Bodkins vs. Werewolves

[martinl]

Last night Llando was in a werewolf fight, and lacking any silver arrows, used his bodkin armor divisor against the lycanthrope's supernatural DR.

A think this is legal RAW, but I think I'm gonna personally invoke the "that was cute, once" rule and not allow it in the future.

[Anthony]

You can always make their DR hardened.

[ArchonShiva]

Why? Silvered or silver arrows would work a whole lot better (silvered bodkin work great if the werewolf is wearing armor), but halving DR is what bodkin arrows do. Would you prevent a 3d+9 attack from injuring the creature?

All my scouts carry a few inexpensive silvered arrows for such emergencies. But if they don’t have them, halving DR is a tolerable backup plan. DR 7 is still a big deal when your damage is somewhat low.

[martinl]

Originally Posted by ArchonShiva

Why?

Lore, mostly. My idea of werewolf DR has less to do with having skin of iron and more to do with weird supernatural disdain of damage not caused by silver. Bodkins make sense for the first but not the second.

I might switch to dividing non-Silver damage by 10 and reduce DR to 2. (I might allow fire to work at ~half damage as well - somehow I feel you should be able to burn Lycanthropes.)

[Anaraxes]

Give your werewolves Injury Tolerance (Damage Reduction, Except silver).

[Kromm]

The GM would be within their rights to rule that the words "narrow, hardened point for piercing armor" aren't just fluff, and imply that only armor DR is affected. The reason that was not emphasized more was to avoid a situation where all DR scores would have to be qualified in whole or in part by one or several labels such as "Armor," "Force Field," "Magic," "Toughness," etc., with inevitable hair-splitting like "Should elephant hide be Armor or Toughness?" and "Magic means supernatural damage absorption that works by fiat rather than by hardening the subject's flesh (Toughness), providing a surface covering of hard material (Armor), or generating physical protection some distance from the surface (Force Field)." That seemed like . . . too much, somehow. YMMV.

In my rant above, the DR of werewolves would be Magic because it's a sort of blessing – not tough flesh (weapons bounce off and don't transfer, say, poison), physical armor (there are no scales or plates), or a field that protects the monsters' possessions as well. They get DR 15 vs. non-silver "just because," and there's no justification other than "the curse of the werewolf." So it would be reasonable to say, "It isn't Armor, so bodkins do nothing." Just realize that if you do, you're going to be looking to categorize all monster DR.