He rolled a natural one on his save...

[Timeboxer]

I was brought over to the "the item damage rules are just fine" camp by this exchange.

Someone I Know: "Wizards are broken."
Amy: "Why?"
SIK: "Well, they always have to keep buying new spellbooks."
Amy: "...wait, why? Mine has had her spellbook for awhile."
SIK: "Oh, because every time they get hit by a fireball their spellbook burns up."
Amy: "...um, that's not actually how it works."
SIK: "It's not?"
Amy: "No. [gives PHB reference]"
SIK: "Oh. ...well, that makes no sense. If you take any fire damage all of your stuff should just immediately burn. Otherwise it's not realistic."
Amy: "...aha."

So.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

Not a bit of it. Hardness applies to all damage an object takes.

Hrm. Our group has been treating hardness as DR. Basically bypassed by spells. Guess I'll have to mention this to our DM....who likes using animated objects....

D'oh!

 

[MerricB]

Hrm. Our group has been treating hardness as DR. Basically bypassed by spells. Guess I'll have to mention this to our DM....who likes using animated objects....

D'oh!

One of the first Living Greyhawk modules I ran, a couple of months ago, had a pair of animated objects with Hardness 10. I was running this game with average party level 2.

There was one character who could hurt them. Luckily, I'd found out about this beforehand and so made a few absolutely necessary modifications...

Cheers!

 

[boolean]

From the PHB, p. 165:
"Energy Attacks: Acid and sonic attacks deal damage to most objects just as they do to creatures; roll damage and apply it normally after a successful hit."

The obvious interpretation of "normally" is simply that acid and sonic damage are not halved/quartered before hardness is applied.

However, the FAQ says:
"• Acid and sonic attacks ignore hardness. Melf’s acid arrow has
the acid descriptor and would ignore an animated object’s
hardness."

So Black Dragons can be pretty good at destroying equipment.

 

[MerricB]

From the PHB, p. 165:
"Energy Attacks: Acid and sonic attacks deal damage to most objects just as they do to creatures; roll damage and apply it normally after a successful hit."

The obvious interpretation of "normally" is simply that acid and sonic damage are not halved/quartered before hardness is applied.

However, the FAQ says:
"• Acid and sonic attacks ignore hardness. Melf’s acid arrow has
the acid descriptor and would ignore an animated object’s
hardness."

So Black Dragons can be pretty good at destroying equipment.

Thanks for pointing that out - I'm fine with that ruling, actually.

Cheers!

 

[Gez]

Strange ruling. I can see sonic attacks damaging metallic or crystalline items (your sword, your potion vials, your gems...), but I wouldn't consider clothes to be damaged in any way by sonic attacks.

For acids, on the other hand, some crystalline materials, like glass, are good at containing acid. So there would be much handwaving...

 

[Plane Sailing]

It comes down to the half-baked way in which elemental damage isn't really differentiated in 3e. I do hope that in a future edition (?) there will be a clear and coherent difference - perhaps along the line of Elements of Magic vol1. The XPH does take a step in that direction which is nice, I was quite disappointed that Neither UA nor CompArc provided optional rules for a unified elemental damage system.

AFter all, even the 1e DMG had it's item saving throw table which differentiated between type or attack and item saving throw (glass was particularly good against acid and particularly bad against crushing blow IIRC).

Cheers