Hardness/Resist Issues

[Stargrove]

I have a character in my campaign that has a Warhammer +1 Striking Thundering with its damage listed as 2d8+3 bludgeoning + 1d4 force + 1d6 sonic.

The group was facing a Spiral Centurion that has various immunities and listed in the creature sheet had a hardness of 10. This hardness show up as "RESIST:10 all" in the combat tracker.

In one of the attack when the aforementioned character hit the creature and rolled the following:
2 on 1d8
6 on 1d8
1 on 1d4
2 on 1d6
for a total of 14 damage.

Fantasy Grounds reported back that the creature took 1 damage. This was confusing.

On another attack he hit and rolled:
7 on 1d8
7 on 1d8
3 on 1d4
5 on 1d6
for a total of 25 damage.

Fantasy Grounds reported back that the creature took 7 damage. This was confusing.


Another character has a Flail +1 Striking Ghost Touch which does 2d6+7 bludgeoning, magic damage. When he hit the creature and rolled:
3 on 1d6
6 on 1d6
for a total damage of 16.

Fantasy Grounds reported back that the creature took 6 damage. This made sense.


I sort of seems like the RESIST takes 10 of each individual damage type on not the total damage. Going back to the fact that the creature has a hardness of 10 it seems like this should only shrug off the first 10 damage rolled and NOT of each damage type rolled similar to what a characters shield can do.

[Trenloe]

RESIST: XX all doesn't accurately implement hardness when multiple damage instances are involved.

"2d8+3 bludgeoning + 1d4 force + 1d6 sonic" is three separate damage instances and the RESIST: 10 all applies to each of these. This is as per a clarification by a Paizo ruleset dev on the Paizo forums here: https://paizo.com/threads/rzs42bxf?T...ness-System#24

Looking at your dice FG performed correctly based off "RESIST: 10 all" - 11 (1 passes), 1 (fully resisted) and 2 (fully resisted); and 17 (7 passes), 3 (fully resisted) and 5 (fully resisted).

Hardness is planned to be implemented in a future release when the shield block functionality is fully coded.

[Farnaby]

Very interesting, good to know.

[Trenloe]

The main thing that's made me not implement hardness yet is because I haven't seen official guidelines on when/how it's applied in the damage process outlined on pages 450 - 453 of the Core Rules. Just because I haven't seen anything official doesn't mean there isn't anything out there, somewhere. So, if someone has seen an official statement from Paizo developers (not just an Internet consensus) please point me to those statements.

There are different scenarios - hardness for shield block could be applied in a different way to the hardness of a creature, for example. It can get quite complex, depending on exactly where in the damage process hardness would be applied. I could take the easy route and just apply it at the end of all the damage calculations against the total damage after immunities, weaknesses and resistances (step 4 in the core rules process); but I feel that isn't a completely satisfactory way to do it for hardness as part of the shield block reaction - as hardness should really be applied before damage reaches the target, but which part of the damage would it reduce if the attack had multiple damage instances? It's an interesting discussion, something I don't have time to get into (there's a relatively long thread on the Paizo forums, with no real consensus, if you're interested), so I'm probably going to leave it until I see an official Paizo statement, or maybe just go with reducing the final damage in step 4 - simplicity over realism.

[Stargrove]

My question really is about Hardness in particular as the creature in question, the Spiral Centurion (Bestiary 2 pg. 250), which is a Construct specifically lists Hardness 10 and when added to the combat tracker this translates into RESIST: 10 all.

I am not sure of the concern over hardness as I find a pretty clear explanation of an items hardness on page 272 which states, "Every item has a Hardness value. Each time an item takes damage, reduce any damage the item takes by its Hardness. The rest of the damage reduces the item’s Hit Points."

There is information listed in the Bestiary 2 on page 208 related to Constructs that says, "...and they may have Hardness based on the materials used to construct their bodies..." and I think that applying the rules for item damage as listed above works here.

In the mean time, is there an Effect that could be added manually instead of 'RESIST: 10 all' so it acts more like Hardness.

[Trenloe]

My question really is about Hardness in particular as the creature in question, the Spiral Centurion (Bestiary 2 pg. 250), which is a Construct specifically lists Hardness 10 and when added to the combat tracker this translates into RESIST: 10 all.

This specific creature is the simplest example of applying hardness - as it doesn’t have any resistances or weaknesses. As I mentioned above, there are many cases where it’s not this simple, so the ruleset can’t be coded to just reduce final damage by hardness across the board - unless I see an official Paizo statement that details exactly where hardness applies in the damage process.

For this example in the current ruleset, if your PCs are attacking with multiple damage instance weapons, I’d recommend you remove the RESIST: 10 all effect and then manually add up to 10 HP back to the creature after any damage has been applied.

[Stargrove]

Well, lets see if I can't get an answer then.

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43jm6?W...e-damage-chain

[Trenloe]

Well, lets see if I can't get an answer then.

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43jm6?W...e-damage-chain

What I think I'm going to do is add a new effect, HARDNESS, that just reduces final damage in step 4. That's the simplest to implement, so it's not a lot of work if that needs to change - and it's arguably better than the current RESIST: XX all implementation. This will be for creatures that have hardness. Shield hardness affecting damage to a target is a whole different discussion - so I'll leave users to apply a HARDNESS effect if they want to apply that in step 4, or handle it some other way if they wish to do it differently.

[Stargrove]

Trenloe, that seems like a viable solution going forward.

BTW...welcome back to Colorado, the snowless wonderland (at least here in the big city).

[Trenloe]

BTW...welcome back to Colorado, the snowless wonderland (at least here in the big city).

Thanks! It's snowless down here too.