What are the stat for damaging a petrified or magically frozen creature?

[Aotrs Commander]

So, you have Petrified someone with Flesh to Stone or frozen them with Flesh to Ice. Both spells have similar clauses that any damage you do to the statue damages the creature (flesh to ice and the attendant rules explictly state if you shatter a frozen creature it dies instantly.)

And, because this is one of those grey areas, I want to (for my own benefit at least) codifiy it.

How do you accomplish that? What damage do you need to deal? The creature's original hit points? (That doesn't make a lot of sense why a statue of barbarian should be harder to smash than a statue of a wizard or a fighter that's nearly dead.) Presumably with Hardness 8 for Flesh to Stone? Or should there be a rules of thumb, based on creature size? If so, what do we reckon would be a suitable number?

Ice is 3 hits/inch of thicnkness, stone is 15. So, maybe something like equivilent to 12 inches of thickness per space? (So small/medium would be 36/180, tiny would be (1/4 space => 3 inches =) 9/45, Large would be 144/720 and Colossal 1296/6480 - in fairness, that's a BIG hunk of ice/stone to smash...!)

Any better ideas?



Funny where my meadering takes me, as I sort through all the spells...!

[Psyren]

1) I don't mind using the character's hit points for this (and thus the barbarian statue ending up harder to smash than the wizard statue) - one character's statue being tougher than another can easily be explained by the magic of the spell itself. If you don't do that, then the spell becomes more and more of a save-or-die the higher level you go, which doesn't seem to fit with PF's design philosophy. Your target loses enough defenses simply by being a statue anyway - no dex, no buffs, no actions etc. Sure they get some hardness, but being helpless cancels that pretty quickly (and again, 8 hardness at high enough levels might as well not be there.)

2) However you decide to handle the health - for adjudicating the effects of the statue sustaining damage prior to restoring the character to flesh, I would refer to the Called Shot rules - these let you cover things like missing limbs and damaged organs or vitals consistently. Given that a statue can't defend itself, you'd probably reach Debilitating Blow status pretty quickly.

[Aotrs Commander]

1) I don't mind using the character's hit points for this (and thus the barbarian statue ending up harder to smash than the wizard statue) - one character's statue being tougher than another can easily be explained by the magic of the spell itself. If you don't do that, then the spell becomes more and more of a save-or-die the higher level you go, which doesn't seem to fit with PF's design philosophy. Your target loses enough defenses simply by being a statue anyway - no dex, no buffs, no actions etc. Sure they get some hardness, but being helpless cancels that pretty quickly (and again, 8 hardness at high enough levels might as well not be there.)

2) However you decide to handle the health - for adjudicating the effects of the statue sustaining damage prior to restoring the character to flesh, I would refer to the Called Shot rules - these let you cover things like missing limbs and damaged organs or vitals consistently. Given that a statue can't defend itself, you'd probably reach Debilitating Blow status pretty quickly.

They're both fundementally save or dies anyway (Flesh to Ice in particular as whichever way you slice it, you're way more vulnerable than stone), so it being a death sentence is KIND of a thing anyway. (Though PF only has Flesh to Stone, but they copypasted that from 3.5 without making any adjustments, so...)

In the case of Flesh to Ice there's MAYBE three spells which do it, and one of those is a 9th level (one of mine) mass-kill one that does effectively Disintegrate-level damage and magically freeze you if it takes you below 0 hp and if the ambient temperature is above freezing, you automatically shatter instantly and damage everything around you ANYWAY.

Besides, it's a highly circumstantial whether using your hit points is better than using material-based ones - if you're on low hit points at the time, it'll get you killed faster, the only change is where the breakpoint is. It also just doesn't sit right with me that a stone statue of, say, a collossal Titan Beetle or something could have but a single hit point. (I was being at least conservative with my previous hit-point estimates, you could easily make an arguement for tripling the number at the very least; that would constitutes a creature counting as fundementally 3' thick of space per square instead of 1'.)

