# The problem with weapon damage resistances.



## Leatherhead

While reading up on all the changes to monsters for the 5.5 edition, or whatever they are going to call it, it occurred to me that the default way that 5e handles monsters who have a weakness to special material weapons, like devils and their aversion to silver, isn't handled to the best of the systems ability.

Currently a Bone Devil has resistances to  Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing from Nonmagical Attacks that aren't Silvered.  Meaning they take normal damage from either silver or magical weapons. Which is less of a weakness, and more of a "You must be this tall to ride" sign that allows the PCs to use platform shoes. It also has the unfortunate side effect of a magical weapon being a one stop shop for all your resistance and often times immunity needs. While this is nice from a balance perspective due to simplicity, it is also boring as heck because there is no reward for using a silvered weapon on top of or instead of a magical weapon, totally wasting the design space.

In another famous example, the Werewolf, they tried to give immunity to nonmangical and nonsilvered weapon damage. But that proved to be less than desirable as it only served to lock mundane characters out of being effective for the fight, and let casters destroy them with cantrips without any considerable changes at all. The designer response to this was the monster called the Loup Garou, which cannot be killed without silvered weapons (or at least some way to prevent healing) due to their regeneration ability.  Needless to say, this is not a practical solution outside of heavily horror games, and even then it can be cheesed by using a simple cantrip (_Chill Touch_) or a single silvered weapon strike after the party unloads their normal routine. 

My solution to this problem is admittedly a bit more complex in terms of wording that WotC may be initially comfortable with, but it is simple enough in play: Give these enemies Resistance and Vulnerability to Silvered weapons.  Vulnerability and Resistance cancel each other out, which gives normal damage. Interestingly enough WotC future proofed themselves this time, as multiple resistances don't stack, so adding another resistance isn't going to make monsters harder. Furthermore Vulnerability is a near vestigial mechanic in this edition, with only 100 out of the 2000+ stat blocks for monsters using the mechanic, and honestly players love when they hit a Vulnerability, so it should be used more.

My proposed changes look like this: 

A Bone Devil would now have resistances to  Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing from Nonmagical Attacks (deleting the part about Silvered weapons). But also Vulnerability to attacks from Silvered weapons. Because a resistance and a Vulnerability cancel each other out, the new damage results would be: x1/2 for normal weapons, x1 for silver or magic weapons, and x2 for silver and magic weapons. This allows for more tiers of readiness. 

The PCs have to duke it out with their resisted weapons. 
The PC's use consumables or other resources (like the_ Magic Weapon_ spell) to normalize their damage.
The PC's use a bit of prep work to get silvered weapons (or just luckily have a magic weapon on hand) for normal damage without using consumables.
The PC's use consumables in conjunction with their prep work to actually exploit the vulnerability.
The PC's get special magic and silvered weapons designed for the purposes of slaying such creatures.
The werewolf could keep their immunities (though there is an argument against that), with the the Silver Vulnerability added to that. The trick here is the addition of a resistance to nonmagical weapons on top of their immunity to nonmagical and nonsilvered weapons. At first glance this seems redundant, but the two categories are actually different. Allowing us to use most of the same clever mechanics from the Bone Devil.  In summery, a normal weapon is totally ignored. A silvered weapon is both resisted and vulnerable which evens out. A magic weapon deals normal damage. And once again a magic silvered weapon is a true weakness.


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## Yaarel

Leatherhead said:


> resistances to  Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing from Nonmagical Attacks ... also Vulnerability to attacks from Silvered weapons



Sounds good to me.


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## Staffan

I'm pretty sure I've seen one developer mention a few years back (might have been Mearls, but I'm not sure) that the reason there are so few vulnerabilities is that they make things too easy. Doubling damage is much too strong to use other than in very special circumstances.

Also, most of the cases where you have resistance to "Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing from Nonmagical Attacks that aren't Silvered" or the equivalent aren't meant to be creatures that are extra vulnerable to silver attacks. I'm not sure it was a thing in AD&D, but I think the silver thing with devils in particular was added in 3.5e, where low-level devils had DR penetrated by "silver or good" weapons, mid-level just had "good", and high-level ones needed "silver and good" weapons. Same thing with demons and cold iron. I think the only large-scale monster type where an actual vulnerability would be appropriate are fey, who are supposed to shun and fear cold iron.


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## Yaarel

Relatedly, regarding "bludgeoning, piercing, slashing" damage types, it seems like a design space that turned out too impractical to implement.

Would we lose anything significant if simplifying all three down to one "weapon damage" type?

The skeleton comes to mind with its vulnerability to bludgeoning, but it seems not worth complicating the entire gaming engine for it.


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## Charlaquin

Yaarel said:


> Relatedly, regarding "bludgeoning, piercing, slashing" damage types, it seems like a design space that turned out too impractical to implement.
> 
> Would we lose anything significant if simplifying all three down to one "weapon damage" type?
> 
> The skeleton comes to mind with its vulnerability to bludgeoning, but it seems not worth complicating the entire gaming engine for it.



4e already did this. Bringing Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing back for 5e was a symbolic gesture to appease the anti-4e crowd, and skeletons were the token “see? We promise this will actually matter sometimes!” monster. There are a few others, but they all exist solely to _gesture_ at the design space weapon damage types _could_ open up, so the folks who want that complexity don’t get _too_ upset by the fact that the design space isn’t really utilized anywhere else. Worked well enough for the playtest, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it gone next edition.


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## Charlaquin

Gesturing at design space the game _could_ utilize was pretty much WotC’s whole strategy with the 5e playtest. Design a game full of potential avenues for expansion so that people who want to see those avenues expanded on will buy in. Then never expand on those avenues to avoid upsetting the people who don’t want to see them expanded on. Promise modularity, deliver an unfinished game. Everybody wins! (?)


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## Yaarel

Charlaquin said:


> Gesturing at design space the game _could_ utilize was pretty much WotC’s whole strategy with the 5e playtest. Design a game full of potential avenues for expansion so that people who want to see those avenues expanded on will buy in. Then never expand on those avenues to avoid upsetting the people who don’t want to see them expanded on. Promise modularity, deliver an unfinished game. Everybody wins! (?)



I am open to the idea of complex weapons, like chain armor grants resistance to slashing, but the cost in complexity gains little benefit return.

Even the scenarios that I can think of arent worth the complexity. I guess the entire D&D tradition has rejected 1e weapon complexity.

I am satisfied with one "weapon damage" type.

If I think about it, I like organizing the weapons table into groups for thematic reasons, but even this lacks verisimilitude in terms of which weapons assemblage one is likely to train in. For example, historically one is more likely to train in axe and spear plus maybe bow and sword, rather than longsword with greatsword.

The "weapon damage" seems sufficient.


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## UngeheuerLich

First: I like your Idea!

Second: I also like the Idea of just needing a silvered weapon for the final kill and otherwise having a high regeneration. That works well for the troll and makes sure, everyone can contribute. It is also more fun than just doing half or even no damage at all, when hit points represent more than just bodily health.

Third: I also like resistance to magical weapons, as this will make sure that only the heroes with magical weapons can save the day.

So maybe all those things can be combined. Reistance to nonmagical weapons + regeneration against anything but silver would be my favourite.
On top of that I would like every PC class to have their weapon attacks be treated as magical by level 5 to 7 or so.

I am not sure vulnerability is the best mechanic in many cases, as doubling and halving damage at the same time seems to be a hassle.
I can however see some creatures not having resistance and still having vulneravility to silvered weapons or such and no regeneration.


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## CubicsRube

One of the dissapointing things about 5e for me is the looseness in the design of things like spell schools and damage types (e.g how is force and thunder different?)

I feel like a shill sometimes but I do prefer how Shadow of the Demon Lord does it.

There are virtually no monsters that have any resistance to mundane weapons. So the system truly doesn't assume magical weapons are necessary. There are also mamy creatures that take half damage from spells.

As a result it addresses the power gap quite effectively between martials and casters and makes magic weapons a nice to have rather than an essential one.

Lastly for some items that monsters are vulnerable to (like iron for demons and faeries) it imposes an impaired condition (basically disadvantage) rather than doing extra damage.


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## AnotherGuy

1. Resistance to normal weapons.
2. Resistance to weapon type (a) bludgeoning  (b) slashing and/or (c) piercing.
3. Immunity to normal weapons.
4. Specific weapons (a) silvered (b) adamantine-made and/or (c) blessed/radiant charged negate regeneration.
5. Resistance to magic weapons unless (a) silvered (b) adamantine-made  and/or (c) blessed/radiant charged.

The above is what I'm contemplating for some monster home-brewery. I've ignored vulnerability.


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## Tales and Chronicles

With the hit point bloat of 5e, I dont thing making more monsters vulnerable to something would be all that bad. Anyway, making, say, shapeshifter Vulnerable to silvered weapons does not mean those weapon would deal double damage, it just means that the Vulnerability cancel the Resistance, making it null. 

I'd personally go with resistance to physical damages from weapon under a certain rarity. 
As for spells, I wish more monsters were immune to spells under a certain level, like the Rakshasa.


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## billd91

Staffan said:


> Also, most of the cases where you have resistance to "Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing from Nonmagical Attacks that aren't Silvered" or the equivalent aren't meant to be creatures that are extra vulnerable to silver attacks. I'm not sure it was a thing in AD&D, but I think the silver thing with devils in particular was added in 3.5e, where low-level devils had DR penetrated by "silver or good" weapons, mid-level just had "good", and high-level ones needed "silver and good" weapons. Same thing with demons and cold iron. I think the only large-scale monster type where an actual vulnerability would be appropriate are fey, who are supposed to shun and fear cold iron.



The ability to damage devils with silver (and demons with iron) dated at least back to AD&D. A lot of people probably missed it but there's a table at the beginning of the 1e Monster Manual sections on devils (and demons) that lists their general characteristics including resistances and vulnerabilities. And silver weapons do full damage.


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## Jer

Staffan said:


> I'm pretty sure I've seen one developer mention a few years back (might have been Mearls, but I'm not sure) that the reason there are so few vulnerabilities is that they make things too easy. Doubling damage is much too strong to use other than in very special circumstances.



I like how 13th age approaches vulnerability - instead of doubling damage if you use a weapon of the appropriate type, the crit range is extended by 2.  So if you have a creature that is vulnerable to fire and you use your flaming broadsword and you normally crit on a 20, you'd crit on an 18+ instead.  You get the feel that the creature is vulnerable to the weapon without the "too good for the math" result that you get of doubled damage with every hit.


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## payn

Charlaquin said:


> 4e already did this. Bringing Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing back for 5e was a symbolic gesture to appease the anti-4e crowd, and skeletons were the token “see? We promise this will actually matter sometimes!” monster. There are a few others, but they all exist solely to _gesture_ at the design space weapon damage types _could_ open up, so the folks who want that complexity don’t get _too_ upset by the fact that the design space isn’t really utilized anywhere else. Worked well enough for the playtest, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it gone next edition.



