# Skeletons and the Need for Bludgeoning Weapons



## Falling Icicle (Feb 10, 2012)

Giving skeletons DR/bludgeonging or a similar resistance has always bothered me. Granted, I can see why a spear or arrow might have some trouble, but a slashing weapon like an axe or sword? Are you kidding me? Such weapons can not only chop off limbs and heads, they can do so even with the meat still attached. You cant tell me that a diagonal slash through a skeleton's rib cage with a greatsword wouldn't really ruin its day!

IMHO, skeletons should have resistance to piercing damage only, not slashing.


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## Dausuul (Feb 10, 2012)

Falling Icicle said:


> Giving skeletons DR/bludgeonging or a similar resistance has always bothered me. Granted, I can see why a spear or arrow might have some trouble, but a slashing weapon like an axe or sword? Are you kidding me? Such weapons can not only chop off limbs and heads, they can do so even with the meat still attached. You cant tell me that a diagonal slash through a skeleton's rib cage with a greatsword wouldn't really ruin its day!
> 
> IMHO, skeletons should have resistance to piercing damage only, not slashing.




I agree. In fact I'm not sure it's worth the hassle of giving them even that much. DR is a nuisance and causes a number of problems, so I'd prefer to use it sparingly.


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## Kingreaper (Feb 10, 2012)

I think that DR was overused in 3.5

If skeletons need to have resistances give them, say:
Resist 5 piercing
*Vulnerable 5 bludgeoning*

In 3.5 things never had vulnerabilities to weapon types, only resistances, which fed into the caster-superiority issue.


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## Falling Icicle (Feb 10, 2012)

Here's a thought. Instead of giving skeletons damage reduction, why not just make them vulnerable to bludgeonging damage? I've always preferred the carrot to the stick.


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## tlantl (Feb 10, 2012)

Wouldn't it make more sense to give the bludgeoning weapon a bonus to damage rather than reducing the damage of other weapons?

I also think the ax should have a bludgeoning component since the weight and shape of the weapon contributes as much to the damage potential of the weapon as the blade does.


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## Sunseeker (Feb 10, 2012)

Falling Icicle said:


> Here's a thought. Instead of giving skeletons damage reduction, why not just make them vulnerable to bludgeonging damage? I've always preferred the carrot to the stick.




Generally speaking, when you give something a negative, you balance it out with a positive.  So resist 5 pricing, vulnerable 5 bludgeoning I think is a fair balance, ya know, except to rangers with daggers.


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## DogBackward (Feb 10, 2012)

This is exactly why I advocate the introduction of the "hacking" damage type. There are certain types of weapon that are decidedly "slashing", and don't put the full weight of a weapon behind the attack. Axes and heavy swords are not these types of weapon. A dagger or whip, for example, should be all but useless against a skeleton. A battleaxe or longsword, on the other hand, still has a huge amount of force behind the blow, enough to crush a bone even if, for some reason, it can't just cleave it in two.


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## Sunseeker (Feb 10, 2012)

tlantl said:


> Wouldn't it make more sense to give the bludgeoning weapon a bonus to damage rather than reducing the damage of other weapons?
> 
> I also think the ax should have a bludgeoning component since the weight and shape of the weapon contributes as much to the damage potential of the weapon as the blade does.




Well, then we get into an issue of sharpness.  Is a morning-star bludgeoning and piercing?  Is a rapier slashing and piercing?  Is a bastard sword slashing and bludgeoning?

I think it'd be really cool to give each kind of weapon two types, that way noone is ever singled-out for using the weapon of their choice.


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## tlantl (Feb 10, 2012)

shidaku said:


> Generally speaking, when you give something a negative, you balance it out with a positive.  So resist 5 pricing, vulnerable 5 bludgeoning I think is a fair balance, ya know, except to rangers with daggers.





Or maybe a 20% chance that a hit with a piercing weapon is really a miss. That way the weapon could still do full damage, but the chance to actually hit something that could be damaged is reduced.


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## Falling Icicle (Feb 10, 2012)

Kingreaper said:


> In 3.5 things never had vulnerabilities to weapon types, only resistances, which fed into the caster-superiority issue.




I couldn't agree more. I HATED DR in 3.x, and especially 3.5. If you really think about it, there aren't that many creatures that should require some kind of special weapon. Werewolves have historically hated silver. Vampires hate wooden stakes. Skeletons crumble under bludgeoning weapons. Trolls hate acid and fire.

DR in 3.x was way overused. And tying it to material types got ridiculous. Oh it's a lich? Better hope you have a holy, magic AND bludgeonging weapon in your golf bag. You don't? Oh, sorry fighter, just sit there and attack it pointlessly as a diversion while the wizard kills it. *grumble*

I think there are much better ways of making creatures have interesting vulnerabilities and resistances without DR. Maybe werewolves regenerate any damage not inflicted with a silver weapon (unless they are totally killed). That could give someone with a silver weapon an edge in fighting them, but they're not strictly necessary. Same with trolls and fire/acid. Maybe instead of needing "holy" weapons against devils and demons, they're vulernable to "radiant" damage, and holy weapons add radiant damage. 

I'd prefer them to handle such things on a creature by creature basis rather than using a blanket rule like DR that will end up being greatly overused. And as I said before, the carrot is better than the stick. Don't punish players for not having the exact right weapon. Reward those that do.


