[DM] - To Sunder, or not to Sunder? (Break, Destroy, Steal the PC's gear?)

Just wondering how many of you DM's use Sunder and break the PC's weapons, and/or send NPC's to steal items from the PC's.

The reason I ask is because of the chart of "character wealth". Each character is assumed to be carrying that amount of wealth at those particular lvls.

The question comes at, what do you do if your players are 6th lvl and you Sunder the Fighter's +2 longsword? He is now 8k behind everyone else. You as the DM have to make up for this in the immediate future by letting him find one as treasure..? If you just give out increased GP, that doesnt' work because that GP is split evenly amongst the party.

Just wondering what you do in your campaign. Please vote and more importantly, explain what you do


EDIT- I'm a Poll newbie.. I wanted to make it a poll where people could give multiple answers. Can anyone fix that for me?

I basically lost three players over breaking equipment.

The party was on the way to a "legendary" weapon/armorsmith. I used a recent action on the party's part to throw in a "revenge" type of encounter, with the main strategy of breaking any weapon used.

Now I know what a drag it is to have your weapons broken. At the same time, I was dealing with how I'd like to "upgrade" the party's gear. Instead of simply having that "why here's that +3 sword I was looking for" experience, I decided that said weaponsmith would be able to "fix" magic weapons, even strengthen them (in exchange for a small quest). Unbroken weapons could be "tempered" and gain an extra enhancement bonus (or something else appropriate).

That was the plan... Unfortunately, the party leader hid the reason *why* he was going to see the legendary smith (he had a good one, just didn't share it which was fine in character). After the "breaking" encounter, one of the players was upset his weapon had been broken (apparently his soul was in it, which was news to me, the DM). Anyhow, half the party ended up leaving their current course (backtracking instead of going to the smith), while the other half pressed on (I had a total of 7 players).

Eventually, three of the players (three of the four who did not go to the smith) left the game. I eventually finished the campaign and my remaining players thought I did a good job (so they say). Still, I feel bad about the three who left over the sundering incident.

So that's my bad sundering experience. As a DM, I'll probably not use sunder again. I know it depends on the players, circumstance, and so on, but some people can take it the wrong way.

I guess I'm a wuss but until the PC's start sundering the NPC's item the NPC's won't sunder the PC's. With the exception of Dragon encounters.

I'm just going to be blunt here - I hate sundering. And the fact that 3.5e seems to want to increase the usage of this tactic makes me ill to my stomach.

I've long house-ruled that in order to sunder (most) items, the attacker must be in control of the item in question. Disarm and sunder, grab and sunder, etc. Only something fragile can be sundered if it is in the possession of someone else - a potion bottle for example. A specific *weapon-breaker* item is the only other way, and that would be limited to it's specific usage (a 17th c. swordbreaker vs light swords for example).


Cheers,

A'koss.

Cloudgatherer and A'koss, pretty much summed up my position.

I've only ever sundered one item - I made it immediately clear that 1) the item could be repaired, 2) told them where the only sufficiently talented smith was, 3) made sure the PC in question had an adequate back-up.

Given 3e's strengthening of the rules, I think I'm probably going to go the M.A.D. route for sunder, except I won't address it explictly. I'll wait and see when the PCs use it, and then make the consequences clear.

Having said that, there might be adventures where the PCs are *expected* to sunder the item; I'm definitely going to make those clear to my players.

Last session, actually, Angcuru lost his sword Stormbrand in a duel with an evil knight. However, he ended up grabbing Balefire, which is Stormbrand's evil counterpart, so it's all good(at least in weapon power), plus it opens up new RP opportunities.

Might I ask what the "M.A.D. route" is?

Also, my stance is that I don't like Sunder, for reasons I had stated above. I really don't ever want to use it on my PC's, and the other DM's in my group (we rotate every once in a while) have said that they don't want to use it either.

It.. just sucks.. heh. I think people view it as just more of a personal attack against *them*. Besides, it screws over the melee types.. you can't "Sunder" spells out of the spellcaster. And, like stated above, what do you do for as far as getting that character's equipment back up to par with the rest of the group's..?

Sunder also ruins stuff for the NPCs as well. The PCs aren't the only ones interested in "killing people and taking their stuff." As has been mentioned, it generally hurts fighter types more than others.

I'd almost never use sunder.

I avoid sunder except for in epic battles. If you're fighting your arch-nemesis, then it's basically fair game. I just don't think random encounters should involve sundering extremely expensive magic items.

I don't typically sunder because, except for creatures with really good DR (at the level of or better than the party's weapons) the opponents don't have good enough weapons to sunder the party's stuff. I only have one player that likes to sunder (+4 adamantine battle axe and improved sunder), and he regularly displeases the other players by destroying the 'treasure'.

In a low magic campaign where weapons (most non-magical) are more disposable, sunder is an excellent tool, though.

-Fletch!