This is a very condescending take. Its not hard to imagine that some folks enjoy damage types and resistances in the game. Maybe, the designers didn't go too into the design space as a gesture towards folks who dislike it not being able to handle its return?


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## Ovinomancer

payn said:


> This is a very condescending take. Its not hard to imagine that some folks enjoy damage types and resistances in the game. Maybe, the designers didn't go too into the design space as a gesture towards folks who dislike it not being able to handle its return?



What do you think @Charlaquin  said,  because I don't see a lot of daylight between you two here.


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## Ovinomancer

Leatherhead said:


> While reading up on all the changes to monsters for the 5.5 edition, or whatever they are going to call it, it occurred to me that the default way that 5e handles monsters who have a weakness to special material weapons, like devils and their aversion to silver, isn't handled to the best of the systems ability.
> 
> Currently a Bone Devil has resistances to  Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing from Nonmagical Attacks that aren't Silvered.  Meaning they take normal damage from either silver or magical weapons. Which is less of a weakness, and more of a "You must be this tall to ride" sign that allows the PCs to use platform shoes. It also has the unfortunate side effect of a magical weapon being a one stop shop for all your resistance and often times immunity needs. While this is nice from a balance perspective due to simplicity, it is also boring as heck because there is no reward for using a silvered weapon on top of or instead of a magical weapon, totally wasting the design space.
> 
> In another famous example, the Werewolf, they tried to give immunity to nonmangical and nonsilvered weapon damage. But that proved to be less than desirable as it only served to lock mundane characters out of being effective for the fight, and let casters destroy them with cantrips without any considerable changes at all. The designer response to this was the monster called the Loup Garou, which cannot be killed without silvered weapons (or at least some way to prevent healing) due to their regeneration ability.  Needless to say, this is not a practical solution outside of heavily horror games, and even then it can be cheesed by using a simple cantrip (_Chill Touch_) or a single silvered weapon strike after the party unloads their normal routine.
> 
> My solution to this problem is admittedly a bit more complex in terms of wording that WotC may be initially comfortable with, but it is simple enough in play: Give these enemies Resistance and Vulnerability to Silvered weapons.  Vulnerability and Resistance cancel each other out, which gives normal damage. Interestingly enough WotC future proofed themselves this time, as multiple resistances don't stack, so adding another resistance isn't going to make monsters harder. Furthermore Vulnerability is a near vestigial mechanic in this edition, with only 100 out of the 2000+ stat blocks for monsters using the mechanic, and honestly players love when they hit a Vulnerability, so it should be used more.
> 
> My proposed changes look like this:
> 
> A Bone Devil would now have resistances to  Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing from Nonmagical Attacks (deleting the part about Silvered weapons). But also Vulnerability to attacks from Silvered weapons. Because a resistance and a Vulnerability cancel each other out, the new damage results would be: x1/2 for normal weapons, x1 for silver or magic weapons, and x2 for silver and magic weapons. This allows for more tiers of readiness.
> 
> The PCs have to duke it out with their resisted weapons.
> The PC's use consumables or other resources (like the_ Magic Weapon_ spell) to normalize their damage.
> The PC's use a bit of prep work to get silvered weapons (or just luckily have a magic weapon on hand) for normal damage without using consumables.
> The PC's use consumables in conjunction with their prep work to actually exploit the vulnerability.
> The PC's get special magic and silvered weapons designed for the purposes of slaying such creatures.
> The werewolf could keep their immunities (though there is an argument against that), with the the Silver Vulnerability added to that. The trick here is the addition of a resistance to nonmagical weapons on top of their immunity to nonmagical and nonsilvered weapons. At first glance this seems redundant, but the two categories are actually different. Allowing us to use most of the same clever mechanics from the Bone Devil.  In summery, a normal weapon is totally ignored. A silvered weapon is both resisted and vulnerable which evens out. A magic weapon deals normal damage. And once again a magic silvered weapon is a true weakness.



Don't have a lot of time,  but I'm not sure there is design space available here once you plug back into the game.   By this I mean ho totals are a massive factor in the CR and encounter balance maths and this is recommending increasing design that adjusts those totals in more complex ways but isn't looking at what that means downstream for the encounters math.   Yes,  it's clever,  but it's clever in isolation.


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## Charlaquin

payn said:


> This is a very condescending take. Its not hard to imagine that some folks enjoy damage types and resistances in the game.



I know for a fact that some folks do. I like them myself, when properly utilized.


payn said:


> Maybe, the designers didn't go too into the design space as a gesture towards folks who dislike it not being able to handle its return?



Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Point is, 5e lacks both the simplicity of a system that doesn’t differentiate weapon damage types and the depth of one that does, because WotC tried to please everyone instead of making a decision and committing to it.


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## Deset Gled

This was a big discussion in the 3.0e to 3.5e update.  In 3.0 you needed a specific material to overcome resistance, in 3.5 a magical weapon overcame all material resistances.

The main explanation I remember hearing from the designers was that material resistances just resulted in a golf bag of different weapons.  Players would have their silver weapon, their cold iron weapon, their adamantine weapon, etc.  This was considered not ideal for multiple reasons: it increases reliance on items instead of abilities, it prevents players from relying on a favored weapon, it makes players more likely lug around a mobile arsenal of weapons, etc.

Personally, I like the idea of going back to multiple resistances having more meaning, but I don't think it fits in with the zeitgeist of 5e.  I would embrace the added crunch, but I would much rather see a deeper design delve into other areas first.

Edit:  Staffan corrected my edition misnumbering, but I'm leaving it unchanged here.


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## Staffan

I do like the way Pathfinder 2 does it better, where resistances and vulnerabilities are fixed numbers and generally scaled to the creature's level (so the 4th level Abrikandilu has weakness 5 vs good and cold iron, while the 20th level Balor has 20). This means that even lower-damage abilities that trigger weaknesses can be devastating to these creatures. For example, holy water deals 1d6 good damage to undead and fiends, plus 1 point of splash damage even on a miss. 1d6 is nothing in PF2 even at mid-levels, but 1d6+10 against a mid-level demon's weakness is nothing to sneeze at. Also, the guidelines for creating creatures say that creatures with weaknesses should have more hp, so that without the ability to trigger them they'll be harder than a baseline creature, but easier with the ability.


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## Quickleaf

I think your changes are just fine, and better than RAW. Thumbs up.

Increasingly, I've been trying to get into the _story _of what's going on with a specific monster's resistances, and then use that story to create more nuanced resistances/vulnerabilities (including sometimes a new trait) that don't just apply to weapons but also to some spells.

To use your bone devil example, what is this particular devil resistant to? And why?

They are skeletal, with a skin stretched across their frame.
They fly on fairly delicate insectile wings.
They are envious of their superiors / mightier devils.

So I might come up with something like...

*Damage Vulnerabilities. *Bludgeoning from silvered weapons.

_*Envy Weakness (replaces damage resistances & Magic Resistance). *_The bone devil has resistance to all damage and advantage to its saving throws against magic, unless it is consumed by envy for another creature. While consumed by envy it does not benefit from its resistance to all damage and advantage to saving throws against magic.

*Silver Downfall. *When the bone devil takes damage from a silvered weapon or a spell consuming at least 100 gp worth of silver as a component, it cannot fly until the end of its next turn. If it is already flying, it is forced to descend 40 feet. If it is higher than 40 feet above the ground, it falls the remainder of the distance.


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## Charlaquin

Deset Gled said:


> The main explanation I remember hearing from the designers was that material resistances just resulted in a golf bag of different weapons.  Players would have their silver weapon, their cold iron weapon, their adamantine weapon, etc.  This was considered not ideal for multiple reasons: it increases reliance on items instead of abilities, it prevents players from relying on a favored weapon, it makes players more likely lug around a mobile arsenal of weapons, etc.



How bizarre. Isn’t encouraging players to have different weapons for different situations and preventing over reliance on a singles favored weapon _the point_ of material resistances (and weapon damage type resistances, for that matter)?


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## Staffan

Deset Gled said:


> This was a big discussion in the 3.0e to 3.5e update.  In 3.0 you needed a specific material to overcome resistance, in 3.5 a magical weapon overcame all material resistances.



It was the other way around. In 3.0, the scale of weapon awesomeness went: various materials, +1, +2, +3, +4, and +5 (I think bonuses above +3 were pretty rare), and resistances were usually pretty high. 10 was a low resistance, and I remember seeing things like DR 50/+3 which is essentially the same as immunity.

3.5 lowered the resistances so 15 was considered very high, but presented materials (as well as alignment) as separate from "magic" (which in turn is no longer separated by plusses, so a +4 and a +1 weapon are equally good at penetrating DR except for the 3 points of damage extra the +4 weapon does). The idea here was that even if you didn't have the right weapon, the DR would be low enough that it would be a speed bump and not a wall. This is what gets you the "golfbag" warrior – a concept I personally like where a professional warrior would use different weapons for different foes ("the right tool for the job"), but I recognize that many didn't like it. Then you get Pathfinder 1 which adds in the concept that certain pluses count as different materials as well.


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## Deset Gled

Staffan said:


> It was the other way around. In 3.0, the scale of weapon awesomeness went: various materials, +1, +2, +3, +4, and +5 (I think bonuses above +3 were pretty rare), and resistances were usually pretty high. 10 was a low resistance, and I remember seeing things like DR 50/+3 which is essentially the same as immunity.
> 
> 3.5 lowered the resistances so 15 was considered very high, but presented materials (as well as alignment) as separate from "magic" (which in turn is no longer separated by plusses, so a +4 and a +1 weapon are equally good at penetrating DR except for the 3 points of damage extra the +4 weapon does). The idea here was that even if you didn't have the right weapon, the DR would be low enough that it would be a speed bump and not a wall. This is what gets you the "golfbag" warrior – a concept I personally like where a professional warrior would use different weapons for different foes ("the right tool for the job"), but I recognize that many didn't like it. Then you get Pathfinder 1 which adds in the concept that certain pluses count as different materials as well.




Yes!  I had it backwards.  That's what I get for posting without enough caffeine.


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## Staffan

Quickleaf said:


> I think your changes are just fine, and better than RAW. Thumbs up.
> 
> Increasingly, I've been trying to get into the _story _of what's going on with a specific monster's resistances, and then use that story to create more nuanced resistances/vulnerabilities (including sometimes a new trait) that don't just apply to weapons but also to some spells.



One of the cooler examples of this I saw in 3.5e was the adventure Shadows of the Last War. In that adventure, you will encounter a village that was subjected to some form of magical experiment during the war, killing the inhabitants and fusing them with glass while raising them as undead. As a result, they have DR 5/bludgeoning until they reach half their hit points, at which time their glass shells crack and they instead revert to the normal zombie DR of 5/slashing.


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## Staffan

Deset Gled said:


> Yes!  I had it backwards.  That's what I get for posting without enough caffeine.



One should always make sure not to have too much blood in one's caffeine system.


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## Deset Gled

Charlaquin said:


> How bizarre. Isn’t encouraging players to have different weapons for different situations and preventing over reliance on a singles favored weapon _the point_ of material resistances (and weapon damage type resistances, for that matter)?




