The "That's Unrealistic!" Retort Compendium

[Saeviomagy]

Of course, that doesn't conform to the rules- you're writing out a creature's immunity which reflects their structure* (which you're free to do in your game)- whereas my position does.

The rules I play by say it gets critically hit just fine. Gogo gadget 4e! Which doesn't really matter because I thought this was supposed to be a thread about realism. And realism says if it's a physical object that can be destroyed, then there are bits of it that are less durable than others.

Anyway, I think this ones dead. Danny's not going to be convinced and neither is anyone else, and the scenario we're discussing is one where you can clearly say "it's magic" and the rules of reality cease to apply.

Has anyone managed to find examples where someone armed with a melee weapon took down an improbably large creature? The best I've found are crocodile or boars.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Which doesn't really matter because I thought this was supposed to be a thread about realism.

How realistic is it for hardened clay or non-molten stone or cast iron to bend like supple flesh, over and over and over?

 

[ProfessorCirno]

That is not even CLOSE to what I'm saying. I'm not saying golems are immune to damage.

I'm saying that, due to the magic that created it, no spot on a golem is more suceptible to damage than any other point, making it immune to damage boosting effects. You can chip away, and get a good whack on it, but by virtue of it's creation ritual, it is not subject to suffering EXTRA damge by striking it's weak points- if such points existed at all after it's creation, the golem's own movement would destroy it.

Statement: The golem cannot be sneak attacked because it has no weak points.

Statement: There are no weak points because the golem does not operate based on it's actual anatomy but due to the magic binding it.

Statement: The golem does not need any part of it's body. If you shatter it's head it will simply keep coming. If you shatter it's joints it will ignore it (I guess the leg is just connected through magic?) and keep coming.

Conclusion: The actual physical body is meaningless due to the magic binding it. Therefore you cannot harm the physical body.

This is what you are saying.

Either the creature has joints and can be damaged or it cannot be damaged because the physical body does not matter. If it is a physical creature then you can smash joints and dislocate hips. If it is a nonphysical creature then it cannot be harmed

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

If you shatter it's joints it will ignore it (I guess the leg is just connected through magic?) and keep coming.

It will ignore it in the sense of it not reacting in pain or experiencing extra HP damage.

While it is perfectly reasonable for a DM to run a golem as having its leg still connected via magic, what I actually said upthread was that if you cut it in half, it will crawl towards you.

Conclusion: The actual physical body is meaningless due to the magic binding it. Therefore you cannot harm the physical body.

This is what you are saying.

Either the creature has joints and can be damaged or it cannot be damaged because the physical body does not matter. If it is a physical creature then you can smash joints and dislocate hips.

That is not what I'm saying.

Your conclusion is false, if for no other reason than you're skipping out on a statement, to whit, that the physical body is a material component of the ritual that creates the golem. And just like other magic rituals with material components, enough damage to them will disrupt the ritual's magic. Also like those other rituals, it doesn't matter where you damage it so long as you do- no particular point on a magic circle is more vulnerable to being damaged than any other, for instance.

It is also erroneous because there is a disconnect between its statements: if the body were meaningless (which I don't concede and actively deny), it does not necessarily follow that the physical body cannot be harmed.

If you read the description of their construction, clay, stone and iron golems are animated sculptures.

SRD
A clay golem’s body must be sculpted from a single block of clay...

A stone golem’s body is chiseled from a single block of hard stone, such as granite...

An iron golem’s body is sculpted...

They are not articulated action figures: they have no joints or hips (in the anatomical/structural sense of having an internal interlocking ball & socket) to dislocate. They are either undifferentiated matter from surface to core (the stone golem) or hollowed out and empty shells (clay or iron) like the statues of similar materials found in museums around the world. Their legs and arms can only bend because the magic makes it possible, not just in the sense of as a magical muscle, but also in the sense of letting the material of the golem actually bend instead of break. A stone golem's construction has more in common with Michaelangelo's David than with a Terminator. The buried tomb guardian clay statues of China or the Statue of Liberty represent the nature of craftsmanship used to create clay or metallic golems, not the work of puppeteers.

So, I stand by my position: you can damage a golem by striking it- as per the rules- but no spot on it is more vulnerable to damage than any other- as per the rules (of pre-4Ed D&D).

 

[Dausuul]

It will ignore it in the sense of it not reacting in pain or experiencing extra HP damage.

While it is perfectly reasonable for a DM to run a golem as having its leg still connected via magic, what I actually said upthread was that if you cut it in half, it will crawl towards you.

And it crawls just as fast as it walks, and it can punch you just as hard when its arm is no longer attached to the rest of it?

And just like other magic rituals with material components, enough damage to them will disrupt the ritual's magic. Also like those other rituals, it doesn't matter where you damage it so long as you do- no particular point on a magic circle is more vulnerable to being damaged than any other, for instance.

Interesting if counterintuitive position... so, you bang off random chips from the golem and eventually it just stops moving for no apparent reason?

I guess that explains why you can kill it with nonmagical weapons. That's a fairly clever explanation, actually, but I think most players would be utterly confused and rather unsatisfied if the DM described a fight with a golem that way.

As I said above, the fact that the golem can in some way negate or compensate for the internal stresses created by its motion--stresses which the animating magic "knows about"--says nothing about its capacity to withstand external stresses. Your explanation is workable, but far from the only possibility.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

And it crawls just as fast as it walks, and it can punch you just as hard when its arm is no longer attached to the rest of it?

Well, golems aren't exactly fast to begin with...

As for how fast someone can be like that...look up HS football players with no legs to see guys like Bobby Martin, who started on special teams and 2nd string D for his HS varsity team, all without legs. And unlike some others you'll find, he did so without prosthetics because he was keyless from birth. (At the time of his TV interview, he had already recorded a sack against a QB scrambling towards the sideline...and he had done more by the time he got interviewed by Sports Illustrated.)

Then there's this kid, Dustin Carter: http://www.break.com/usercontent/2008/1/MUST-SEE-Wrestler-with-NO-ARMS-and-NO-LEGS-437609.html

Note that he's NOT wrestling similarly disabled opponents.

As for punch strength, think of it like the Monk of the past 2 editions: in 3.X, a monk's unarmed strike was not defined to be a particular body part (except when definition was required by some other rule, such as a Kensai's cavorts weapon ability); the 4Ed Monk's damage is completely divorced from the particular weapon he is using- he hits as hard with a pocketknife as he does with a polearm.

The stone golem strikes with a punch, the party cuts it off. It picks up the arm with it's other hand and hits with the craggy end. Disarm it (heh) then cut off its head and it uses it like it was Mjolnir. Cut off the other arm, it kicks and stamps. Cut off a leg and it tries to steamroller you...until you do the last HP of damage it can take.

 

[Hussar]

ARRRGGGHHH, shades of Monty Python.

Although the mental image of an armless, legless stone golem steam rolling over the PC is kinda cool.

I like the Terry Pratchett approach to damaging golems from Feet of Clay. As you beat on the golem, cracks appear, glowing with magical light. Beat on the golem enough and it shatters and falls into a heap. Which does support DA's approach of no sneak attack. You can damage it, but, no single point is more vulnerable than any other point. You basically just have to bludgeon it enough times to shatter it.

OTOH, I hate, hate, hate the idea of immunities in D&D. Sidelining the rogue because it would be "more realistic" sucks. So, I don't do that.

 

[fuzzlewump]

I feel like you could just as easily say that a Rogue can sneak attack the magic binding the golem as he can't. It's magic! Who knows how that would work. Maybe there are points of magical weakness ala 'Shadow of the Colossus.'

Besides, rogues are adept with dealing with magical traps, they probably can target the inherent magical weaknesses on the golem. In fact, that interpretation seems better in a world where a rogue can disable a purely magical trap. Magical traps have some kind of weakness that only rogues can exploit (i.e. the fighter can't bash the anti-magic zone trap to death), so why not golems? One is resolved using thievery/disable device, the other is sneak attack.

 

[Gantros]

Either the creature has joints and can be damaged or it cannot be damaged because the physical body does not matter. If it is a physical creature then you can smash joints and dislocate hips. If it is a nonphysical creature then it cannot be harmed

I assume the magical force animating the physical body only has a finite amount of power to hold it together and keep it moving. If enough stress is applied to the physical body in any one location, or in multiple locations over time, then the animating magic is expended and the physical body collapses permanently.

So the physical structure and substance of the construct/undead creature actually has little or no influence on its HP or its ability to move. It can be made of stone, metal, bundles of sticks, disconnected bones floating in the air, liquid, or even vapour; all that matters is how much physical force its animating magic can withstand before giving out. Some materials may still be better or worse at resisting certain types of damage, which is reflected in the creature's DR, immunities, and vulnerabilities.

This interpretation actually works whether or not you choose to allow critical hits on such creatures. If you interpret crits as strikes against a vital area, then they have no effect because these creatures have no specific vital areas. If, on the other hand, you interpret a crit simply as a high quality or "ideal" attack, then it works normally because it applies more force to the target than a normal hit and therefore makes the animating magic work harder to keep the creature intact.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Now, there's a stronger argument to be made for Clockwork critters- those constructs that most closely resemble what we think of as robots- having weak points. You see the joints; you can hear/see the gears at work within them.

My take on them is that, absent magic, they are completely non-functional. One could not use mere physical force to make a gear spin or a joint bend, for instance. Trying may result in some slight movement, but nothing like you'd expect. And then it wouldn't move back to it's original position...

This is because the form that we see is not merely an assmbly of otherwise normal machinery animated by magic- those cogs, cables, gears, escapements, etc., are actually magic made solid, coalesced into metal with features existing in more than 3 dimensions imperceptible to normal sight. The assembled creature is a physical, ambulatory assembly of mystic symbols, like a LeMarchand Box or the house in Thirteen Ghosts.

Again, their very nature as fundamentally unnatural objects- not merely manufactured but essentially impossible machines- renders them immune to damage boosting effects.