Ranking Damage Reduction [3.PF]

[Tanuki Tales]

We all know that Damage Reduction/Magic is the worst of the lot and that Damage Reduction/- is the best, but I'd like to look more indepth into the ability than simply that.

How would you rank the varying types of damage reduction (from best to worst for PC use), at what point does each type of damage reduction best shine and at what point does it become practically worthless?

[Jack Zander]

From best to worst IMO:
/-
/cold iron
/silver
/good
/lawful
/chaotic
/evil
/adamantine
/bludgeoning
/piercing
/slashing
/magic

[Hand_of_Vecna]

Here's a quick off the top of my head list with a quick reason for why each type is as good/bad as it is.



magic-at some point everyone has this

The three weapon damage types all weapons have one and many have 2 so even about a third of peasants can hurt you. I ranked them within this category based on my perception of how common each weapon set is.
slashing-swords, axes, polearms
piercing- spears, swords, arrows
bludgeoning- clubs, morningstar

adamantine-adamantine weapons are pretty popular in games I play/run between the ability to cut through adamnantine dr and hardness and resistence to breaking.

evil (for good characters)- Bad because evil weapons are very popular with antagonists. DMs often feel safe giving extra bad evil weapons to enemies because they know that you're just going to destroy it.
good (for evil characters)- Just slightly better than evil because I expect evil pc's to fight more non good enemies than good fights non evil.

Silver- People have it around for fighting a lot of different monster types and they also should have a decent chance of knowing they need it to fight you.
Cold Iron- Like silver, but a hair better.

Law/Chaos- Unless your DM puts a ton of effort into verisimilitude Axiomatic and Anarchic weapons will be stupidly rare unless you're fighting in the blood war.

Protection from your own alignment- The only way I can think of to get this is a good Hellbred wearing a /good item.

Epic (special case)- Generally by the time you can get this DR anything that can't ignore it should be a non threat with or without it the only exception I can think of is something like an uber charger, but he's doing double your hp with or without your dr. If you can get epic DR pre-epic it would go here in the pecking order.

Blessed wooden piercing weapons- nobody not setting out to kill a rakshasa has or ever will have these ever.

-/

[Jack Zander]

I agree with your assessments, Hand, except that you seem to be forgetting that monsters with damage reduction can also overcome that type of damage reduction, and with the large amount of lawful and chaotic monsters out there, I'd put them a little above good/evil, but slightly below silver/cold iron.

[classy one]

What about /+6 and above? Pre epic they might as well be /-

[Hand_of_Vecna]

Good point Jack, I always remember that rule on magic but forget on the alignment stuff.

However I think I'll stick with my rankings because; many high end extra planar's default attack routines are with weapons so assuming they know about your DR they have to choose between trying to punch through your DR with a weapon it soaks up or using their natural attacks that ignore it. Either way your DR is having an effect on the fight.

Also, I refer back to my point about verisimilitude. In a theoretical perfect game Lawful/Chaotic creatures are as common as Good/Evil ones, in my experience though, a lot of DMs pull more than half their encounters from MM1 which predates Lawful/Chaotic DR/damage or use NPC's with class levels which also heavily favors the Good/Evil spectrum. If your experience differs I envy you and tip my hat to your DMs.

Added Epic and Hellbred resistence to own alignment to origonal post.