You're not wrong, but it's also a problem for certain types of play.  If you want to play a character that has an ancestral sword, or disdains excessive wealth, or any number of other reasons, carrying around a collection of a dozen swords for different enemies doesn't really fit the character concept.  Considering how much 5e is focussed on allowing almost any character option, it makes sense to me that they would avoid this.  Also, note that Staffan has corrected my edition numbering

In general, the designers felt that 3.5e suffered from what was referred to as a "Christmas Tree" effect, where players (especially at high level) were too reliant on multiple magic items (effectively wearing magic items like ornaments on a Christmas Tree).  How much of a problem this is could be debated, but it's definitely true that multiple material resistances adds to the effect.


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## Laurefindel

Leatherhead said:


> It also has the unfortunate side effect of a magical weapon being a one stop shop for all your resistance and often times immunity needs.



Yes, this bothers me too. Once you get a magic weapon - or whatever ability that considers something as magical for the purpose of bypassing damage resistance and immunity - you can pretty much ignore having to deal with resistance to BPS damage ever again.

And as for bludgeoning, piercing and slashing differentiation, I tend to agree with @Yaarel; for what the game makes of it, it's not worth the design space.

...or physical space for that matter: shortening "bludgeoning, piercing and slashing" to "weapon" is an economy of 21 characters (or savings up to 77.777%)! In many places, the space taken by "bludgeoning, piercing and slashing" is half the whole sentence.


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## billd91

Staffan said:


> 3.5 lowered the resistances so 15 was considered very high, but presented materials (as well as alignment) as separate from "magic" (which in turn is no longer separated by plusses, so a +4 and a +1 weapon are equally good at penetrating DR except for the 3 points of damage extra the +4 weapon does). The idea here was that even if you didn't have the right weapon, the DR would be low enough that it would be a speed bump and not a wall. This is what gets you the "golfbag" warrior – a concept I personally like where a professional warrior would use different weapons for different foes ("the right tool for the job"), but I recognize that many didn't like it. Then you get Pathfinder 1 which adds in the concept that certain pluses count as different materials as well.



I really did like the PF1 enhancement to DR. 3.5 made an important shift away from needing a specific plus to hit something, PF1 added back in notable benefits of having a higher plus.


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## Jer

Deset Gled said:


> In general, the designers felt that 3.5e suffered from what was referred to as a "Christmas Tree" effect, where players (especially at high level) were too reliant on multiple magic items (effectively wearing magic items like ornaments on a Christmas Tree).  How much of a problem this is could be debated, but it's definitely true that multiple material resistances adds to the effect.



IIRC during the 3.0/3.5 era the Christmas Tree effect was debated right here on these very boards.  As you might expect everyone here was of one voice about how good/bad it was in 3.5 and how much it was/was not like earlier editions of the game   

4e's design was definitely trying to react to some level of discontent that some folks had over mid-to-high level parties carrying around substantial collection of magic items, but from that came limitations on magic items/level which eventually was re-written as attunement rules in 5e.


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## Charlaquin

Deset Gled said:


> You're not wrong, but it's also a problem for certain types of play.  If you want to play a character that has an ancestral sword, or disdains excessive wealth, or any number of other reasons, carrying around a collection of a dozen swords for different enemies doesn't really fit the character concept.  Considering how much 5e is focussed on allowing almost any character option, it makes sense to me that they would avoid this.  Also, note that Staffan has corrected my edition numbering
> 
> In general, the designers felt that 3.5e suffered from what was referred to as a "Christmas Tree" effect, where players (especially at high level) were too reliant on multiple magic items (effectively wearing magic items like ornaments on a Christmas Tree).  How much of a problem this is could be debated, but it's definitely true that multiple material resistances adds to the effect.



Yeah, I definitely understand 5e wanting to avoid the Christmas Tree effect. Just seemed like strange reasoning in the transition from 3e to 3.5e. Makes more sense with Steffan’s clarification though.


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## Staffan

Laurefindel said:


> And as bludgeoning, piercing and slashing differentiation, I tend to agree with @Yaarel; for what the game makes of it, it's not worth the design space.
> 
> ...or physical space for that matter: shortening "bludgeoning, piercing and slashing" to "weapon" or is an economy of 21 characters (or savings up to 77.777%)! In many places, the space taken by "bludgeoning, piercing and slashing" is half of the whole sentence.



PF2 uses "physical" as a super-category of bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage (as well as bleed damage). There are still monsters as well as certain character options where the distinction is relevant, but those with a general resistance to weapons have something like "resistance physical 5". If the resistance can be bypassed by certain weapons, it's instead written as something like "resistance physical 5 (except magical)" or "resistance physical 12 (except adamantine or bludgeoning)".


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## Blue

I don't see silver as doing any more damage, just that it can hurt them when normal weapons can't.  So the idea that magic+silver gets double damage is actively against matching the lore.

As a mechanical solution it's fine-ish.  Could be confusing to new players or to a DM who doesn't realize the interaction and stops after applying one line.  Lore-wise it does not model what I want.


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## James Gasik

While vulnerability is a bit strong, something I've done in the past is to slightly boost the damage of special materials against various creature types.  A truesilver (mithril) weapon can deal d4 extra damage to lycanthropes, an adamantine weapon can deal d4 extra damage to constructs, and so on.

Cold iron would do the same, but I don't really have "cold iron" in my games, since there really isn't any such thing (don't bring up cold forging, please), but I have other materials for that.  Similarly, I don't have silver weapons because they are a bit fragile, instead, as indicated above, there's a rare metal called truesilver (basically mithril).


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## Scars Unseen

One way you could mitigate the issue of vulnerabilities making things too easy would be to only have them do extra damage on a critical.


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## Sulicius

Some great discussion here so far, everyone.

As a relatively new DM (4 years of weekly 5e), the nonmagical weapon resistance was real problem for me. It started when I made a demon boss using the DMG rules, and as a low level monster with these resistances, it got shredded by my players. They all got a way to do magical weapon damage around level 5-6, and so all that power hidden behind b/p/s resistance was lost. I struggled to challenge my players by building encounters the way the rulebooks advised me.

Now I just max out the possible HP for enemies that are supposed to be any threat. My players are 19th level, and they have +3 weapons (when would they otherwise wield such artifacts?) and they are well optimized. They are not challenged by ancient dragons in their lairs. I have to do massive amounts of damage and double the HP of my bosses.

Magic weapons are just a toggle. There is nothing interesting about them. When I read about the struggles of older editions and their solutions, I can totally understand why the way things are as they are now. 5e wants to simplify things so players can spend more time rolling dice and less time doing calculations. With my high level players, they have all these bonuses and additional weapon dice and smite damage that it actually takes a little while to calculate all the damage. It is working like it is now, and the martials are almost overshadowing the spellcasters. So if you just play the game as it is now and use magic weapons, things sorta work out. Monsters do need a power boost. vincegetorix mentioned HP bloat, which is a numerical thing, but not a gameplay thing to me. There is a bigger problem with monsters not hitting hard enough compared to their CR, because all the "value" is pumped into their defenses, just so that they can get in a turn or two.

Do I want to calculate half of the damage more often? Maybe, it's not hard. Double it for vulnerabilities? Sure. Add bigger crit ranges, damage reductions or added dice? It would be more math, and I am not looking forward to it.

So the game as it is now works, sorta. Monsters are usually too weak as CR once intended it, even using Xanathar's rules. Resistance/immunity to nonmagic b/p/s damage will probably stay to show that some monsters can't be killed by farmers. It's more for flavour then, that these immunities and resistances are still there than for balance reasons. No cobbler will kill Orcus with a hammer. Also, DM's will have a mutiny on their hands if they don't hand out magical weapons soon enough. Published adventures tend to give magic weapons long before lvl5.

So what is the problem that we're trying to solve here? Do we want the game to become more complex and spend more time on what we already do now? Do we want flavor to have more effect on the rules? Do we want to make monsters stronger, as CR is a total shitshow? 

In any case, I have learnt a lot about combat balance in my current campaign, which will finish up soon. I have a couple of fun campaign ideas lined up, and some of them might improve with additional rules for resistances/vulnerabilities to certain materials. If my players are interested in additional mechanics, I will look into them. I like the concepts of Leatherhead a lot, and I might expand on them.


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## Asisreo

Charlaquin said:


> 4e already did this. Bringing Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing back for 5e was a symbolic gesture to appease the anti-4e crowd, and skeletons were the token “see? We promise this will actually matter sometimes!” monster. There are a few others, but they all exist solely to _gesture_ at the design space weapon damage types _could_ open up, so the folks who want that complexity don’t get _too_ upset by the fact that the design space isn’t really utilized anywhere else. Worked well enough for the playtest, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it gone next edition.



Hmmm...

I'm not sure they completely disregard damage types in the game as much as you think. I understand why you can get that impression, though. 

Thumbing through the Monster Manual, you can see that basically a creature resistant against one physical attack is resistant to all of them. But if you look at player-facing options, its not completely as all-encompassing. 

Barbarian's rage resists all physical damage, but Fiend warlock's resistance only let's you choose one. So if a warlock is expecting to fight, say, a snake, they can resist bludgeoning against their constrict or piercing against their bite but not both. 

Magic items are the same. It's pretty easy to get a physical resistance, but it's fairly hard to get all three of them without using up all your attunement. Which makes sense. Most of these resistances don't discriminate against magical/nonmagical and even if they did, most creatures use nonmagical damage. 

In other words, offensively, they're kinda monotonous but defensively, there is room for meaningful choices.


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## Deset Gled

Sulicius said:


> So what is the problem that we're trying to solve here? Do we want the game to become more complex and spend more time on what we already do now? Do we want flavor to have more effect on the rules? Do we want to make monsters stronger, as CR is a total shitshow?




The goal is simulation. 

In the case of a skeleton, the goal is to simulate the logic that a mace is a more effective weapon than a rapier against enemies without flesh. In the case of classical monsters like werewolves and vampires, the goal is to simulate the common literatary tropes that these monsters are killed with a certain type of material.


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## Sulicius

Deset Gled said:


> The goal is simulation.
> 
> In the case of a skeleton, the goal is to simulate the logic that a mace is a more effective weapon than a rapier against enemies without flesh. In the case of classical monsters like werewolves and vampires, the goal is to simulate the common literatary tropes that these monsters are killed with a certain type of material.



And how the rules work now is not sufficient? Should we change things as they are now?


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## DEFCON 1

My own guesstimation with regards to the B / P / S differentiations-- but then not doing much with them for resistances and such-- is that I've always felt the entire armor, weapon, and equipment sections were written as a first draft for playtest purposes but then never really iterated on past that.  None of them ever really got looked at again later on in the game's development and determined whether the bits they had were useful or fun or necessary.  Weapon types and resistances/vulnerabilities seems like one of those things.  As well as things like the goofiness of the spear and trident being the exact same weapon except one's Simple and the other is Martial and they cost differently for no reason.  And how the three levels of the armor chart have prices set up such that there's armors on it that will never be bought or used (like Ring mail).  These entire chapters really needed to be reviewed again and cleaned up before publication, and I'm only hoping someone actually does this for the 2024 edits, because it could certainly use it.  Making the differences between B, P & S meaningful would be one of those things.