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## Sunseeker (Feb 10, 2012)

tlantl said:


> Or maybe a 20% chance that a hit with a piercing weapon is really a miss. That way the weapon could still do full damage, but the chance to actually hit something that could be damaged is reduced.




Miss-chance, ie: higher to-hit roll needed is actually significantly more punishing than damage reduction.


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## tlantl (Feb 10, 2012)

shidaku said:


> Miss-chance, ie: higher to-hit roll needed is actually significantly more punishing than damage reduction.





The miss chance isn't a higher roll to hit. It means you miss entirely even if you could have hit a creature's armor class. 

The bolt you shot at it would have hit it in the abdomen, but since there is nothing there to hit, the bolt passed completely through the creature doing no damage to it at all. Otherwise the weapon does normal damage.

I think I'll give it a try in one of our games to see if it might be too punishing. 20% could be little high I think.


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## am181d (Feb 10, 2012)

Sinbad's scimitar seemed to work just fine against the skeletons he fought!

Personally, I agree with the "carrot vs. stick" approach mentioned above. What I'd do is boost the skeleton's HP and then give folks attacking with bludgeoning weapons extra damage dice. Because rolling dice is fun! Players would be all like "Yay! We get to bash some skeletons!"


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## Ichneumon (Feb 10, 2012)

DR can be frustrating, but I believe it has a purpose. A resistant monster is a reminder to the PCs that not everything will yield to the same old methods. They're also useful for making players think hard about tactics: do they try to take the resistant monster out first, or focus on more "reliable" targets and risk suffering lots of harm from it? If the battlefield contains ways to harm resistant monsters, e.g a rockslide that can be triggered to fall on them, this will help to make the fight memorable.

Different weapon types are a useful companion to DR. If a monster's going to be resistant, better to make it resist piercing or slashing damage than to resist all physical damage. I believe that it should be used sparingly, and always paired with a vulnerability. The "golf bag" effect can be reduced by having weapons that can do more than one damage type, or even two at once, such as the morningstar. I'd also like it if criticals always ignored damage resistance.


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## Savage Wombat (Feb 10, 2012)

I think anyone complaining about DR is primarily a player and not a DM.  I mostly run, and I love it.  And the one time I played a werewolf PC it was _awesome._


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## Jeff Carlsen (Feb 10, 2012)

The carrot method for skeletons doesn't really work. A fleshy humanoid takes just as much damage from a mace as a skeleton does, so it doesn't make sense to give a weakness to bludgeoning.

In this case DR 5/bludgeoning works. It says that only blunt attacks are effective, which describes a skeleton well.

I agree that weapons should be able to have more than one damage type for purposes of DR. A mace may only do bludgeoning, but a spiked mace would also do piercing. Don't bother with splitting the damage. Simply say that if a creature has DR 5/piercing, then a spiked mace means you're good to go.

Daggers would be slashing and piercing. Axes would be slashing and bludgeoning. A longsword can do all three.


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## Li Shenron (Feb 10, 2012)

Falling Icicle said:


> Giving skeletons DR/bludgeonging or a similar resistance has always bothered me. Granted, I can see why a spear or arrow might have some trouble, but a slashing weapon like an axe or sword? Are you kidding me? Such weapons can not only chop off limbs and heads, they can do so even with the meat still attached. You cant tell me that a diagonal slash through a skeleton's rib cage with a greatsword wouldn't really ruin its day!
> 
> IMHO, skeletons should have resistance to piercing damage only, not slashing.




It's the kind of rule that whatever you make of it you'll always have players bothered because it's not realistic enough, and players bothered because it's already more complicated than worth.


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## S'mon (Feb 10, 2012)

I definitely think "DR 5 vs Piercing" is the best approach.


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## Connorsrpg (Feb 10, 2012)

I always made these type of rulings on the fly anyway. I still like to picture the weapon, how it is used and compare to foe. I agree with the original post for most slashing weapons. How could a longsword of even battleaxe not be as lethal as a mace on a skeleton. But you know whips were slashing, rapiers could be too, and I would not give them any advantage.

Used to go with DR for skeletons but only vs piercing. In 4E I simply used the vulnerable mechanic if a player used an appropriate weapon. Anything to get through the hps faster.

It seemed to be a lot easier to make these calls when all the rules weren't so codified. I prefer to have these sorts of things kept to the monster descriptions so the DM can adjudicate given the monster and situation.


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## Hassassin (Feb 10, 2012)

Connorsrpg said:


> I always made these type of rulings on the fly anyway. I still like to picture the weapon, how it is used and compare to foe. I agree with the original post for most slashing weapons. How could a longsword of even battleaxe not be as lethal as a mace on a skeleton. But you know whips were slashing, rapiers could be too, and I would not give them any advantage.




It's all relative. If you compare how much damage a sword will do to a living creature and to a skeleton, the sword's bleeding effects won't work in the latter case.

Axes, OTOH, should be slashing/bludgeoning in my opinion.


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## Mattachine (Feb 10, 2012)

What I disliked is the DR rules in general. Why not simply use resistances? Instead of DR 5/bludgeoning, a skeleton could just have resist 5 piercing, as others have said.

The old "you need a weapon this magical to beat this creature" is an old saw from 1e, where highly supernatural creatures simply couldn't be defeated with normal weapons. I didn't like it then, and I didn't like it in any iteration of the game.


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## Aberzanzorax (Feb 10, 2012)

I greatly prefered monte cook's variant damage reduction to the official dr.


