Hit Points for Armor

[airwalkrr]

The PH provides a pretty good baseline for determining the hp of weapons with the table in chapter 9, but it falls short of describing armor in a similar manner. Is a method to determine the hp of armor laid our clearly anywhere in the PH? If not, how do you usually determine the hp of armor in your campaign. Though I'm a scholar of medieval history, I claim ignorance to the true thickness of full plate mail and would think it different in different parts of the body anyway.

 

[Hypersmurf]

In most cases, armor is being worn, so hit points aren't generally an issue - attended objects only take damage from a spell if the owner rolls a 1 on the save, and the object is selected from the list as the single item affected; and worn armor can't be sundered.

It's not often that hit points for armor come up, in play...

-Hyp.

 

[airwalkrr]

Yea, but for that rare situation (and by "rare" I mean it has occured in my games at least a dozen times since 3e came out) that a 1 is rolled and armor is selected, how do you determine whether or not the armor is destroyed?

 

[Jack Simth]

Even though you can't sunder worn armor, it's actually in the SRD (Combat, Special Attacks, Sunder).

Hardness: Varies by material. HP: Armor Bonus * 5

Then I'd probably use the version for shields when looking at the hardness/hp of magic armor (each +1 grants +2 hardness and +10 hp).

 

[Legildur]

Wouldn't it come into play for some special attacks involving acid and the like? (Black Puddings springs to mind....)

 

[airwalkrr]

Hardness: Varies by material. HP: Armor Bonus * 5

Awesome! That answers my question. Thanks a lot.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Wouldn't it come into play for some special attacks involving acid and the like? (Black Puddings springs to mind....)

Generally not; puddings, et al., tend to destroy instantly rather than do damage.

 

[mosaic]

How about for people who use armor as DR? Does the damage that gets absorbed chip away at the armor's HP?