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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3265059" data-attributes="member: 4937">But now we've moved on back to the original question, whether its possible for the trap to do unresistable damage.  And the answer ought to be, obviously, "Yes."  And it doesn't even have to deal 'city' damage. The point is that there are (basically) unresistable sorts of damage. There is a fine line between making something so obvious it provides no challange, and making something so inobvious that no one will get it except at random.  In my experience, with skilled players, you can trust them to figure things out (even things you didn't plan on having them figure out).  The problem comes when inexperienced players faces challanges intended for experienced ones - say Forgotten Tomb of Thardizun or Temple of Horrors.  (I've also discovered that any ammount of 3rd edition adventuring doesn't seem to produce the hardened savvy players that I'm used to from the 1st edition days, but that's another topic.)First of all, no it is not.   If I write in the text, the door has 200 hardness and 1000 hitpoints, then I'm effectively making the decision to make that path inaccessible just as if I had said, "Nothing short of salient divine strength abilities can bash this door down."   And in either case, what I wrote in my description is not the business of the players.  For all that they are concerned, I could have wrote either.  All they know is that based on the feedback I'm giving them, bashing the door down is not a path accessible to them.  In either case, the doors durability is based on the power of plot.If on the other hand I wrote that the door has 30 hardness and 400 hitpoints, then I'm making the decision to allow the door to be bashed down by any party that has sufficient determination and the minimal ability to do so.  And that too is a decision based on the plot.  The problem comes when your too inexperience to realize that 30 hardness and 400 hitpoints represents no real obstacle under the rules as written.Oh balarky.  No.  No.  No.   Anyone that thinks that the D&D rules for object damage are sufficient and workable has bloody little experience as a DM.  Sorry.  That's just absurd.  The object damage rules rank right up thier with the diplomacy rules as one of the remaining glaring deficiencies in the game.  A decision to ignore these rules because they are unworkable is not necessarily in the least poor writing, and often quite the contary.One of the main reasons to make a door unbashable is just to avoid dealing with the highly flawed object damage rules so as to avoid getting the game sidetracked by some stinking rules lawyer who doesn't want to let the DM DM because his idea of a good time is telling the DM what he's going to do and then telling the DM what happened when he did it, and all he wants from the DM is a captive audience to set their and stroke his ego.  That's every bit as bad as DM that wants to play the player's character's for them.The problem with relying too heavily on the object damage rules is that they aren't designed for any sort of complex situation, but rather simply to give a quick and dirty resolution system when the problem comes up.   The result is that if you follow them exactly as written with no additions of any sort, they get ridiculous.  A mid level barbarian with power attack and a wooden great club can bash through a foot thick adamantium door using the rules as written.  That's absurd.   I can't even begin to list all the problems the rules have with dealing damage to inanimate objects, but heres just a few off the top of my head:1) The rules don't categorize the weapons well with respect to thier effect on inanimate objects.  A longsword simply shouldn't be very effective at bashing down anything, or hewing through wooden doors, or anything of the such.  Under the rules as written, all lethal weapons work equally well.  2) Under the rules as written, if you hit a hardness 30 object with anything, the object you hit takes damage, but the object you use to do the bashing does not..  The result is that, unless the DM 'cheats', a 20th level barbarian with power attack can bash through an adamantium door with a wine glass.  What really should happen is that if you hit a hardness 30 object sufficiently hard to damage it, the object you hit it with should take 30 damage.  Thus, realisticly, if you try to bash down a wall with a wooden club, very quickly you should end up with a broken club.  3) That doesn't even begin to deal with the fact that eventually even 'soft' objects (like wood) will damage hard objects (like steel) if you do enough pounding with them.  If you go trying to break down a door with battleaxe, sooner or latter you end up with a dull and dented battleaxe.  Normally, the rules hand wave away all this stuff as not worth the book keeping, but when the PC's try to abuse the rules as written (bashing through the stone door with thier long swords) the DM is well in his rights to bring rule zero into play.4) The rules as written assume that the hardness of an object depends only on the material that it is made of and that the hitpoints depend on the size.  In fact, both the hardness of an object and its hitpoints scale up with thickness.  Six inch thick glass will resist a much harder blow without any damage than 1/4" glass.  A 2" in plank may have a hardness of 8, but a 18" wall of planks and timbers has a hardness closer to 18 (cannonballs might well bounce off it without damaging it).  And yet, because of the properties of wood, you can take an wood awl and bore a hole into wood of just about any thickness with (comparitively) little force.  Is this because an awl does a tremendous ammount of damage?  No, this is because tools that are designed to 'do damage' to inanimate objects are designed very differently than most weapons.And so forth.    Yes it is.  Believe me, I would give them a rather hot brush off if I had such an idiot at my table trying to rules lawyer me on how I run my game.  I've got very little patience for players who expect me to do all the work, but for them to be in control of the game or who actually don't want be challenged, just validated.I think that's an argument based on semantics that ultimately signifies nothing.  As I continue to point out, I can set the objects hardness arbitrarily high and its the same thing as saying, "No."People have a very strange idea of what constitutes 'rules' these days, but I've already gone there.  The point you make here is, tangentally, the point I've been trying to make all along.  The real complaint here has nothing to do with what is being (so misleadingly) called 'cheating', but rather with arbitrarily taking away the players character.  Arbitrarily taking away the players character is in general, bad DMing (especially if this isn't a one shot but an on going campaign).  But a DM can do that with or without 'cheating'.  It's just that most players don't notice that that is the problem unless they feel that the DM 'cheated' in some way.  I can easily design traps that are invariably lethal and yet within the rules.  But if I did that, I really would be going 'neener neener'.  The DM proves nothing by 'beating' the players.  He's the DM.  Of course he can beat the players.  But breaking the rules - or as is more likely, noting the rules are incomplete and extending them oso that they better cover some situation that the rules don't cover so well - has nothing to do with going 'neener neener'.  As I said, the player would almost certainly have no problem with an unbreakable sword being given to him, even though that is by this (really dumb) definition 'cheating'.I doubt that we do have that different of standards.  I think instead that you've been misled by this thread into blaming the wrong thing.</blockquote>

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