why cant you sunder armour?

[irdeggman]

I have a hard time imagining how one could sunder armor without damaging the man inside it... definitely not in combat. In a way it's a bit like trying to hit someone's dress without scratching him, which perhaps should not be impossible in a fantasy novel (Zorro?), but with a metal armor it should take at least a seriously hard effort.

I think this is the real key.

Essentially sundering worn armor is like dealing a critical to the person inside, essentially overcomplicating the system.

It is pretty much hard to imagine sundering worn armor without causing damage to the wearing and the sunder rules don't address that one.

By the way you can sunder shields.

SRD:

You can use a melee attack with a slashing or bludgeoning weapon to strike a weapon or shield that your opponent is holding. If you’re attempting to sunder a weapon or shield, follow the steps outlined here. (Attacking held objects other than weapons or shields is covered below.)

 

[Felnar]

Essentially sundering worn armor is like dealing a critical to the person inside, essentially overcomplicating the system.

It is pretty much hard to imagine sundering worn armor without causing damage to the wearing and the sunder rules don't address that one.

well as i understand it, you dont damage someone when you sunder their quiver/cloak/amulet/etc, so you could just stick with that

 

[Cabral]

I'd say it's downright impossible to sunder armor without harming the wearing. In essence, a sunder armor mechanic would have to be extremely difficult not allow for a two-for-one situation.

If you look at real armor, you'll see fanciful grooves flowing away from the center. They are designed to divert an attack regardless of direction in came from. Therefore, a successful Sunder would require a good solid hit, basicly a critical hit. and even then, it would only damage the armor, not make it useless. It would probably take several successful sunder attempts to reduce the AC by even one point.

What I would instead do is keep track of armor damage. Everytime the wearer takes damage, the armor takies the same (minus hardness).

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Would it really be any more of a problem than standard sunder rules? Losing a weapon or shield would blow too.

It rather depends upon the level and the kind of character. At low levels, shields and weapons are much easier to replace than armor. The orc barbarian sundered your greatsword? Pick up his greataxe. He sundered your shield? Pick up the orc cleric's shield. He sundered your chain mail? Shoot--all of his orc friends were wearing studded leather and the DM says it needs to be fixed since your friend with the flachion sliced them all in half.

At higher levels, my guess is that it would still be harder to replace armor because most PCs are using one particular kind of armor that may be tough to replace. On the other hand, only fighters and war domain clerics are really committed to a particular weapon. A rogue can go from a rapier to a shortsword without too much trouble and a barbarian can pick up a greatsword in place of his greataxe without suffering too much. If the weapons were magic, it will hurt a lot, but in a normal D&D campaign, you might expect your enemies to have magic weapons at those levels too. (In Order of the Stick, Roy's sword was sundered in a fight, but he found a magic weapon in the treasure--of course, he opted to go on a side quest to get his ancestor's sword repaired instead). On the other hand, you can expect PCs to be wearing one of several kinds of armor: mithral breastplate, mithral chain shirt, mithral fullplate, adamantine fullplate, chain shirt, or ordinary fullplate. Fullplate, according to the PHB has to be crafted specifically for the wearer or at least requires a smith to do the resizing. So, no picking up a suit of fullplate off the dead fighter or cleric on the other side. The mithral and adamantine items are rare, and will not be as frequently found as treasure, so there's a difference in kind as well as the difference in enhancement to deal with. My 17th level fighter/mage, for instance, would be better off going back to mage armor than picking up a non-mithral chain shirt. Still, the guys who wear light armor would at least have some luck. Those who usually wear fullplate would have very slim pickings in the armor department since most high level bad guys who would benefit from it wear fullplate and fullplate is specifically hard to simply pick off a dead enemy and wear.

 

[Bloodstone Press]

Speaking strictly in terms of game balance, there really isn't any reason why you can't. Monte has said before that the high rate of treasure that characters typically get (according to the tables in the DMG) is high because it is offset by characters periodically losing items, including their armor.

Currently there are several monsters in the core rules that can destroy armor, some oozes and at least 1 kind of demon (IIRC) can destroy armor. Not to mention the DM's prerogative to have characters lose their armor to thieves, or drop them into deep water where they have to cut it off and leave it, or any other role playing situations.

I think the main reason there isn't a feat or combat option for sundering armor is because destroying a weapon with one heavy blow is conceivable, but on the other hand, destroying a whole suit of armor with ONE mighty blow is a little too far fetched, even for DnD.

In my home brew, when we are playing games that focus heavily on knights and chivalry, I sometimes use an optional armor point system to enhance the importance of armor and the maintenance of it. With rules like that in play, you could add magic weapons and feats that do extra damage to armor, effectively sundering it in fewer blows than otherwise possible.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

A bebilith can sunder armour, so there's some precedent for it, at least.

 

[Li Shenron]

A bebilith can sunder armour, so there's some precedent for it, at least.

Except that it is a special attack which does NOT use the sunder rules

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Except that it is a special attack which does NOT use the sunder rules

True, but it would be incorrect to say that there's a general unwritten rule against damaging armour to make life easier.

 

[Daermon]

If you're going to sunder/damage armor, here are my recommendations on making life easier (re: fair) towards your players:

Give your players a Defense modifier from 1/3 to 1/2 of BAB. I prefer using the 1/2 model myself. So a level 20 Fighter would have a +10 Defense (for a total of +20 before modifiers). Negate this bonus if they're wearing medium or heavy/superheavy armor. This aids in adding a sense of 'realism', as your dexterous Rogue with leather armor is nearly as hard to hit as the Fighter with plate and shield.

Allow for 'blocking'. Let your players roll their full BAB, plus all modifiers, in place of an attack. The next creature to attack them must score higher than the character's AC or attack roll, whichever is higher. Let this be a Standard action and include a few Feats to allow for blocking multiple opponents, making it Move Equivalent, et cetera.

 

[Samloyal23]

Historically, there were any number of weapons designed to damage armour, especially chainmail. I recommend splitting the damage between the wearer and the armour on a successful Sunder attempt, minus Hardness for the 1/2 damage suffered by the armour. Remember that when sundering armour not all of the damage to the armour is from the impact, some of the damage is cause by the weapon on the withdraw as it is yanked out of the armour or when parts like loose straps are snapped.