How powerful is the abilty to ignore DR/Hardness or target touch AC with weapons.

[Zancloufer]

D&D 3.5 specifically. Wondering how big of a deal people think it is.

On ignoring DR or hardness I know the Force enchantment, which has a +2 cost ignores DR. Adamantine weapon can ignore hardness (of most things) when you attempt a sunder. There are some martial adept manouvres which can be put on scrolls for ~300 GP per use to ignore both. Don't think this seems too extreme, especially with +enchantment levels scaling exponentially in price the more you get.

Targeting touch AC is much rarer for mundanes. Again ToB provides us with a single level 2 manouvre, so 300 GP per attack again with a consumable. The Brilliant Energy coming in at the absurdly priced +4 can ignore AC provided by armour, but only on living creatures.


There probably are some other sources I've missed but wondering what they are. Also wondering if people think they are overpriced and how much these abilities should cost. Asking mostly because this topic came up in discussion with a player who seems hell bent on getting these abilities and is seeming a little belligerent when I push back against it. Not sure if overreacting or not.

[Thunder999]

Ignoring hardness mostly just makes breaking objects faster, it's nice, but you can manage without it as there's not usually a major time constraint.

Ignoring DR is always strong (assuming enemies have DR) and varies between "This is basically a huge +10, +15 etc. to damage." for people who do enough damage that DR isn't crippling to "My attacks are actually useful now" for characters that have a lot of weaker attacks.

Hitting touch AC is insanely powerful, it lets you do things like power attack for your full BAB and still reliably hit or just hit on a 2, against many enemies it does both at the same time.

[rrwoods]

In terms of resource expenditure, both of those are a second level maneuver, which equates to slightly more often than a once per encounter resource in practice. Personally I feel this is about “fair” in terms of how powerful the outcome is.

[Crake]

On ignoring DR or hardness I know the Force enchantment, which has a +2 cost ignores

Keep in mind, force is limited to projectile weapons only.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Ignoring hardness is pretty "meh" unless you fight a -lot- of animated objects or have to frequently break down really heavy doors. The cost of adamantine is -probably- about right, if not a little high. I certainly wouldn't pay much if any more for it, and I'm hesitant at that price-point. If there weren't creatures with DR adamantine, I'd say it's too high.

Ignoring DR is worth about a +3. There's a special ability in Tome of Magic, shadow striking, that when you hit a creature with DR then the first hit is resloved normally but the weapon then tunes itself so that it ignores that particular creature's DR for the next minute. Can't remember if it does so on the following round or immediately after the first successful hit. I'll merrily pay for that +3 on a lot of warrior type characters. It's well worth the cost even in the late game when it's 10s of thousands of gold to add it to a weapon or even just the 16k to put it on a backup weapon. It's just that damn good.



Hitting touch-ac without having to burn any expendable resources is probably just outright OP. It's easy enough for PC class characters to get their touch AC high enough to matter but the vast majority of monsters just became sandbags that the character is going to beat the stuffing out of without much difficulty. In that single effect, you've made archivists and wizards hit with -greater- accuracy than most dedicated melee classes going forward and a melee class will never miss any enemy ever again, even if he's dumping everything into power attack -and- combat expertise once he has it. I exagerate for effect but not by much. For comparison, the skillful enhancement (CAr, IIRC) is a +3 that gives you proficiency with the weapon and increases your BAB to average if it's not already better. What you're proposing is -dramatically- better than that. Certainly not less than a +5 equivalent if not an epic effect. Given the relative devastation that can be wrought, I'm leaning hard toward the latter.

Speaking of extant ways of getting touch attacks, a minor correction to the martial scrolls you mentioned; it's 300 gp per attack but only once per encounter. The item doesn't remove that restriction. So even if you bought a dozen of them, you're still not getting through a single fight making nothing but touch attacks. Sightly better would be a potion or 5 of wratihstrike which actually does give you a whole round of touch attacks per dose at a similar price point but eats a standard action to consume, thus limiting itself to either opportunity attacks or requiring twice the price for extended wraithstrike. A wand of wraithstrike gets you there by eating your swift action every round but at 4500 for a full one and requiring either UMD or actual caster levels, it's hardly usable without substantial investment. At 13 encounters a level, you won't even typically get to the next level on a single wand either.

The game just doesn't support a character making all of his attacks as touch attacks unless it's by delivering standard action spells and similar supernatural effects; generally either limited in uses per day or with limited effects.

[Crake]

Ignoring DR is worth about a +3. There's a special ability in Tome of Magic, shadow striking, that when you hit a creature with DR then the first hit is resloved normally but the weapon then tunes itself so that it ignores that particular creature's DR for the next minute. Can't remember if it does so on the following round or immediately after the first successful hit. I'll merrily pay for that +3 on a lot of warrior type characters. It's well worth the cost even in the late game when it's 10s of thousands of gold to add it to a weapon or even just the 16k to put it on a backup weapon. It's just that damn good.

