[3.5] The Reverse Stripper Barbarian

[Tacoma]

Interesting build idea to come from another thread. You play a Sunder Fighter, probably with the Dead Horse® Power Attack / Big Two-Handed Weapon / High STR combo. You're trying to destroy the enemy's equipment until he's naked and defenseless.

But Tacoma, you say, you are a moron. If you destroy his items you're destroying your own potential loot!

I answer, you must create a PrC that gives you benefits for destroying magic items like the 1E Unearthed Arcana Barbarian. If you can eke bonus XP out of it, that's glorious. But I'm thinking something more like Vow of Poverty where as you rack up "Sunder Value To Date" amount you qualify for various non-Supernatural but still pretty cool powers.

So to answer the argument against, you're not really destroying your own loot. You're just instantly exchanging the loot for permanent abilities for yourself. You're destroying your friends' potential loot.

At low level you aim for cloth and leather, ammunition, and bows. Big obvious items that have very few HP and Hardness even when magical.

At mid level you start to hit weapons too.

At high level you start destroying armor and hitting small objects like potions on a belt, amulets, headbands, ioun stones.

Oh but the most lovely part is blasting the ring off a Wizard's finger. Just scrapping his junk until at about round 3 you slash open his backpack and his spellbook falls out. He quickly looks down, then looks back up at you. His spell falls from his lips as his eyes widen and his mouth forms a perfect horrified "NOOOOOOO" as you use your last attack to cut the spellbook cleanly in half, destroying decades of research.

Next round it's his familiar. Then it's his body.

So this build requires huge amounts of Spot so you can immediately see everything with the weird and funky Spot rules in 3.5 combat. You need really good attack rolls to hit small objects, but remember once you've exceeded about 50 damage per attack you don't really need more except against special metals that are also magical.

You'd go for feats that grant full damage against objects, a special Cleave feat in the chain that adds "destroying an object" to the one-item list of things that cause you to activate a Cleave attack, and probably Sonic damage on your weapon.

As a crossover possibility to another thread, you could easily work this character as a Vow of Peace warrior.

[UserClone]

I used a Feral Half-Minotaur Barbarian with Improved Sunder and Power Attack for this. He wielded a Shatterspike (DMG) modified to be Adamantine and instead of an ordinary longsword, was a Swordbreaker (Dragon Comp., adds 1d6 to sundering damage). You could further enhance that by adding acid damage, since that ignores hardness. Let's see...Forsaker, did they ever update that? It gives you bonuses, provided that you destroy magic items. Although that might prevent you from using the destructo-sword of doom in the first place, I'm not sure.

Edit: sonic damage, too.

[Tacoma]

I just love the Vow of Peace as icing on the cake.

The Barbarian slashes your Shield +5 in half. A shard flies up and strikes your chin, drawing a thin line of blood. Sudden compassion overcomes the Barbarian's features. A single tear rolls down his cheek as he caresses your wound and dabs it with a handkerchief.

Then he suddenly demolishes your Full Plate.

[holywhippet]

So to answer the argument against, you're not really destroying your own loot. You're just instantly exchanging the loot for permanent abilities for yourself. You're destroying your friends' potential loot.


I think that pretty much summarises the core problem with your character proposal. You are describing a character who is being completely selfish - destroying things that the other characters can use for your own benefit. Unless you are part of a party out to destroy magical items, what possible reason could they have to adventure with you? I'd expect them to either kick you out or kill you after your first loot destroying episode.

[Eldariel]

Feral Half-Minotaur

You forgot baserace. Let me suggest Dragonborn Water Orc.

[Keld Denar]

Complete Warrior has the Combat Brute tactical feat. One of its maneuvers is Sundering Cleave, or the ability to gain an additional attack when you sucessfully sunder and item. I wonder, could you cleave into another item? That would be crazy. Walk up to somone, your weapon slashing furiously, and then, BOOM! their naked!

[Moriato]

Couple of problems I can see:


Sundering a Carried or Worn Object
You don’t use an opposed attack roll to damage a carried or worn object. Instead, just make an attack roll against the object’s AC. A carried or worn object’s AC is equal to 10 + its size modifier + the Dexterity modifier of the carrying or wearing character. Attacking a carried or worn object provokes an attack of opportunity just as attacking a held object does. To attempt to snatch away an item worn by a defender rather than damage it, see Disarm. You can’t sunder armor worn by another character.

Ephasis mine. Also isn't there some sort of rule about not being able to damage a weapon with a greater enhancement bonus that the weapon doing the sundering? Either way, for the armor at least you'll need some sort of feat or class ability to get around that.

[Tacoma]

True, you would need a feat to get around not being able to Sunder armor.

But is that really an Epic feat? Doesn't sound any more powerful than Power Attack, you know?

That said, I see no reason why there is a Break DC for an inches-thick Iron door and you can't break someone's armor. There is a HP value for a 2' thick stone wall, a value you would regularly exceed every round at high level.

[AslanCross]

I just love the Vow of Peace as icing on the cake.

The Barbarian slashes your Shield +5 in half. A shard flies up and strikes your chin, drawing a thin line of blood. Sudden compassion overcomes the Barbarian's features. A single tear rolls down his cheek as he caresses your wound and dabs it with a handkerchief.

Then he suddenly demolishes your Full Plate.

Cookie for you.

However, to answer your question about sundering armor someone else is wearing: I think it's just to prevent DMs from screwing PCs over with every single Fighter NPC smashing their armor. The only thing that actually uses this as a tactic is the Bebilith.

[Yukitsu]

True, you would need a feat to get around not being able to Sunder armor.

But is that really an Epic feat? Doesn't sound any more powerful than Power Attack, you know?


It prevents party kills and interparty conflict. Seriously.

[Tacoma]

Oh as for the party thing.

People play with frenzied berzerkers, right? I know we did. I both played with and DMed for people who have had dysfunctional characters.

Sometimes wayward Fireballs melt your Boots of Speed.

Sometimes the Wild Magic Surge results in hundreds of gems violently embedded in everyone's flesh, including your familiar.

Sometimes someone goes out and picks pockets or sleeps with the merchant's daughter or burns down the town in an orgy of oil-soaked haycarts rolling downhill.

Sometimes the night guard forgets to tell everyone he's a werewolf and notices too late that it's a full moon and he's hungry.

Sometimes the Barbarian Reverse Stripper smashes a magic item.

I think it's unlikely that most things worn by a person will be magical. But the fact that you're up against a Weapon Master whose weapon has just been snapped means the fight is pretty much over.

And it's not like you would smash items that you find as treasure. Just things worn by people.

And maybe you're right, and the party would get sick and tired of it and fire the Reverse Stripper. Not a big deal.

[UserClone]

Oops, I meant human, but yeah, Dragonborn Water Half-Orc is much better for our purposes, except that you lose all the neat things about being a half-minotaur, other than the stat modifiers. I'd just use a regular water half-orc, or a silverbrow human as the starting race. Also, the shatterspike makes your weapon +4 for purposes of sundering, so that's pretty good right there. Also, it adds 2d6 to the damage. So the weapon I mentioned previously gives a +4 on the opposed attack roll, and 1d8+Str+Power attack+2d6+1d6+4 damage, with no hardness counted unless the target is adamantine or better.

[Yukitsu]

Out of all of those, only the frenzied barbarian and the proposed class consistantly do those things as the norm, and intentionally. It's why if we have a frenzied barb, I generally marble him when he's trying to do pretty much anything that may make him frenzy. Alternative for my evil characters is just killing them, of course. Class mechanics built around screwing over the party on purpose doesn't make any freinds.

[Aquillion]

Even a frenzied berserker isn't really doing it intentionally from an in-character standpoint -- you start attacking your friends, they Hold Person you until you calm down, everyone is happy. You start attacking their loot, they do the same thing...

