Force Enchantment vs. Golem?

[Stront]

Could someone please explain to me how the Force Enchantment out of the MiC would work regarding an Iron Golem? Is Force an energy or is it magic? If you fire a Force bow at someone with SR does it have to bypass their SR?

Thanks in advance I'm a bit confused here. :smalleek:

[Phelix-Mu]

I echo the request. In an upcoming campaign, we had to mega house rule this, since force is terribly defined, if indeed it is ever really defined.

[Deophaun]

Is Force an energy or is it magic?
Yes.

If you fire a Force bow at someone with SR does it have to bypass their SR?
No. Same thing with flaming or shocking weapons. A magic item will only have to deal with SR if a) it specifically tells you or b) it says "as the spell" (or the equivalent) in the description of how it works, in which case, you look up the spell and see if that allows SR.

As for an Iron Golem, it should bypass its DR, as the damage is an energy type and DR doesn't reduce energy damage.

[Phelix-Mu]

Hate to be a stickler about this, but source please on "as the damage is an energy type and DR doesn't reduce energy damage." Our DM will want to know.

[Divayth Fyr]

Hate to be a stickler about this, but source please on "as the damage is an energy type and DR doesn't reduce energy damage." Our DM will want to know.
From the SRD:

Whenever damage reduction completely negates the damage from an attack, it also negates most special effects that accompany the attack, such as injury type poison, a monk’s stunning, and injury type disease. Damage reduction does not negate touch attacks, energy damage dealt along with an attack, or energy drains. Nor does it affect poisons or diseases delivered by inhalation, ingestion, or contact.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Whether force is an energy type or not is unclear. (it's an issue of some debate) However, that particular point is irrelevant to your concern.

Energy or not, the force enhancement's description explicitly says that it bypasses DR, IIRC, and there's no question about the fact that it doesn't care about spell-resistance. It's a magical effect, but it's not a spell or spell-like ability. Since spell resistance doesn't apply, neither does the golemn's magic immunity.

[Deophaun]

Technically, energy damage is defined as either fire, cold, electricity, acid, or sonic. However, force is handled exactly the same way as those: Force dragons, for example have immunity to Force damage, just like Red dragons have immunity to fire (note: you do not see "immunity to cold iron"). Conversely, you will never see DR 10/force. It's odd because force is supposed to be reliable. That's why force effects have lower damage caps than their official energy equivalents, and why converting your weapon's damage to force is worth a +2 enhancement bonus.

[Story]

What does City Damage count as?

[Stront]

Thank you for clarifying what I assumed. We let the force enchanted bow damage golems and it turned into a huge debate. It continued into claiming all weapon enchantments would not hurt golems either. I just kind of sat back and let them argue.

[BowStreetRunner]

What does City Damage count as?

I can tell you what it is not. To quote Cityscape: "Only half the damage from a spell with the appropriate subtype is considered energy damage, and is thus subject to resistances or immunities. The remainder comes from the city itself, and is not subject to spell or energy resistances or immunities." So it is not considered energy damage.

[Stront]

So to continue this saga of Force versus a Golem.

My adversary in this argument contests that since Magic Missile and Spirtual Weapon can't hurt a Golem; therefore, neither could a Force enchantment on a bow.

I pointed out Orb of Force and Wall of Force as spells that use Force that a Golem would be affected by - he still contests the concept.

I showed him three creatures with resistance to force in 3.0 but of course that is 3.0 and not 3.5. Is there any creature in 3.5 that has force resistance? I think this might finally silence him in the debate. How about a creature in Pathfinder that force resistance, that would be even better as he concludes Pathfinder is god now.

[Alabenson]

So to continue this saga of Force versus a Golem.

My adversary in this argument contests that since Magic Missile and Spirtual Weapon can't hurt a Golem; therefore, neither could a Force enchantment on a bow.

I pointed out Orb of Force and Wall of Force as spells that use Force that a Golem would be affected by - he still contests the concept.

I showed him three creatures with resistance to force in 3.0 but of course that is 3.0 and not 3.5. Is there any creature in 3.5 that has force resistance? I think this might finally silence him in the debate. How about a creature in Pathfinder that force resistance, that would be even better as he concludes Pathfinder is god now.

Magic Missile and Spiritual Weapon can't hurt a golem because those spells are effected by SR; the fact that they happen to deal force damage has nothing to do with it. Similarly, while most acid spells bypass SR, a Fireball that dealt acid damage via Energy Substitution wouldn't be any more effective against a golem than a regular Fireball.

A damage spell's effectiveness against a golem is purely a factor of whether or not it allows SR; the type of damage is irrelevant.