(It's also getting into the arguement where you have to consider that structural damage and hit points are not the same; hit points are (as far as we;'re concerned) ultimately an abstraction of shock, pain, blood, loss, stamina, grit (for want of a better word) and at the bottom end of a creature's total, significant physical damage.)



I would say right off the gate that you can't Sneak Attack (nor coup-de-grace) an object and a petrified character ought to count as an object, especially as in both cases they are treated as being neither dead nor alive. (And if necessary as part of ths, I'll codify that; both petrification and magically frozen constitute their own conditions as it is - and there's an argeument I could change the wording of the former and fold the latter into it, actually, now I think about it.) The Golem priniciple applies, which says "you can't get a critical hit - and certainly not Precision Damage - on something that is a solid block of Stuff." Pathfinder may have chosen to disagree, but I have disagreed with its disagreement1. (I deal with called shots in D&D by virtue of saying simply "no, you can't;" even Pathfinder's called shot rules aren't really that great.)

I'm not really too concerned with stuff like taking a pertified statue's, say, arm off, since I would mandate that constitutes an out-of-combat action that would take significant time (I'd start with at LEAST a minute for ice and much loner for stone, but at the same time not something I'd constitute rolling for. (I'd still have to determine what that would constitute to stats afterwards, but it's only having to work out the penalty, not how to get to it, which is much easier; and on the other hand, it's nothing Regenerate (or arguably Heal) wouldn't fic anyway.) Or you're using Stone Shape, in which case you can effectively insta-kill them anyway.




13.Aotrs took a half-way stance between 3.5 and PF on critical hits and precision damage, in that it allows most stuff to be crited, but doesn't allow everything to be subject to crits or precision damage. (If you want to SA Undead, Plants or (non-clockwrk/robot) Consructs, you need to take one of the many options (cribbed from 3.5) or the option to replace one of your Finesse Training Dex-to-damage weapon choices. (Realsitically, most of those after the first one are almost never going to come up anyway, as with most characters, they will tend to pick one and use that exclusively anyway.)

[Psyren]

They're both fundementally save or dies anyway (Flesh to Ice in particular as whichever way you slice it, you're way more vulnerable than stone), so it being a death sentence is KIND of a thing anyway. (Though PF only has Flesh to Stone, but they copypasted that from 3.5 without making any adjustments, so...)

In the case of Flesh to Ice there's MAYBE three spells which do it, and one of those is a 9th level (one of mine) mass-kill one that does effectively Disintegrate-level damage and magically freeze you if it takes you below 0 hp and if the ambient temperature is above freezing, you automatically shatter instantly and damage everything around you ANYWAY.

Besides, it's a highly circumstantial whether using your hit points is better than using material-based ones - if you're on low hit points at the time, it'll get you killed faster, the only change is where the breakpoint is. It also just doesn't sit right with me that a stone statue of, say, a collossal Titan Beetle or something could have but a single hit point. (I was being at least conservative with my previous hit-point estimates, you could easily make an arguement for tripling the number at the very least; that would constitutes a creature counting as fundementally 3' thick of space per square instead of 1'.)

(It's also getting into the arguement where you have to consider that structural damage and hit points are not the same; hit points are (as far as we;'re concerned) ultimately an abstraction of shock, pain, blood, loss, stamina, grit (for want of a better word) and at the bottom end of a creature's total, significant physical damage.)

Yes, if you're low on hit points then your statue would be in more danger - but your hitpoint total going into an effect like this is something you (and your party) can control, i.e. counterplay around. The HP total of ordinary rock is not, and given that that would stay static regardless of your level, is a problem to me.

And yes, I agree that your hit point total is an abstraction for a lot of things besides "meat" - but that doesn't mean that magic can't similarly abstract those things. A Hand spell for instance is able to figure out how tough to make your force projection based on those same intangible factors. Simply put, it's easier and more intuitive to transfer the HP over and add the hardness on top than it is to recalculate everyone's HP to be that of a regular statue. That's my take on it anyway.