One more reason I'm happy he's working on 5e.

(That, his variant ranger, the book of experimental might, etc etc.) 

Seemed he really got some of the flaws in 3e and worked to find ways to improve em.



My own damage reduction system kept specific vulnerabilites of creatures (e.g. werewolves, vampires, skeletons)....and turned the dr into a bonus as well.

So if skeletons had dr 5/bludgeoning, players would not only bypass their dr with a bludgeoning weapon, but they'd do an additional 5 damage with that as well (for a total of 10 points of damage more than if they used an "ineffective" weapon).

Also, yes, I agree the "requires holy AND silver AND lawful AND +3 AND flaming" sort was a bit much.

I generally used the 3.0 version of DR (most high lvl monsters needed a certain plus to hit) and then scaled the dr with a given weapon's plus.
e.g. If a monster had dr 15/+3, then a +1 weapon would ignor 5 points of that dr, a +2 weapon would ignore 10 points of it, and a +3 or better weapon would ignore the full 15 points.

If there was then holy, silver, lawful, flaming etc, then those components worked like the "specific resistance" I mentioned above for skeletons.



This setup worked for my group and made it feel less arbitrary what kind of weapon you needed (and less golfbag like) while at the same time keeping the "realism" component of classic monsters who were only hurt by silver, or cold iron, or skeleton bludgeoning, or whatever.


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## Yora (Feb 10, 2012)

Falling Icicle said:


> Giving skeletons DR/bludgeonging or a similar resistance has always bothered me. Granted, I can see why a spear or arrow might have some trouble, but a slashing weapon like an axe or sword? Are you kidding me? Such weapons can not only chop off limbs and heads, they can do so even with the meat still attached. You cant tell me that a diagonal slash through a skeleton's rib cage with a greatsword wouldn't really ruin its day.



Slashing weapons can do damage to bones. But that is really just a small thing compared to what it does to to flesh. I would dare to assume that most attacks with slashing weapons to not actually do any significant damage to bones at all and if they do, that's really not that important when you look at the wound it caused. And that's why skeletons are not immune to slashing weapons, but only resistant.


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## Rechan (Feb 10, 2012)

There's certain feel/reactions that these rules _want_ to invoke, but that I think they inevitably don't because it just doesn't jive with typical play behavior. 

I.e. if a monster is resistant to slashing and piercing, you want the PCs to scream "Crap", scramble for improvised weapons, scratching out victory, or they all rally around the one character with the appropriate damage type, aiding him and the spotlight goes to him. This is evocative and found in fiction. But most players will just grit their teeth and grind through the encounter using their weaker weapons while glaring at the DM. 

If a monster is resistant to all but magical items, you want players to feel fear, to rally around the one guy with the magical item, try something creative like wrap a club in a magical cloak, or you want them to try and power-attack, praying they breach the creature's hide. This is evocative and found in fiction. But most players will grit their teeth and grind through the encounter with their weaker weapons, while cursing the DM for throwing a monster that's hard to kill because the Dm hasn't given them adequate magical weapons.

If a monster cannot be destroyed via conventional means, you want players to look for unconventional methods like say, collapsing a tunnel on top of a monster. This is evocative and found in fiction. Not only "collapse the tunnel" is _very_ unconventional way of thinking when approaching an adventure (Well we need to get through that tunnel when it's over, it's never been done before in any of the players careers, etc), but there are no clear and concise rules to handle "collapse the tunnel", so the Dm has to just hope the players get the idea. Instead, most players will grit their teeth and keep trying, and some  characters will likely die before they realize the monster is  "unbeatable", and then they get mad at the DM for throwing something  unbeatable at them.

(Yes, _your_ group may commonly try to collapse tunnels or rally around the one character with the appropriate damage type, but when designing rules, the designers must consider how _most_ groups are going to play the game. Doing something to reward what most do not do would be enforcing a certain playstyle.)

Then there's the issue of rare item types, or at least item types that only effect a _small_ subset of monsters. Silver is a good example. In 4e, the _only_ monster that needs a silver weapon are the uncommonly encountered lycanthropes. So, the only reason you should ever get a silvered weapon is if you need to fight lycanthropes (3e was better with this in that a few others had silver weaknesses, but it was a small list). The same goes for Good aligned weapons, etc (and don't get me started on Law/Chaos). Adamantite was useful only for constructs (which don't appear that often anyhow). 

You also come into the problem of "Ok x should kill monster y, but how  do we use it?" like a wooden stake. You should be able to stake a vamp.  But is that a called shot? A critical (rolled while wielding a 1d4  improvised wooden dagger)? A coup de gra- oh right, vampires turn to  mist when reduced to 0 HP. 

So you _want_ to evoke a certain feel derived from fiction, but what you get is the opposite to ease of play. You wind up with melee characters carting in a golf bag of weaponry, checking their inventory to make sure they have an item of that damage type/property. Switching weaponry leads to a few minutes of changing their to-hit and damage calculations because they probably have feats tied into certain weapons, and those weapons have different enchantment effects/damage die. It doesn't feel exciting, just feels like refitting lower-quality tools.

Or you just play a caster and only worry about energy resistances and SR.


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## Yora (Feb 10, 2012)

Rechan said:


> (Yes, _your_ group may commonly try to collapse tunnels or rally around the one character with the appropriate damage type, but when designing rules, the designers must consider how _most_ groups are going to play the game. Doing something to reward what most do not do would be enforcing a certain playstyle.)



