Roll With It feat and non DR/- DR

[Yogibear41]

ROLL WITH IT [GENERAL]
You are adept at lessening the effects of blows.
Prerequisite: Con 20, Toughness.
Benefit: You gain damage reduction 2/–. This applies in
addition to any damage reduction you have from other
sources. Damage reduction cannot reduce damage you take
to less than 0.
Special: You may take this feat multiple times.


Does this mean that the feat adds to other forms of damage reduction?

For example if you had DR 1/ Cold Iron, after taking this feat would you effectively have DR 3/ Cold Iron and DR 2/- ?

[The Viscount]

No, you would have DR 1/Cold Iron and DR 2/-. Also, DR never stacks, so a blow would only ever be reduced by the highest number, in this case 2. You gain just as much use as a person with no DR, and it kind of makes your existing DR useless, in the example.

[ArcturusV]

... which doesn't make sense in that it says "You may take this feat multiple times".

Which means that either the feat is broken (bad writing) and it was meant to stack with itself, or that the rule is wonky and they intended for DR to stack. In this case I'm probably leaning towards the former, and thinking the feat needs a line added to say "This feat may be taken multiple times. Each time this feat is taken it increases the DR/- by 2". Least for RAI.

[Douglas]

No, you would have DR 1/Cold Iron and DR 2/-. Also, DR never stacks, so a blow would only ever be reduced by the highest number, in this case 2. You gain just as much use as a person with no DR, and it kind of makes your existing DR useless, in the example.
That is the general rule, but the feat is quite explicit that this particular DR applies in addition to other DR. That specific rule overrides the general, so the OP example would indeed effectively have DR 3/cold iron and DR 2/-.

[ZamielVanWeber]

Wouldn't he have DR 1/ Cold Room and 2/- still? Anytime he was hit he would shave off 3, unless the weapon was cold iron: then he would shave off 2.

[tyckspoon]

Wouldn't he have DR 1/ Cold Room and 2/- still? Anytime he was hit he would shave off 3, unless the weapon was cold iron: then he would shave off 2.

This is how I would understand it; the DRs don't stack, as such (the character doesn't get DR 3/Cold Iron), but unlike regular DR rules where you just take the best applicable you do check both DRs. So when the character got hit, you would go "ok, you have DR 2/-. Take 2 points off the damage. You also have DR 1/Cold Iron. Was it a Cold Iron hit? No? Take another 1 point off" ... where the regular thing would be "you have DR 2/- and DR 1/Cold Iron. DR 2 is higher than DR 1. Take 2 points off."

Now, it does look like they managed to write it so that Roll With It cannot stack with itself, which makes taking multiple instances irrelevant- it has an exception clause so that it can work alongside other sources of DR, but one instance of Roll With It is the same source of DR as another instance of Roll With It. The section that says you may take it multiple times should have a second sentence along the lines of "every time you take this feat the DR provided by Roll With It increases by 2."

[ZamielVanWeber]

It stacks with itself fine if each feat considers another feat a different source. Your way just makes it clearer, which is pretty much illegal in DnD.

[Yogibear41]

Wouldn't he have DR 1/ Cold Room and 2/- still? Anytime he was hit he would shave off 3, unless the weapon was cold iron: then he would shave off 2.

Well yes but thats effectively the same as having what I wrote.

[ZamielVanWeber]

It is good to be careful though. DnD will produce situations where "effectively the same thing" and "wildly different" mean exactly the same thing. The way you wrote it was cleaner, but not technically what the feat does.