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## Deset Gled

Sulicius said:


> And how the rules work now is not sufficient? Should we change things as they are now?




That was the premise that @Leatherhead started the thread with, yes.


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## TwoSix

Charlaquin said:


> How bizarre. Isn’t encouraging players to have different weapons for different situations and preventing over reliance on a singles favored weapon _the point_ of material resistances (and weapon damage type resistances, for that matter)?



The problem is that the idea of preparing different tactics and logistics for various challenges sounds like a fun part of the game, but runs into the in-table reality that people mostly just want to hit things.  And the players who really do like the preparation and logistical aspects of the game tend to play casters anyway.

Differentiating by equipment made more sense in the old-school eras because your ability to mechanically differentiate your characters was so limited; in modern games with multiple axes of customization it becomes much less necessary.  Also, characters having "signature weapons" became a thing when weapon specialization became a rule, and is pretty much prevalent for warrior types across the broad spectrum of fantasy media.

So yea, sounds good in theory, but way too many trends push against it being a thing.


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## payn

TwoSix said:


> The problem is that the idea of preparing different tactics and logistics for various challenges sounds like a fun part of the game, but runs into the in-table reality that people mostly just want to hit things.  And the players who really do like the preparation and logistical aspects of the game tend to play casters anyway.
> 
> Differentiating by equipment made more sense in the old-school eras because your ability to mechanically differentiate your characters was so limited; in modern games with multiple axes of customization it becomes much less necessary.  Also, characters having "signature weapons" became a thing when weapon specialization became a rule, and is pretty much prevalent for warrior types across the broad spectrum of fantasy media.
> 
> So yea, sounds good in theory, but way too many trends push against it being a thing.



A damn shame really. I greatly dislike the idea of having a signature weapon that the character is absolutely screwed if its ever disarmed and/or destroyed. I kind of miss the days equipment had unique properties, but going gonzo on a single weapon wasn't built into the mechanics. I prefer that to be loaded into character side progression and stay off equipment so it can do cool things.


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## Charlaquin

TwoSix said:


> The problem is that the idea of preparing different tactics and logistics for various challenges sounds like a fun part of the game, but runs into the in-table reality that people mostly just want to hit things.  And the players who really do like the preparation and logistical aspects of the game tend to play casters anyway.
> 
> Differentiating by equipment made more sense in the old-school eras because your ability to mechanically differentiate your characters was so limited; in modern games with multiple axes of customization it becomes much less necessary.  Also, characters having "signature weapons" became a thing when weapon specialization became a rule, and is pretty much prevalent for warrior types across the broad spectrum of fantasy media.
> 
> So yea, sounds good in theory, but way too many trends push against it being a thing.



Oh, I understand that. It just seemed odd in the context of 3e to 3.5. Course, it turns out the person I was responding to got it backwards, which makes more sense to me.


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## Undrave

Can I just say I think it's dumb that a Skeleton would take less damage from a slashing weapon? You're still swinging at it with a chunk of metal! Almost every weapon should, realistically, have the option to deal bludgeoning damage. Heck, even just holding a dagger and punching should be like clocking someone while holding a roll of quarter in your hand. 



Charlaquin said:


> How bizarre. Isn’t encouraging players to have different weapons for different situations and preventing over reliance on a singles favored weapon _the point_ of material resistances (and weapon damage type resistances, for that matter)?






Staffan said:


> This is what gets you the "golfbag" warrior – a concept I personally like where a professional warrior would use different weapons for different foes ("the right tool for the job"), but I recognize that many didn't like it. Then you get Pathfinder 1 which adds in the concept that certain pluses count as different materials as well.






Sulicius said:


> Magic weapons are just a toggle. There is nothing interesting about them.




See, I like the _concept_ of a warrior with multiple options that brings them out when it's more favourable... but as a game mechanic in D&D *it's REALLY *_*boring*_. As Sulicius say, it's a toggle. It only comes up once in a while, if you have a magic weapon it all disappear, and the best thing it can do is have you waste a turn switching weapons.

In the end, it's not a true decision point, it's not in any way more interesting that just choosing between a club (single handed, d4), a short sword (single handed, d6) or a rapier (single handed, d8). If there's no incentive to pick the lower damage weapon then why would you EVER do that? That's not a choice, it's a speed bump. Itdoesn't make the experience of attacking with a weapon any more rich or engaging so it's essentially a wasted piece of design.

I don't know the solution to that, but I'm sure there's a way to make weapon types matter. 



Sulicius said:


> So what is the problem that we're trying to solve here? Do we want the game to become more complex and spend more time on what we already do now? Do we want flavor to have more effect on the rules? Do we want to make monsters stronger, as CR is a total shitshow?




That's a good question. Is there more to this weapon damage thing and the associated resistance that's not just nostalgia pandering? Is there a game design reason it's there?


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## Undrave

TwoSix said:


> The problem is that the idea of preparing different tactics and logistics for various challenges sounds like a fun part of the game, but runs into the in-table reality that people mostly just want to hit things. And the players who really do like the preparation and logistical aspects of the game tend to play casters anyway.



That and the game mechanic doesn't actually reward you for thinking this way beyond a few corner cases, with the most common being "enemy be way over there=use ranged weapon I'm not as good with"

Even a Fighter's fighting style barely interacts with weapon properties.


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## Laurefindel

TwoSix said:


> The problem is that the idea of preparing different tactics and logistics for various challenges sounds like a fun part of the game, but runs into the in-table reality that people mostly just want to hit things.  And the players who really do like the preparation and logistical aspects of the game tend to play casters anyway.
> 
> Differentiating by equipment made more sense in the old-school eras because your ability to mechanically differentiate your characters was so limited; in modern games with multiple axes of customization it becomes much less necessary.  Also, characters having "signature weapons" became a thing when weapon specialization became a rule, and is pretty much prevalent for warrior types across the broad spectrum of fantasy media.
> 
> So yea, sounds good in theory, but way too many trends push against it being a thing.



To be fair, players enjoying the logistical aspect of the game tend to play casters because we're removing every logistical decision-making from martials...

Personally, I like signature weapons both as a player and as a DM, but I accept (and ask that my players expect) that there will be times when that signature weapon won't be part of the solution to a problem at hand. I'm also fond of spells or alchemical components that can transform the properties of a weapon temporarily. But vulnerabilities could also come in different format than just the material or esoteric property of a weapon. As mentioned earlier, vulnerabilities could take more poetic/folkloric significations such as "while inside a circle" or "under moonlight at full moon", or "as long as the sun shines", or "while bathing in the high tide", or whatever.


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## Charlaquin

Undrave said:


> Can I just say I think it's dumb that a Skeleton would take less damage from a slashing weapon? You're still swinging at it with a chunk of metal! Almost every weapon should, realistically, have the option to deal bludgeoning damage. Heck, even just holding a dagger and punching should be like clocking someone while holding a roll of quarter in your hand.



I agree. If you wanted to really get into the weeds with it, you could give each weapon a damage rating with each damage type. Maybe a longsword does d8 slashing or d8 piercing but only d6 bludgeoning, for example. But that would be a lot of extra details for not much benefit. Personally, I rule that you can use a weapon to deal whatever damage type makes sense for the weapon. If doing so would require you to use it in a manner contrary to its design, it might count as an improvised weapon.


Undrave said:


> See, I like the _concept_ of a warrior with multiple options that brings them out when it's more favourable... but as a game mechanic in D&D *it's REALLY *_*boring*_. As Sulicius say, it's a toggle. It only comes up once in a while, if you have a magic weapon it all disappear, and the best thing it can do is have you waste a turn switching weapons.
> 
> In the end, it's not a true decision point, it's not in any way more interesting that just choosing between a club (single handed, d4), a short sword (single handed, d6) or a rapier (single handed, d8). If there's no incentive to pick the lower damage weapon then why would you EVER do that? That's not a choice, it's a speed bump. Itdoesn't make the experience of attacking with a weapon any more rich or engaging so it's essentially a wasted piece of design.
> 
> I don't know the solution to that, but I'm sure there's a way to make weapon types matter.



I agree with this as well. I think damage types _can_ be made to matter, but it takes a lot more adventure design work. Just slapping some weaknesses and/or resistances on some monsters and calling it a day results in what you describe here. To make damage types really matter, you have to design adventures like The Witcher 3. Monsters have to be like puzzles, where brute-forcing your way past their resistances is very nearly futile, and finding their weaknesses is a quest in and of itself.


Undrave said:


> That's a good question. Is there more to this weapon damage thing and the associated resistance that's not just nostalgia pandering? Is there a game design reason it's there?



In D&D I think it’s mostly nostalgia pandering. You could make it matter, but it would take a lot of adventure design work and what you would end up with would look very different than your typical high-adventure D&D campaign.


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## Charlaquin

Laurefindel said:


> To be fair, players enjoying the logistical aspect of the game tend to play casters because we're removing every logistical decision-making from martials...



So much this. As a player, I’m absolutely the sort who prefers that kind of logistical play, and I generally find martial characters _conceptually_ more interesting, in part because they should theoretically have to do more of that type of thinking to compensate for lacking the versatility of magic. But the actual mechanics don’t bear that out. The need for logistical thinking has been almost entirely streamlined out of the game, and even casters mostly don’t have to worry about it with neo-vancian casting.



Laurefindel said:


> Personally, I like signature weapons both as a player and as a DM, but I accept (and ask that my players expect) that there will be times when that signature weapon won't be part of the solution to a problem at hand. I'm also fond of spells or alchemical components that can transform the properties of a weapon temporarily.



Heck yeah! Crafting special oils to coat your sword with or whatever sounds like my kind of game!



Laurefindel said:


> But vulnerabilities could also come in different format than just the material or esoteric property of a weapon. As mentioned earlier, vulnerabilities could take more poetic/folkloric significations such as "while inside a circle" or "under moonlight at full moon", or "as long as the sun shines", or "while bathing in the high tide", or whatever.



Yeeeeeeeessssssss!!!


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## Staffan

Undrave said:


> Can I just say I think it's dumb that a Skeleton would take less damage from a slashing weapon? You're still swinging at it with a chunk of metal! Almost every weapon should, realistically, have the option to deal bludgeoning damage. Heck, even just holding a dagger and punching should be like clocking someone while holding a roll of quarter in your hand.



The idea is that the damage from a sword to a large degree is the result of a sharp object slicing into your soft flesh and organs (for the moment we're ignoring the debate about hit points being meat or skill), and if you don't have soft flesh or organs the sword is going to be less effective – so, half damage.

If you wanted to be more realistic you could look at a game like the Swedish RPG Eon, where most weapons can do either slashing, crushing, or piercing damage, but many do significantly more damage of one type. For example, a spear deals basic damage (a calculated value depending on your stats, usually 2d6 to 4d6) +1 when used to deal crushing or slashing damage, but basic damage +3d6 piercing. So unless there's a really good reason to do otherwise, you're going to deal piercing damage with your spear.


