Resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from Non-Magical Weapons

[Grog Logs]

In another thread, I was asking about the distribution of nontraditional magic items and limiting access to magic weapons. At which point, it was asked:


no magic weapons?? why not? unless you don't plan on pitting them against anything with resistance to normal weapon damage

Azgeroth makes a very valid point. However, it raises the important question: At what point do magic weapons ruin the point of physical (i.e., bludgeoning, piercing, slashing) resistance? Most monsters resistant to this type of damage could kill a Level 1-4 PC in one hit (so it's not for Tier 1 PCs), yet the game seems to assume that a PC would have a magic weapon by Level 6 (based upon Monk's Ki-Empowered Strikes ability). I know that at some point always doing half damage as a physical-based class would become tedious and frustrating (and increase the fighter-mage power gap). But, if we're going to negate this entire monster ability for every physical based PC, why bother including it in the first place? Simply for lore? So that we can occasionally steal their weapon away before an important fight? Just to show how much better our PCs are than the king's army? Furthermore, no one would bat an eye at fireball being debuffed while fighting a horde of fiends. Is there any way to give magic weapons without completely negating these physical resistances?

[JNAProductions]

The reason why it's okay to resist or be immune to a fireball but not a sword is that the Wizard can then cast Lightning Bolt, or Vitriolic Sphere, or Magic Missile. The Fighter can't swap damage types entirely.

And my question is-why do you feel like you need to negate the resistances FOR THE PLAYERS? I can understand wanting followers, like mercs or squires or whatever, to do less damage, but why the PCs? And why can it not be accomplished by adding more HP the a monster?

As a follow-up, what abilities would you give Fighters and other martial types to mitigate that? Or is it just "Sucks to suck, deal less damage"?

[KorvinStarmast]

[B]At what point do magic weapons ruin the point of physical (i.e., bludgeoning, piercing, slashing) resistance? ? Magical attacks. And to answer your question, they don't ruin it. Magic weapons are rare. Having one means you can deal with those resistant critters who are otherwise not able to be damaged by your martial characters.


Is there any way to give magic weapons without completely negating these physical resistances? There is no point, and I'd say that you are missing the point.
Consider using other monsters, or using smarter tactics for your monsters if this (the existence of magic weapons) is causing frustration as a DM.

You have what looks to me like a solution looking for a problem: there isn't one.

Genre alert: magical weapons are a core element of the genre of game you are playing. If you don't care for that, you may want to try a different game.

[Sigreid]

Instead of looking at it as the magic weapons reduce the challenge to the party you could view it as the magic weapons enable the party to be the heroes, slaying the beast that shrugs off the villagers attacks.

But it's up to you.

[HappyDaze]

The reason why it's okay to resist or be immune to a fireball but not a sword is that the Wizard can then cast Lightning Bolt, or Vitriolic Sphere, or Magic Missile. The Fighter can't swap damage types entirely.

That would be less of an issue if more creatures just resisted one or two types out of the bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing trio. This would really help to get warrior types to diversify their weapon choices just as most spellcasters learn to diversify their spell lists.

[KorvinStarmast]

That would be less of an issue if more creatures just resisted one or two types out of the bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing trio. This would really help to get warrior types to diversify their weapon choices just as most spellcasters learn to diversify their spell lists.
well said :smallbiggrin:

[Leith]

Actually there are several low cr monsters that have those resistances; demons, devils, shadows, peyton's. The appearance of one at low levels can be pretty scary and fun.

Once every member of the party who needs one has magic weapons, resistance to mundane damage doesn't really matter, which is why in CR calculations it matters less and less the higher level the monster is.
Ultimately it depends on how many magic weapons you give out, what kind, and the specifics of each encounter.

[Calimehter]

Melee types who are very focused on one specific type of weapon (via feats or fighting styles) may find monster resistance to be a "decision forcing" game feature all throughout the game . . . unless their DM is tailoring their magic item loot.

[Morty]

That would be less of an issue if more creatures just resisted one or two types out of the bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing trio. This would really help to get warrior types to diversify their weapon choices just as most spellcasters learn to diversify their spell lists.

Considering that magic weapons are scarce and there's just a couple of feats (which are likewise scarce) that relate to weapon types, all it'd accomplish is make warrior-types spend an action now and then to swap weapons. And it'd royally screw over finesse-users and archers, who rely on piercing damage.

I'm not seeing much of a point behind resistance to non-magical weapons either, but I guess it's tradition, so that's all the reason the game needs.

[The Jack]

Thing with warriors and damage types is that, IRL, very few weapons could be said to be exclusively bludgeoning/slashing/piercing weapons.