But with this, your entire character is built around screwing over your teammates; you're going to be rendered pretty useless when the party cleric has to Hold Person you at the start of every damn fight. It isn't like the Frenzied Berserker where you only do it sometimes as a side-effect or disadvantage to your abilities, something the rest of the party can cheerfully work to minimize, prevent, or avert -- in this build, smashing that sword that your fighter buddy really, really wanted and forcibly taking an unfair portion of the loot in a form that you can't be made to share with anyone else is the whole point.

It just strikes me as a really bad idea.

...also, destroying an NPC wizard's spellbook in combat is stupid, pointless, and a waste of an action unless you expect him to be a recurring character or something (and if he's a recurring character, the DM will just have him acquire a new spellbook by the next time you see him -- it isn't as hard as you seem to think. At a bare minimum, any spells he currently has prepared are retained and can be easily scribed back down into a new book... if he's friends with even one other wizard of similar level, they've likely shared spells already, and all you've managed to do is cost him a little gold.) Sure, it costs them gold, but why do you care about costing an NPC gold? That's stupid.

Spellbooks are vastly overrated as targets, mostly because adventurers tend to use them in odd ways (a 'non-adventurer' wizard would normally be expected to have a library, collaborate with other spellcasters, etc.) And no matter what the situation, destroying a spellbook doesn't erase the spells in the enemy's brain, so for that encounter you've spent your action to accomplish absolutely nothing, and given him another round to blast spells at you even more angrily. Destroying a spellbook gives you no advantage in any fight lasting less than eight hours.

Not quite sure why you think you'd even survive that many rounds next to an angry wizard -- in the short term, equipment damage is going to be a minimal annoyance to a wizard at best; he's angry, and maybe he loses a small number of spell slots when you destroy his int+ items, but he'll still have plenty of spells left to deal with you.

Meanwhile, if you even think about destroying a spellbook while there is a wizard in your party, they will be furious with you. I cannot think of very many reasonable interpretations that would let a wizard continue to maintain civil relations with a supposed 'ally' who pointlessly destroyed such a potentially valuable piece of loot. (Truthfully, it would probably cause even more OOC problems, because you're the one who designed a character around the express concept of screwing your teammates over.)

I'm singling this out because it sort of exemplifies everything that's wrong with this concept: You're wasting a round in combat to pointlessly screw over your teammates (and, since many spellbooks aren't magic items, you aren't even benefiting yourself from this -- the only real mechanical effect of sundering that spellbook is ensuring that your party's wizard doesn't get their hands on it.)

[elliott20]

A reverse stripper barbarian: Barbarian with really low CHA who threatens that he will RAGE and then take off all of his clothes unless people pay large sums of money to keep his clothes on?

[Username]

I expected a build that rapidly clothed people. I was disappointed.

[CasESenSITItiVE]

I expected a build that rapidly clothed people. I was disappointed.

me too. i had a rebuttal about it being elan's bane lined up and everything:smallfrown:

[Who_Da_Halfling]

Well, it kinda works that way...if only you could sunder their clothes....

Honestly, I'd be ok with this concept if that was how they played it. "He can keep that nice shiny +3 sword, I make a Sunder attempt on his pants."

-JM

[Starbuck_II]

Get the Feat Bind Vestige:
Aym lets you deal double damage to objects.

[Mercenary Pen]

Even a frenzied berserker isn't really doing it intentionally from an in-character standpoint -- you start attacking your friends, they Hold Person you until you calm down, everyone is happy. You start attacking their loot, they do the same thing...

But with this, your entire character is built around screwing over your teammates; you're going to be rendered pretty useless when the party cleric has to Hold Person you at the start of every damn fight. It isn't like the Frenzied Berserker where you only do it sometimes as a side-effect or disadvantage to your abilities, something the rest of the party can cheerfully work to minimize, prevent, or avert -- in this build, smashing that sword that your fighter buddy really, really wanted and forcibly taking an unfair portion of the loot in a form that you can't be made to share with anyone else is the whole point.