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## EzekielRaiden

Asisreo said:


> Hmmm...
> 
> I'm not sure they completely disregard damage types in the game as much as you think. I understand why you can get that impression, though.
> 
> Thumbing through the Monster Manual, you can see that basically a creature resistant against one physical attack is resistant to all of them. But if you look at player-facing options, its not completely as all-encompassing.
> 
> Barbarian's rage resists all physical damage, but Fiend warlock's resistance only let's you choose one. So if a warlock is expecting to fight, say, a snake, they can resist bludgeoning against their constrict or piercing against their bite but not both.



That...would seem to be even less representation than the MMs. Based on what sources are available to me (which are reasonably comprehensive), as far as I can tell there are less than two dozen monsters in all of 5e that have only partial physical resistances (that is, they resist at least one of those three types, and do not resist at least one of the other two)--and that's counting unique named creatures that are just copying the base form (e.g. there's apparently a flaming skull NPC of some kind, that inherits those characteristics).

To be represented in all of _one_ class seems even less relevant than it would otherwise be. You'd have gotten better results from citing the fact that a large number of _spells_ do at least one of those types of damage. Meaning...spellcasters are now more deeply-invested in the _physical_ damage types than melee characters are. Yet another case of "if you want to do it right, be a spellcaster," le sigh.



Asisreo said:


> Magic items are the same. It's pretty easy to get a physical resistance, but it's fairly hard to get all three of them without using up all your attunement. Which makes sense. Most of these resistances don't discriminate against magical/nonmagical and even if they did, most creatures use nonmagical damage.
> 
> In other words, offensively, they're kinda monotonous but defensively, there is room for meaningful choices.



The bigger problem, of course, is that attuning a magic item only to get resistance to one damage type is _a huge waste_. Like, you've shown that the limit is present, but because of that limit, almost no one is going to seek out that benefit. There are _dramatically_ better benefits than "maybe taking less damage some of the time."


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## EzekielRaiden

Staffan said:


> The idea is that the damage from a sword to a large degree is the result of a sharp object slicing into your soft flesh and organs (for the moment we're ignoring the debate about hit points being meat or skill), and if you don't have soft flesh or organs the sword is going to be less effective – so, half damage.



Which just emphasizes how unrealistic many calls for realism are. A crowbar should not have _more_ ability to break bones than a sturdy, relatively wide-bladed rapier _solely because it lacks a sharp edge_, yet that's basically what "skeletons resist slashing damage and are vulnerable to piercing damage." The "realism" of "oh, see, this does damage mostly by cutting or poking, and skeletons have nothing to poke or cut" is undercut by the equally-valid realism of "...it's a long metallic rod, _who cares if it's sharp_, the force of the swing is still being carried along a lever-arm..."


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## payn

EzekielRaiden said:


> Which just emphasizes how unrealistic many calls for realism are. A crowbar should not have _more_ ability to break bones than a sturdy, relatively wide-bladed rapier _solely because it lacks a sharp edge_, yet that's basically what "skeletons resist slashing damage and are vulnerable to piercing damage." The "realism" of "oh, see, this does damage mostly by cutting or poking, and skeletons have nothing to poke or cut" is undercut by the equally-valid realism of "...it's a long metallic rod, _who cares if it's sharp_, the force of the swing is still being carried along a lever-arm..."



I get kinda what you are saying, but I would so rather be hit with the blunt side of a rapier than a crowbar.


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## Deset Gled

EzekielRaiden said:


> Which just emphasizes how unrealistic many calls for realism are. A crowbar should not have _more_ ability to break bones than a sturdy, relatively wide-bladed rapier _solely because it lacks a sharp edge_, yet that's basically what "skeletons resist slashing damage and are vulnerable to piercing damage." The "realism" of "oh, see, this does damage mostly by cutting or poking, and skeletons have nothing to poke or cut" is undercut by the equally-valid realism of "...it's a long metallic rod, _who cares if it's sharp_, the force of the swing is still being carried along a lever-arm..."




Me.  I care.

There's a reason no one else in this thread has used the world "realism".  We understand that RPGs are an abstraction.  Some attacks do more damage than others.  Damage type vs resistance is one way to model that.  So are the damage die of the weapon, AC of the target, class abilities, and attributes of the wielder.

But even though these mechanics are abstract, they can also be a simulation.  The damage type/resistance model is a valuable way to numerically describe the narrative that a knight will generally do more damage to a piece of inanimate bone by using a heavy crowbar than a flimsy foil designed to poke between links of chainmail.  And the same model can be applied to describe why a werewolf is extra hurt by silver.  Or why a fire elemental takes damage from water but not from a sword.


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## CubicsRube

It's worth remembering that the witcher, a huge IP has as a core element 2 different weapons and a variety of oils. It's far from the golfbag warrior a relatively few vocal people complained about and a very many people enjoy this style of play.

I have the TTRPG and am sorely tempted to run it for my next campaign.


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## Asisreo

EzekielRaiden said:


> That...would seem to be even less representation than the MMs. Based on what sources are available to me (which are reasonably comprehensive), as far as I can tell there are less than two dozen monsters in all of 5e that have only partial physical resistances (that is, they resist at least one of those three types, and do not resist at least one of the other two)--and that's counting unique named creatures that are just copying the base form (e.g. there's apparently a flaming skull NPC of some kind, that inherits those characteristics).
> 
> To be represented in all of _one_ class seems even less relevant than it would otherwise be. You'd have gotten better results from citing the fact that a large number of _spells_ do at least one of those types of damage. Meaning...spellcasters are now more deeply-invested in the _physical_ damage types than melee characters are. Yet another case of "if you want to do it right, be a spellcaster," le sigh.
> 
> 
> The bigger problem, of course, is that attuning a magic item only to get resistance to one damage type is _a huge waste_. Like, you've shown that the limit is present, but because of that limit, almost no one is going to seek out that benefit. There are _dramatically_ better benefits than "maybe taking less damage some of the time."



Hmm...you may have a point. The separation has helped me as a DM because I often have homebrew where the distinction is very important.


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## EzekielRaiden

Deset Gled said:


> Me.  I care.
> 
> There's a reason no one else in this thread has used the world "realism".



Um...


Undrave said:


> Almost every weapon should, *realistically*, have the option to deal bludgeoning damage.





Staffan said:


> If you wanted to be more *realistic* you could look at a game like the Swedish RPG Eon, where most weapons can do either slashing, crushing, or piercing damage, but many do significantly more damage of one type.



Unless you're going to go for the pedantic requirement that it be the literal actual word "realism" and exclude the adjectival form "realistic" or the adverbial "realistically," purely because they're spelled differently, no, I'm not the only person using this term.



Deset Gled said:


> We understand that RPGs are an abstraction.  Some attacks do more damage than others.  Damage type vs resistance is one way to model that.  So are the damage die of the weapon, AC of the target, class abilities, and attributes of the wielder.
> 
> But even though these mechanics are abstract, they can also be a simulation.  The damage type/resistance model is a valuable way to numerically describe the narrative that a knight will generally do more damage to a piece of inanimate bone by using a heavy crowbar than a flimsy foil designed to poke between links of chainmail.  And the same model can be applied to describe why a werewolf is extra hurt by silver.  Or why a fire elemental takes damage from water but not from a sword.



I'm not challenging the fundamental model. I'm challenging the idea that it is useful to narrowly specify physical damage types in this way.

I find it both more useful and more interesting to model weapon differences in tags or keywords. E.g., perhaps "bludgeoning" type weapons (clubs, maces, hammers, staves, maybe flails) have some kind of property in common that makes them more useful against certain creatures. Spitballing, it could be something that mitigates generic physical damage resistance (e.g. they all have "Relentless 2," which means they ignore 2 points of damage resistance on each attack, thus favoring repeat attackers rather than precision attackers). Or perhaps weapons with the Blunt tag do extra damage against creatures with the Fragile tag. This then sets the stage for potentially a whole host of interesting tag interactions between weapons, characters, and monsters.


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## Leatherhead

I think maybe this discussion needs a refocus.

What do you think of "Carrot" VS "Stick" design when it comes to dealing with monster weakness?

"Stick" design means everything else is made worse, and the abusing weakness lets you perform as normal.

"Carrot" design means that you can function normally, but there is also a way to perform better.


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## Rabulias

Leatherhead said:


> "Stick" design means everything else is made worse, and the abusing weakness lets you perform as normal.
> 
> "Carrot" design means that you can faction normally, but there is also a way to perform better.



Both options in some combination would give the widest range of effects, at the probable cost of more complexity.


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## Stalker0

Staffan said:


> Then you get Pathfinder 1 which adds in the concept that certain pluses count as different materials as well.



To add context here, Pathfinder had an optional variant where each plus of magic item could also be considered a certain material for the purpose of bypassing DR. A +3 weapon counted as silver, +4 as adamantine, and +5 counted as evil/good/chaos/law (as needed). So a +5 weapon effectively bypassed pretty much every type of DR except epic.

Ultimately to me, DR serves three purposes:

To create an interesting challenge to the players.
As a "riff raff" negator, ensures that hordes of commoners can't just beat the monster.
Weakens/nullifies summoned type creatures, who often don't have the same ability to negate DR as the party does.

The problem with damage resistance (half damage) is its often not that great for the second purpose. For example, as strong as the Tarrasque is, 1000 just absolute shlub archers (no bonuses or anything) will still do over 100 damage a round to it. 1000 archers might sound like a lot, but against a creature that a party of 20th level characters is supposed to have trouble against, its really not, any kingdom worth their salt should be able to supply that force easily against such a legendary monster.

The "damage threshold" concept is a much better fit for that purpose, it makes a lot of monsters "invincible" against your armies, which then requires specialized heroes to do the job. The damage threshold is also nice because unless its quite high, it doesn't come into play for a lot of PCs, and so you don't have to add in extra math. So I'm a big fan of damage thresholds on those key legendary type monsters.


The second issue is around an interesting challenge to the players, and this is where the binary problem comes in. Once players have a magic weapon (which in most games is going to happen), it throws off the math on a whole slew of creatures (as apparantely CRs do not assume magic weapons, and so high level creatures are supposedly much tougher than they are in actual practice). I much prefer gradients, monster X needs a +1 weapon, monster Y needs a +3. I am okay with material DRs if they are seperate from magic, I think magic or silver is silly. That said, I also think damage IMMUNITY needs to be rarer. The fact that werewolves are immune from nonsilver/magic damage is kind of crazy when you consider their CR, they should just be resistant. True immunity should be the purview of high CR monsters, where a party should be expected to have many ways to deal with it.

I also think the "slashing, piercing, and blugeoning" damage is quite a mouthful and very silly. Just add a new category of "weapon damage". Keeping your blugeoning or slashing for specific monsters like a skeleton that need them, but otherwise just say weapon damage. It will save a lot of real estate on the page considering how many monsters have it.


Lastly, I agree vulnerability needs a new look. Its so powerful that WOTC is terrified to use their own condition, and so it needs a tuning down. Later monster books have shown us a glimpse of what that might look like, where a vulnerability doesn't add more damage but applies a certain condition or penalty to the monster.


