5e damage types in 3.5e

[Roninblack]

What do you folks think would be the implications of porting over the various damage types of 5e to 3.5?

Namely radiant, psychic, and poison are the ones that stand out to me as being ones that don't already exist.

I know that in spells like flame strike already have radiant damage and treat it as untyped and unresistable, but if we had to go in by hand and add resistances then it shouldn't be too bad.

Poison might be a bit trickier to determine when to do hp damage and when to do ability damage.

Thoughts?

[Troacctid]

It would be easy to update spells and effects. What would be annoying would be updating all the monsters for new resistances.

[InvisibleBison]

I don't know if it really makes sense to have poison as a damage type in 3.5. What would be the difference narratively between a poison that does hit point damage and one that does Constitution damage?

[Roninblack]

I don't know if it really makes sense to have poison as a damage type in 3.5. What would be the difference narratively between a poison that does hit point damage and one that does Constitution damage?

There are a couple of benefits, ability damage and poison in general are a lot harder to deal with at low level when you're fighting spiders and snakes, hp damage is much easier to deal with, and the other is that poison that does con damage is gated behind a save. If you're players have high saves for instance, poison damage is just bonus damage.

Don't get me wrong though, I like both and think there are uses for both.

[InvisibleBison]

There are a couple of benefits, ability damage and poison in general are a lot harder to deal with at low level when you're fighting spiders and snakes, hp damage is much easier to deal with, and the other is that poison that does con damage is gated behind a save. If you're players have high saves for instance, poison damage is just bonus damage.

Don't get me wrong though, I like both and think there are uses for both.

Those are mechanical benefits, though. I was asking about narrative differences. If a creature was described as having a poisonous sting that sapped it's victims vitality, how would you tell if it was doing hit point damage or Constitution damage?

[Nifft]

What do you folks think would be the implications of porting over the various damage types of 5e to 3.5?

Namely radiant, psychic, and poison are the ones that stand out to me as being ones that don't already exist. Technically also Necrotic, though it's reasonable to think of "negative energy damage" as basically that.


It would be easy to update spells and effects. What would be annoying would be updating all the monsters for new resistances.

Yeah.

Even there, though, there's some significant guidance in the form of the even-more-annoying current special cases in various spells.

E.g. Searing Light calls out special target cases which would eventually turn into the a sub-set of the monsters with Radiance vulnerability. Some are beyond obvious -- vampires, for example -- and others can be fit into a category.


Those are mechanical benefits, though. I was asking about narrative differences. If a creature was described as having a poisonous sting that sapped it's victims vitality, how would you tell if it was doing hit point damage or Constitution damage?

5e also has the Poisoned condition which represents a non-HP vitality reduction.

You could put that as a rider on a lot of former ability-damage poisons -- not the lethal ones, though -- and have a simplified system which models a lot of the narrative effects in a reasonable way.

[Gavinfoxx]

How many different damage types did Neverwinter Nights and Neverwinter Nights 2 have??

[Falontani]

Radiant: Most spells that deal radiant damage should also have the [Light] descriptor. Could have it that any creature that has sunlight sensitivity (that isn't currently solved by glasses) have a -2 circumstance penalty to their saving throw, and that creatures that are actually vulnerable or worse to sunlight (such as vampires, wraiths, shadows, and more) are vulnerable to the Radiant Damage.

If you wanted you could make an Umbral damage which is just swapped with Radiant, creatures with Darkvision are affected normally, while creatures with Low-Light Vision have a -2, and creatures with neither are vulnerable, but I think that may be going too far with that damage type.

Psychic: Nice and simple, should be most Enchantments and Illusions which deal damage. And nearly every damaging Telepath power. Why is it it's own damage type? Easy: so that creatures that should be affected by Power Word Pain (apparently a mind affecting spell which causes pain) to work on creatures like Vermin (creatures that should be susceptible to pain?). But that is breaking the Mindless immunity, which again may be going too far. Perhaps you could bake in something like, "Mindless creatures only suffer half damage from Psychic Damage." or something.

Poison: There are many effects that have an, "if you save, then x" clause. Perhaps have all poison abilities have this, if you save against the poison, you take 1d4 points of poison damage per point of stat damage the poison would have caused, fort for half. So a Colossal Spider's Poison would be something like:
Bite, Initial: 2d8 Strength, Secondary: 2d8 Strength, on a successful save the creature takes (2d8)d4 poison damage (Fort half).
or on average 9d4 poison damage, or 22 extra damage (11 on a second successful save).

This would be a good way to fix Venomfire being OP, just make the poison damage increase from 1d4 to 1d6, or 1d8, etc. And maybe have the poison damage always deal damage with fort half, instead of only if the creature saved against the ability damage (so the spider above would be doing 2d8 str damage and (2d8)d6 poison damage, or something.)


Obviously none of the above is locked in exactly how it should be done. Just ideas off the top of my head. I'd love to hear what others think about it.

[Roninblack]

Those are mechanical benefits, though. I was asking about narrative differences. If a creature was described as having a poisonous sting that sapped it's victims vitality, how would you tell if it was doing hit point damage or Constitution damage?

Oh story reasons, um I'd think that hp poison would be less severe, because con poisons increases susceptibility to itself when administered (lower fort save) as well as takes out hp per level instead of just flat damage.

[Mordaedil]

How many different damage types did Neverwinter Nights and Neverwinter Nights 2 have??

Neverwinter Nights had in value order, Bludgeoning, Piercing, Slashing, Magical, Acid, Cold, Divine, Electrical, Fire, Negative, Positive, Sonic and "Base Weapon". Worth noting that the last one if attempted to be used on dealing damage as part of a spell-effect reverted to Magic damage. Magic damage was used effectively for force effects or untyped damage most of the time, except for divine spells that used Divine instead as untyped. While Sonic was always in the game, Positive energy damage was only added with the last expansion and is only used on the epic spell Great Ruin. It also functions as untyped damage as nothing (implemented in the game at least) is really immune to it for some reason.

[Gavinfoxx]

So if we wanted to consolidate damage types...

what... make everything fit to:

Bludgeoning
Piercing
Slashing
Force
Acid
Cold
Divine
Electrical
Fire
Negative
Positive
Sonic

And just add Psychic and Poison?

Hell, I'd suggest removing 'divine' and 'untyped' entirely...

[Falontani]

How many official damage types does 3.5 already have?

Slashing
Piercing
Bludgeoning
Fire
Cold
Acid
Lightning
Sonic
Force
Positive
Negative
Untyped (is Pure divine energy the same thing?)
Nonlethal (possibly an addon, so it is nonlethal slashing)
Vile (possibly an addon, so it is vile slashing)
City (seriously?)
...

[Nifft]

Untyped (is Pure divine energy the same thing?) IIRC there's at least one thing which specifically resists Divine damage so it should not be considered identical to Untyped.


Nonlethal (possibly an addon, so it is nonlethal slashing)
Vile (possibly an addon, so it is vile slashing) I think these two aren't types themselves, but rather modify types.

Technically that means you could count them like a cross-product with base types, so you could get +4 types for e.g. Vile Nonlethal Acid, Vile Acid, Nonlethal Acid, and Acid.


City (seriously?)
...
"City" and "seriously" are incompatible keywords.