It just strikes me as a really bad idea.

...also, destroying an NPC wizard's spellbook in combat is stupid, pointless, and a waste of an action unless you expect him to be a recurring character or something (and if he's a recurring character, the DM will just have him acquire a new spellbook by the next time you see him -- it isn't as hard as you seem to think. At a bare minimum, any spells he currently has prepared are retained and can be easily scribed back down into a new book... if he's friends with even one other wizard of similar level, they've likely shared spells already, and all you've managed to do is cost him a little gold.) Sure, it costs them gold, but why do you care about costing an NPC gold? That's stupid.

Spellbooks are vastly overrated as targets, mostly because adventurers tend to use them in odd ways (a 'non-adventurer' wizard would normally be expected to have a library, collaborate with other spellcasters, etc.) And no matter what the situation, destroying a spellbook doesn't erase the spells in the enemy's brain, so for that encounter you've spent your action to accomplish absolutely nothing, and given him another round to blast spells at you even more angrily. Destroying a spellbook gives you no advantage in any fight lasting less than eight hours.

Not quite sure why you think you'd even survive that many rounds next to an angry wizard -- in the short term, equipment damage is going to be a minimal annoyance to a wizard at best; he's angry, and maybe he loses a small number of spell slots when you destroy his int+ items, but he'll still have plenty of spells left to deal with you.

Meanwhile, if you even think about destroying a spellbook while there is a wizard in your party, they will be furious with you. I cannot think of very many reasonable interpretations that would let a wizard continue to maintain civil relations with a supposed 'ally' who pointlessly destroyed such a potentially valuable piece of loot. (Truthfully, it would probably cause even more OOC problems, because you're the one who designed a character around the express concept of screwing your teammates over.)

I'm singling this out because it sort of exemplifies everything that's wrong with this concept: You're wasting a round in combat to pointlessly screw over your teammates (and, since many spellbooks aren't magic items, you aren't even benefiting yourself from this -- the only real mechanical effect of sundering that spellbook is ensuring that your party's wizard doesn't get their hands on it.)

You could, however try sundering the enemy Mage's scrolls.

[Aquillion]

You could, however try sundering the enemy Mage's scrolls.That'd really only bother them a little, since they still have their spells.

The most logical thing to do is to usually go for their spell component pouch (which does cripple their spellcasting a bit if they don't have it -- although there's still plenty of powerful/useful spells with no component, including general-purpose things they're likely to have ready like Dimension Door or Teleport.) But the problem with that is that spell component pouches have a negligible cost, so if you live in a world where it's easy to target them then it's silly to think that any decent spellcaster would carry less than three or four at various points on their person before going into combat -- carrying all your essential spell components in a single easily-lost, easily-taken pouch is stupid, and in fact there's nothing in the rules to require or really encourage it. A strategy that depends on the enemy wizard being stupid is not a good strategy in the long term.

But anyway, that's not the important part. (If you can sunder the enemy wizard's spell component pouch, sure, you should -- that's one of the few things it's all right to sunder, since while it's cheap enough for them to carry several, it's also near-worthless as treasure.)

The important part is that there's basically nothing else you can sunder if you want to play in a group with other people (and not end up playing Paranoia instead of D&D.) This whole build strikes me as an extremely convoluted way to steal things from your party members by designing custom mechanics that let you irrevocably grab an unfair portion of the loot during combat. Unless you're playing an out-and-out PvP party already, nobody is going to want to play with a character like that in their group; and if you are playing in an out-and-out PvP party, they're just going to kill you.

Now, if you just want the "fluff" or general sense of this character without the absurd mechanics, I suggest an alternate way of doing it: Make a character class with the ability to temporarily absorb magic via melee attacks. You hit an object (like a sunder attempt), and instead of actually sundering it you can temporarily suppress it (sort of like a targeted dispel, but maybe lasting longer.) You hit someone, you can absorb/steal/end some of their buffs, maybe steal/eliminate some of their spells per day, SLAs, or Su abilities. Sort of like a Spellthief, only... well, all right, almost exactly like a Spellthief. But more focused on targeting items.