----------



## EzekielRaiden

Leatherhead said:


> I think maybe this discussion needs a refocus.
> 
> What do you think of "Carrot" VS "Stick" design when it comes to dealing with monster weakness?
> 
> "Stick" design means everything else is made worse, and the abusing weakness lets you perform as normal.
> 
> "Carrot" design means that you can faction normally, but there is also a way to perform better.



As a rule, I favor carrot design with almost everything. I'm a huge believer in the power of "yes," and generally prefer to see subtractive/penalty-based things that are used as costs for failure or accepted consequences, rather than inherent and default states. Note, _general_ preference, not universal.

Hence, I prefer things like the 4e way of encouraging people to consider various class/race combos. Not by _penalizing_ off-archetype choices (e.g., half-orcs with a Cha penalty), but by giving opt-in _bonuses_ to on-archetype choices (e.g. dragonborn and tieflings having cool opt-in Paladin features, like racial feats). I prefer a baseline of general, decent competence; from there, different classes, races, etc. have various quantities and qualities to throw at having an edge of some kind. The ideal, for me, is where on-archetype choices (e.g. "Dragonborn Paladin") get you an edge within that archetype but leave you weaker outside it unless you spend resources to make up the difference later, while off-archetype choices (such as "Halfling Paladin") start you out as a pretty diverse character, and you can choose to get an edge in any of those things later.

That's why I gave the example I did earlier. Something like: "all weapons work on skeletons, but Skeletons have the Fragile tag, which means you take the better of two damage rolls if using a weapon with the Bashing tag."


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## jmartkdr2

Leatherhead said:


> I think maybe this discussion needs a refocus.
> 
> What do you think of "Carrot" VS "Stick" design when it comes to dealing with monster weakness?
> 
> "Stick" design means everything else is made worse, and the abusing weakness lets you perform as normal.
> 
> "Carrot" design means that you can function normally, but there is also a way to perform better.



I think it's a tough nut to crack for a game like DnD because we want it to be optional.

Some players are going to want to encounter a puzzle with most monsters where they need to figure out what weapon to use before they attack to do so with maximum effectiveness. Other players won't want to deal with that - or will simply always want to use their mother's sword and be effective that way. And these two types want to play together at the same table, and be about equally effective. So you really can't use the carrot or the weapon-switcher will outperform. And the stick just sometimes punishes the weapon-switcher if the don't solve the puzzle. There's technically a balance point, but it's when the difference between the right weapon and another weapon is negligible. 

Also it's a really tough puzzle to crack in a non-visual medium because you have a much harder time burying clues in the text, especially since the text will be re-written by the dm on the fly so it will often be left unsaid - unless the players metagame of course, which is how most games deal with these sorts of puzzles.

(What I mean is: either there are  certain keywords that indicate what weapon to use - ie "bony" means use bludgeoning - in which case players will learn the keywords early and then the puzzle is gone, or there's no consistent way to know, in which case the 'puzzle' becomes 'guess randomly until you stumble upon the answer. And that assumes the players don't know any of the monsters, even if they dm themselves. Basically imagine if every monster was a troll.)


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## Undrave

Leatherhead said:


> I think maybe this discussion needs a refocus.
> 
> What do you think of "Carrot" VS "Stick" design when it comes to dealing with monster weakness?
> 
> "Stick" design means everything else is made worse, and the abusing weakness lets you perform as normal.
> 
> "Carrot" design means that you can function normally, but there is also a way to perform better.




Personally I prefer the carrot. And I also think weaknesses should be more interesting than Pokémon type matchups or the Fire Emblem triangle.


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## James Gasik

Well most people wouldn't like too much complexity- it's not like we can go back to 1e's "weapon vs. armor class" modifiers.


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## Undrave

James Gasik said:


> Well most people wouldn't like too much complexity- it's not like we can go back to 1e's "weapon vs. armor class" modifiers.



Weaknesses should just be revealed through narration and visual design. Like a glowy bit on a NES boss. Characters should be able to observe a creature and deduce weak points and then come up with a way to exploit that weakness.


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## GMforPowergamers

Staffan said:


> I'm pretty sure I've seen one developer mention a few years back (might have been Mearls, but I'm not sure) that the reason there are so few vulnerabilities is that they make things too easy. Doubling damage is much too strong to use other than in very special circumstances.



when I make monsters I often make "Immune to non magic, resistant to magic BUT special material over comes"


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## Seramus

I have a slight dislike of 'magic weapons' being a universal unlock. At the same time, I feel like it creates an expectation that most martials will need to have a magic weapon by X level, or it becomes a strange tax against martial characters compared to casters who can cantrip around it (if they selected the right cantrips).

So I would just throw out the granularity of tiers. Stick with thematic things. This monster has resistance to damage unless it has been hit by Silver within the last round. That monster has resistance to damage unless it has been hit by Fire within the last round. This third monster has resistance to damage unless it has been hit by sunlight or running water within the last round. This monster has resistance to damage unless it has been hit by Cold Iron within the last round.

Resistant to WHAT damage? *All of it.*

Also allows for nice moments like stabbing the werewolf with a silver dinner knife to break the resistance, allowing the party to pile on for a round, without requiring everyone to have/use silver.


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## billd91

Stalker0 said:


> The problem with damage resistance (half damage) is its often not that great for the second purpose. For example, as strong as the Tarrasque is, 1000 just absolute shlub archers (no bonuses or anything) will still do over 100 damage a round to it. 1000 archers might sound like a lot, but against a creature that a party of 20th level characters is supposed to have trouble against, its really not, any kingdom worth their salt should be able to supply that force easily against such a legendary monster.
> 
> The "damage threshold" concept is a much better fit for that purpose, it makes a lot of monsters "invincible" against your armies, which then requires specialized heroes to do the job. The damage threshold is also nice because unless its quite high, it doesn't come into play for a lot of PCs, and so you don't have to add in extra math. So I'm a big fan of damage thresholds on those key legendary type monsters.



To a certain degree, and from a more simulationist approach, that makes sense. However, it does lead to problems with varying degrees of damage output and the “must be x tall to play“ problem. If damage is halved, everyone in the party can still participate effectively. If it’s a threshold, anyone usually under the threshold is ineffective. And that’s been a problem, historically.


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## Stalker0

billd91 said:


> To a certain degree, and from a more simulationist approach, that makes sense. However, it does lead to problems with varying degrees of damage output and the “must be x tall to play“ problem. If damage is halved, everyone in the party can still participate effectively. If it’s a threshold, anyone usually under the threshold is ineffective. And that’s been a problem, historically.



Honestly even a 5 threshold does a lot to solve the "mass archer" problem, and a threshold of 10 eliminates it. By the time PCs are fighting creatures that have a 10 threshold, I have rarely seen dealing 10 damage in a swing being a big problem.


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## EzekielRaiden

Seramus said:


> I have a slight dislike of 'magic weapons' being a universal unlock. At the same time, I feel like it creates an expectation that most martials will need to have a magic weapon by X level, or it becomes a strange tax against martial characters compared to casters who can cantrip around it (if they selected the right cantrips).
> 
> So I would just throw out the granularity of tiers. Stick with thematic things. This monster has resistance to damage unless it has been hit by Silver within the last round. That monster has resistance to damage unless it has been hit by Fire within the last round. This third monster has resistance to damage unless it has been hit by sunlight or running water within the last round. This monster has resistance to damage unless it has been hit by Cold Iron within the last round.
> 
> Resistant to WHAT damage? *All of it.*
> 
> Also allows for nice moments like stabbing the werewolf with a silver dinner knife to break the resistance, allowing the party to pile on for a round, without requiring everyone to have/use silver.



The two main problems I can see with this route are:

1. People aren't going to want EVERY monster to be a perfect binary "no resistances AT ALL"/"resistant to EVERYTHING." If literally all monsters with resistance work that way, then fights devolve into "hunt for the weakness," because this is _literally_ meme-tier "FIGHTER DOUBLES DAMAGE WITH _ONE WEIRD TRICK_ (MONSTERS HATE HIM)" stuff. Every fight becomes either relief that these creatures _don't_ have resistance, or a slog of scrambling to find the resistance, or a cakewalk because you remember the resistance.

2. There are plenty of monsters that this doesn't make sense for, with the humble skeleton being a great example. Why should a skeleton be _stupidly durable_ against _literally all_ forms of attack unless hit with a bashing weapon, at which point (for whatever reason) thunderbolts and lightning become fully effective again? Your examples of werewolves, or similar things like powerful fae (cold iron) or vampires (sunlight) etc. are solid, but they break down if you have to consider small, weak creatures that should still have some kind of benefit. (E.g., do pixies or will-o'-the-wisps still have the tankiness of a raging Bear Totem barbarian just because they're fae who haven't been hit by cold iron?)

You get a huge amount of simplicity from this method. But I think the price paid for such simplicity, in player frustration and in flattening things to a hard binary, is not worth the prize.


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## Seramus

EzekielRaiden said:


> Every fight becomes either relief that these creatures _don't_ have resistance, or a slog of scrambling to find the resistance, or a cakewalk because you remember the resistance.



That's already how things are right now, with magic weapons being the weakness (or just magic in general).


EzekielRaiden said:


> 2. There are plenty of monsters that this doesn't make sense for, with the humble skeleton being a great example. Why should a skeleton be _stupidly durable_ against _literally all_ forms of attack unless hit with a bashing weapon, at which point (for whatever reason) thunderbolts and lightning become fully effective again? Your examples of werewolves, or similar things like powerful fae (cold iron) or vampires (sunlight) etc. are solid, but they break down if you have to consider small, weak creatures that should still have some kind of benefit. (E.g., do pixies or will-o'-the-wisps still have the tankiness of a raging Bear Totem barbarian just because they're fae who haven't been hit by cold iron?)



I have no problem with Vulnerability still existing. It's a great option for things like Skeletons!!


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## EzekielRaiden

Seramus said:


> That's already how things are right now, with magic weapons being the weakness (or just magic in general).



No, it's not--it's the exact reverse, actually. Magic weapons currently are a universal _key_ that opens every lock, no matter how hard it is to open the lock normally or how hard it is to bypass the lock without opening it. You have proposed an _unbreakable universal lock_, which requires one _specific_ key, depending on the nature of the monster in question.

A universal key makes life easy for people wanting to open the lock--aka players. A universal and unbreakable lock makes things _significantly_ more difficult for players. That is the core of my criticism here. Players are punished unless and until they discover the key to open the lock.



Seramus said:


> I have no problem with Vulnerability still existing. It's a great option for things like Skeletons!!



How can you have vulnerability if the target is resistant to _all_ damage?


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## Seramus

EzekielRaiden said:


> No, it's not--it's the exact reverse, actually. Magic weapons currently are a universal _key_ that opens every lock, no matter how hard it is to open the lock normally or how hard it is to bypass the lock without opening it. You have proposed an _unbreakable universal lock_, which requires one _specific_ key, depending on the nature of the monster in question.
> 
> A universal key makes life easy for people wanting to open the lock--aka players. A universal and unbreakable lock makes things _significantly_ more difficult for players. That is the core of my criticism here. Players are punished unless and until they discover the key to open the lock.