Transmuting in the magic item compendium does the same thing for +2. It changes at the start of your next turn and remains that way for 10 rounds or until you hit a creature with a different kind of damage reduction, at which point, it changes the next round as before. Shadow striking on the other hand seems to happen immediately after you strike a creature, and lasts for 1d4 minutes, for +3. Take your pick.


A wand of wraithstrike gets you there by eating your swift action every round but at 4500 for a full one and requiring either UMD or actual caster levels, it's hardly usable without substantial investment. At 13 encounters a level, you won't even typically get to the next level on a single wand either.

An eternal wand of wraithstrike for a character with the magical training feat should be pretty decent, maybe get a couple and swap between them for multiple encounters.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Transmuting in the magic item compendium does the same thing for +2. It changes at the start of your next turn and remains that way for 10 rounds or until you hit a creature with a different kind of damage reduction, at which point, it changes the next round as before. Shadow striking on the other hand seems to happen immediately after you strike a creature, and lasts for 1d4 minutes, for +3. Take your pick.

It may not be intended but the shadow striking ability also seems to lack the clause about changing to match the DR of a new target. As such, it may be ruled that it bypasses the DR of -every- foe with differing damage reduction you strike until the 1d4 minutes lapse for each instance. That'd make it as close as anything printed comes to just saying "lol, no. You don't get damage reduction with me."

EDIT:

Oh, the shard of granite tactical feat will let you laugh at damage reduction and hardness too, as long as you can afford the -5 to attack rolls. Starting on the second round of your assault, you ignore the DR of a foe as long as you keep taking the -5 and stay focused on that target. Costs you a prerequisite feat and two maneuvers know. Should have a rough value of somewhere between 30k and 40k gold, depending on exactly how you work the guidelines.



An eternal wand of wraithstrike for a character with the magical training feat should be pretty decent, maybe get a couple and swap between them for multiple encounters.

It's arguable that magical training actually allows you to use wands of all sorcerer/ wizard spells. The feat says you cast the spells you learn from it as a sorcerer or wizard (your choice) and that you're treated as a sorcerer or wizard of your arcane caster level to a minimum of 1 for determining CL based variables of them but it doesn't actually give you a virtual level in either class or anything.

Even if it does though, 2 instances a day isn't going to go very far on most days and at 4420 each it only saves you money in the long-term.

[Gruftzwerg]

@DR/Hardness
Imho investing into DR bypassing things ain't worth it. Better invest into direct damage boosts. I mean, how hard is it to push your damage per attack to over 20 per hit (against DR 15 which comes pretty late)? And how often does it come up?
Instead of going for a (+2) metalline enhancement, I would go for e.g. Collision and Valorous. Straight damage
optimization beats any DR/hardness and kills stuff faster overall.

@targeting touch AC
Just another method to hit reliably things. Gets still countered by misschances. Thus not that OP as one might think at first glance. Can get annoying (for some DMs) if you can consistently apply high dmg via your full attack touch attacks.
Compare it with an optimized Glaivelock. They can also dish out constant high dmg with full attack touch attacks. (see signature for an optimized Glaivelock pulling up to 10 attacks/round pre epic and 20 attacks/round when epic = hundreds of d6 dmg).
If your table is fine with high optimized dmg builds, its fine to give other mundanes access to touch attacks (e.g. wraithstrike). But if you table dislikes high dmg optimization, it should be avoided.

[Khedrac]

In 3.0 DR could be a big deal - when a creature has DR30 it is going to matter to enyone who tries to hit it whether they can bypass it or not.
In 3.5 DR tends to cap out at 15, and most is lower than that.
Consider DR10:
a Ftr 1 wielding a 2-H sword is doing 1d10 + 6 (18 str) + 2 (power attack × 2) - the DR here is a problem, but they can still do damage fairly reliably and this is at level 1!
a Rng 5 dual wielding short swords is doing 1d6 +1 (magic) + 2 strength - and here they require a crit despite being 4 levels higher!

In short, on a big weapon DR avoidance is a nice toy, on a light weapon it is essential.

[Fizban]

Ignoring hardness is pretty "meh" unless you fight a -lot- of animated objects or have to frequently break down really heavy doors. The cost of adamantine is -probably- about right, if not a little high. I certainly wouldn't pay much if any more for it, and I'm hesitant at that price-point. If there weren't creatures with DR adamantine, I'd say it's too high.
Note that Adamantine doesn't ignore hardness- it ignores hardness less than 20, which means it doesn't even help against Adamantine or basic Magically Enhanced Iron. Being able to ignore hardness completely means the DM's only option is jumping all the way to magical force or similar.

Mostly I find it as a ridiculous slap in the face to verisimilitude- it being Mountain Hammer of course. Should martial artists be able to break objects surprisingly easily? Sure, and there are plenty of feats that do that, if the simple fact of their potential base damage values isn't enough, and plenty of maneuvers give a pile of extra dice too. Should a 3rd level character be able to bash their head against literally anything that is not defined as indestructible and break it eventually? I don't think so.

Hitting touch-ac without having to burn any expendable resources is probably just outright OP.
Unsurprisingly I agree, though even with consumable resources there needs to be sufficient in-character cost and limit. Wraithstrike and Heartseeking Amulet are banned. Deep Impact has a bunch of costs and limits, and Emerald Razor is a little too ingrained but still has hard limits.

The only way you can balance a freely usable weapon "touch attack," is by explicitly stripping out the stuff people specifically want it for, to "deliver" all the bonus damage they can dredge up regardless of penalties (it's Power Attack, they want free Power Attack). If you get say, the base weapon damage of a light weapon (1d6) some time after 1st, and that's it, no Power Attack, Sneak Attack, etc, then that's probably low enough not to cause problems at a default power level even after being multiplied by multiple attacks. It still murders verisimilitude and the entire armor class system, but the point is that you can always write something to be limited enough to be manageable, if that's your actual goal.


Sightly better would be a potion or 5 of wratihstrike which actually does give you a whole round of touch attacks per dose at a similar price point but eats a standard action to consume, thus limiting itself to either opportunity attacks or requiring twice the price for extended wraithstrike.
Personal-only, you'd need a Skull Talisman at double the cost.

The game just doesn't support a character making all of his attacks as touch attacks unless it's by delivering standard action spells and similar supernatural effects; generally either limited in uses per day or with limited effects.
Flame Blade and similar or Spectral Weapon are the best options, but you need to be a caster to do so reliably and SR means you have to keep leveling. The former clearly allows some effects, but has room for the DM to squelch others, and is fire damage, while the latter simply allows a Will save to cut all the damage in half. There are a couple other sources of touch-ifying normal attacks (Shadow Sentinel is one I find quite reasonable). But indeed, all of the above are supernatural and have limits.



Regarding the specific circumstances of the OP: You have player "hellbent" on getting an ability you expressed a desire to not have at the table, and they became "belligerent?" I believe that is the colloquial "red flag." Sounds like you should take a long look at what exactly it is they want, make the decision of whether or not you want it in your game, and be ready to put your foot down. Both abilities are absolutely not things the base game expects at all, and allowing them, like anything else, goes through the DM first or not at all.

Even if you are okay with martial adepts using those maneuvers, you are under no obligation to allow martial scripts. They're an obvious and even crude jamming of "scroll/potion" mechanics into a system that has exactly zero need of them (people spend so much effort trying to get past the levels=magic problem, and then they go and put non-magical combat in magical potion scrolls :smallsigh:)- rather than quibble about whether they think the cost is too high, I'd say just get rid of them on principle. Nor do you have to allow the permanent items that grant maneuvers if you don't want to, or at the book listed prices.

As noted- Adamantine, which is actually quite limited in terms of ignoring hardness and does nothing for other types of DR, costs the same 3,000gp as the basic maneuver granting item, while ignoring DR costs up to +3 depending on effective it actually is, or a collection of various items that tend to total at least 6-10,000+gp. Meanwhile the closest published item for granting weapon "touch" attacks is the Heartseeker Amulet, again at 3,000gp, with a 3/day limit (and only outclassed by the Anklets of Translocation in my book for broken items from that book)- and if anything, I'd bet they priced it based on the ToB maneuver item in the first place, publishing dates check out.

If your player is complaining about the price of 300gp martial scripts, or 3,000gp permanent daily or effectively daily items, which itself would presume you're already allowing ToB content- well then I guess they should have taken the class levels to get them for free, shouldn't they?

But if you already don't want them in the game, they'll need to present a very compelling argument as to why you would have more fun if you did allow them.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Consider DR10:
a Ftr 1 wielding a 2-H sword is doing 1d10 + 6 (18 str) + 2 (power attack × 2) - the DR here is a problem, but they can still do damage fairly reliably and this is at level 1!

Oh, come on. An average of -3- points of damage and a maximum of 8 is not reliable damage at 1 when the system expects a two-hander to be averaging 10 up to about level 5. It is, no doubt, worse for anything that's taking the punches-in-bunches approach rather than swinging for the fences but until you start getting some pretty wild damage output from optimizing in the direction of charging or something similar, DR is a noticeable thorn in any fighting-man's side. This becomes increasingly true as even characters focused on big, two-handed hits start leaning on haste or similar's extra attack and that first iterative to keep up with expected damage outputs.

A charger can throw a monkey wrench into the formula but only so reliably and then you're right back to square one: DR -matters- for the vast majority of beaters. It's worth finding a way around even if you can, ostensibly, chew through it.

[Bronk]

Targeting touch AC is much rarer for mundanes. Again ToB provides us with a single level 2 manouvre, so 300 GP per attack again with a consumable. The Brilliant Energy coming in at the absurdly priced +4 can ignore AC provided by armour, but only on living creatures.

There probably are some other sources I've missed but wondering what they are. Also wondering if people think they are overpriced and how much these abilities should cost. Asking mostly because this topic came up in discussion with a player who seems hell bent on getting these abilities and is seeming a little belligerent when I push back against it. Not sure if overreacting or not.

There's the impaling weapon property... Three times per day your next attack targets touch AC for a +1 bonus.