Using this power grants you some sort of brief, temporary buff. To discourage people from draining their own items, the buff should be very short -- maybe even just one round, while the item/ability remains suppressed for much longer.

It'd be even more interesting if there was some feat, skill check, or other ability that lets you 'sunder' an item in a way that disables it but doesn't destroy it or make it permanently lose its power -- if you use this option, a mending spell can fix it (but maybe a few rounds have to pass first, so the enemy can't immediately fix their stuff.) A spellcraft or knowledge arcana check or whatever to know just where to damage the magic sword so it'll stop working without being ruined beyond repair.

Anyway, just some general thoughts. A build based around permanently destroying loot in combat is never going to be compatible with your typical D&D group, just because of the logistics of the situation. (Sure, artificers can dissolve items, but that's different -- it's not their core melee shtick. An artificer can just dissolve their own share of the loot, plus -- when the situation gives them enough time -- occasionally some very large/heavy magic items their party wouldn't have been able to take with them anyway. This sunder PRC, though, seems built around the idea of making it your sole purpose so you'll have an excuse to sunder all the treasure in sight.)

[Cheesegear]

Cookie for you.

However, to answer your question about sundering armor someone else is wearing: I think it's just to prevent DMs from screwing PCs over with every single Fighter NPC smashing their armor. The only thing that actually uses this as a tactic is the Bebilith.

My Rust Monster begs to differ.

[Kizara]

As for the no sundering armor thing: that's assinine, just houserule it.

Imagine how that would work out around the table:

PC with Combat Brute Build: "Yea, I sunder the Chaos Knight's heavy fort armor so the rogue can sneak attack him!" *starts rolling dice*

DM: "Wait, you can't do that, armor isn't targetable by sunder attempts." *shows rule to prove he's not just being an asshat and making this up*

PC: "What? What the hell? How does that work?"

DM: "Uh... its like too hard to hit or something... or maybe its too dense to sunder effectively?"

PC: ... "Its armor, how could it be hard to hit? He is currently wearing it, its very large, its obviously the easiest thing to hit aside from like a shield. And sure its going to be tougher to break, but that doesn't mean I can't try."

DM: "Sorry, but that's what the book says, we can talk about it more later after the session. Oh, Rogue you are now at -9 because the knight hit you this round."

Rogue Player: "Ok, I fall into this bucket of water to stabalize and become concious, then 5ft adjust and drink a CLW potion. ... What? The book says I can!"

DM: ... *Sigh*

Rogue Player: " 'We can talk about it more after the session.' "

[Moriato]

As for the no sundering armor thing: that's assinine, just houserule it.

Is it really more assinine than armor can be easily destroyed by hitting it with weapons? I'd need to have a little chat with my armor smith... if I lived.

[Zeful]

Is it really more assinine than armor can be easily destroyed by hitting it with weapons? I'd need to have a little chat with my armor smith... if I lived.

Magic weapons, and spells!

[Sstoopidtallkid]

Magic weapons, and spells!Magic Armor.

[Tacoma]

Yeah. You all seem to be under the impression that the things that I say are meant to be taken completely seriously.

Of course it would cause party dissonance. The worst kind, because you're affecting people's lewts, which are more important than life itself.

[Tacoma]

Is it really more assinine than armor can be easily destroyed by hitting it with weapons? I'd need to have a little chat with my armor smith... if I lived.

It's possible for an Ubercharger to collapse a tower by causing enough damage to one of its sections.

If that's possible, then destroying armor is possible. It is an object in the world and physics apply to it just like everything else.

[Yukitsu]

But doing it without killing the guy inside? Now that takes skillz.

[hamishspence]

killing the guy inside the armour, without damaging the armour, even when it involves bashing him with a mace, apparently doesn't take much skills.