Hell, if you ignore double sided weapons like poleaxes or warhammers, or that you can flip a sword for murderstrokes/simply choose to stab or slash... you've still got differences like axes having a lot of weight on their heads so they can deliver force like a blunt weapon.


Like, other than clubs and very specialised amunition nothing is so simple.




That said, skeleton vulnerability to bludgeoning (or resistance in other games) is just silly.

[Marcloure]

But, if we're going to negate this entire monster ability for every physical based PC, why bother including it in the first place?

Because of tradition. Which is the thing 5e is entirely built on. I mean, 4e tried to defy D&D's own legacy, and no thing such as resistance to physical damage exists there, because it really doesn't aggregate anything to a game where the PCs are supposed to only fight these creatures when they are capable of fighting them. But then, 4e didn't succeed.

That doesn't mean you can't use resistances in the game though. I myself am very found of real world lore, and in my setting, some ghosts and wraiths are immune to steel and bronze, only iron weapons deal damage to them. But of course, I'll not put one of these for the group to fight them out of nowhere and make martials useless. I need to be very careful in giving them information, tips, and maybe a first "ominous" encounter so they can search for this specific magic weapon or item, and then go to solve the problem.

[BurgerBeast]

I think another part of the point is: why should immunity to s/p/b factor into CR calculations if the game is designed on the assumption that they are always by-passed.

[stoutstien]

I think another part of the point is: why should immunity to s/p/b factor into CR calculations if the game is designed on the assumption that they are always by-passed.

I think over CR 5ish it is a non factor. even if every weapon user doesn't have access to a magic weapon there are spells that can overcome it. I think the resistance is on there to make the monsters feel more complete thematically. If archdevil shows up in a handful of villagers could take it out with their mundane weapons it doesn't feel all that threatening. now the heroes show up with their magical weapons and send it back to it the lower planes.

now as a DM I'm very stingy with magic weapons it usually involves a long quest to make / repair/ find one. Magic weapon are sentient to at least some degree.will I throw something at him it might be resistant to non-magical weapon damage before they have it? definitely. I had a barbarian get in a fight with a monster that was almost completely immune to weapon damage and ended up killing it by shoving his arm down its throat.

[Lord Vukodlak]

Summoned monsters, animate objects and similar spells create temporary allies but few of those allies can bypass resistances. Animate objects only works on non-magic objects for example.

So it’s not about punishing melee types who you expect to get magic weapons eventually but to limit summoners.

[LordEntrails]

That would be less of an issue if more creatures just resisted one or two types out of the bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing trio. This would really help to get warrior types to diversify their weapon choices just as most spellcasters learn to diversify their spell lists.
That was actually one of the common complaints about 3.x. The need for melee characters to carry at least two if not more 'primary' weapons. "Oh, it's a skeleton, I pull out my maul. Oh, it's destroyed but now a zombie appears, drop my maul and pull out my great sword..."

That's actually pretty tedious, and then necessitates twice as many magic weapons.

As others have said, it's good for thematic reasons, and so that hordes of low level creatures can't take down the big bad evils. i.e. with bounded accuracy, 50 villages with pitchforks would be a much bigger threat to a dragon if it did not have resistance.

[Telok]

Originally (and therefore "traditionally") there were three important things about immunities.

1. Many critters were taken form real world folklore, myths, and/or had some form of logic applied to them. Thus there were supernatural critters immune to "the pathetic weapons of mortal men", or the fact that arrows are probably largely ineffective when shot at a doctors office skeleton but a sledge hammer takes one apart pretty darn well.

2. "You must be this tall to get on this ride" was a thing. To retain a believable level of threat certain monsters were essentially level gated via magic gear. A Godzilla type monster isn't really a threat if 200 guys with bows and mounted on horses can kill it in fifteen or twenty minutes.

3. It dealt pretty well with the "I have a hammer so all problems are nails" mind set. Like there were things that were flat out immune to weapon damage there were also things that were flat out immune to magic. Which meant that sometimes the solution to a monster couldn't just be "I sword/cantrip it to death. Next monster please."

For #1 the major focus has moved away from myth, legend, and logic. The focus is on simple and "balance" now. Hit point inflation has replaced #2, it hasn't really worked since mid-3e/beginning 3.5 though. With #3 the current opinion is that having "I mash the attack button" not work is "un-fun" and makes thing too hard for players.

[HappyDaze]

That was actually one of the common complaints about 3.x. The need for melee characters to carry at least two if not more 'primary' weapons.
Nonsense. Secondary weapons exist for a reason. If you have a slashing sword (e.g., longsword or greatsword) as primary, it's not much of a stretch to carry a mace (horseman's/light if your game uses such divisions) at your belt along with a dagger. It's something that real knights did, and I like seeing it in D&D.

