Sunder vs. Natural Weapons

[JiffyPopTart]

So, one of the players in my party has just retired his Soulborn (and I agree that this class is pretty crappily underpowered) and replaced it with a Minotaur/Fighter sundermonkey. The GM has decided to try out "extrapolated from the hydra" rules for letting the character sunder natural weapons. We had a spirited (one degree below heated) debate about this, as I was the only one who thought the idea of allowing sundering of natural weapons was a giant can of worms best left untouched.

Opinions pro or con?

DS

 

[Corsair]

I say no. As soon as the minotaur gets his horns chopped off, or his hands (he does an unarmed attacks, just like all other humanoids) he'll see how much of a bad idea this is.

 

[shilsen]

Really, really dumb idea on your DM's part.

 

[Zaruthustran]

Totally awesome idea. We've seen plenty of horns, teeth, and stingers hacked off in heroic fantasy. As another person pointed out, however, if you're allowing sundering of natural weapons you've pretty much got to allow sundering of limbs. And that is a can of worms indeed.

It is strange that D&D allows a zombie to pick up an arm and use it as a club, and allows another character to sunder that arm--but not the arm holding it.

-z

 

[molonel]

Called shots, which is effectively what you're talking about, don't work very well in D&D combat. People always think it's a really cool idea until you start doing it to them, and they realize that there are more monsters who can eat any penalty you assign to such called shots like they were twinkies.

 

[Nyeshet]

Sounds like the "Regenerate" spell will finally see a little use!

Seriously, it could bring up a few problems. For instance, if you allow a sundering of a beast's claw from its body, why not also allow the sundering of a hand or arm holding a weapon? If you allow the sundering of a lion's paw (ie: foot), then why not allow it for, say, centaurs (they can strike with those things, as I recall) or even - perhaps - humans, reducing their movement?

It is a notable can o' worms, but if it is not allowed then you have to wonder why sundering is allowed at all? Why would the (comparatively softer) flesh and bone of a monster be impossible to sunder when the (much harder) blade carried by another creature is sunderable? I can see stating that a natural weapon could not be disarmed, as it is attached, but to state that it cannot be sundered seems to increase the power of having natural weapons notably, while also further weakening an already weak form of attack (due to the DCs involved and the many creatures other than humanoids (and sometimes even them) that use natural attacks).

It is a complex issue. By the RaW, perhaps it should not be allowed. By common sense, it most definitely should be allowed. Of course, we already know that D&D defies common sense at least 19 times before breakfast each day. Also, as already stated, it gives a use for the (currently unusable) Regenerate spell. Of course, what you can use, so too can your foes.

 

[RangerWickett]

So how many hit points does an arm have?

Hardness 0. Maybe HP equal to the character's Con, +4 per size category over Medium, -4 per size category below. Hm. That's probably too easy, so we need some way to make this more difficult, or else every halfling is going to be nicknamed Stumpy.

I mean, you need an opposed attack roll, so maybe just allow some sort of super high bonus to resist having your limb cut off?

In my game, if a PC reduces a foe to 0 hit points, I have absolutely no problem with letting him say he has cut something off. It's dramatic, and I mean, he's already beaten his foe.

How about we make it a little hard? Give your limbs virtual hardness equal to your Con. Then the limb itself has HP equal to your current HP divided by 4 for arms, or by 3 for legs. To even hit a limb, you make a Sunder attempt, but there is no benefit for a difference in size categories (a large hand is easier to hit but harder to hurt; a small hand is a tough target to strike, but fragile). The defender gets a +4 bonus if he isn't using the limb offensively.

 

[Simm]

As I see it the problems begin when monsters start doing the same thing. Its fine for the party to lop off their enemies limbs but when the minotaur with monkey grip and a really big greataxe starts performing amature surgery things can go down hill really fast. The problem lies in that any accurate system for handleing these things is probably affected by four variables: the damage the attacker can do, the attack bonus of the attacker, the size of the defender, and the number of hit points of the defender. Since, especially at high levels monsters will be larger, have more hitpoints, have a higher attack bonus and deal more damage per hit the rule set quickly becomes a disadvantage to the players. I'm guessing that most players don't want to see their limbs hacked off so these rules are probaby a bad idea.

 

[MarkB]

The big potential problem is the possibility of one-shot kills. After all, the rules the OP's DM is extrapolating are rules for lopping off a creature's head - so why bother sundering a claw or tooth, when you can simply sunder a neck instead?

Even without this, if the creature has just one very powerful natural weapon, you have the potential of an effective one-shot disabling attack by taking out that weapon.

 

[usdmw]

I have a different take on this.

In my games I use a Massive Damage Threshold = Con + (Hit Dice/2) [See Unearthed Arcana]. When a character takes massive damage, he/she must pass a Fort save to avoid a crippling injury. If THAT fails, he/she must pass an additional Fort save to avoid death.

The logic is that a crippling injury isn't as bad as death, so there's no additional hardship.

You could do the same thing with any Massive Damage Threshold, depending on how gritty you want things to be. Oh, and there are rules in the DMG for injuries to different body locations.