D&D 3E/3.5 [3.0/3.5] GMW and Sunder

[Artoomis]

I think it's fairly obvious that the changes to DR, the hardness/hit points of shields and weapons, and the rules on breaking magic weapons were not fully thought out and/or properly edited.

I await errata!!

 

[Spatzimaus]

I'd chalk the Shatterspike thing up to bad editing again, too. That is, they copied it over, THEN changed the rule, and didn't bother fixing it. The DR/magic thing is pretty good evidence, I'd say. If Enhancement Bonus was still critical to Sunder, then how exactly do you rule these? And what if the creature was changed to have something like DR 5/adamantine (like a Golem)? It now can't break any magical weapon at all?

Vurt, even if you can't Sunder armor (and I thought you could in 3E, but frankly I never used Sunder), the fact that both the Sunder section and the shield section specifically dropped that clause AND have what we believe to be the correct Hardness/HP boost seems to imply it's gone now. Anyway, IMC it's going away when 3.5 gets integrated, but it's just another thing to add to the errata list.

 

[hong]

He should get sure striking enchancement. +1 ability, counts as +5.

Only for the purpose of negating DR. It doesn't make your weapon into a +5 weapon, so it won't help against sundering or if you attempt a sunder.

Sure striking, as written, is pretty useless in 3.5E. I'd change it to negate the first 5 points of DR of any type, and maybe bump it up to +2.

 

[Vurt]

To be fair, the only thing I can honestly read into these rules is that whole topic is pretty messed up.

I personally believe (but cannot prove) that any weapon can sunder any other weapon, and this is why magic ones receive a nice boost to HP and hardness in the new edition. They become, in effect, harder to sunder. This also allows creatures with the new DR to still do their thing.

However, by the rules there is still the fairly decent argument that magic weapons require a requisite enhancement bonus or special property (ala Shatterspike) to sunder other magical weapons. Since DR 5/magic is basically what used to be DR 10/+1, then each multiple of 5 in the new DR can be thought of as constituting an extra +1 enhancement, for sundering purposes only.

Neither approach appears to be terribly unbalancing, and if this ever comes up, I'll probably ask my players which version they prefer until the eratta on the subject finally arrives.

-- Vurt

 

[James McMurray]

To answer the original question:

If I "give" you an apple, do you now "have" an apple. Since the answer tot hat is obviously yes, the answer to whether GMW helps defend against Sunder is also obviously yes.

Of course, if its later determined through erratta that enhancement bonuses don't matter for sunder attempts, then the above answer is meaningless. But in a world where enhancement bonuses count for sunder, GMW will count for sunder.

 

[Spatzimaus]

But in a world where enhancement bonuses count for sunder, GMW will count for sunder.

I wouldn't necessarily agree with that, either. This has come up in other GMW threads before.
(And I'll preface this by saying it's not what we do IMC, but we changed spells like GMW in other ways to balance them)

See this logic chain:

> Enhancement bonuses give, among other things, a +1 enhancement bonus to attack rolls and a +1 enhancement bonus to damage rolls. (The other things they give: more HP, more hardness, higher Sunder threshold, higher anti-DR threshold)
> Masterwork weapons get a +1 enhancement bonus to attack rolls. In 3.0 this was simply a "masterwork bonus" that was clarified to not stack with enhancement bonuses, but in 3.5 it's explicitly been typed as enhancement.
> However, that +1 from Masterwork doesn't let you bypass DR, become immune to Sunder, or anything else that an Enhancement bonus gives. This is clarified in several places.
Therefore, the anti-Sunder ability comes from the fact that it's the weapon/armor ability referred to as "Enhancement", NOT that it's simply a bonus of type "enhancement".
> GMW only gives an enhancement bonus to attack rolls and damage rolls. It doesn't say "the weapon acts as if it had a +X Enhancement bonus", it explicitly says attack rolls and damage.

So, using this logic you'd be perfectly justified in saying that a GMW'd weapon isn't any better for Sunder or DR than it was before the spell, because like a Masterwork weapon, it gives a PART of the bonus you get for the normal +1 Enhancement. In fact, with this interpretation a mundane weapon with Magic Weapon wouldn't even penetrate DR/magic, you'd need an actual magic weapon for that.

 

[James McMurray]

People are more than welcome to follow that convoulted chain in their campaigns. In mine, I'll opt for my simpler method.