That's the problem. Your group may never get creative and grind through it hating the DM. That's not a sufficent basis to say that almost everyone, with a few singular exceptions, has the same experience.


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## Rechan (Feb 10, 2012)

Yora said:


> That's not a sufficent basis to say that almost everyone, with a few singular exceptions, has the same experience.



1) Then it's a good thing I used the word *most*, and not "almost everyone, with a few singular exceptions".  I consider most to encompass 60-70% - and I would not characterize 30-40% as a few singular exceptions. Had I meant "almost everyone", I would have said something like "nearly everyone".

2) I'm welcome to say what I think most groups do. You're welcome to do the same. I feel that I'm making a reasonable assumption on the behavior of your average gaming group. There's no proof one way or the other unless someone wants to fund some gamer research. Or get WotC's data.


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## Kingreaper (Feb 10, 2012)

Jeff Carlsen said:


> The carrot method for skeletons doesn't really work. A fleshy humanoid takes just as much damage from a mace a skeleton does,



Not actually true.

You see, the fleshy humanoid has SKIN, and MUSCLE, which spread out the damage from the bludgeoning weapon, making it less likely to shatter bones.

Without those things getting in the way, and spreading out the energy, bones are actually a lot easier to shatter (hard to cut, but easy to shatter).


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## Ed_Laprade (Feb 10, 2012)

As a sort of aside, I've watched some medieval weapons documentary series on YouTube lately, and there's one where they test several weapons against a nicely sized piece of chainmail. (Conquest, but I don't remember which ep.) When they get to the ax, after all the others do minimal, or no, damage to it, it simply rips right through it. So I expect one would work pretty well against a skeleton.    (Of course, the mail probably wasn't rivited, but it was still pretty awesome to see it _destroyed _with one blow.)


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## Rechan (Feb 10, 2012)

Ed_Laprade said:


> As a sort of aside, I've watched some medieval weapons documentary series on YouTube lately, and there's one where they test several weapons against a nicely sized piece of chainmail. (Conquest, but I don't remember which ep.) When they get to the ax, after all the others do minimal, or no, damage to it, it simply rips right through it. So I expect one would work pretty well against a skeleton.    (Of course, the mail probably wasn't rivited, but it was still pretty awesome to see it _destroyed _with one blow.)



Reminds me that the Pike Axe was created to cleave through helmets.


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## TwinBahamut (Feb 10, 2012)

I'll just echo the idea that this kind of debate is exactly why there should be hacking damage alongside slashing, piercing, and blunt...

I also generally favor giving things weaknesses rather than resistances most of the time. In many ways, they are just plain more fun.


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## Jeff Carlsen (Feb 11, 2012)

Kingreaper said:


> Not actually true.
> 
> You see, the fleshy humanoid has SKIN, and MUSCLE, which spread out the damage from the bludgeoning weapon, making it less likely to shatter bones.
> 
> Without those things getting in the way, and spreading out the energy, bones are actually a lot easier to shatter (hard to cut, but easy to shatter).




I thought about that, but concluded that it was in error. 

When a human takes a hit with a mace, his muscle and skin do absorb damage, meaning his bones are less likely to shatter. But damage doesn't just mean bone fractures. That skin and flesh is essential to the health of a human, so absorbing the damage doesn't do the human a lick of good. In the meantime, a skeleton functions even when his bones aren't connected to one another, so a few bones cracking and breaking aren't the threat to the skeleton that they would be to a human. Stopping a skeleton requires demolishing its bones until even magic can't hold them together.

So, what extra bone-smashing a mace might do is rendered inconsequential due to the practical effectiveness of that bone smashing, while skin and flesh absorbing a blow isn't an advantage at all.


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## Kingreaper (Feb 11, 2012)

Jeff Carlsen said:


> In the meantime, a skeleton functions even when his bones aren't connected to one another, so a few bones cracking and breaking aren't the threat to the skeleton that they would be to a human.



I'm sorry, but you know this HOW?

Are you a visitor from an alternate reality where walking skeletons are a real problem, encountered commonly?

When walking skeletons are depicted in D&D artwork, all the bones are whole.
Cracking even a single bone may very well be all it takes to break the magic.

Unless you're actually a necromancer from Faerun, you have no way of proving otherwise.

What you're saying isn't based on realism, it's based on your personal preferences. You need to be aware of this.


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## Jeff Carlsen (Feb 11, 2012)

Kingreaper said:


> I'm sorry, but you know this HOW?
> 
> Are you a visitor from an alternate reality where walking skeletons are a real problem, encountered commonly?
> 
> ...




Fair enough, though you could have made this point more respectfully.

In this case, I'm making a rational assumption. You see all sorts of skeletons in art. Sometimes they're missing limbs, are crawling across the ground with just the top half of their body, or have holes in their skulls. It's a common trope that the undead just keep coming despite incredible disfigurement. So it seems appropriate that you defeat a skeleton by breaking it into so many pieces that it can no longer reassemble itself.

The fantasy doesn't _have_ to work that way. In that you are correct. But in D&D, monsters tend to be borrowed and follow familiar tropes.


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## Kingreaper (Feb 11, 2012)

Okay, let's assume you're right, and Skeletons have to be broken down to tiny pieces to kill them.
So, they can take more damage than a normal human.

Leaving aside the fact that reassembling would come under "regeneration" in D&D.