[Tacoma]

Neither does blasting him with an undefined number of Lightning Bolts so long as he doesn't roll a "1" on the Reflex save.

[hamishspence]

Depends on the armour: the Inside a Lightning Bolt programme the other day showed that it leaves small entry hole (measured in mm), slightly bigger exit hole.

leather might take even less damage- its equivalent of hardened hide after all.

[Tacoma]

Oh sure maybe the lightning leaves a small hole, I didn't see the show. I'm talking about its energy value melting and fusing the armor pieces and chainmail, setting the leather and cloth on fire, ruining any decorative work. You know, energy damage like what energy like lightning does.

[hamishspence]

true- metal might melt a little, not so sure about leather. How often are leather objects on a victim of lightning-strike ruined?

Diablo had weapon damage wear down armour, but not magic (except for that spell the big D uses himself)

why D&D doesn't do it that way is an interesting question- maybe a little too realistic. or, its handwaved into downtime- you don't have it written as "Must spend 1 hour grinding down nicks in sword, 3 hours removing and repairing damaged mail links"- you just have PCs doing stuff at camp.

[monty]

But doing it without killing the guy inside? Now that takes skillz.

On the other hand, you can sunder a ring without touching their finger. That is skillz.

[Moriato]

true- metal might melt a little, not so sure about leather. How often are leather objects on a victim of lightning-strike ruined?

If I had to guess, I would think that lightning wouldn't damage metal at all, just pass right through it. Maybe heat it up, but not enough to melt it, I'd think. Leather would probably be scorched, or even set on fire.

[Oslecamo]

On the other hand, you can sunder a ring without touching their finger. That is skillz.

No, it's just that losing your ring finger isn't actually that much of an injury, so it counts as 0 damage.:smallbiggrin:

[hamishspence]

the example in the programme was a plane getting hit by lightning- little entrance hole, not so little exit hole. a flying fighter (or armoured mage) hit by powerful lightning might show similar damage.

[Moriato]

the example in the programme was a plane getting hit by lightning- little entrance hole, not so little exit hole. a flying fighter (or armoured mage) hit by powerful lightning might show similar damage.

Ahh, true, because they aren't grounded. Being grounded would make a big difference.

[monty]

For a better reverse-stripper feeling, how about a barbarian that starts the fight naked, then steals his opponent's equipment and puts it on during the fight? Basically, similar idea with disarm instead of sunder.

[Tacoma]

People struck by lightning, even if they survive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Sullivan), pass out for a time. Coup de Grace, anyone?


After one strike caught his hair on fire, he started carrying a pitcher of water with him. Then he was struck later, blown out of his car, and his hair caught on fire. Another time, he saw a cloud he thought was following him, fled, but was struck anyway. I love Roy Sullivan.


And that much heat and electricity does affect materials in D&D. But for some reason an unattended suit of armor can be blown to smithereens while one worn by a character is invincible.

If he were plunged into lava, the armor would take no damage until he died, at which point it would instantly vaporize from the damage. Makes no sense.

Lightning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning) can reach a temperature of 54,000 degrees F. Iron has a boiling point of just over 5,000 degrees F. Your lightning leaves a hole in the armor because it boiled the metal away into a gas instantly. A tree can be completely shattered by a lightning strike and set on fire.

But in the game, what it comes down to is that the lightning bolt could run through a series of objects equipped by various people standing just off to the side. From weapons to shields to coffee mugs, all would be eligible for damage. But when we come to the guy wearing a helmet and sticking his head in the line of fire, that helmet is miraculously immune.

[Tacoma]

No, it's just that losing your ring finger isn't actually that much of an injury, so it counts as 0 damage.:smallbiggrin:

I always wear my two rings in a far less accessible place.

...

Actually the standard practice is to wear gloves, even nonmagical ones, if you have magic rings. Because then they logically have to attack your glove and then your ring.

