Item VS Item

[pwykersotz]

Is there a rule or precedent for a weapon or item breaking because it hits a harder material and has too much strength put behind it? Think a man with a copper dagger attacking a wall of adamantine. It makes sense that the weapon might be deformed in such a case, or even completely destroyed.

If there are no rules for such, are there any sensible houserules? Maybe when attacking something with a higher hardness, it takes damage as normal, but your weapon takes damage equal to the added damage from STR that is applied to the blow?

[Aergoth]

There are no out-and-out rules in 3.5 or PF that I'm aware of. It'd help if we knew what system you were using, just to be safe.

As far as a simple houserule, here's what I'd do. When you attempt to sunder or damage something and are incapable of overcoming the hardness to actually damage the object the difference between the hardness of the object being struck and the damage that you've rolled is damage to the weapon itself, bypassing hardness.

So adamantine has a hardness of 20. You attack the adamantine wall with a bronze dagger, dealing 1d4+str damage. Call it 6 for the sake of argument. Since I'm using PF rules, it's a light blade with 2 HP and it has a hardness of 9 (plus the fragile quality which doesn't really apply here). 20-6=14. The damage ignores the hardness and goes directly to your bronze dagger, dealing it 12 damage over the hit points that it has. The dagger is now a lot of really useless bronze scrap and the adamantine wall is unscathed.

[Mootsmcboots]

Is there a rule or precedent for a weapon or item breaking because it hits a harder material and has too much strength put behind it? Think a man with a copper dagger attacking a wall of adamantine. It makes sense that the weapon might be deformed in such a case, or even completely destroyed.

If there are no rules for such, are there any sensible houserules? Maybe when attacking something with a higher hardness, it takes damage as normal, but your weapon takes damage equal to the added damage from STR that is applied to the blow?

If you're the DM, there's a rule for it. You say "You hit a wall with a dagger made of a very malleable material, your dagger broke."

Wouldn't even need to be an adamantine wall to bust up a copper dagger. Copper is for roofing, pipes, wires and small coin.

[pwykersotz]

3.5, but Pathfinder insight is fine as well.

As for the full damage applying, there's a hangup I see. Let's say you scrape your dagger against the wall, putting virtually no strength behind it. It deals 1d4 damage plus 0 Str, and might scrap itself anyway.

And yes I'm the DM, but I'm looking for a system to use so that it's not arbitrary. Damage to weapons from attacking certain materials should be measurable by the PC's, methinks.