I agree that you shouldn't be able to sneak attack the statue, but not because of any of the construct/golem stuff you said.

[Aotrs Commander]

Yes, if you're low on hit points then your statue would be in more danger - but your hitpoint total going into an effect like this is something you (and your party) can control, i.e. counterplay around. The HP total of ordinary rock is not, and given that that would stay static regardless of your level, is a problem to me.

But they can't control it as a rock anyway. And if your hit points are low when you get turned into a rock (and that strategy would be the an intelligent foe would use), then you will die MORE easily, because you straight-up die when you reach 0, because objects get destroyed at 0 hit points (i.e. you don't get the death-at-minus-half-max-hits (already more generous than PF's -Con)).

Speaking of, it occurs to me that there is at least one instance of this coming up at some point in the eventualy future as a good a point as any to consider as a practical example.


Such the final boss' level 10 (because frack Epic spells and Mythic) Flesh to Stone, Mass, which I was planning to open with (with the forewarning that if the PCs are going up against the greatest transmutor the world has ever seen, they better be prepared for it). But if they use their hit points? It would be smarter to use into the fight, when their hit points are low and then follow up with something else to smash the now more-fragile statues because the PCs can't fix THAT without Res like they could negative hit points.

Okay, so let's maths this through, as you have convinced me I likely wasn't generous enough with statue hit points.

For Flesh to Stone, using my initial calcualtions, you'd be getting 180 hit points between you and death as a statue. For comparison as a practical example, at the time of the spoiler-mentioned fight (projected 17th level), the party Dwarf Barb/Fighter is likely to have around 315 +/-20-40 hit points - all HD are maxed - (in rage, the +/- depending on whether he gets any enhcanement bonus to Con between then and now). The average party member is going to have approximately 170 -/+30-60 hit points, between Con variant and again future enhancement bonuses.

(If you're looking at regular 3.5/PF, you're looking at more like 208 and 110 +/-30-60, respectively, with average HD rolls.)

So 180 statue-form hp (assuming the character is not Enlarged at the time, which seems unlikely, to be honest, in that case you can multiply that by four) is not far off the party's average, non-tank hit points. And that's comparing to 17th level characters with maximum hit points per level (and very generous stat allocation). (Yeah, be a bugger if Throllgar gets it, because it would functionally reduce his hit points; but if he fails a FORT save with Dwarf Barb/Ftr with all the bonuses, then, well, that natural 1 is going to frack you whatever, right?)

As I said my initial estimate was low-balling it; so, if you double it (to 360) - which is assuming that a statue has a "thickness" approximated to 2 feet thick for every 5 foot of space - that's almost as much as the tank character at full health. (You might make the arguement of being 18 inches per 5-foot space being between those.) A Large statue would take 1440 hit points to knobble, which I suspect is quite a bit more than most character's hit points - *check* yeah, that's more than double a PF Tarrasque's max hit points of 660 (and this is why my Defiant template exists, because they are tackling creatures (the boss at the end of book four with two applications) that have 840 (280+280+280) hit points ALREADY and that's before current 3.Aotrs change-buffs.. So that's almost excessive.



What this DOES suggest that Flesh to Ice ought to be a level higher, because it is significantly easier to smash you while you're ice than stone, so there's that.

[Fizban]

With the concept usually being that petrified people look just like a statue and can go unnoticed (despite existing in a world were this magic should be well-known), I have always taken it that they should be treated as a statue (however many hp you decide to assign a statue, if there's not an example to use). The resulting object is an object until the spell is reversed, and is treated as such unless the DM decides there's a reason something particular shouldn't.

The hit points of stone vs ice are irrelevant and are for aesthetic purposes only. Landing the spell already wins the fight and puts the target at your mercy, in a far tougher state than if you'd rendered them helpless some other way, or just killed them (and with all their gear safely transmuted along with them, highly damagable without a master stonecutter to cut them apart before you de-petrify). Unless your xp has been made specifically dependent on the death of the target, but that's not the spell's fault.

Far more to worry about if your squishy body dies and is left on the ground while AoEs continue firing around it: how much damage does it take to destroy a Medium Humanoid corpse? It's a composite of 8 hardness bones and 0 hardness flesh, only a few inches thick in many critical places. The base 30hp given for the body size of Medium Construct seems generous. A foot thick masonry wall only has 90 hit points, for a 10' by 10' section. At least being statued gives you more hardness than a corpse.

[Aotrs Commander]

With the concept usually being that petrified people look just like a statue and can go unnoticed (despite existing in a world were this magic should be well-known), I have always taken it that they should be treated as a statue (however many hp you decide to assign a statue, if there's not an example to use). The resulting object is an object until the spell is reversed, and is treated as such unless the DM decides there's a reason something particular shouldn't.

Agreed; statue hit points are something I'm not aware of a guideline for, which is why I was using Damaging an Object numbers.


The hit points of stone vs ice are irrelevant and are for aesthetic purposes only. Landing the spell already wins the fight and puts the target at your mercy, in a far tougher state than if you'd rendered them helpless some other way, or just killed them (and with all their gear safely transmuted along with them, highly damagable without a master stonecutter to cut them apart before you de-petrify). Unless your xp has been made specifically dependent on the death of the target, but that's not the spell's fault.

Far more to worry about if your squishy body dies and is left on the ground while AoEs continue firing around it: how much damage does it take to destroy a Medium Humanoid corpse? It's a composite of 8 hardness bones and 0 hardness flesh, only a few inches thick in many critical places. The base 30hp given for the body size of Medium Construct seems generous. A foot thick masonry wall only has 90 hit points, for a 10' by 10' section. At least being statued gives you more hardness than a corpse.

You would advocate that they should have the same hit points, but different hardness? And to ignoring the hit points of ice on the object tables, at least for this purpose? I am open to being convinced, some of the other spells do talk about "diamond-hard ice" use to entrap creatures.

After checking where you'd gotten the wall stats from (interestingly enough, it's not hugely consistent with the material damage and hit points), a masonry wall is indeed 90 hp (half of what they gave stone) and a 3' thick hewn stone as 540 (which translates back to 180 at the same thickness, which suggests that maybe I wasn't far off the mark the first time.

Okay, so what about something, then, that maybe doesn't scale on square of area or lineraly (to keep the number reasonable); say 200hp for Small/Medium, 400 for Large, 600 for Huge, 800 for Gangauntaun, 1000 for Colossal, 50/25/12 for Tiny/Diminutive/Fine? Slightly more generous (because it rounds the numbers off) than my initial estimate, but also fixes ice to the same hit points as stone?

[Fizban]

You would advocate that they should have the same hit points, but different hardness? And to ignoring the hit points of ice on the object tables, at least for this purpose? I am open to being convinced, some of the other spells do talk about "diamond-hard ice" use to entrap creatures.
No, I just mean that they are irrelevant for purposes of how powerful the spell is considered to be. They both do the same thing, save or lose, and actually leave you more protected than sleep, paralysis, or an unattended corpse. The difference between ice and stone is negligible.

After checking where you'd gotten the wall stats from (interestingly enough, it's not hugely consistent with the material damage and hit points), a masonry wall is indeed 90 hp (half of what they gave stone) and a 3' thick hewn stone as 540 (which translates back to 180 at the same thickness, which suggests that maybe I wasn't far off the mark the first time.
Defaulted to masonry by default, hewn stone would be more correct (or Wall of Stone, which is slightly different). Object stats are based only on thickness, apparently all the way up until you hit things that can be divided into 10'x10' sections- and generally seems meant to reflect breaking in half, putting a hole in, or disabling something, not neccesarily pulverizing it to dust (thus, the length and width [or total volume] don't matter]. The thickness of a human is only a few inches, I'd say 6" at most. That comes out to 90hp of hewn stone, which would actually increase linearly with the thickness, until the width or height of the creature went past 16 feet- but adding another section doesn't make it any harder to break one and almost certainly carve a fatal wound.