Vorpal Vs Fortification

[Majere]

Simple question:
Does fortification protect you against vorpal weapons.

Ive read the various rules about 15 times and have my own conclusions, but Im sure I havent come up with every possible argument or interpretation.
Have a field day

Majere

 

[Denarr]

If your opponent can't reach you with their weapon, they can't Vorpal you either. You can't Vorpal a creature that is flying 100 feet above your head, as far as I know.
If they can't chop through a door with a single stroke, I would think that would make it impossible to cut your head off.
Just exactly what sort of fortification are you referring to?

 

[Thanee]

Altho it doesn't follow the standard threat range system, I would consider the vorpal effect to be a critical hit, which can be negated by fortification and turned into a normal hit.

Bye
Thanee

 

[rei jin]

generally, if you want to know what fortification does, just look at what you can't hit something with that's immune to criticals

fortification protects against

sneak attack
critical hits
flaming/icy/acid/lightning burst on crit
vorpal hits
energy drain on critical

etc,etc.

basically treat your weapon as if it had no critical range against someone with heavy fortification.

 

[Jondor_Battlehammer]

Same basic idea with DR. It dosn't matter how deadly a posion is if you cannot get it into someones blood, which requires damage. If your DR negates the damage, no matter how hard the hit was, all the posion does is stain your cloths.

 

[DragonShadow]

Same basic idea with DR. It dosn't matter how deadly a posion is if you cannot get it into someones blood, which requires damage. If your DR negates the damage, no matter how hard the hit was, all the posion does is stain your cloths.

Um...not if it's a contact poison.

Your body shrugs off damage, but if you're getting hit with a contact poison, regardless of whether or not you take no damage, you are poisoned.


Unrelated to that, doesn't Damage Reduction basically work like fast healing, in that you take the damage, but it just doesn't effect you because of your tough body make-up? That being the case, the poison is in your blood.

I could always be wrong on that though.




Anyway, on topic: fortification has a chance of negating a critical hit. A % chance is rolled, and if it passes (or fails, depending on who's looking at it) the critical hit is negated. Vorpal activates on a successful critical.

Negate the critical, and you negate the vorpal effect.

 

[Kalanyr]

DR is abstract in some cases it represents instantaneous healing (which is weird since this should be covered by Regeneration/Fast Healing) and in some it represents the unbelievable toughess of the body possessed by barbarians and supernatural creatures (like demons or vampires).

 

[Alzrius]

Unrelated to that, doesn't Damage Reduction basically work like fast healing, in that you take the damage, but it just doesn't effect you because of your tough body make-up? That being the case, the poison is in your blood.

As Kalanyr said, the exact "how" of DR is mostly a question of flavor text. However, the rules are quite clear that any special effect that requires damage to be effective doesn't work if the DR negates all damage. If your blade is dripping injury-based poison, and you do four points of damage to a creature with DR 5/-, the poison doesn't take effect. If it's contact poison, that's another story (AFAIK).

 

[Hypersmurf]

There is debate on the matter.

Creatures who are immune to critical hits are still affected by crit-triggered effects. You can still benefit from Flaming Burst or Vorpal against a vampire, for example; even though he takes no extra damage from the critical, the special abilities still trigger.

Someone wearing Fortification armor, however, is not immune to criticals; any critical has a percentage change of being negated, which, logically, would prevent a crit-triggered effect from occurring (since the crit never, in fact, took place).

This is Core Rules.

The problem, however, comes from the occasion when the Sage stated "Fortification doesn't really negate critical hits". (Apparently "negate" doesn't mean "negate", sometimes...)

He said that Fortification gives a percentage change of making a creature immune to a given critical... so crit-triggered effects would still take place.

So it's up to you whether you think "negate" means "negate"... or something-completely-different-to-"negate".

-Hyp.

 

[Oscar carramiñana]

if you are inmune to critical you are inmune to vorpal effect.
The fortification has a % of ignore a critical - vorpal effect