Let's use a slightly ridiculous example:
Mrugnak, the minotaur Barbarian from a Dungeon Fantasy game is wielding a large, Fine, Balanced, Dwarven Morningstar of Penetration. With a Striking ST of 21, he deals out 4d+3 (2) every hit. With a Forced Entry skill at DX+2*, vs an inanimate object he gets +8, and an All Out Attack Strong dishes out another +4.
Assume he's gone Berserk and he's trying to bash his way through the curtain wall surrounding the tower from
The Tower of Octavius. You'd basically have to be crazy-go-nuts to try to make your own door in a wall like this: Curtain wall: 6’ stone, 936 DR, 171 HP. Assuming the DR is like the DR from stone in the Basic Set, it's Ablative vs Crushing damage when struck repeatedly on the same spot (to a minimum DR of 3).
Luckily for Mrugnak, Morningstars do Crushing damage!
Assuming he does average damage, he deals out 29 damage a second when All-out-Attacking a stone wall.
If he wasn't using a MAGICAL Morningstar, this would strip off 29 DR a second, and then would start blasting away at HP, meaning that in 38.17 seconds, Mrugnak has blasted a hole RIGHT THROUGH a 6' thick curtain wall.
Side note: It's a little unclear what size a hole this is. I'm hoping a roughly giant-morning-star-spiky-ball-of-death sized one.
But Mrugnak has a magical morningstar of Armor Divisor (2)! Does this mean he actually only needs to bash off HALF as much DR before he starts tunneling through the HP?
That doesn't seem quite right, because after bashing through 468 DR (half of the total), there must STILL be another 468 DR left - his morning star just treats it like 234 (still well and enough to block the incoming 29 damage).
My theory on how this is supposed to work, please help, my brains they are confused:
It seems like he can ignore the Armor Divisor for the first 31 blows (which remove 899 DR) leaving 37 DR.
On hit #32, only 18 DR is in effect against the blow (and are immediately crushed leaving DR 19? I think?) letting 9 HP slip through to reduce HP to 162.
On hit #33, only DR 9 is in effect against the blow (leaving DR 10) and 20 more damage slips through, reducing HP to 142.
On hit #34, only DR 5 is in effect against the blow (leaving DR 5) and 24 more damage goes through, reducing HP to 118
On hit #34, only DR 2 is in effect (leaving DR 3) and 27 goes through, reducing HP to 91
On hit #35 only DR 1 is in effect (leaving minimum DR 3) and 28 goes through, reducing HP to 63
On hit #36 only DR 1 is in effect (Leaving minimum DR 3) and 28 goes through, reducing HP to 35
On hit #37 only DR 1 is in effect (Leaving minimum DR 3) And 28 goes through, reducing HP to 7.
On hit #38 Mrugnak makes a hole in the wall.
So Mrugnak has saved 0.17 seconds (round up to 1) by having DR divided by 2.
This seems... unexpected. Am I doing this wrong?
* Actual In-Play Mrugnak only has Forced Entry at DX, but this only slows him down, it doesn't really stop him...