Why is it superior to say "Skeletons have low hitpoints, and DR/bludgeoning" than "Skeletons, being hard to kill, have high hitpoints, but are vulnerable to bludgeoning weapons"?

The fiction in both cases is the same; skeletons are harder to kill than a normal human, unless you're using bludgeoning weapons. Why do you feel that the former is better than the latter?
Especially given as you're maintaining that skeletons can, in fact, take more damage than a human (suggesting higher HP)


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## dnlas (Feb 11, 2012)

Jeff Carlsen said:


> When a human takes a hit with a mace, his muscle and skin do absorb damage, meaning his bones are less likely to shatter. But damage doesn't just mean bone fractures. That skin and flesh is essential to the health of a human, so absorbing the damage doesn't do the human a lick of good. In the meantime, a skeleton functions even when his bones aren't connected to one another, so a few bones cracking and breaking aren't the threat to the skeleton that they would be to a human. Stopping a skeleton requires demolishing its bones until even magic can't hold them together.




So some monster with no muscle such as goem ,element would also take more dmg like skeleton?


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## mkill (Feb 11, 2012)

Looking at all the arguments in the thread, there really seems to be no perfect solution. Personally, I prefer no DR, no resistances as the default. If you can have core PC rules with reduced complexity, then there should be "core monsters" with simple rules as well.

Then, step away from the rules, start from the description. What kind of effects and behavior do you expect?

* arrows and pointy weapons hit between the bones of the monster
* a fire elemental hit by a fireball grows even stronger
* a werewolf's wounds close, but silver leaves painful burns
* a balor can be fought with weapons, but holy weapons weaken him

Based on these, create an individual rule for each of these monsters. The goal is that if the DM describes the game rule effect, it matches the expected flavor. That's why I like the suggestion of a 20% miss chance for piercing weapons for skeletons that was suggested here. The PC thinks he has scored a good hit, but then the DM announces "sorry, right between the ribs"

Of course, the downside of having individual rules for each monster is that things might get fiddly. That is why you need some framework that you can build on, like weapon damage type, elemental damage type, creature type, and a definition of "resistance", "immunity" etc.


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## Tovec (Feb 11, 2012)

Kingreaper said:


> I think that DR was overused in 3.5
> 
> If skeletons need to have resistances give them, say:
> Resist 5 piercing
> ...




Sorry, bit late to the thread.

I think DR was overused, but I think regeneration was underused for monsters that should have had it.
I understand things like dragons having DR vs adamantine, that makes sense because they have hard scales.

It all depends on how the resistance should be applied, and to which creatures. I also think that magic (a lot of the time) should have been equally resisted by these creatures but the best we had was spell resistance and that was too often easily countered.

I think that creatures like werewolves and vampires should have had regeneration. But I also think regeneration should have acted differently than it did, based on how creatures like trolls worked. It should have been nearly immediate resistance to anything that they were immune to (everything but fire/silver/whatever) and then lengthy or magical healing to recover from the rest, none of this "it heals X per round" business.

OH, as as far as my quote - How would Vulnerability 5 work? I get resist (DR) 5. I don't agree with resist (DR) 5 but I get it.

Also, dragons and vampires were kind of the prime examples of creatures with weaknesses to things and they turned into a caster's autokilled creatures. Dragon is resistant (or immune) to fire? Okay douse it with cold. The vampire does from sunlight? Good thing I have that daylight spell.
If they did introduce bigger (or any) weaknesses then we would have an even greater deficit between the casters and the fighters - unless those weaknesses were PURELY weapon related.


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## UngeheuerLich (Feb 11, 2012)

Jeff Carlsen said:


> Fair enough, though you could have made this point more respectfully.
> 
> In this case, I'm making a rational assumption. You see all sorts of skeletons in art. Sometimes they're missing limbs, are crawling across the ground with just the top half of their body, or have holes in their skulls. It's a common trope that the undead just keep coming despite incredible disfigurement. So it seems appropriate that you defeat a skeleton by breaking it into so many pieces that it can no longer reassemble itself.
> 
> The fantasy doesn't _have_ to work that way. In that you are correct. But in D&D, monsters tend to be borrowed and follow familiar tropes.



I´d like bludgeoning weapons slowing them or weakening them on a successful hit. Would not be the worst idea...


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## jcrowland (Feb 13, 2012)

TwinBahamut said:


> I'll just echo the idea that this kind of debate is exactly why there should be hacking damage alongside slashing, piercing, and blunt...




I agree. "Cleaving" as in using a meat cleaver, is what you are thinking of, and while more accurate than "hacking", it does run into what we in D&D think of when we think of a cleave.

Personally, I am a big fan of the K.I.S.S. principle. Make weapon damage types differentiated by their criticals: Bludgeons add a slow on crit, slash add a bleed DoT, and so on. In addition, skeletons in the Monster Manual can have a line that says "immune to DoT effects" and/or "Slow from a damaging effec are permanent" for example, effectively negating a slashing weapons crit and/or highlighting a bludgeons effectiveness versus the skeleton. The DR/5 stuff is too much small change accounting IMO.


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## Dausuul (Feb 13, 2012)

Seems like the distinction people are making is not between slashing, bludgeoning, and piercing, but between light and heavy weapons. Perhaps skeletons should have vulnerable: heavy 5?

