What would the hardness and hitpoints of a 12-foot diameter spherical boulder be?

[dead]

Just wondering what the hardness and hitpoints of a 12-foot diameter spherical boulder would be?

I ask because in the free WotC adventure called "A Question of Ethics" by Monte Cook, there is a Wizard's Challenge in it where the above boulder is rolled down a hill and whoever destroys the boulder first wins the prize.

Now, you get points for *style*, too, and the three featured NPC wizards participating in the challenge use the following tactics:

1) Lightning Bolts
2) Summoning Thoqquas to destroy boulder
3) Disintergrate

Now, with the first 2, hardness and hitpoints of the boulder will play a factor, so I just wanted to get other folk's personal opinion on what these figures would be.

P.S. As a side note . . . wouldn't those poor Thoqqua's getted squashed? The boulder is surely size large and would perform an overrun action . . . What would the boulders overrun bonus be?

 

[dcollins]

DMG says hewn stone is hardness 8, hp 540 for 10x10x5 ft thick. Multiply by 4 (12 ft. thick) and you get -- hardness 8, hp 2,160.

Clearly some of those wizards have better tactics than others for different challenges (I read that adventure a week ago or so). A rolling boulder wouldn't count as an "Overrun" attack, you'd have to call it a trap at best (as falling block or something, likely easy to dodge if seen and rolling in a straight line).

 

[MerakSpielman]

Solid granite weighs 161 pounds per cubic foot.

A sphere 12' in diameter contains 452.376 cubic feet of granite, and weighs 72832.536 pounds, or 36.41 tons.

It's gonna have a LOT of hit points, espicially if you factor in the fact that in this case the participants don't simply have to break the boulder, they have to utterly demolish it.

 

[dead]

Thanks for the help.

Wow, the wizard's who use lightning bolt and summon Thoqquas don't stand a chance.

The boulder would roll straight down the hill (I'm guessing it'd take 3 rounds tops) and mow into the surrounding crowd causing many spectator deaths.

Hmm. What other means besides disintergrate (and wish!) could you use to *realistically* destroy this thing coz obviously spells like lightning bolt and thoqqua attacks are gonna do nuthin!

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Uh, Transmute Rock to Mud?

ETA:

Stone to Flesh it, and then Fireball it?

Summon an Earth Elemental using the rock as your material component?

Open a portal to the Plane of Fire in front of it?

 

[LokiDR]

A 10x10x5 section of hewn stone has a volume of 500 cubic feet and 540 hp. That is 1.08 hp per cubic foot. The volume of the sphere is 4/3 pi x r^3, or about 905 cubic feet in case of 6 foot radius. That figures out to 977 hp, hardness 8 (same as hewn stone wall).

The disintergrate description in the 3.5 SRD says "When used against an object, the ray simply disintegrates as much as one 10- foot cube of nonliving matter." 10^3 is 1,000 cubic feet of volume. The sphere doesn't quite fit in a 10' cube, but it wouldn't leave much left (and I don't want to get into even more math).

The lightning bolt is significantly less productive. "Electricity and fire attacks deal half damage to most objects; divide the damage dealt by 2 before applying the hardness." That mage isn't going to have enough to destroy the boulder.

When I played this module, I polymorphed into the assassin demon from the MMII (I forget the name), stone shaped the ground as the boulder came down into a ramp, and attacked it with a greatsword as it flew over me. It wasn't very fast, but I did get style points.

 

[Tatsukun]

Wall of force to stop it and "a million billion magic missiles"*?

-Tatsu
*Quote from our game

 

[dead]

Uh, Transmute Rock to Mud?

A perfectly spherical boulder was probably shaped that way by man. Thus it'd probably be considered *worked stone* and thus the spell would be useless against it.

If I wanted a boulder with 100hp (giving the lightning bolts a fighting chance) how big would it be? The size of a basket ball?

 

[Sejs]

Reverse Gravity? Let its own weight work against it.

Fabricate it into a statue of nude goddess?

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

A perfectly spherical boulder was probably shaped that way by man. Thus it'd probably be considered *worked stone* and thus the spell would be useless against it.

You didn't say it was perfectly spherical.

I assumed it was just a rather large, round rock that happened to be in the right place at the wrong time.

The other suggestions still work, though, if you're going with the worked stone ruling.