spearing a ship until it sinks

[Dausuul]

Is it realistic that you can chop down a tree with an axe? Take a big hammer and knock down a wall? Well, yes it is. Arguably, it's too quick and easy to wreck a ship with hand weapons, but no-one can seriously argue that it's physically impossible.

For a couple specific classes of hand weapons--namely, axes and maces--yes. Every other class of hand weapon--bow, crossbow, sword, dagger, spear, sling, staff--the answer is a resounding no. (And if you seriously want to talk realism, a battleaxe is very different from a woodcutter's axe, and a warhammer is very different from a sledgehammer. Chopping down a tree with a battleaxe is a dubious proposition. Knocking down a wall with a warhammer is laughable.)

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Is it realistic that you can chop down a tree with an axe? Take a big hammer and knock down a wall? Well, yes it is. Arguably, it's too quick and easy to wreck a ship with hand weapons, but no-one can seriously argue that it's physically impossible.

It is not just too easy, since I have experience in chopping down a tree with an axe and a wall with a 12lbs sledgehammer but it usually possible in the rules of the game to chop down the tree with the hammer and the wall with the axe and just as quickly as the otherway around.

It might be doable but it would be painfully slow and the work of weeks or longer depending on the size of the wall or tree. Also in the case of knocking the wall with the axe, you would ruin the axe. The temper of the blade would be destroyed, at the least assuming you did not split the blade.

 

[vaultdweller]

(snip)
And if you seriously want to talk realism, a battleaxe is very different from a woodcutter's axe, and a warhammer is very different from a sledgehammer. (snip)

Quite right. Moradin's Legendary Battleaxe of Uber-Godslaying is very different from a woodcutter's axe. The woodcutter's axe would take some time chopping to get through the tree, whereas the ancient magical battleaxe would cleave through it in one swing and take down the two adjacent trees too, because you accidentally swung too hard.

 

[nightwyrm]

I'm not sure hardness scores do anything practical in game. A decent ranger or barbarian can have at-will static damage mods in the teens by lv 10 or 11. The difference in damage between an axe or a dagger is comparatively low at that point. It may take a few more rounds to chop through a ship with a dagger than with an axe, but the barbarian is still gonna do it with enough time. Practically speaking, there's little difference from just giving stuff a ton more hps. You're either going to have to assign hardness scores that's so low that it doesn't matter or so high that there's no difference from indestructible.

The rules might as well just have certain stuff be destructible by X, but indestructible by Y or Z etc. The slashing/piercing/bludgeoning damage type is a start, but you could still have problems. You might have difficulty imagining breaking rocks with an arrow, but you would have no problems if somebody does it with picks, even though they would deal the same type of damage (piercing).

 

[Dausuul]

I'm not sure hardness scores do anything practical in game. A decent ranger or barbarian can have at-will static damage mods in the teens by lv 10 or 11. The difference in damage between an axe or a dagger is comparatively low at that point. It may take a few more rounds to chop through a ship with a dagger than with an axe, but the barbarian is still gonna do it with enough time. Practically speaking, there's little difference from just giving stuff a ton more hps. You're either going to have to assign hardness scores that's so low that it doesn't matter or so high that there's no difference from indestructible.

The rules might as well just have certain stuff be destructible by X, but indestructible by Y or Z etc. The slashing/piercing/bludgeoning damage type is a start, but you could still have problems. You might have difficulty imagining breaking rocks with an arrow, but you would have no problems if somebody does it with picks, even though they would deal the same type of damage (piercing).

That was actually more or less what I was proposing above (shouldn't have used the term "hardness" for it--call it "durability" instead). All large objects have a Durability stat, ranging from 0 (glass) to 5 (adamantine). All forms of attack have a Shatter stat, ranging from 0 (most hand weapons) to 5 (disintegration magic). Your attack must have a shatter value equal to or greater than the durability of the target in order to damage it. If it does, you deal full damage. Otherwise, zilch.

Just a quick sketch--subject to revision, of course--might look something like:

DURABILITY
0: Glass, cloth, normal equipment
1: Wooden structures, metal equipment
2: Reinforced wooden structures
3: Stone or bronze structures
4: Iron or steel structures
5: Adamantine structures

SHATTER
0: Normal weapons, radiant, necrotic, cold*
1: Axes, maces, lightning, thunder
2: Fire, acid
3: Light siege equipment (ballista, light catapult, hand-held ram), mining tools**
4: Heavy siege equipment (heavy catapult, trebuchet, massive ram), dragon breath
5: Disintegration magic

[size=-2]*Poison and psychic do no damage to objects.
**When used as mining tools; as weapons, they have Shatter 1. Mining inflicts damage on a per-hour basis.[/size]

Some attacks would get upgrades; for instance, a fire attack designed to be extra nasty might be Shatter 3 or even 4. Being made of adamantine might increase a weapon's Shatter by one. It offers a fair bit of design space.

 

[LostSoul]

Here's how I handle it in my hack:

* What You Can Do: Characters can do many extraordinary things, as described by their feats, powers, and skills. Apart from that, however, treat Heroic-tier characters as normal human beings with all our inherent limitations. Paragon-tier characters can stretch these limitations to perform implausible acts, and Epic-tier characters can succeed at the impossible.
* DM determines what is appropriate: The DM determines what actions are appropriate in the game world, and may ask you to re-state your action if he feels it isn’t appropriate (see What You Can Do, above).​

 

[KahnyaGnorc]

I'd also say that different objects of the same type can be handled much differently.

The PC's ship, a big-name NPC's ship, or a flagship of a boss-type enemy would be heartier than a ship of regular no-names monster and/or NPCs. Say, the PCs are in a big naval battle. You could have their ship mop the floor with regular enemy ships ("Minion" ships) with a few requiring an actual fight ("Standard" or "Elite" ships), while on the other side, the enemy flagship is mopping the floor with regular allied ships. It would be the same as those epic land battles where the heroes and villains are barely phased by the regular combatants as they are drawn inevitably into direct combat.

 

[TerraDave]

The specific rules for attacking vehicles simply say "if you manage to apply the following conditions to a vehicle, here is the result". It never changes any of the rules for how to apply those conditions at all - just clarifies what would happen if a vehicle were immobilized. The general attack rules still apply, and they state that vehicles aren't creatures, enemies or allies, and therefore any interaction between them and attack powers is purely at the whim of the DM.

The "specific rules" do not say that.

AV says that vehicles can be attacked and damaged like other objects, that like other objects they have HP and defenses, and when HP goes to 0, the object is destroyed.

The DMG says that objects can be attacked and that "damage is damage". Thats what it actually says. Immunities to attacks or damage is for unusual items only.

 

[Mallus]

This still means that no kind of door or bar will ever stop any party, no matter how low level or poorly equipped, from getting anywhere. A large adamantine door has 200 hit points according to the rules; a typical 1st-level party could batter it down in maybe half a minute.

I took a look at the most recent object-damage rules in the Essentials Rules Compendium, which, in retrospect is something I probably should done before posting in the rules forum, and you're not quite right about this.

The text makes it pretty clear the whole object damage section is just a set of loose guidelines. It's not a comprehensive modeling system. It's basically, it's "PC's sure like to break stuff. Here some advice on how to handle that." It relies on DM discretion. For example, it's clearly states reducing an object to 0 HP doesn't necessarily mean it's completely destroyed; in the case of a complex mechanism it could mean it's rendered non-functional, a statue could be toppled over, a door knocked off its hinges, etc. So the idea PC's could burrow through a dungeon like Purple Worms is right out.

The rules also say DM's should feel free to assign material Resistances and Vulnerabilities as they see fit --ie, cloth burns, glass doesn't-- or to disallow certain kinds of damage to objects as they see fit.

So in the case of your amamandine door, which BTW should probably have 300 HP (if you bother to construct a door out of adamantium, it's almost by definition going to be "reinforced"), the DM would be well within their rights to declare non-magical attacks don't do any damage, or powers below Paragon Tier, or it's invulnerable to anything save the Holy Pick-Axe of Antioch, or whatever.

Or the DM could let even a low-level party of heroes knock it off it's hinges, if that floats their boat.

If you feel it's important that your PCs be able to emulate Hercules (John Henry had mining tools, not a sword).

I don't feel it's important so much as I feel it's traditional. D&D characters begin to resemble the heroes of folklore, myth and legend as they gain levels, and the core books themselves have been explicitly using characters like Hercules as examples of PC's since 2nd Edition (if not earlier).

Also, how much more plausible do the mining tools make John Henry -- he still bored through a mountain by himself over the course of an afternoon

edit: come to think of it, I do like the fact 4e PC's can emulate the deeds of folkloric/mythic character without the explicit use of magic spells or items. Why should breaking the laws of physics be reserved for the guys in the pointed hats and miters? It's not like that in real mythology.

The "specific rules" do not say that.

AV says that vehicles can be attacked and damaged like other objects, that like other objects they have HP and defenses, and when HP goes to 0, the object is destroyed.

The DMG says that objects can be attacked and that "damage is damage". Thats what it actually says. Immunities to attacks or damage is for unusual items only.

I'm guessing the rules in the Compendium supersede these. At least they should, the newer text is a lot more commonsensical.

 

[TerraDave]

On the RC: sure, and I quoted it above. It has a little more fudging then the DMG, so at the DMs discretion and not damage is damage, though it could be intepreted in a pretty silly way, but thats true of a lot of things.

But, not harp on this too much, the AV is were the vehicle combat rules live. Yes, I guess when combined with RC and DM common sense then abuses could be avoided. I still doubt the value added of those rules, but the DM is given some discretion to effectively ignore them.