Although I'm hard pressed to find a rule like that in the SRD. It appears you can shred someone's underwear without going through their armor and pants first.

[Aquillion]

Cookie for you.

However, to answer your question about sundering armor someone else is wearing: I think it's just to prevent DMs from screwing PCs over with every single Fighter NPC smashing their armor. The only thing that actually uses this as a tactic is the Bebilith.Another possible explanation: Sundering a magical object isn't simply damaging it, but utterly destroying all its functions while rendering it permanently beyond repair. It could just be that armor is made to take blows, and magical armor in particular is designed so that no amount of beating in combat will ruin its magical properties (which is pretty common-sense, when you think about it.)

The primary long-term impact of sundering is permanently ruining magical properties (because generally, non-magical stuff is cheap), so from a mechanical standpoint the rule against sundering armor is a good approximation for 'magical armor won't stop working just because you hit it very hard, and will continue to function regardless of melee damage.' Which is much more logical.

Now, yes, this does mean you can't ruin an armor's non-magical properties, or do 'lesser' damage short of totally ruining it -- but D&D already fails to represent any sort of lesser damage point beyond 'fully functional' and 'totally ruined' anyway. That's a much bigger issue, and part of the simplification necessary for the world to be sane to run.

[Tacoma]

Another possible explanation: Sundering a magical object isn't simply damaging it, but utterly destroying all its functions while rendering it permanently beyond repair. It could just be that armor is made to take blows, and magical armor in particular is designed so that no amount of beating in combat will ruin its magical properties (which is pretty common-sense, when you think about it.)

The primary long-term impact of sundering is permanently ruining magical properties (because generally, non-magical stuff is cheap), so from a mechanical standpoint the rule against sundering armor is a good approximation for 'magical armor won't stop working just because you hit it very hard, and will continue to function regardless of melee damage.' Which is much more logical.

Now, yes, this does mean you can't ruin an armor's non-magical properties, or do 'lesser' damage short of totally ruining it -- but D&D already fails to represent any sort of lesser damage point beyond 'fully functional' and 'totally ruined' anyway. That's a much bigger issue, and part of the simplification necessary for the world to be sane to run.

But you can sunder unattended magic armor.

[ChaosDefender24]

For a better reverse-stripper feeling, how about a barbarian that starts the fight naked, then steals his opponent's equipment and puts it on during the fight? Basically, similar idea with disarm instead of sunder.

I can't find it now, but the mighty Snow Savant found how to make great use of Sleight of Hand in order to run up to your enemy, steal everything on them, and run away. Anyone have the link?

The guy who said rust monster was right; the best way to blow up metal stuff is to polymorph someone into a rust monster. Also, aurorum doesn't save you either

In really low level campaigns where nobody's using magic items, the warlock invocation Baleful Utterance reigns supreme as the destroyer of gear, however.

[monty]

But you can sunder unattended magic armor.

Maybe it only works while you're wearing it?

[Animefunkmaster]

Sundering cleave, its a tactic of Combat Brute (Which synergizes well with shocktrooper and power attack)... just adding my two cents.

[Tacoma]

Maybe it only works while you're wearing it?

Nope, it has bonus HP and Hardness based on its magical value, as well as a save bonus in cases it's needed. This is not Schrödinger's Enchantment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Schr%C3%B6dinger).

[Tacoma]

I just realized that the threat title could be taken to mean a Barbarian who starts the fight naked, slowly putting on equipment seductively.

[hamishspence]

Discworld troll strippers do this- audience gets hot and bothered after the fourteenth overcoat is put on.

[Tacoma]

This is why I don't like Discworld or Wheel of Time. The material is so extensive, they've touched upon every idea or something like every idea that I'll ever think of. It's the book equivalent of "Simpsons did it!"

[hamishspence]

haven't read Wheel of Time- I like discworld- it generally provides quirky reasons for ideas. Trolls, at least in early books, see themselves as moving through time backwards, and talk of the distant past as "the sunset of time"