D&D 4E 4e -- Is The World Made Of Cheese?

OK, I'm missing something.

I'm looking at p. 65 in the DMG, and as far as I can tell, there's no Hardness in 4e any more. Objects just have hit points. I can punch my way through an admantium door, given time (large object * 5=200 hit points, so let's see, unarmed is 1d3, assume 14 strength, so avg 3 damage per attack, 66 rounds, or 6 minutes. To go through an admantium vault. With my bare hands.)[1]

Never mind Eladrin teleporting out of prison; the prisoners can dig through the walls with wooden spoons, using the RAW!

"Apply common sense" really doesn't work here -- about the only "rule" that "works" is to borrow from videogames and claim the world contains both "destructible" and "non destructible" objects, like playing City of Villains and running a mayhem mission -- you can destroy cars, but not windows; you can battle cops, but not bystanders. If the DM wants you to be able to destroy an object, you can, otherwise, you can't.

And it's not like 4e doesn't have the mechanics in place to model this better; declare most objects have, I dunno, Resist 10 All, with the DM being free to grant special bonuses or vulnerabilities where obvious.

Or are the hardness (or equivalent) rules on a different page? If so, retract rant.

[1]"Well, the DM shouldn't let you use your bare hands!" Leaving aside there's no hint of this in the rules, fine. I use a sledge hammer. This lets me do it even faster. Who needs rogues, or knock rituals?

EDIT: Doing some more math...
Assume a "statue" is the size of a man. Assume two men with hammers and picks can work side-by-side in a non-combat situation. Assume a stone mountain face.

Clearing out a "statue sized" area with hammers (1d8) and moderately strong workers (Str 14) will take roughly 7 rounds. Assume four such "man size" chunks=a 5 by 5 cube. This will take about two minutes to dig. Thus, a 10 * 10 cube, standard dungeon size, will take 8 minutes. This works out, rounding down all the time, to 70 feet/hour, or 560 feet, per say, of 10*10 corridors, dug by TWO workers.

I think we've just figured out why the D&D world is riddled with all those dungeons...damn, they're cheap to build! And fast! Given a few dozen workers..you could do Undermountain in a week.

(By comparison, in 3x, with a hardness 8 rock, you'd do 1.5 points of damage every 4 rounds, or 0.375 a round, multiplying the time by...uh...16, I think...so about two hours for that 10*10 cube...still probably way too fast, but at least it's not possible for an average, unarmed, man to tunnel through stone...even a Str 18 brute couldn't do 9 points of damage (1d3+4=max of 7, and rocks are immune to criticals). I wouldn't recommend basing your real-world construction estimates on D&D rules in any case, but the 3x rules are BIT less head-go-splodey in this area. Still, it's very easy to house rule it in 4e. Hardness is simple to add in, in a consistent and not plot-dependant way.)

I suppose the caveat is their is no hardness for the wooden spoon either. The spoon breaks long before the hole in the wall is finished. Same thing with PCs breaking admantine doors. Their hands will be bloody pulps before they break the door.

Objects get resistances and vulnerabilities as appropriate, determined by the DM (see page 66, Object Immunities and Vulnerabilities). So a particular wall can have Resistance All 45, while another wall of seemingly the same material has no resistances at all.
Why?
Because of Plot. The one wall is supposed to be practically invulnerable, the other isn't.

And some walls can just can't be smashed through at all.

grimslade said:

I suppose the caveat is their is no hardness for the wooden spoon either. The spoon breaks long before the hole in the wall is finished. Same thing with PCs breaking admantine doors. Their hands will be bloody pulps before they break the door.

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Does this apply to the characters weapons/tools, as well? So what CAN they break?

Again, we seem to be back to either:
a)Everything is breakable given time -- and not much time.
b)You can break what the DM wants you to break. Try to break something else, and he'll apply "common sense", which is how you say "Eff you!" in 4e-ish.

ValhallaGH said:

Objects get resistances and vulnerabilities as appropriate, determined by the DM (see page 66, Object Immunities and Vulnerabilities). So a particular wall can have Resistance All 45, while another wall of seemingly the same material has no resistances at all.
Why?
Because of Plot. The one wall is supposed to be practically invulnerable, the other isn't.

And some walls can just can't be smashed through at all.

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So how long can I keep farming LONGBOW agents for easy XP?

I'm pretty happy to leave this one to DM fiat, really. Just apply a little common sense. The only problems you're having here is ones that you're making for yourself by carrying rules designed to cover most situations to ridiculous extremes.

What is it about Internet forums that causes people to carry out thought experiments they'd never ever attempt in a real game and pretend they're serious?

Lizard said:

So how long can I keep farming LONGBOW agents for easy XP?

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If this is a serious question then please rephrase it using real words instead of internet meme speak.

Gort said:

I'm pretty happy to leave this one to DM fiat, really. Just apply a little common sense. The only problems you're having here is ones that you're making for yourself by carrying rules designed to cover most situations to ridiculous extremes.

What is it about Internet forums that causes people to carry out thought experiments they'd never ever attempt in a real game and pretend they're serious?

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Never attempt?

Dude, two campaigns ago, the DM threw some rock burrowing monsters at us. We figured out to capture one, put it in a harness, and chewed through walls. He hated us.

And, what, you've never had to lead sappers under a castle? Or reach trapped miners? Or otherwise engage in digging/burrowing actions in play? Or, as a DM, wanted to know how long it would take for NPCs to do such things, so you could work out when the orcs would boil up from beneath the 'secure' castle? Or had PCs who wanted to build strongholds/fortresses?

As for "most situations", PCs being trapped/held/contained is a very common situation. If the rules allow for, basically, bare handed tunnelling through solid stone -- and as written, they do -- you will have them digging their way out of any cell you put them in. OK, let's limit it to non-bare-handed. They find any metal implement they can and trivially batter down an iron cell door. The rules, as written, do not really work for ANY situation other than, as others have said, purely plot-driven ones, where you can destroy what the DM wants you to destroy and nothing else.

What's irksome about this is that it's a "fix" for a non-problem. Resistance is in the rules; clearly, the concept of "sometimes you subtract number Y from damage X" was not deemed too complex or difficult for 4e to handle. If a dragon can have Resist Fire as part of its stats, why not a wall? Was space so tight that a paragraph explaining this, and a second column added to the table on P. 65, was simply not possible? I don't think so. It's a "simplification" that wasn't needed and that will ADD complexity (and arguments) by tossing all of this into the DMs hands, forcing him to decide case-by-case if a given combination of tools and time is sufficient to destroy an object.

If you could handle 3E fighters with Power Attack carving their way through walls, you can handle this.

After reading page 66 of the DMG as suggested by a previous poster, it looks to me like those determinations are in your hands. You can have every wall in your world have resistance x all, using wwhatever number you feel is appropriate. Or, if you dont want any walls to have any resistance they dont have to.

Your PCs want to dig a trench that 6 feet deep and 50 feet long use a little common sense and tell them how long it will take.

If they capture that burrowing monster and harness it to dig for them, use common sense and figure out what is reasonable for YOUR group. There doesnt have to be rules etched in stone for this kind of thing. Thats why there is a DM, to make the world work the way he/she and the group of players envision, not how some game designers envisioned it. Rules are just a framework. Sometimes too much scaffolding gets in the way.