tome of battle maneuvers.

[krupintupple]

i dm a game and the following situation came up - i'm kind of at a loss as how to rule upon it.

party is captured and jailed by local bad guys, party is stripped of weapons and items. the group's warblade realized that he can use his maneuvers without a weapon and decides to use mountain hammer on the bars of the cell with his bare hands.

unarmed, his mountain hammer would've done 1d3+Str+2d6 damage and bypasses damage reduction and hardness. i estimated the iron bars of the jail to have roughly 15 hp and a hardness of 10, since it's not a new cell. as strange as it sounds, he'd be able to knock it apart - bare handed - within a round or two.

i'm not complaining, but it seems strange that the monk would be unable to do this, due to the high hardness, yet the warblade is. basically, it would mean that anyone with mountain hammer would be able to punch their way out of even an adamant jail cell given enough time.

anyhow, what are your thoughts on this situation?

 

[Arkhandus]

Anyone could do it with Power Attack after gaining, like, a +10 base attack bonus. Someone using a two-handed weapon can probably do it at level 1, with just a bit more time.

A half-orc monk with 20 Strength can do it at level 1 with just a lot of persistance in punching the cell bars (1d6+5 damage, will deal 11 damage once in a while, getting 1 point in past the hardness, so he could eventually break it down).

And an adamantine set of bars would not be likely until upper levels. A human warblade 3 with 18 Strength, Mountain Hammer, and Power Attack could punch at bars for 1d3+2d6+4+3 damage....so an average of 16 damage or so, which don't even dent adamantine bars (hardness 20). The maximum he could do would be 22 damage, which would get in 2 points beyond hardness, and it would take quite a while to break......

Of course, all this means is, in a setting with martial adepts, people would just know that you don't just throw people with good fighting skills into a jail cell without binding their hands. Stone Dragon is the one discipline shared by all three martial adept classes, and Mountain Hammer is a low-level maneuver, so it would be quite well known.

I'd suggest just assuming that whatever NPC threw the PC into jail was being foolish and forgetting the fact that many skilled warriors can break free if allowed free use of their hands. Adamantine shackles would do more good than adamantine prison bars, and plain old iron manacles should suffice for keeping the average martial adept as helpless as a wizard in the same situation.


A quick edit cuz I thought it should be mentioned: with a warhammer, a human barbarian with 18 Strength and Power Attack could deal 1d8+6+6 damage, or 1d8+9+6 damage raging. Enough to pound his way through iron bars a bit faster than the warblade could unarmed (he'd just need that warhammer or something like it to compensate for not having the Mountain Hammer maneuver). And without bruising his hands so much.

Sure, the martial adepts can do somewhat better unarmed than other warriors, but not better than a monk (who'd batter down his obstacle unarmed with a rapid series of flurries).

 

[brehobit]

I think you have to be proficient in the weapon to use a strike with it. So I _think_ you need improved unarmed to pull this off.

Yeah, it is a bit odd. They should have excluded hardness and DR/- IMO.

Mark

 

[Vurt]

Without Improved Unarmed Strike, wouldn't the warblade in question be dealing nonlethal damage to the bars? I don't think objects are susceptible to nonlethal damage.

 

[Zurai]

Without Improved Unarmed Strike, wouldn't the warblade in question be dealing nonlethal damage to the bars? I don't think objects are susceptible to nonlethal damage.

That's my interpretation. Technically, you can take a -4 penalty to deal lethal damage with an unarmed strike, but I wouldn't allow it in this case.

 

[RangerWickett]

You can take a -4 penalty to your attack roll to deal lethal damage. With enough persistence, by the rules you can chop down an adamantine wall with a whip (though you still can't hurt someone in padded armor).

Even if you bound his hands, he could kick his way free. I suppose you could truss him up in full arm and leg binds, but then he'd just head butt the damned bars.

Really, the appropriate deterrent is having a guard handy to kill him if he tries to escape. Why were they being held? You only keep prisoners if a) you're legally required to, or b) you expect to get value from keeping them. Martial adepts are like mages in that they're really hard to keep captive, so I imagine most people would just kill them if they tried to escape.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

You can take a -4 penalty to your attack roll to deal lethal damage. With enough persistence, by the rules you can chop down an adamantine wall with a whip (though you still can't hurt someone in padded armor).

Which is where that 'ineffectual attacks'* line comes into play...no matter how much damage dice the Warmage can pull off unarmed, a fist against iron just doesn't work..and a whip against metal doesn't work.

..it would have been nice, altho complicated, to have a rule that stated that the object with the least hardness take the damage of an attack...meaning unarmed against metal would end damaging the person attacking... but there isn't


*can't seem to find it right now, and really should be doing research for my homework instead of for EnWorld posts

 

[Arkhandus]

I think you have to be proficient in the weapon to use a strike with it. So I _think_ you need improved unarmed to pull this off.

Yeah, it is a bit odd. They should have excluded hardness and DR/- IMO.

Mark

Nope. And Improved Unarmed Strike only deals with unarmed AoO matters. Anyone can be proficient in unarmed strikes (they're simple weapons, only wizards and maybe one or two other classes aren't proficient in them), really. And anyone can deal lethal damage with unarmed strikes by taking a -4 penalty on attack rolls. Also, technically, only monks can make effective unarmed strikes with any part of their body, by the RAW.

Mountain Hammer, and its higher-level versions, were explicitly put into the book to allow for stuff like a martial artist breaking iron or stone with his bare hands. And to get past pesky Damage Reduction.

Also, there is no rule whatsoever, in the Book of Nine Swords, that says you need to be proficient in the weapons you use for martial maneuvers or strikes. You could initiate Mountain Hammer or Five-Shadow Creeping Ice Enervation Strike using a spoon, if you wanted to! The weapon used doesn't matter much because you're going through the same very specific motions to initiate each maneuver, whether there's a weapon in your hand or not, you just won't be as accurate (-4 nonproficiency penalty on attack rolls) if you aren't used to swinging that kind of weapon around effectively (i.e. proficiently).

And yeah, I was wondering about that 'ineffectual attacks' line in the rules about striking objects. But I don't think a martial adept smacking stuff bare-handed with Mountain Hammer, Elder Mountain Hammer, or Ancient Mountain Hammer would be considered to be making an ineffectual attack against the iron bars; those maneuvers specifically channel earth-like hardness into the martial adept's striking appendage or weapon.

 

[Arkhandus]

..it would have been nice, altho complicated, to have a rule that stated that the object with the least hardness take the damage of an attack...meaning unarmed against metal would end damaging the person attacking... but there isn't

Y'know, martial artists who are properly trained for it can break thin iron boards with their arms or even their foreheads (I've seen it). They'll get a bit of a mark from doing so, but they can do it. And of course, they can shatter several bricks, pieces of concrete, or the like. Proper training, though painful and very repetitive, can harden the bones and flesh to a moderate extent. Just as the body builds muscle by tearing it up with lots of weight-lifting or the like, it can concentrate resources on mending and hardening spots on the body that are used to repetitively strike a hard surface, over the course of many months or years.

 

[Stalker0]

While he would do it, it would likely take a few rounds to break enough bars to escape, and that's going to create a huge racket, bringing in the guards with spears. So completely doable, but certainly not an automatic jail break, just a nice chance to have a combat within a jail cell