One thing to keep in mind, though, is that skeletons are not supposed to be unstoppable, invincible death machines. They're the cannon fodder of the undead hordes; the terror of skeletons comes from numbers rather than individual strength. One single skeleton should not be a threat to an adventurer.


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## Crazy Jerome (Feb 13, 2012)

Another reason this is hard to model for all folks is that DR versus vulnerabilities have very different effects on low damage results, and some people want one or the other. 

1. If you like to visualize the monsters as shrugging off damage and being hard to kill--even impossible in some situations--then DR works great. The fact that some commoner with a 1d4 dagger *cannot* hurt it is just fine.

2. OTOH, if you like to visualize such monsters as mostly avoiding damage, but eventually getting worn down by attacks, then with DR you need to make sure that there are ways to increase damage enough for some to leak through--and this may play havoc with other parts of the system. Whereas, "vulnerability 5 to bludgeon" works great. Daggers will eventually kill this thing, but maces work a lot better.


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## Herschel (Feb 13, 2012)

The thing is though that even a trained dagger-wielder is smart enough to do what he normally does: go after weak points. In the case of the skeleton, he'll be stabbing at the connective "tissues" at the joints. As for bows, DR5 ranged or whatever is kind of messy. I DETESTED DR/SR in 3.0/3.5.


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## Alzrius (Feb 13, 2012)

There's a time when a stick is more appropriate than a carrot.

If you want to emphasize that a monster has a great deal of resistance to most methods of being wounded, save for a small few - rather than emphasizing that it's as vulnerable as a normal person to most attack forms, and exceptionally vulnerable to a few - then DR is a better mechanic than assigning it a vulnerability.

To put it another way, one does not kill Demogorgon with a non-magical dagger.


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## Dausuul (Feb 13, 2012)

Alzrius said:


> There's a time when a stick is more appropriate than a carrot.
> 
> If you want to emphasize that a monster has a great deal of resistance to most methods of being wounded, save for a small few - rather than emphasizing that it's as vulnerable as a normal person to most attack forms, and exceptionally vulnerable to a few - then DR is a better mechanic than assigning it a vulnerability.
> 
> To put it another way, one does not kill Demogorgon with a non-magical dagger.




Sure. But we're not talking about Demogorgon here. We're talking about your basic skeleton, the kind every two-bit necromancer can raise by the hundreds.

(I might also add that whether you can kill Demogorgon with a nonmagical dagger depends heavily on the assumptions of your game. In a Tolkien-style setting, where storied weapons of ancient provenance are the norm, that would no doubt be true. On the other hand, in a Conan-style setting--"What is steel, compared to the hand that wields it?*"--a sufficiently mighty hero could well slay Demogorgon with an ordinary blade.)

[SIZE=-2]*Yes, I know this quote comes from the movie. I think it gets at the spirit of Conan rather well, though.[/SIZE]


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## Leatherhead (Feb 13, 2012)

What if: Instead of DR or resistances, skeletons just had an additional hp pool (like temp hp) that was only used when faced with damage types they are resistant too? That way even a dagger can destroy them, but it would take longer, and you don't have to modify the player damage at all (which is a big mental roadblock it seems).


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## Recidivism (Feb 13, 2012)

Dausuul said:


> Sure. But we're not talking about Demogorgon here. We're talking about your basic skeleton, the kind every two-bit necromancer can raise by the hundreds.




Maybe in your campaign.
Personally I'm inclined towards presenting undead as much more formidable foes than D&D typically does.
I can't think of a single book or movie (though I'm sure there are some) that presents raising the dead, even if just in some sort of twisted half-life, as trivial.
One of the main uses of having undead, narratively, is to ratchet up the fear factor -- An implacable foe, that can absorb damage that would kill a normal living creature and keep coming. Can't be scared off or bargained with, and many of the adventurer's common tactics just won't work. I'm ok with that, and while I liked 4E a lot, the idea that every monster has to be "balanced" in terms of presenting a challenge that can be met in the same way, grinding down monster HP, is something I'd like to get away from.
I don't really expect D&D to adopt that idea wholesale, but it'd be nice if D&D were more aligned with popular fiction than something like Diablo, where Skeletons are just cannon fodder.


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## Alzrius (Feb 13, 2012)

Dausuul said:


> Sure. But we're not talking about Demogorgon here. We're talking about your basic skeleton, the kind every two-bit necromancer can raise by the hundreds.




It was a counter-example to the underlying assumption regarding monster traits that reduce or increase damage taken. There's a difference between trying to simulate an area of particular vulnerability while other attacks deal normal damage, versus simulating a monster that's incredibly resistant to most damage but has some area where particular vulnerability that lets them be damaged normally.


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## Dausuul (Feb 14, 2012)

Recidivism said:


> One of the main uses of having undead, narratively, is to ratchet up the fear factor -- An implacable foe, that can absorb damage that would kill a normal living creature and keep coming. Can't be scared off or bargained with, and many of the adventurer's common tactics just won't work. I'm ok with that, and while I liked 4E a lot, the idea that every monster has to be "balanced" in terms of presenting a challenge that can be met in the same way, grinding down monster HP, is something I'd like to get away from.




I quite like this approach, as it happens. My all-time favorite undead are the Cauldron-Born from Lloyd Alexander's "Chronicles of Prydain," whose signature trait was that _you could not kill them._ Ever. By any means. There was no victory against the Cauldron-Born. The best you could do was delay them until they were forced to return to their places of power, since they weakened the longer they were away.