[Yora]

I can understand wanting followers, like mercs or squires or whatever, to do less damage


Summoned monsters, animate objects and similar spells create temporary allies but few of those allies can bypass resistances.

Oooohh... I never thought about that. That is actually great. Now I want to make enconters with that aspect in mind.

[Lunali]

Nonsense. Secondary weapons exist for a reason. If you have a slashing sword (e.g., longsword or greatsword) as primary, it's not much of a stretch to carry a mace (horseman's/light if your game uses such divisions) at your belt along with a dagger. It's something that real knights did, and I like seeing it in D&D.

Real knights did it because weapons break, an element of realism that I prefer to avoid.

[Zalabim]

Your game may vary, but the DMG says some suggestive stuff for when creating your own monsters, "If a monster has resistance or immunity to several damage types -- especially bludgeoning , piercing, and slashing damage from nonmagical attacks -- and not all the characters in the party possess the means to counteract that resistance or immunity, you need to take these defenses into account when comparing your monster's hit points to its expected challenge rating. Using the Effective Hit Points Based on Resistances and Immunities table, apply the appropriate multiplier to the monsters' hit points to determine its effective hit points for the purpose of gauging its final challenge rating." Then the table says:


Expected Challenge Rating
HP Multiplier for Resistances
HP Multiplier for Immunities


1-4
x2
x2


5-10
x1.5
x2


11-16
x1.25
x1.5


17 or more
x1
x1.25


So that suggests that a party on average will be gradually less bothered by weapon resistance up to level 17, and slightly more bothered by immunity going all the way up to level 20. (Which can be hinder allies and summoned creatures even when all the fighters have vorpal swords.)

As a secondary comparison, you can just see what rolling random loot spits out, which in my experience is "some, but not enough for everyone and not very appropriate to most fighters until level 17+." Of course you can also consider if your current party is just not effected by the resistances and adjust your expectations accordingly.

Part of the reason the monk gets ki-enhanced strikes at level 6 is you can't just silver your unarmed strikes while a silvered weapon is certainly affordable for tier 2 adventurers and covers a lot of situations by itself. On top of that is some of monks being monks. I'm also dubious of any wizard preparing fireball, lightning bolt, vitriolic sphere, and ice storm at the same time, and casting magic missile instead is worse than dealing half damage. In the olden days, a wizard with fireball prepared could no more switch to lightning bolt either, since that's not how spell preparation worked.


That was actually one of the common complaints about 3.x. The need for melee characters to carry at least two if not more 'primary' weapons. "Oh, it's a skeleton, I pull out my maul. Oh, it's destroyed but now a zombie appears, drop my maul and pull out my great sword..."

That's actually pretty tedious, and then necessitates twice as many magic weapons.

As others have said, it's good for thematic reasons, and so that hordes of low level creatures can't take down the big bad evils. i.e. with bounded accuracy, 50 villages with pitchforks would be a much bigger threat to a dragon if it did not have resistance.
¿Dragons don't have such resistance though.?

Nonsense. Secondary weapons exist for a reason. If you have a slashing sword (e.g., longsword or greatsword) as primary, it's not much of a stretch to carry a mace (horseman's/light if your game uses such divisions) at your belt along with a dagger. It's something that real knights did, and I like seeing it in D&D.
It wasn't about carrying secondary weapons like bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing, though that was part of it. It was also expecting PCs to get silver, cold iron, adamantine, holy/unholy, axiomatic/chaotic, and in the case of the alignment restricted ones, if you were the wrong alignment you could take negative levels or just put up with dealing 10 or 15 less damage with each attack. Assuming all the weapons are going to be magic, and that you just get whatever alignments your own allows, then just covering the semi-exclusive types could take nine different weapons. A witcher carries two swords. A 3.5 adventurer carries three swords, and three maces, and three daggers, etc.

[sithlordnergal]

There are a few reasons for resistance to normal weapon damage:

1) The main reason it is there is to nerf mooks. These mooks could be summoned allies, animated objects, or NPCs hired by the party. I play in AL, where DMs are not allowed to nerf spells like Animate Objects or summoning spells. If I cast something like Animate Objects, I get to have my ten tiny mooks, doesn't matter if the DM likes it or not. I cannot tell you how many times I managed to end combat encounters with just a single spell like that. Hell, before my DM and I realized he got to choose what was conjured, I could use Conjure Animals to deal with hostiles in a room so efficiently that the rest of the party didn't even bother fighting. We'd go about exploring the room and checking for traps as a herd of 8 Velociraptors cleared out whatever monsters were there. We only got involved if the target resisted the damage from the Velociraptors.

2) It allows DMs to provide some terrifying challenges to tier 1 parties. Ever fought an Earth or Fire Elemental at level 4? They are terrifying to fight if you lack a magic weapon. Hell, an Imp can become a lethal threat to a T1 party due to invisibility and its resistances/immunities.

3) It makes certain spells, magic items, and abilities more useful. I'm specifically looking at spells and abilities where you summon/transform into an Elemental. Being able to resist non-magical b/p/s damage is a HUGE deal for PCs, since that's the most common damage type you're ever going to face. Even if you're fighting a Wizard, that wizard likely has a bunch of mooks, and generally those mooks do non-magical damage.

[Chronos]

Well, it wasn't quite that bad, since weapon type DR wasn't usually combined with weapon material DR, and alignment-based DR was usually vulnerable to Good (except for Good-aligned creatures which were vulnerable to Evil, but the party probably isn't fighting them). So you could get by with, say, a holy silver spear, a holy cold iron sword, and an adamantine hammer.

But back to the original question, even if it's (mostly) irrelevant at low levels (because the monsters mostly don't yet have such resistances), and (mostly) irrelevant at high levels (because everyone who uses a weapon has an appropriate magical one), there's still a transitional period in between where it is relevant. When the party finds its very first magical weapon, which character gets to carry it (which depends on which ones have better non-weapon options available to them)? If you have a nonmagical weapon well-suited to your combat style (which can mean melee vs. ranged, or ability to sneak attack, or even just proficiency, in addition to feats and the Combat Style class feature), and a magical weapon not well-suited to it, which do you use? And when looking at the party as a whole, this transitional period can actually be fairly long.

As an example, my first 5e party consisted of my arcane trickster rogue, a dex-based paladin, a barbarian, a wizard, a cleric, and sometimes a warlock or bard. The first magic weapon we found, before we even encountered any resistant monsters, was a greataxe at level 3 or 4, and that's what the barbarian was using anyway, so that was an easy choice (this might have been deliberate on the DM's part).

Not too long after that (around 6th level), we got a rapier and a magic staff which could cast a few spells or be used as a weapon. The paladin and my rogue were both interested in the rapier, but he needed it more (partly because I had more out-of-combat utility, and partly because I also had a few spells that I could use in combat instead). I got the staff, as both a consolation prize and because I liked the spells on it. During this time, there were a few times I found myself having to choose between attacking with the staff (unresisted, but no Sneak Attack), attacking with my usual shortbow (resisted, but with Sneak Attack), or casting a spell (which was underpowered, since I wasn't a full caster).

Then we found a very nice bow, which my character would have liked, except that it was a longbow, not short, so he wasn't proficient with it. The paladin ended up with that, too, even though smites don't work at range, because he was the only one who could get any use out of it. Likewise a few other magic weapons, that nobody was particularly interested in, and ended up being either back-up weapons that nobody ever fell back on, or just tossed in the bag of holding and forgotten. And we also ended up finding a Sunblade, which the paladin also got, but now he didn't need the old rapier any more, so my character got that. Now I had a magic melee weapon which was well-suited to me, but that wasn't until level 11, and I still often didn't use it, because I preferred to stay at range (unless we were fighting a resistant monster, in which case I had to close to melee).

Finally, at level 14, I also got a magic shortbow, and so always had the weapon I'd want available. Meanwhile, the cleric never ended up using a magic weapon at all, because by the time we found a Mace of Disruption, which he would have liked, he was mostly using spells in combat anyway, and had other items that he preferred to be attuned to.

TL:DR, the span during which resistance to nonmagical weapons was relevant for that party ran from level 4 to 14, even though at no point in that range were we completely without magic weapons. That's an awful lot of the game.

[Grog Logs]

Your game may vary, but the DMG says some suggestive stuff for when creating your own monsters, "If a monster has resistance or immunity to several damage types -- especially bludgeoning , piercing, and slashing damage from nonmagical attacks -- and not all the characters in the party possess the means to counteract that resistance or immunity, you need to take these defenses into account when comparing your monster's hit points to its expected challenge rating. Using the Effective Hit Points Based on Resistances and Immunities table, apply the appropriate multiplier to the monsters' hit points to determine its effective hit points for the purpose of gauging its final challenge rating."

