1/2 Ork 13th fighter with sunder feat chain driving me nuts

[Malum]

sundering thread con't

I have intoduced several monsters w/ nat att as well as the disarming duelist type(such is the party 2nd fighter) I have dominated him several times, charmed etc he has even mauled the rest of the party at one time..it would appear that the rest of the party and my self have noticed that the armed enemies dont remained armed. And to add to this our psi warrior has noticed the psi sunder feat now. Well thanks all for the responses.

Malum

 

[Shin Okada]

Let him face a similarly made NPC fighter with +3 Adamantine War Mace and he will reglet his choice of weapon.

Well, seriously, Sunder is a very situational tactics. If that one trick is dominating your campaign, your games need more variety of foes and foes' equipment. You need monsters other than medium-sized-non-adamantine-weapon-wielding humanoids.

Adamantine/Starmetal swords and maces will be popular indeed, especially amongst higher-level opponents. Dwarvencraft weapons (in Races of Stone) can be another option as it adds +2 hardness and +10 hp. Now +5 Dwarvencraft weapon made of steel or cold iron has hardness of 22 which cannot be ignored by adamantine/starmetal. +3 weapon made of mithral is another option (hardness 21).

And in my experience, even against someone with not that hard weapon, it is much better to smack the opponent himself than attacking his weapon. Just do not forget to give a spare weapon or two to any warrior types (PCs typically do the same, aren't they?) Sundering opponent's weapon could be a good tactics in a duel. But that does not stop that opponent from moving and striking the PC's buddy wizard.

 

[Corsair]

WARNING: If you make a point of only dealing with the situation by breaking/stealing the fighter's weapon, you will quickly have a pissed off fighter player. Much like burning a wizards spellbook, or shattering a cleric's holy symbol, removing a characters primary tool of destruction is a sure way to piss them off.

A much better solution is what others have said: vary your monsters more. Sundering is useless against dragons, elementals, most constructs and undead, aberations, etc. Anything who's best attack isn't a weapon is a good choice.

 

[Enamel_32]

As Shin Okada says, bring more than 1 weapon!

 

[Legildur]

Just in case you are allowing him to use the Sunder attack for each melee attack.... Sunder requires a Standard Action, which is resolved through a melee attack roll. So only one Sunder attempt per round (and can't be attempted on an AOO).

Mind you, if he is using a double weapon for one strike per round, then he gets to add 1.5x Str bonus to the damage (and he gets 2-1 Power Attack regardless), so it mightn't change the outcome by much.

 

[Nonlethal Force]

If you want to really make the player mad - do a sort of OotS type scenario with the game:

1. BBEGs get ahold of several magical weapons that a "good" deity allowed to be created for the defense of a certain temple. Said BBEGs robbed the temple and are now using the weapons - drawing the wrath of the deity.

2. Said deity releases a slew of VoP enhanced characters after the weapons because the deity knows that the VoP characters (monks, especially ) will bring the items back without claiming them for themselves.

3. Before the VoP party can reach the BBEGs, the PCs reach them. Many (if not all) of the deity's weapons are sundered by the half-orc just because that's the way he plays his character.

4. When the VoP characters catch up to the party and realize they sundered all (or most) of their deity's weapons - the VoP characters feel compelled to bring the half-orc and his friends before their deity to feel the deity's wrath. [Think Miko in OotS]

...

Now, I am typically against intentionally irritating players. But I am likewise against players who seldom vary their tactics. My thought is that if a player always uses the same tactics, they'll get areputation. And before you know it - their opponents are prepared for it.

Heck - you could even enhance this and really make a point by having the BBEGs intentionally seek out the party so that the "deity's weapons" are destroyed. Once they are sundered, the BBEGs flee the scene quickly, leaving the PCs with the sundered mess. This could be because the BBEGs knew they were being pursued by the VoP characters and wanted to have someone else draw their wrath. They heard about the half-orcs fighting style and intentionally sought him out to make the deity angry with him rather than the BBEGs.

That could seriously work. And, it wouldn't be life-ending for the character, but it might make a point that every tactic can be abused and sticking to one tactic all the time gives you a bad reputation.

 

[UltimaGabe]

You are remembering, of course, that Adamantine ONLY ignores hardness if the object's hardness is 20 or less, right? So even if a person has a +1 adamantine dagger, his weapon does absolutely nothing to bypass its hardness of 22.

 

[Li Shenron]

In a campaign one of our players has decided to play a huge ½ Orc Fighter. His history dominated by pit fighting followed by military. We started campaign at 5th are currently 13th. Difficulty is he wields a +3 adamanite Double Orc axe this combined with the sunder chain of feats makes fighting him a rather large pain in the arse! He destroys enemy’s weapons typically in 1st round. I would be less than honest to simple remove it from the campaign but I have thought about it. Is the sunder feat chain broken? What to do? Admittedly this ½ Orc has many weaknesses such as will save as you would expect with any fighter class. The party 's Duelist brings this to my attention every game play because he is now become a distant second in combat and is now considering making another character for this campaign (a little green with combat envy)

Well, if the character is legit by the rules, then I suppose it is probably balanced as it is... are you using some non-core feats which boost sunder even more?

It sounds strange to me how this player has played his PC for 9 levels, without (a) becoming bored of doing the same trick over and over or (b) the other PCs being annoyed of him destroying treasure!

I wouldn't suggest you to scrap his PC, that would just be rude. The other posters have already pointed out some in-game suggestions about how to challenge this PC to find some new tactics.

Or, if you were playing in 3.0, you would just need opponents with +4 magic weapons...

 

[Veril]

Sunder rules are seriously broken as is trip and grapple.

All of these are tricks that should be attempted occasionally, not used as the main-stay of combat. The rules favour using these over normal attacks, and that's just plain wrong.
If these combat techniques were so much better than hitting someone with a club/sword, why did people hit each other with weapons for 2000+ years as the main way of attacking?

Simply increase Weapon and Shield HP by a factor of five to solve the problem. Weapons and shields are meant to be beaten on by other weapons and should be designed as such.

Ways to deal with it: Talk to the group and tell them that you don't like the cheesy sunder tactics and ask them to stop doing it. It's not fun. This is a game, it's supposed to be fun for everyone.

If they don't then use the following tactics:
1) do not face them with anything that uses weapons that can be sundered. Monks, monsters, undead, demons, devils, spellcasters.
2) Make every single weapon the face be magical and let the 1/2 orce destroy all the treasure - peer pressure will soon start to rear it's head.
3) Establish that the sunder technique is spreading like wildfire throughout the world (spread by the fame of the party). Have people turn up who attempt to sunder the party's weapons every single melee rouond.

 

[Dark Dragon]

It is up to the DM to keep the balance within the campaign.

If a PC likes sundering the foe's weapons - ok, let him do so.

But, as was already said, use also foes without sunderable weapons in a fight, the different monster manuals are full of these creatures.

Maybe some opponents want to imprison the party alive and so may try to disarm the fighter guys.


IMHO, it wouldn't be a good DMing style if all encounters are only designed to deal with a weapon destroying PC. Create mixed groups of enemies: some foes may wield weapons others within the group do not. Maybe an encounter needs to be tailored, but that is a way to keep everybody happy. Sometimes the casters shine in combat, sometimes the fighters. If you get that balanced, nobody should seriously complain.