I would really love to see something like the Cauldron-Born in D&D. However, I would not consider this treatment appropriate for skeletons, which are well established in D&D's history as the fragile, disposable fodder of undead armies. Better to create a new, more formidable class of undead, and then just say skeletons don't exist in that setting.


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## Savage Wombat (Feb 14, 2012)

I had my PCs run into Cauldron-Born in a Planescape adventure that led to Arawn's realm.  Effectively just 6 HD zombies, but they couldn't be killed.  At all.  

One of the PCs, a half-troll, came up with the solution of lifting heavy objects and putting them on top of the Cauldron-Born, immobilizing them.


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## FireLance (Feb 14, 2012)

Dausuul said:


> I quite like this approach, as it happens. My all-time favorite undead are the Cauldron-Born from Lloyd Alexander's "Chronicles of Prydain," whose signature trait was that _you could not kill them._ Ever. By any means. There was no victory against the Cauldron-Born.





Spoiler



Until the last book


, of course. 

Also: Finally! A use for that _bag of devouring_!


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## Crazy Jerome (Feb 14, 2012)

Recidivism said:


> I don't really expect D&D to adopt that idea wholesale, but it'd be nice if D&D were more aligned with popular fiction than something like Diablo, where Skeletons are just cannon fodder.




Where do you think Diablo got the idea?


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## Dausuul (Feb 14, 2012)

FireLance said:


> [stuff], of course.




Oi! Spoiler alert there! I've read it, but other people may not have.


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## FireLance (Feb 14, 2012)

Dausuul said:


> Oi! Spoiler alert there! I've read it, but other people may not have.



I went back and edited the post, but really, it seemed to me to be as much of a spoiler as "The good guys win in the end".


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## Jeff Carlsen (Feb 14, 2012)

I took some time away from this thread so I could think on it and avoid the backfire effect.

For most creatures, hit points don't directly represent real damage, but a combination of real damage and the ability to mitigate damage taken, either through skill or constitution. When you run out, you can no longer mitigate damage, and the collected minor wounds take you down, or something serious gets through. How you describe it is up to the DM.

This could be an argument for simply giving the skeleton more hit points with a weakness to bludgeoning damage.

I can't even say that hit points are mostly linked to skill, since many monsters are simply given extra hit dice for being bigger and meaner, though in that case it's mostly meant to illustrate that the monster can take many wounds and keep fighting. It's a representation of the real damage part of hit points.

So, in essence the difference between the big monster and the skeleton is that the skeleton _doesn't_ take any noticeable real damage from most attacks. Its invulnerability is a mitigating factor that doesn't decrease, even as the skeleton takes damage.

Damage Reduction does model that aspect more accurately.

But this does leave us with one last problem to look at. What do the hit points of a skeleton mean? Presumably, the skeleton doesn't feel pain, it doesn't grow fatigued. The only way it loses the ability to mitigate damage with skill is if parts of it actually break. So, for the skeleton, hit points really do represent real damage and nothing but. At the same time, the skeleton can take significant amounts of real damage and still be a threat, so they may still have a high number of hit points.

So, my final verdict is that Damage Reduction is the proper rule for the skeleton if you want model intent with a degree of accuracy. I'd rather not lose that. Still, it wouldn't be largely inappropriate to use the high hit point with a weakness method. It's just less precise.


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## Recidivism (Feb 14, 2012)

Dausuul said:


> I would really love to see something like the Cauldron-Born in D&D. However, I would not consider this treatment appropriate for skeletons, which are well established in D&D's history as the fragile, disposable fodder of undead armies. Better to create a new, more formidable class of undead, and then just say skeletons don't exist in that setting.




I understand that attitude, and I feel like Skeletons as trivial foes has a long history in D&D. I even understand from the perspective of a DM that I'd much rather describe a skeleton or zombie getting its skull bashed in than a living humanoid foe -- Undead opponents seem to work a lot better at the level of abstraction that hitpoints give us, and there's less of a moral quandary about killing clearly unnatural and non-living foes.

But at the same time I don't think the typical D&D experience correlates all that well with typical fantasy genre depictions of undead foes, nor does it pass the fridge logic test for me. Since I'd like my home campaigns to both resemble (to a certain extent) fiction that I've enjoyed, and to have a good degree of internal consistency, legions of trivial undead foes isn't something for me to use.

I don't really expect D&D to cater to my exact needs, but I do feel that 4E went a little overboard in homogenizing monsters and removing aspects that were flavorful and required approaches different from "I attack until it dies." Ghosts and other ethereal foes come to mind as bad offenders (not only does the insubstantial property not reflect their flavor well, but it turns combat into an HP slog too.)


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## Dausuul (Feb 15, 2012)

Recidivism said:


> I don't really expect D&D to cater to my exact needs, but I do feel that 4E went a little overboard in homogenizing monsters and removing aspects that were flavorful and required approaches different from "I attack until it dies." Ghosts and other ethereal foes come to mind as bad offenders (not only does the insubstantial property not reflect their flavor well, but it turns combat into an HP slog too.)




I agree with all this, especially on incorporeal undead. (I'm sorry, it's a freaking ghost. Nonmagical weapons don't hurt it. Deal. If the designers feel this unduly punishes fighter-types as opposed to casters, the proper solution is to say that most spells don't hurt it either. Why should a ghost be any more vulnerable to a _fireball_ than a sword?)

