Tactics for destroying armor & weapons

[Oryan77]

I'm ready to start changing NPC tactics now that my players are getting higher level (lvl 8). I never used the Sunder rules before, and I'm interested in starting to make PC's worry about losing their items.

What are the different ways you can tactically destroy a characters weapons/shields/armors? Give ideas for any type of material (wood, steel, ect).

How would it work if an item is magical?

 

[phindar]

That's covered under the rules for Sunder. I could cut and past it from the SRD, but so can you, and since you want to know and I'm not that curious, the ball's in your court there my man.

As for other methods, there are still Item saving throws somewhere (DMG?). There used to be a rule that a nat 1 on a Save meant you had to save for your items. Disjunction targets magical items, but it may be a little over-the-top ot start centering it on 8th level parties. Dispel Magic can knock items out for a period of time, and you can always go with the classic Dead Magic Zone, which doesn't destroy items but does nullify them when you're in there. Depending on how you interpret Psionics, DMZ's are either a good place for your psionic monsters to set up shop or (if you take psionics as magic) a good place for the magically vulnerable types (big scary monsters with low ref and will saves, like giants) to hide out.

Also, there's the whole category of monsters that do this. Rust Monsters are the poster boy (bug). There was another one an old GM of mine got out of Dragon Magazine, an orb of light that flew around and "ate" magical energy, essentially draining magical items. High level parties scattered away from these like cockroaches. Someone around here will know what those are called.

Also, a good ship sinking and a rigorous and keen-eyed enforcement of the swimming and encumbrance rules might help out with getting pc's out of excess gear, but they're getting past the level where that will work.

 

[DarkJester]

Besides the mechanics I have to warn you to watch how often you start playing the sunder card. I find that it's one of the things that can ruin players overall fun pretty quickly. Not that there is anything wrong with the occasional destruction of property, IME its just not good to let it get out of hand.

 

[Voadam]

Sunder can't target armor. So other options must be considered.

1 rust monster for metal armor.

2 rusting grasp spell for metal armor.

3 there is a gauntlet that lets you do rusting grasp and makes you immune to rusting attacks.

4 warp wood for wooden shields.

5 given that leather armor is made from skins, animate dead or create undead can be a nasty trick. Book of Templates by Silverthorne games has an undead made from creatures skins, skinwraiths?

6 disintegrate gets rid of material things if they fail their save.

 

[Pyrex]

Edit: Erroneous information removed...

 

[Patlin]

Rust monsters are a minor nuisance by themselves, but a few Thri-Kreen with bone weapons and a pet rust monster might be pretty scary!

 

[Magesmiley]

1. Sunder is the obvious choice - simply breaking things is nasty. If the NPC has an admantine weapon its even easier (but beware as the players will probably end up with said admantine weapon after the battle). The first time I hit my players with a sunder specialist with an admantine heavy mace, they didn't really have much of an idea how to deal with it.

2. Some of the oozes are very effective way to destroy PC equipment. The black pudding and gray ooze in particular. They're not to great at tacticians however, so its often good to use them in unusual situations. The black pudding is probably one of the nastiest item destroyers in the game.

3. The remorhaz is another nasty customer for destroying PC weapons. My players discovered this one the hard way recently.

4. While not destroying per se, disarming can be almost as effective as destroying. Especially if the NPCs pick up said weapon/item and use it against the PCs. Consider knocking a character's wand out of his/her hand after its been used and having an NPC pick it up and activate it against the party. Another point to the disarm... if the PCs are in a precarious position, such as flying or fighting from a narrow rope bridge above a massive crevasse, a disarm is about as good as a sunder at destroying things - items which aren't recoverable are as good as destroyed.

5. The good old rust monster is always sure to strike fear into the hearts of fighters everywhere, even at 8th level.

6. I seem to recall the Nightwalker having the ability to crush an item. Combined with a disarm attack, this could be rather cruel.

Special materials are more of a factor when dealing with item destruction than magic, at least from my experience.

 

[Pyrex]

And the Bebilith gets Rend Armor.

 

[Drowbane]

Warlocks: Dispel Magic + Baleful Utterance (shatter) = what magic armor (weapon, etc)?

 

[Aries_Omega]

Remember templates...I did and hit my players with a half green dragon rust monster. Yep...it rusted metal and melted everything else. I almost had a TPK with it.