I consider magic weapons being a universal key to be a con, so that isn't a problem for me. I imagine some groups might rate that increase in difficulty as "significantly" more difficult, but I rate it as "slightly" more difficult assuming your players are the least bit interested in the thematics of the monsters they fight.


EzekielRaiden said:


> How can you have vulnerability if the target is resistant to _all_ damage?



A skeleton is better represented by Vulnerability alone, instead of Resistance to damage until it's interrupted by a thematic weakness. I wouldn't use both on a skeleton.


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## EzekielRaiden

Seramus said:


> I consider magic weapons being a universal key to be a con, so that isn't a problem for me. I imagine some groups might rate that increase in difficulty as "significantly" more difficult, but I rate it as "slightly" more difficult assuming your players are the least bit interested in the thematics of the monsters they fight.



That would be fair if this were the only means to achieve that end. It is not. As a result, you're going to have a lot of very frustrated casual players who don't understand why the vast majority of enemies need to be like trolls, where everything they do is heavily mitigated unless they acquire and use the one specific weakness of each and every such creature. Making all monsters that have resistance instead resist absolutely everything unless you unlock the ability to do normal damage for a turn would, 100% guaranteed, drive away more players than it pleases.



Seramus said:


> A skeleton is better represented by Vulnerability alone, instead of Resistance to damage until it's interrupted by a thematic weakness. I wouldn't use both on a skeleton.



Okay, well, your original presentation made it sound a lot more like everything that has resistance right now would instead be upgraded to resist all damage unless it got turned off. Skeletons were not an ideal example, as they have only an immunity rather than resistance, but consider the sheer number of things that have a resistance in 5e: hundreds of distinct creatures have some kind of resistance already, apparently more than 20% of all monsters yet published.

Turning this around: You are saying we should double the HP of every creature in the game that has resistance, and then let people find a way to double their own damage for a time if they happen to be able to find the right trick. Most folks are going to feel punished for not knowing which keys they need to use. They are not going to feel excited by the idea that any given threat might be made significantly harder just because they don't know how to pierce its resistance.


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## Seramus

EzekielRaiden said:


> That would be fair if this were the only means to achieve that end. It is not. As a result, you're going to have a lot of very frustrated casual players who don't understand why the vast majority of enemies need to be like trolls, where everything they do is heavily mitigated unless they acquire and use the one specific weakness of each and every such creature. Making all monsters that have resistance instead resist absolutely everything unless you unlock the ability to do normal damage for a turn would, 100% guaranteed, drive away more players than it pleases.
> 
> Okay, well, your original presentation made it sound a lot more like everything that has resistance right now would instead be upgraded to resist all damage unless it got turned off. Skeletons were not an ideal example, as they have only an immunity rather than resistance, but consider the sheer number of things that have a resistance in 5e: hundreds of distinct creatures have some kind of resistance already, apparently more than 20% of all monsters yet published.



I never suggested all monsters that have resistance instead resist absolutely everything. I think it should be judged on a monster by monster basis, and only assigned to monsters where such resistance would be highly thematic or appropriate to the lore. In other cases, vulnerability is the most appropriate tool to use. And in some, nothing at all.


EzekielRaiden said:


> Turning this around: You are saying we should double the HP of every creature in the game that has resistance, and then let people find a way to double their own damage for a time if they happen to be able to find the right trick. Most folks are going to feel punished for not knowing which keys they need to use. They are not going to feel excited by the idea that any given threat might be made significantly harder just because they don't know how to pierce its resistance.



If your players are going to feel *PUNISHED* because they have to find some silver for a werewolf, or some sunlight for a wraith, or some cold iron for an archfey, then I don't want them anywhere near my table. Gods forbid they ever fight a Lich, or have to find a McGuffin to defeat a BBEG. Full scale rebellion, no doubt!


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## UngeheuerLich

Seramus said:


> If your players are going to feel *PUNISHED* because they have to find some silver for a werewolf, or some sunlight for a wraith, or some cold iron for an archfey, then I don't want them anywhere near my table. Gods forbid they ever fight a Lich, or have to find a McGuffin to defeat a BBEG. Full scale rebellion, no doubt!



The problem always is that such things sound more fun in theory than in application. There is also the problem with in and out game knowledge. Yes, I know godd players can seperate and yada yada, but reality is, if you have fireball and lightning bolt and face something vulnerable to lightning, good players also find reasons why in that situation using ligntning bolt was the correct choice because of the setup of combat, not because of the vulnerability.
And even if there is no such reason, how should you decide? By choice using the wrong spell? Roll a die, which spell to use?

So vulnerability and resitances are either widely known in the world on a common monster (trolls are vulnerable to fire and acid as told in many tales (history or nature check DC 5 to 10), or it is a rare monster players only face once in their career. Or the DM just switches up resistance sometimes to confuse players, when it boils down to either luck or a puzzle to be solved.

So in the end, it is only fun if the players are attacked, forced back because they can't really win and then aquire knowledge to defeat the monster in the end.


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## James Gasik

Since there's no set way for player characters to know what monster abilities are, it is a problem when you create monsters that are only vulnerable to specific tactics.  I'm reminded of the old D&D golems, where they were flat out immune to magic, save for a specific list of spells.

Is your Wizard going to know what those spells are?  Will they even have them prepared should you come across a clay golem?  "What do you mean I need a magical bludgeoning weapon to even hurt it?"

I sure as the heck want weapon choices to matter more, but there's a flipside.  What do you do when you encounter a werewolf and you don't have silver?  You can't run from the thing- it's probably faster than you.  A non-magical character in this position has NO options.

And you know, those are the guys who are going to interact with a system supporting weapon choices the most.


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## EzekielRaiden

Seramus said:


> If your players are going to feel *PUNISHED* because they have to find some silver for a werewolf, or some sunlight for a wraith, or some cold iron for an archfey, then I don't want them anywhere near my table. Gods forbid they ever fight a Lich, or have to find a McGuffin to defeat a BBEG. Full scale rebellion, no doubt!



How is that not what it is, objectively?

You are penalizing--punishing--all forms of damage unless and until the key to unlock normal damage output is found. That's literally what is happening here. You paint it as some kind of horrible affront to view it this way, but that's objectively what is going on. What other purpose is there for "literally everything you do is half wasted unless you find the One Weird Trick first"? It penalizes any action which does not exploit the key first.


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## Deset Gled

James Gasik said:


> Since there's no set way for player characters to know what monster abilities are, it is a problem when you create monsters that are only vulnerable to specific tactics.  I'm reminded of the old D&D golems, where they were flat out immune to magic, save for a specific list of spells.
> 
> ...
> 
> I sure as the heck want weapon choices to matter more, but there's a flipside.  What do you do when you encounter a werewolf and you don't have silver?  You can't run from the thing- it's probably faster than you.  A non-magical character in this position has NO options.




Why is there no way for characters to learn about monsters? Why is retreating impossible? These are both common in my experience.


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## James Gasik

Oh well, first, 5e doesn't have built in monster knowledge mechanics.  And as a result, I've played at several tables that simply don't allow you know these things.

Second, how do you retreat from a werewolf trying to kill you?  If I'm in melee range with the thing, most races move at 30 feet.  I can disengage without being hit again and move 30 feet.  Or dash and take a free hit to move 60 feet.

In wolf form, the werewolf moves at 40 feet.  If it wants to chase me, I can't get out of combat with it unless the DM rules that I can (I come up with a trick).

My only hope is that someone has a spell that will slow the creature down.


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## Seramus

EzekielRaiden said:


> How is that not what it is, objectively?
> 
> You are penalizing--punishing--all forms of damage unless and until the key to unlock normal damage output is found. That's literally what is happening here. You paint it as some kind of horrible affront to view it this way, but that's objectively what is going on. What other purpose is there for "literally everything you do is half wasted unless you find the One Weird Trick first"? It penalizes any action which does not exploit the key first.



I think the real issue is our vastly different perspective on how "punishing" such a change would be. Unless I am misunderstanding your position, you seem to think it would be a heinous slog. I think it would be a mild inconvenience that is more than worth the trade-off in making certain monster encounters more iconic and memorable. I don't objectively know which of our perspectives is right, but I see a molehill where you see a mountain. So we're essentially talking past each other.


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## EzekielRaiden

Deset Gled said:


> Why is there no way for characters to learn about monsters? Why is retreating impossible? These are both common in my experience.



Before any direct answers, keep in mind the difference between "X is conceivable but not (currently) supported" and "X is simply _impossible_." James Gasik very clearly meant the former, given the explicit phrasing "there's no set way," so don't confuse their position for a much, much more strident one.

As for direct answers:

For the former, I find two major inhibiting factors. One, this places certain responsibilities on the DM which I find are often not handled well, especially for inexperienced DMs. That is, for _any_ kind of "the DM needs to inform the players of X" stuff, many DMs struggle, especially since they are (sometimes perversely) resistant to ever just _telling_ their players friggin' anything. It needs to be clear that there is worthwhile knowledge to obtain, and it needs to be reasonably accessible, and many DMs struggle with that (as do game designers of all stripes; it's easy to think a puzzle you wrote is very easy to solve!) Part of this is the paradox of ignorance: you need to know _that_ you don't know something in order to start asking about it. You can't investigate or prepare for something if you don't even know that it's a possibility, and I find a lot of DMs struggle mightily with getting even enough information to the players that they can start asking. It's the stereotypical "you should have asked the one-armed man in the tavern!" "We talked with him, it didn't seem he had anything interesting to say..." "Well you should have asked him about X." "...we had no idea X even _existed_ at that point!" debacle.

The second problem for this "why is there no way for characters to learn" problem is, if there's no current support, the DM has to invent it on the fly. And "the DM has to invent it on the fly" is what leads to tons of janky, inconsistent methods and subsystems floating around. It's why the early-edition DMG was such a nightmarish mishmash of _stuff_ with almost no organization--bursting at the seams with useful tools, but those tools were scattered about like leaves. Gygax was very good at improvising, but very bad at editing and revising. It's not that anything is strictly _impossible_ with D&D, it's that inventing consistent, well-designed, functional systems or group policies is _hard_ and a lot of DMs are simply not very good at doing that.

For the latter: Again, less a matter of "impossible" and more a matter of "impractical" or "mathematically unfeasible." Many of the things that have good resistances can move faster than regular characters can. Especially if any of them are dwarves, halflings, gnomes, etc. The risk of eating an opportunity attack, or still being within range of any ranged attacks, makes retreat often unpalatable at best--and since the only reliable way to try to figure out how to break something's resistance is to _try_ to break it with various things, players will often feel already committed to trying to do something, doubly so if most of the party is melee characters....who are, notably, the most punished by this sort of thing (since melee attackers usually rely on many smaller-size attacks, rather than single big hits, which are usually the domain of magic...and magic has the easiest time breaking through enemy resistance!)