I just think that for better or for worse, the meaning of "skeleton" as a monster is well established in D&D, and 4E gave us an object lesson in the dangers of messing with established elements of the game. It's an easy matter for a DM to eliminate skeletons from a campaign world, and for the designers to provide a new type of invincible undead horror.


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## trancejeremy (Feb 15, 2012)

Considering that skeletons are literally just skeletons that have been magically animated, it's hard to understand how they can be really tough. 

They're just skeletons - old bones are fairly brittle.

And really, do we really need all these elaborate rules to deal with them? Is saying "Skeletons suffer only one-half damage from sharp and/or edged weapons" really that difficult? 

Gaming isn't a bureaucracy, just use simple rules and some common sense.


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## Dausuul (Feb 15, 2012)

trancejeremy said:


> And really, do we really need all these elaborate rules to deal with them? Is saying "Skeletons suffer only one-half damage from sharp and/or edged weapons" really that difficult?
> 
> Gaming isn't a bureaucracy, just use simple rules and some common sense.




What "elaborate rules?" All of the proposals I've seen so far are very simple. To date, they seem to be:

Skeletons take 5 less damage from non-bludgeoning weapons.
Skeletons take 5 less damage from piercing weapons.
Skeletons take 5 more damage from bludgeoning weapons.
Skeletons take half damage from non-bludgeoning weapons (your suggestion).
Skeletons just take damage like everything else.
The debate is over which of these represents the best combination of "simple rules and some common sense," with some verisimilitude and thematic concerns thrown in.

Myself, I favor the final option, since I feel that all the other proposals--simple as they are--are still more complicated than the situation warrants. 3E went hog-wild with damage reduction and resistances for every-damn-thing. Admittedly, 4E went too far the other way, but in general I think damage reduction and/or resistance should be quite rare.


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## JohnSnow (Feb 15, 2012)

Dausuul said:


> I quite like this approach, as it happens. My all-time favorite undead are the Cauldron-Born from Lloyd Alexander's "Chronicles of Prydain," whose signature trait was that _you could not kill them._ Ever. By any means. There was no victory against the Cauldron-Born. The best you could do was delay them until they were forced to return to their places of power, since they weakened the longer they were away.
> 
> I would really love to see something like the Cauldron-Born in D&D. However, I would not consider this treatment appropriate for skeletons, which are well established in D&D's history as the fragile, disposable fodder of undead armies. Better to create a new, more formidable class of undead, and then just say skeletons don't exist in that setting.




The closest I ever saw to something almost as evocative as the Cauldron-Born were the Fell from Fantasy Flight's _Midnight_ campaign setting. In that world, the land itself is so corrupt that there is a good chance that the recently dead will rise - with a burning hunger for the flesh of the living.

A newly risen Fell is very similar to what it was in life, but must feed on the flesh of sentients periodically in order to keep from decaying. Fell of this sort are quite cunning, and even capable of passing for living - if they're careful to hide their injuries. However, if one of these creatures goes long enough between feedings, it degrades. The lesser Fell are basically slightly tougher versions of ghouls, zombies, and skeletons. Once they degrade, feeding keeps them at that level, but they can't ever return to the higher state. And even though they can no longer feed, the skeleton-type Fell have nothing left but the need to kill. And none of the heroes in the world of _Midnight_ have the ability to turn undead, which makes the hordes of risen dead even scarier.

Unlike most undead in D&D, the Fell are downright f'ing creepy. They're an important element of the setting which helps to set the tone in _Midnight_. But that's really the only time I've seen the undead used in D&D as anything other than a mostly boring low-level threat. Which by all rights the undead shouldn't be, but are.

In standard D&D, you basically need wraiths to scare people.


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## Hassassin (Feb 15, 2012)

Dausuul said:


> What "elaborate rules?" All of the proposals I've seen so far are very simple. To date, they seem to be:




Let me add my proposal: half damage from piercing, double damage from bludgeoning.


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## steeldragons (Feb 15, 2012)

OR...or...just thinkin'/typin' out loud here...

We do away completely with DR and "weapon damage types/slahing/piercing/bludgeoning" entirely in the new game?

You roll. You hit? Roll damage. Done.

<dives under the desk and waits for the world to come crashing down upon his ears and..er...eyes>


--SD


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## Floyd Hamilton (May 7, 2017)

But if you read the skeleton in the 3.5 monster manual it states it has DR5 bludgeoning weapons not cutting or piercing and I find that a joke


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## Celebrim (May 7, 2017)

3.0 had it half damage from non-bludgeoning weapons.  Slashing attacks were still effective, but not as effective.  3.5 had the problem of trying to make DR too unified of a mechanic.  5e would in theory handle this better by just giving advantage or disadvantage against certain kinds of damage.

I personally think DR is great when used appropriately, but the biggest problem with it in 3.X is that it scaled up too much.   I'd much rather see DR X/5 than DR X/10 or D X/30.  

I tend to scale up 'by 5's' rather than 'by 10's', and I retain the 3.0 DR +1/5, +2/10, +3/15, etc. rather than 3.5's toolbox approach of something like DR 30/magic and good.


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## Random Bystander (May 10, 2017)

Personally, I feel that Skeletons should be vulnerable to Otto's Irresistible Dance.

I am less sure about any of the other questions, although I admit to liking the simplicity of a high hit point total, and "Vulnerability 5 (Bludgeoning)".


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