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

[WalterKovacs]

One thing of note: There are very few abilities that spell out that they can target an object ... most powers target creatures.

That means you wouldn't be using normal "attacks" against objects.

That makes sense, because hit points for a creature have to do with life and death. Damage to an object, on the other hand, is NOT hit point damage ... it has a permanent effect that, outside of "repairing" the object, isn't going to 'heal' naturally, etc.

There should be different rules entirely for dealing with "dealing damage" to objects, since HP and the HP damage that weapons inflict has little to do with the damage you'd deal to doors, walls and other inanimate objects.

EDIT: Also ... armour must have incredible hardness or regeneration or number of hit points, etc ... considering the fact that nearly every point of damage you take is likely taken by the armor as well ... and it probably doesn't benefit from your healing surges, etc. That a non magical piece of leather can withstand a lot more than the adventurer that wears it seems to imply a different system for damaging objects. Also, with no noticeable side effect for characters that are "wounded" ... they seem to not be 'damaged' by losing HP either. No arms being lopped off. So, if you can kill a person, but not cause them to get cut in half, or smashed to pieces ... what hope is that same attack going to have against something sturdier than a person, and that is already dead ... so the main point of losing HP is lost?

 

[Obryn]

D&D has always had quite a bit of simulationism inherent in its structure.

Seriously?

3e and 3.5 , particularly the latter, had quite a bit of simulationism inherent in their structure.

The editions from OD&D to 2e didn't. They were even more reliant on DM fiat than 4e is, by a wide margin. The first nods to simulationism in D&D, I'd say, were in 2e Skills & Powers.

-O

 

[gonesailing]

I just want to help out those who are looking for hardness numbers.
The following articles on Wikipedia refer to various hardness tests of material:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knoop_hardness_test
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockwell_scale#Typical_values
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brinell_hardness_test (this one has a good range of sample values)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickers_hardness_test

And the most useful of them all
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohs_scale_of_mineral_hardness
On the Mohs scale, a pencil lead has a hardness of 1; a fingernail has hardness 2.5; a copper penny, about 3.5; a knife blade, 5.5; window glass, 5.5; steel file, 6.5.[1] Using these ordinary materials of known hardness can be a simple way to approximate the position of a mineral on the scale.

Per the Mohs scale a fingernail can only scratch a wall with a hardness less than that of Gypsum, gold, silver or aluminum. A knife can only scratch something as soft or softer than iron.

Impact hardness, (the first few links) seems harder to judge, but there are branches of material science who have already made these tests and the numbers shouldn't be that hard to find.

If you want that level of realism (or something slightly less) the information is out there. (and you don't need to buy another book) I doubt there are any WoTC employees who have studied these sciences and I would be a little bored reading a treatise about Impact vs Scratch hardness.

And what simulationist player would argue with numbers derived by actual real world testing.

For wood doors and any kind of scale all I can do is quote this from Wikipedia:
"[edit] Different woods
There is a strong relationship between the properties of wood and the properties of the particular tree that yielded it. For every tree species there is a range of density for the wood it yields. There is a rough correlation between density of a wood and its strength (mechanical properties). For example, while mahogany is a medium-dense hardwood which is excellent for fine furniture crafting, balsa is light, making it useful for model building. The densest wood may be black ironwood.

Wood is commonly classified as either softwood or hardwood. The wood from conifers (e.g. pine) is called softwood, and the wood from broad-leaved trees (e.g. oak) is called hardwood. These names are a bit misleading, as hardwoods are not necessarily hard, and softwoods are not necessarily soft. The well-known balsa (a hardwood) is actually softer than any commercial softwood. Conversely, some softwoods (e.g. yew) are harder than most hardwoods.

Wood products such as plywood are typically classified as engineered wood and not considered raw wood."

Then my question is "What kind of wood??? Where was it grown?? How was it dried? Is there any rot? (a real possibility in a damp dungeon)"

Exactly how many real world variables can be reduced to a table anyway?

For myself....I'll just eyeball it and move on.
Also it took about 5 minutes to collect this information. It took longer to write and proof this post.

 

[glass]

Finding anything wrong with it - ANYTHING AT ALL! - even if you overall support it = you're wrong. And closeminded. And dumb. And a bad DM.

Apparently, it also = having a serious persecution complex.


glass.

 

[qstor]

however if the destruction of other people's personal property isn't part of adventuring I don't know what is.

LOL...sounds like an OotS cartoon if I ever read one!


As for years of development I guess 4 count. But did they need 4 years to chuck the baby out with the bathwater?

Mike

 

[kromelizard]

As much as I disagree with Gygax on many things, he was absolutely right when he, in the 1e AD&D DMG pointed out that the game's intended to be a game, not an accurate world simulation.

Anyway, how did Lizard and the other people complaining about this ever deal with admantine weapons in 3.5? They ignored the hardness of objects, meaning that by the rules, you could cut your way through walls and doors with impunity. Yet no campaign I played in, or know of, featured adamantine-armed people boring through the dungeons.

(There was the time when a gnome monk with admantine knuckle-dusters pummeled a dwarf-made stone bridge into rubble, but the guy running that game was a very good example of a bad DM.)

In fact, buying an adamantine "door knocker" was a pretty common tactic, and I say if it's good enough for Wolverine, then who am I to judge? D&D is a weird magic world where men might just find an eldritch sword and use it to cut a hole in the wall. I'm pretty entertained by that.

 

[hong]

In fact, buying an adamantine "door knocker" was a pretty common tactic, and I say if it's good enough for Wolverine, then who am I to judge? D&D is a weird magic world where men might just find an eldritch sword and use it to cut a hole in the wall. I'm pretty entertained by that.

Ppl, the six billion chickens was a bug, not a feature. So is adamantine door knockers.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Our 3.5 campaign just wrapped up. My character carried around an adamantine-bladed glaive specifically for carving through doors, walls, and trap-laden dungeon features.

It didn't really ruin verisimilitude, that I could see.

Since, y'know, we could make walls disappear with a wave of a hand, teleport across continents, and blow everything in a 40' diameter to rubble in less than 6 seconds. Cutting through a wall with some fantasy substance harder than diamond didn't really break ranks.

--fje

 

[SteveC]

I have to agree with Lizard here: we have rules for object hardness in 3X, what was the necessity of removing them in 4E? Did I miss all of the people who are arguing that these rules are unnecessary decrying them in 3X? Of course not!

About the only thing that was ever discussed on object hardness was how adamant weapons would bypass it and how unrealistic that was. With 4E we have effectively given everyone adamant weapons. But now that's a good thing, and why did we ever think it otherwise?

Seriously, people: 4E has a lot of great ideas behind it, but it's also laid more than a few eggs at the things that were left out, just as 3.5, 3.0 and all of the other editions before have had. There's nothing wrong with acknowledging that, and moving on. Maybe a designer or playtester will be able to chime in and tell us why these things were removed. That would be extremely helpful.

--Steve

 

[Ahglock]

I'm actually happy with 0 hardness across the board. I always found 3e disappointing in how durable object were.

Player "I cast meteor swarm at that wooden cottage and burninate the peasants inside."

DM "The cottage is slightly smoldering and you thing you knocked some of thatch off the roof."

With the 4e reduced damage thing going on, if hardness was in the game you would need a daily to bruise a door.