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## James Gasik

Quite well put, Ezekiel Raiden.  The old school mentality of "retreat if you can't handle it" falls apart when you realize bolting and running isn't really all that well supported.  Someone is going to fail to get away, as the old adage goes, you don't need to outrun the thing that wants to kill you, you just need to outrun the slowest party member.

The DM needs to actively switch from combat to a pursuit scene- and that's out of the control of the players unless they can demonstrate they can outpace their pursuer.

Let me also reiterate, a player doesn't know a monster has resistance to their attacks until the DM specifically tells them that it does.  They *should* be describing this to players, but that doesn't always mean they will, or the point will get across adequately.

But melee characters *do* know that magic weapons work on most creatures with resistance to b/p/s damage, so they can plan around that- even if they can't get a magic weapon, there are spells and abilities to work around that.

Asking them to also carry around a cold iron/silver/adamantine/starmetal/scrith/what have you weapon on the off chance that A) they will encounter a creature that needs that kind of material to hurt it, and B) they will realize not only the creature has resistance *and* know which of their weapons is the correct one to use requires the DM to make sure the players have that information.

If they don't have it, well...they might not survive their first encounter with the creature to tell the tale.


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## Sulicius

Such great points made so far. I also desperately want the fantasy of monstrous vulnerabilities come to life, and I’m looking forward to making a campaign that makes those important. From experience, many additions to the rules I made, or additional game systems just become too much of a hassle in the end, and I get rid of it so we can just play the game.

However, as many pointed out eloquently: this might be more trouble than it’s worth. Either we have to use damage thresholds or we are right back to binary effectiveness. It would bring us right back to where we started, as the power of a monster would be very much dependent on the knowledge and gear of an adventuring party.

I’m getting the sense that the designers went through these options a decade ago, and decided that they would rather “spend the complexity of the system” on other things. They let magic weapons be the solution so they could balance the game easier.


----------



## James Gasik

On the other hand, making the right weapon for the job do a little extra damage, as I do in my games, is just a nice bonus if it comes up.  No one is prevented from dealing damage in this case.  Personally, I hate the low tier enemies with resistance to nonmagical b/p/s damage the most- magic items are "optional" and you never know when you'll get one, if ever.  Sure, there are options, but having been caught in a fight without a magic weapon when none of those options were on the table really bit.

I mean, I was an archer, and my arrows were doing squat, meanwhile, the casters all had elemental damage cantrips that worked fine.  It made me really miss being able to buy magic arrows!

I don't mean to say you can't do it the other way, make a creature that requires a specific weapon to slay, but you do need to be careful with that.  This would be ideal for legendary creatures any Bard has heard tales of.


----------



## jmartkdr2

James Gasik said:


> On the other hand, making the right weapon for the job do a little extra damage, as I do in my games, is just a nice bonus if it comes up.  No one is prevented from dealing damage in this case.  Personally, I hate the low tier enemies with resistance to nonmagical b/p/s damage the most- magic items are "optional" and you never know when you'll get one, if ever.  Sure, there are options, but having been caught in a fight without a magic weapon when none of those options were on the table really bit.
> 
> I mean, I was an archer, and my arrows were doing squat, meanwhile, the casters all had elemental damage cantrips that worked fine.  It made me really miss being able to buy magic arrows!
> 
> I don't mean to say you can't do it the other way, make a creature that requires a specific weapon to slay, but you do need to be careful with that.  This would be ideal for legendary creatures any Bard has heard tales of.



That's a good point - resistance to nonmagical weapons is a really _boring_ ability for a monster to have, because it doesn't create interesting choices for anyone.

At least resistance to bludgeoning creates the choice of 'weapon switch or power through' for maul-wielders.

I wonder if you could make the system work with really small shifts - ie resistance and vulnerability only add or subtract five points per hit rather than half. Powering through remains an option but having the right weapon/spell would still _feel_ like a big deal ... maybe.


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## James Gasik

Oh so like 3e damage reduction?  Having DR be a flat amount?  I'm not opposed, while resistance is simple, it does have the strange dichotomy of being a bit much for low level heroes, and not a big deal for high level ones, at least, from what I've noticed.

OTOH, some classes will be negatively affected by that more than others.  Take 5 damage off of a Fighter, his damage doesn't scale that fast, he mainly does damage through many attacks.  If he attacks three times for 1d8+8 and you take 5 damage off each hit, then he loses 15 damage.

A Rogue, on the other hand, isn't going to miss 5 damage nearly as much at that level, when he's rolling 7d6+6.

You will probably see Sharpshooter and Great Weapon Master go up in value in such a system.


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## Undrave

EzekielRaiden said:


> For the latter: Again, less a matter of "impossible" and more a matter of "impractical" or "mathematically unfeasible." Many of the things that have good resistances can move faster than regular characters can. Especially if any of them are dwarves, halflings, gnomes, etc. The risk of eating an opportunity attack, or still being within range of any ranged attacks, makes retreat often unpalatable at best--and since the only reliable way to try to figure out how to break something's resistance is to _try_ to break it with various things, players will often feel already committed to trying to do something, doubly so if most of the party is melee characters....who are, notably, the most punished by this sort of thing (since melee attackers usually rely on many smaller-size attacks, rather than single big hits, which are usually the domain of magic...and magic has the easiest time breaking through enemy resistance!)






Sulicius said:


> However, as many pointed out eloquently: this might be more trouble than it’s worth. Either we have to use damage thresholds or we are right back to binary effectiveness.






James Gasik said:


> On the other hand, making the right weapon for the job do a little extra damage, as I do in my games, is just a nice bonus if it comes up. No one is prevented from dealing damage in this case. Personally, I hate the low tier enemies with resistance to nonmagical b/p/s damage the most- magic items are "optional" and you never know when you'll get one, if ever. Sure, there are options, but having been caught in a fight without a magic weapon when none of those options were on the table really bit.




Okay... What if... we flipped the damage threshold system and instead have a 'max' damage if the resistance isn't broken? This would make multiple smaller attack more viable, while a simple blowout spell would be more punished? I think it would be an easier way to conceptualize damage resistance without making it an absolute slog where if you roll poorly you don't do any damage at all.

It might be a little too 'gamey' for some but I think it would be interesting on, at least, a couple monsters.


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## billd91

Undrave said:


> Okay... What if... we flipped the damage threshold system and instead have a 'max' damage if the resistance isn't broken? This would make multiple smaller attack more viable, while a simple blowout spell would be more punished? I think it would be an easier way to conceptualize damage resistance without making it an absolute slog where if you roll poorly you don't do any damage at all.
> 
> It might be a little too 'gamey' for some but I think it would be interesting on, at least, a couple monsters.



I think the end usability of such a system is low. A computer would handle it fine, but it seems more complex and counterintuitive than it should be to implement at the table. Resistance, from an intuitability standpoint, should protect the target from minor attacks, not major ones. A mechanic like this is always going to be fighting that in the players' brains.


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## EzekielRaiden

Undrave said:


> Okay... What if... we flipped the damage threshold system and instead have a 'max' damage if the resistance isn't broken? This would make multiple smaller attack more viable, while a simple blowout spell would be more punished? I think it would be an easier way to conceptualize damage resistance without making it an absolute slog where if you roll poorly you don't do any damage at all.
> 
> It might be a little too 'gamey' for some but I think it would be interesting on, at least, a couple monsters.



That's certainly a novel solution. I actually kind of like it from a cinematic perspective: many movies or stories have opponents that can be whittled down by a death of a thousand cuts, but who can't be taken out with a single mighty blow.

So yeah, I'd be pretty cool with that.


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## Ayeffkay

James Gasik said:


> OTOH, some classes will be negatively affected by that more than others. Take 5 damage off of a Fighter, his damage doesn't scale that fast, he mainly does damage through many attacks. If he attacks three times for 1d8+8 and you take 5 damage off each hit, then he loses 15 damage.
> 
> A Rogue, on the other hand, isn't going to miss 5 damage nearly as much at that level, when he's rolling 7d6+6.



I don't think there's anything wrong with that.  Sometimes it's ok for one character to shine in a given challenge, instead of all the characters shining all the time.  Sometimes the fighter can grapple the enemy while the rogue can dance in, hit hard, disengage, and get out, leaving only the big can of hit points in range to hit back.  Sometimes there are hoards of low hp skeletons, and rather than nuking one of them into dust each round, it's more effective for the rogue to dodge and soak up opportunity attacks while the fighter wades in with a maul.

Sometimes your party only has one magical weapon and the party has to find ways of helping even though they can't damage the creature.  Sometimes the rogue has to pick up the fallen paladin's silver long sword, stand over his frenemy's body, and get an unlikely KB without sneak attack, and then rub it in his holier-than-thou face for the rest of the campaign.

Challenges presented by the DM are there to be overcome - game design needs to remember this, and enable the DM to create interesting challenges.  Not cater to the lowest common denominator of "10% of DMs will use werewolves when their players have no silver/magic weapons" x "10% of players will be frustrated and quit if an attack ever does half damage."


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## James Gasik

As long as guidance is provided to new DM's on what all this means, that's probably fine.  In my area, the number of available DM's is tragically low, and most of the ones that exist are the ones who have been gaming for longer than RPG's have existed (or so it seems).

We need more new DM's, and understanding details like this and their ramifications will help them get better at their craft.


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## DarkCrisis

On retreating:  I like and still use that in AD&D the heroes could throw out gold or food (depending on how smart the monster was) to aid in running away.


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## Undrave

billd91 said:


> I think the end usability of such a system is low. A computer would handle it fine, but it seems more complex and counterintuitive than it should be to implement at the table. Resistance, from an intuitability standpoint, should protect the target from minor attacks, not major ones. A mechanic like this is always going to be fighting that in the players' brains.



I mean, this would be a special case for like... spellcasters or something.

Like a magical kinetic field that reacts to the force acting against it in equal mesure. It lets bad guys pick up objects, or BREATH, but stops arrows and energy blasts. The faster and more agressive your attack, the more the field protects... So if you knick them with a poisoned blade you might fell them easily, or throw a vial of poisonous gas at their feet when they can't run away, or, at great risk, you could approach and grapple them and trap them in a painful submission lock, or maybe you can startle them with a psionic attack, disabling the shield and now your allies can go to town.



EzekielRaiden said:


> That's certainly a novel solution. I actually kind of like it from a cinematic perspective: many movies or stories have opponents that can be whittled down by a death of a thousand cuts, but who can't be taken out with a single mighty blow.
> 
> So yeah, I'd be pretty cool with that.




I think there's room in the game for all sorts of ways for monsters to mitigate damage, and all sorts of ways for player to negate that damage reduction. The more elaborate ones should be limited to set piece encounters, obviously. 

Here's another one: creature that take double damage when prone because their soft underbelly is exposed! That would mean the burly Barbarian could flip the creature on its side and make it a cakewalk but it's something you'd need some kind of skill check to know. 

Similarly, maybe certain monsters have a built in called-shot mechanic where you can take disadvantage on a (preferably only melee) attack in hopes of stricking a specific part and inflicting more damage than normal?


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