaring you should instead use a fucking mechanic which does not create progress is fucking stupid.
Stubbazubba wrote:You gain that the raging Berserker's player is going to take those odds into account as he decides what to do. If the door is just yes/no, then there's not a decision to be made. "Should we take a chance and try to break down the locked door to escape or keep going down the hall and hope for another exit?" is a question you will never ask because the berserker already knows he either can/can't break down a door of that description.
So what you gain is absolutely nothing? Okay, I'm glad. People know what kinds of fucking doors they can break down if they have any experience hitting doors. All mystery should come as it does in real life, from whether or not you really know what door you are slamming into.
That does leave a small hole, where normal people need slam attacks for that approach to work.
Vebyast wrote:Here's a fun target for Major Creation: hydrazine. One casting every six seconds at CL9 gives you a bit more than 40 liters per second, which is comparable to the flow rates of some small, but serious, rocket engines. Six items running at full blast through a well-engineered engine will put you, and something like 50 tons of cargo, into space. Alternatively, if you thrust sideways, you will briefly be a fireball screaming across the sky at mach 14 before you melt from atmospheric friction.
fectin wrote:That does leave a small hole, where normal people need slam attacks for that approach to work.
Not necessarily. One could argue that slamming your shoulder into the door is an unarmed strike that benefits from 1.5x STR like a two handed weapon. Allow Power Attack with the same considerations, and a big barbarian is a serious door wrecking machine.
For smaller guys, either you've got a door with a low hardness (rotten wood, glass, etc.) or you've got a door that you're gonna need an axe or better to get through. I could probably throw myself at some beefy, iron-banded, oak door all day and make little progress.
Kaelik wrote:
Yes, if you can't break it with a break check, then you have to attack the door to break it over a few rounds (or maybe in one round) instead of using a break check. There is one mechanic, HP in which damage last round increases your chances of breaking it this round. There is another mechanic, break checks, which does not. If what you want to model is successive attempt slowly breaking the door in to chunks, you have a fucking mechanic for that already, and so declaring you should instead use a fucking mechanic which does not create progress is fucking stupid.
Kaelik wrote:
No. If you can't break a door in 6 seconds, then you can't fucking break it in six seconds. Second tries with each compounding are handled by HP damage, not break checks.