Thank you. I presume that this is for Encounter Building, right? If so, I had forgotten about this. I had only remembered the Custom Monster section talking about using multipliers if you expected the Party to fight the Resistant Monster as low levels. I had assumed (apparently wrongly) that the Monster Manual factored resistances into the CR! Are any non-physical resistances (e.g., fire) factored into the CR in the published manuals?


...TL:DR, the span during which resistance to nonmagical weapons was relevant for that party ran from level 4 to 14, even though at no point in that range were we completely without magic weapons. That's an awful lot of the game.

This and your snipped details is much more interesting to me than the 'everyone always gets magic items by Level 5-8' mentality.

[Azgeroth]

a thread because of me?? :D

ok, so i didn't say this before as the former thread was more about magic item distribution, but i will now point out that you can overcome resistance to non-magical physical damage with a silvered weapon.. as long as that option is available to the players, they don't need magic weapons to circumvent resistance.

[sithlordnergal]

a thread because of me?? :D

ok, so i didn't say this before as the former thread was more about magic item distribution, but i will now point out that you can overcome resistance to non-magical physical damage with a silvered weapon.. as long as that option is available to the players, they don't need magic weapons to circumvent resistance.

Mmm, not all the time. Silvered and adamantium weapons are specifically called out as an exception whenever a monster resists/is immune non-magical weapon damage.

[Azgeroth]

Mmm, not all the time. Silvered and adamantium weapons are specifically called out as an exception whenever a monster resists/is immune non-magical weapon damage.

huh, good to know, thanks!

[Unoriginal]

a thread because of me?? :D

ok, so i didn't say this before as the former thread was more about magic item distribution, but i will now point out that you can overcome resistance to non-magical physical damage with a silvered weapon.. as long as that option is available to the players, they don't need magic weapons to circumvent resistance.

Not all the resistances are bypassed by silver.

Also, under no circumstances 5e PCs *need* magic weapons. It's nice to have them, but the game was calculated without them.

[nickl_2000]

Don't forget that not everything a PC will use will be magical. For example, all summons from a Druid will be non-magical, animate object will be non-magical, catapult will be non-magical, etc

[stoutstien]

I think a good rule to keep in mind is that resistance to non-magical weapon damage should be a speed bump, not a roadblock.

[ad_hoc]

In another thread, I was asking about the distribution of nontraditional magic items and limiting access to magic weapons. At which point, it was asked:



Azgeroth makes a very valid point. However, it raises the important question: At what point do magic weapons ruin the point of physical (i.e., bludgeoning, piercing, slashing) resistance? Most monsters resistant to this type of damage could kill a Level 1-4 PC in one hit (so it's not for Tier 1 PCs), yet the game seems to assume that a PC would have a magic weapon by Level 6 (based upon Monk's Ki-Empowered Strikes ability).

Empowered strikes is a special ability.

So are Arcane Archer's magic arrows.

The treasure tables have, on average, each PC getting 2 permanent items by 11th level. It is likely that the party will get magic weapons for people who need one, but it might not happen. It is unlikely by 6th level.

[Boci]

huh, good to know, thanks!

Yeah, I was struggling figuring out why a splat monsters was such a higher CR than the MM gargoyle, when they had similar stats. Then I realized the gargoyle was resistant to "Bludgeoning, Piercing, And Slashing From Nonmagical Weapons That Aren't Adamantine" whilst the other was immune to them.

[Chronos]

Yeah, immunity to certain attack forms is a lot more problematic than resistance, because it means that anyone who only has access to those attack forms (like a fighter with nonmagical weapons) has nothing at all to do in that fight. And even if the rest of the party is able to handle it without the fighter, it's not very fun for the fighter's player.

[LordEntrails]

Nonsense. Secondary weapons exist for a reason. If you have a slashing sword (e.g., longsword or greatsword) as primary, it's not much of a stretch to carry a mace (horseman's/light if your game uses such divisions) at your belt along with a dagger. It's something that real knights did, and I like seeing it in D&D.
Nonsense? Just because you "like seeing it in D&D" doesn't mean the complaint is nonsense. It was and is a common complaint about 3.5E. That's not nonsense, even if you don't agree with it.

I too always have my players carry a "secondary" weapon. But my example wasn't about a "secondary" example, it was about having to carry two "primary" weapons. You know, where you need to carry two magical weapons that are 'tier 1' damage dealers.

[HappyDaze]

I too always have my players carry a "secondary" weapon. But my example wasn't about a "secondary" example, it was about having to carry two "primary" weapons. You know, where you need to carry two magical weapons that are 'tier 1' damage dealers.

Read what I wrote again. The part I'm calling nonsense is thinking you need multiple primary weapons when secondary weapons will suffice. Not every attack has to be at "tier 1" every time.