If your goal is to hit a creature's armor for the purposes of damaging the armor, it may work in principle, but not very well in practice. Armor is an object, so an adamantine weapon would do additional damage. But we don't really get into how many structural hit points a piece of armor has, nor is there really a general rule that talk about when your armor breaks in combat. Actually, there might be, but I can't find it. I'm sure someone will post it if there is. We have specific rules for things like the rust monster or the black pudding that can damage armor and weapons, but RAW those are specific to those circumstances and not applicable in your example.
When time is a factor, you can assign an Armor Class and hit points to a destructible object. You can also give it immunities, resistances, and vulnerabilities to specific types of damage.
Armor Class
An object's Armor Class is a measure of how difficult it is to deal damage to the object when striking it (because the object has no chance of dodging out of the way). The Object Armor Class table provides suggested AC values for various substances.
Substance
AC
Cloth, paper, rope
11
Crystal, glass, ice
13
Wood, bone
15
Stone
17
Iron, steel
19
Mithral
21
Adamantine
23
Hit Points
An object's hit points measure how much damage it can take before losing its structural integrity. Resilient objects have more hit points than fragile ones. Large objects also tend to have more hit points than small ones, unless breaking a small part of the object is just as effective as breaking the whole thing. The Object Hit Points table provides suggested hit points for fragile and resilient objects that are Large or smaller.
Size
Fragile
Resilient
Tiny (bottle, lock)
2 (1d4)
5 (2d4)
Small (chest, lute)
3 (1d6)
10 (3d6)
Medium (barrel, chandelier)
4 (1d8)
18 (4d8)
Large (Cart, 10-ft.-by-10-ft. window)
5 (1d10)
27 (5d10)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
See DMG2014 Chapter 15: Running the Game: