Dragon breath weapon and suddenly all your gear destroyed?

[_RAGNAR_]

So my current DM seems to love destroying your gear, even magic (in a already low magic game) I'm not used to this at all.

I know it is his game and therefore in the end his rules but..... it started with breaking a +1 spear on just a critical miss

Last night is was failing a saving throw against a black dragons acid breath weapon and suddenly half my belongings are destroyed.

Is this correct by the rules?


To clarify the dragon was young adult, no item hardness of hit points were taken into account etc. I didn't critical fail my save (roll a 1) I dont know know what difficulty saving throw I was trying to make for the items. (how is dragon breath DC determined?)

[newguydude1]

Is this correct by the rules?

no its not. not by a longshot. i suggest you get a new dm. not gaming is better than bad gaming. hes gonna do a lot worse stuff because it seems like he gets his jollies from destroying your gear so he wont stop. if you force him to stop he wont dm anymore so just skip everything and get a new dm.

items only have a chance at getting damage if you critically fail your save.

https://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/magicItemBasics.htm

Damaging Magic Items

A magic item doesn’t need to make a saving throw unless it is unattended, it is specifically targeted by the effect, or its wielder rolls a natural 1 on his save. Magic items should always get a saving throw against spells that might deal damage to them— even against attacks from which a nonmagical item would normally get no chance to save. Magic items use the same saving throw bonus for all saves, no matter what the type (Fortitude, Reflex, or Will). A magic item’s saving throw bonus equals 2 + one-half its caster level (round down). The only exceptions to this are intelligent magic items, which make Will saves based on their own Wisdom scores.

Magic items, unless otherwise noted, take damage as nonmagical items of the same sort. A damaged magic item continues to function, but if it is destroyed, all its magical power is lost.

i bet he didnt even give your magic spear a saving throw too right.

also
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/exploration.htm

Energy Attacks

Acid and sonic attacks deal damage to most objects just as they do to creatures; roll damage and apply it normally after a successful hit. Electricity and fire attacks deal half damage to most objects; divide the damage dealt by 2 before applying the hardness. Cold attacks deal one-quarter damage to most objects; divide the damage dealt by 4 before applying the hardness.

acid doesnt ignore hardness

[_RAGNAR_]

the spear got a saving throw but there was no hardness/hit points thing done, just failed saving throw=broken. Pretty annoying.

[False God]

Play a monk, multiclass into a psionic monk. Conjure swords from other times with your mind. Expansion yourself into a giant and go dragon wrestling.


Alternatively, get a new GM.

I'm fine with destroying gear, but this sounds excessive.

[GrayDeath]

As has been said, this is a very houseruly way of doing things.

Now, a game like that can be fun, IF all players agree to it.
But not in 3.x, as Items are half the Game, at least (depending on class, Druids can of course cope^^).

So yeah, talk to your DM, tell him you went to play D&D, not "Low Magic everything sucks ahrd using a D20", and are not having fun.

If hes a good DM, and this is a simple style mishmash that doesnt work, he will work with you to either change how he runs the game, or explain ALL changes he has done and allow you to rebuild your Character.

if he does neither (and again, this wa sin NO way clarified in session 0!), then hes a bad to horribly DM that should not be advertizing his homebrew a D&D.

And you should leave.

[tyckspoon]

I know it is his game and therefore in the end his rules but..... it started with breaking a +1 spear on just a critical miss

Last night is was failing a saving throw against a black dragons acid breath weapon and suddenly half my belongings are destroyed.

Is this correct by the rules?


No, and no. First not-actually-a-rule: There is no special thing that happens on a 'critical miss'. You just.. miss, even if your bonuses would otherwise be high enough to make your total roll high enough to hit (as might happen if, say, you were trying to strike an AC 5 inanimate object.) Anything along the lines of 'you strike your friend/yourself/your weapon breaks/you lose the rest of your turn/you trigger an Attack of Opportunity' is a creation by your DM and has very little support in the rules (the DMG has a sidebar variant for 'critical misses', which suggests calling for a DC 10 Dexterity check, and if you fail that check then you should 'lose a turn of activity' with some pretty vague guidance about what that should entail.)

Second thing is, as mentioned, you generally do not have your equipment harmed by area attacks. You have to Natural 1 fail your saving throw, and then the DM is supposed to identify the four to six items you are carrying that would be most likely to be affected (there's a table listing them down, it looks.. pretty much like you would expect: Cloak/robes - armor - shield - weapon most likely, going down to stuff on your belt/things inside your backpack as least likely) and then ONE (1) of those items gets hit by the attack and makes its own saving throw, then has the appropriate damage applied to its hardness + HP. Since this usually results in things splashing against a magical weapon/shield/armor, and magical weapons/shields/armor get significant bonuses to their HP and hardness, most of the time this means nothing significant really happens. You may need to have a little bit of reforging/cast a Mending/Make Whole on your sword when you get a chance.

[Vaern]

Unless the descriptive text for the spell specifies otherwise, all items carried or worn by a creature are assumed to survive a magical attack. If a creature rolls a natural 1 on its saving throw against the effect, however, an exposed item is harmed (if the attack can harm objects). Refer to Table: Items Affected by Magical Attacks. Determine which four objects carried or worn by the creature are most likely to be affected and roll randomly among them. The randomly determined item must make a saving throw against the attack form and take whatever damage the attack deal.

If an item is not carried or worn and is not magical, it does not get a saving throw. It simply is dealt the appropriate damage.
From the saving throws section in the magic overview, which is more or less the same as the bit quoted earlier from magic item basics except in the context of spells rather than saving throws in general.

If you roll a natural 1 on a saving throw, one item is chosen to make a saving throw against taking damage. This is the only scenario in which you need to worry about your items taking damage from an effect that does not specifically target them, and they need to take a bit of damage before actually breaking.
Deciding that a weapon is immediately destroyed on a failed attack roll or that several pieces of gear are destroyed on any given failed save is absolutely not RAW. The item takes damage, which is subject to hardness; it's worth noting that magic items have inherently increased hardness and HP compared to their mundane counterparts. At worst, the dragon might have managed to destroy one piece of gear if you were extremely unfortunate.
The saving throw DC against the dragon's breath attack doesn't come into the equation - all that matters is that you did or did not roll a 1.

[_RAGNAR_]

Thanks guys

I havent played in a while and have played since 1st edition so lots of rules get mixed up, so I wanted to clarify before I talk to the DM

The DM is old original 1st edition also so maybe hes got some leftover things going on from some earlier version. I know he has a hard time with a rogue isnt a thief as an example. (I play a paladin with rogue levels, all charisma and dex skills, he doesnt see how a paladin can be a rogue or not be clumsy in armor as an example)

[GrayDeath]

In that case, my recommendation would be to either play with a DM who is not stuck in 1st Edition think....or keep the DM and simply play 1st Edition, where he is sure to have a lot of advantages over someone going TO first Ed from anywhere else.

As someone who experienced a similar problem (though in our case it was with Legend of the 5 Rings) of a 1st Ed Old Timer simply only taking new Spells/Classes/Abilities of the new Edition, but keeping everything as is (and anyone who has played 1st and 3rd Edition knows the huge differences^^) without actually ever thinking about.
Contact him. Talk to him normally, explain where your problems are coming from and most importantly: Offer ways to solve that that do not only consist of "you done goofed, go do better!".

Good Luck!