[RPG] Are there any rules for sundering natural weapons

attackdnd-3.5enatural-weapon

Many monsters have very dangerous natural attacks (like scorpion's poisonous sting, for example). Sometimes players come to a decision to severe the natural weapon first and then deal with a much less dangerous opponent. An obvious choice for that is sunder special attack. But PHB and DMG lack some vital statistics for that.

  1. There are no explicit rule for determining natural weapon hardness and hit points.
  2. It is strange to assume that severing body part deals no damage to the monster itself, but it is unclear how much damage to monster total HP such an attack would deal.

I've been comparing a natural weapon to an artificial weapon and assigning the same hardness and HP to it. And using rules for severing hydra heads for damage dealt to the monster total HP (half damage dealt to the natural weapon).

But I wonder if there are any explicit rules for sundering natural weapons in any 3.5 source.

The in-game problem to solve is: what should I, as a DM, answer to a player who declares "I'm trying to hit scorpion's sting with my sword"? While the sunder mechanics seems the most apropriate to me, I would accept any good solution. Rules from the books are preferred, but play tested house rules are also welcome.

Best Answer

No, there are no such rules for sunder in particular

Excepting special cases for particular monsters, as with hydras or krakens.

The rules for sunder explicitly begin with

Sunder

You can use a melee attack with a slashing or bludgeoning weapon to strike a weapon or shield that your opponent is holding.

(emphasis mine)

There is an additional section for a carrier or worn object, but that still doesn’t apply to natural weapons.

In online discussions of sunder, the inability to use it on natural-weapon-using monsters is frequently brought up as a massive problem with the tactic (though far from the only one). I have never seen anyone mention any official rule for sundering them, nor have I ever seen such a rule myself, strongly supporting my broader claim that no such rule was published in a supplement. I specifically checked Rules Compendium, as the most likely location of such a thing, and it only reprints what core had to say (plus a little sidebar on how a DM should prepare encounters when a PC is using sunder).

As for houserule, I have not used, or seen used, any particular rules. Most seem willing to accept that sundering is just a dead rule, that is undesirable for PCs and (often) obnoxious and unfun for use by NPCs. There have been few, if any, attempts to rehabilitate it, and I’m not familiar with any. Your approach of using the hydra’s rules seems appropriate, though I wouldn’t guess that bone and hide, even fantastic bone and hide, has the same Hardness as steel.

There may be optional, variant rules for called shots, but....

I have to admit that I am not familiar with any official variant rules for called shots, but I suspect they exist (and homebrew versions certainly exist as well). However, I would caution against them: they are, in effect, like super-charged criticals. Many even run off of critical mechanics, but even when they don’t, by definition you are talking about something with a lower chance of a higher consequence.

The problem with this is that it degrades the stability of the system. The ability to predict consequences and prepare for them is diminished, and the game was already quite swingy. I would argue, then, that these effects are to the detriment of the game.

You may disagree; you might want something even swingier. That’s fine, as long as you have a group that’s on board with that, but I think it is important that you and your group all know the ramifications here: swinginess is inherently bad for the players. Mathematically, a dire consequence as a result is equally likely for PCs and NPCs (assuming they’re making similar numbers of attempts, which seems mostly reasonable), but while such bad luck against NPCs is much more likely than not to befall some random mook, the same bad luck against PCs will land on a PC 100% of the time by definition. And since there are relatively low risks of these consequences, it is more difficult to defend against them—player resources are already devoted to a number of things they need to defend against as it is, so it will be difficult to justify diverting some of them to protect against a low-risk event.

Called shots are far better than critical or fumble tables in that they are specific, planned maneuvers, so they avoid a lot of the huge narrative failings of critical or fumble tables. So that much is good. And since you are presumably giving up an attack or something else to attempt these called shots, your odds can be reasonable, and if the odds are reasonable, the effects need not be so dire. So a well-made system could mitigate some of the mathematical problems I mention above. But it is important that, whatever you choose, you go into it with eyes open, aware of potential problems. Unlike critical or fumble tables, they’re not insurmountable for a group that’s interested in this sort of thing, but they’re not something to add on a whim because it sounds cool. Consider it carefully.

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