[Deophaun]

Don't bother. Your friend seems to have immunity to logic on this matter. He's reading the ability's title (immunity to magic) and taking that as the rule, instead of reading the actual definition of the ability.

[BowStreetRunner]

So the relevant special qualities of concern here are A) an iron golem is immune to any spell or spell-like ability that allows spell resistance and B) an iron golem has damage reduction 15/adamantine against physical attacks. The Force enhancement in MIC can be applied to a projectile weapon and has the several effects on the projectiles fired from the weapon including 1) the projectiles automatically overcome damage reduction and 2) the projectiles suffer no miss chance against incorporeal targets and 3) the projectiles don't damage creatures immune to force effects.

So effect 1 negates any benefit from B as the projectile categorically ignores DR, rather than merely gaining a quality that affects certain types of DR. Effect 2 is irrelevent, as no one is claiming an iron golem is incoporeal in this instance. Effect 3 seems to be the source of the confusion - as someone seems to be questioning whether an iron golem counts as a creature immune to force effects.

This is certainly not an explicit quality of an iron golem - it does not outright state it is immune to force effects. Nor does it seem likely anyone believes that the iron golem's DR is effective against force effects - even if it were something normally concerned with DR, the enhancement entry in MIC explicitly states that these weapons overcome DR. So it seems that the question is whether the iron golem is implicitly immune to force effects due to its magic immunity.

The iron golem's magic immunity ability states that an iron golem is immune to any spell or spell-like ability that allows spell resistance. Force effects are part of a specific subset of spells and spell-like abilities and may or may not allow spell resistance. In other words, magic immunity is not equal to force immunity. Since the Force enhancement is not a spell or spell-like ability that allows spell resistance and the iron golem is not specifically immune to force effects, the conclusion that must be reached is that the iron golem is fully affected by weapons with this enhancement.

[Stront]

This all makes perfect sense to me. Thank you for confirming my thought process and at least I am not missing the big picture here. The funny thing is we are arguing about literally a +2 enchantment that is helping a Scout do 1d6+1 damage to a Golem.

Wow, broken huh? :smallwink:

[Answerer]

The Scout ought to be doing more damage than that. Even if it's just 1d8+1d6+1 (Skirmish on a Composite Longbow) for an unoptimized Scout 1...

[BowStreetRunner]

The Scout ought to be doing more damage than that. Even if it's just 1d8+1d6+1 (Skirmish on a Composite Longbow) for an unoptimized Scout 1...

Golem...construct traits...no critical hits, therefore no skirmish.

[Answerer]

Oh, that's right. 3.x is all kinds of terrible like that. I'd somehow managed to forget.

[Eldan]

From the SRD:

Hm...
Side question I never thought about: if DR doesn't apply to touch attacks, does that mean that if you can make your melee weapon attacks as touch attacks, say by certain ToB maneuvers, DR does no longer apply to them?

[Chilingsworth]

So to continue this saga of Force versus a Golem.

My adversary in this argument contests that since Magic Missile and Spirtual Weapon can't hurt a Golem; therefore, neither could a Force enchantment on a bow.

I pointed out Orb of Force and Wall of Force as spells that use Force that a Golem would be affected by - he still contests the concept.

I showed him three creatures with resistance to force in 3.0 but of course that is 3.0 and not 3.5. Is there any creature in 3.5 that has force resistance? I think this might finally silence him in the debate. How about a creature in Pathfinder that force resistance, that would be even better as he concludes Pathfinder is god now.

Is this person your DM? Is your DM more likely to listen to him than you (or for that matter, logic, in this case?) If you answered "no" to both the above, then ignore his objections.

[BowStreetRunner]

Hm...
Side question I never thought about: if DR doesn't apply to touch attacks, does that mean that if you can make your melee weapon attacks as touch attacks, say by certain ToB maneuvers, DR does no longer apply to them?

Actually, I think this is just poorly worded. The section of the SRD where this is mentioned is the part that explains that if all the damage of an attack is negated by an attack, any special effects from that attack are also negated. As I understand it, this is going on to state that if it is a touch attack, the special effects are not negated even if all of the damage is.

Anyway, I am sure you will find people who interpret it both ways - so I would suggest taking this up with your DM before you go selecting feats and maneuvers with the intent of abusing this.

[Edit: Oh, and don't forget that back when the DR rules were first written the only touch attacks in the game were pretty much incorporeal creatures and spell-based attacks.]

[Stront]

Is this person your DM? Is your DM more likely to listen to him than you (or for that matter, logic, in this case?) If you answered "no" to both the above, then ignore his objections.

He WAS my DM... :smallwink: