saving throws for magic items

[Sektat]

I never really understood the saving throws for items thing.

Here's what happend: Our rogue rolled a 1 on a breath weapon acid attack. Then we decided which item is affected (according to PHB). It's the magical cloak!

But what now?

The item gets a saving throw. With the rogue-stats? What about rogue-evasion here?

 

[Pyrex]

Here you go:

Damaging Magic Items
A magic item doesn’t need to make a saving throw unless it is unattended, it is specifically targeted by the effect, or its wielder rolls a natural 1 on his save. Magic items should always get a saving throw against spells that might deal damage to them— even against attacks from which a nonmagical item would normally get no chance to save. Magic items use the same saving throw bonus for all saves, no matter what the type (Fortitude, Reflex, or Will). A magic item’s saving throw bonus equals 2 + one-half its caster level (round down). The only exceptions to this are intelligent magic items, which make Will saves based on their own Wisdom scores.

This diverges slightly when a spell directly targets an object you're holding or wearing:

(object)
The spell can be cast on objects, which receive saving throws only if they are magical or if they are attended (held, worn, grasped, or the like) by a creature resisting the spell, in which case the object uses the creature’s saving throw bonus unless its own bonus is greater. (This notation does not mean that a spell can be cast only on objects. Some spells of this sort can be cast on creatures or objects.) A magic item’s saving throw bonuses are each equal to 2 + one-half the item’s caster level.

Evasion doesn't help in either case. If it did, it'd be listed in the description for Evasion. (Though you could make a fairly good case for Improved Evasion...)

 

[Sektat]

Hmm, so for my example above, since the rogue rolled 1 one, the cloak's saving throw is:

> A magic item’s saving throw bonus equals 2 + one-half its caster level (round down).

Since it's a cloak of resistance + 1 it's saving throw is 2+5/2 ==> 4

If the item succeeds the saving throw it gets half damage IF the description of the damaging-breath weapon says so?!

 

[Pyrex]

Yeah, that's pretty much how it works.

Saves for items are pretty goofy, even if they succeed they're almost always destroyed (except for metal weapons and armor which generally have enough hardness/hp to survive an attack or two).

Your cloak OTOH, with (at best) Hardness 2 and (at best) 5 hp is just plain toast.

 

[Sektat]

Ok, now it's clear. However, I just realised that I don't know the HP and hardness of the cloak:

> Your cloak OTOH, with (at best) Hardness 2 and (at best) 5 hp is just plain toast

Where would I find that info? There is a bad page in the PHB which doesn't help me much on this. Somebody must have made a list which magic item has which hardness and hp?!

 

[Enforcer]

Use the following table, from the SRD: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/exploration.htm#tableCommonArmorWeaponAndShieldHardnessAndHitPoints