Class feature ideas: Damage typing

[IChosePoorly]

I'm batting around a few ideas for class features for martials and trying to focus my thoughts a bit. Relatedly, I've read some complaints about the uselessness of weapon damage typing in 5E. These came out:

Versatile Defense. When you roll initiative and you are wearing armor or carrying a shield, you may gain resistance to one of: non-magical piercing, non-magical slashing, or non-magical bludgeoning. If your armor or shield is magical, you also gain resistance to magical damage of that type. You may change which type of damage you resist with this ability as a reaction when you are struck by an attack.

If you are wearing heavy armor, you may gain resistance to two types of damage with this ability.

Versatile Offense. When you make your first melee weapon attack in a round, you may declare that the weapon deals piercing, slashing, or bludgeoning damage rather than its usual type. It deals that type of damage until the end of your turn.

At Xth level, you may change damage type with each attack.



At what levels or tiers would these make sense? Are there particular interactions with other rules that I should think about? Do the Crusher/Slasher/Piercer feats become too easy to trigger?

Most important, might this be fun to play with?

Thanks in advance!

[Yakk]

I don't see the narrative hook for the game of "I take half damage from X and Y" you have designed.

There is also very little state involved. You are just playing "guess the opponents vulnerability" with no feedback (other than previous rounds of combat), but the opponent can change their vulnerability with a reaction.

I am not sure what fun gameplay you are attempting to generate here. I'm uncertain what story you are trying to tell with this gameplay to hook it into a greater narrative. The gameplay looks less interesting than rock paper scissors.

...

Making weapon damage types matter more for players is just a matter of making monsters vulnerable/resistant to a weapon damage type. Go ahead as a DM, it isn't hard.

Making the damage the players do, well, the easy thing would be to add:
Light armor: Resists piercing damage
Medium armor: Resists slashing damage
Heavy armor: Resists bludgeoning damage
or something simple like that. Now the armor you are wearing means the incoming weapon damage matters a bit.

Now, this is hard to justify, honestly. So instead, give PCs magical armor with resist against 1 of the 3 damage types. Poof, they start caring what damage monsters do.

[BerzerkerUnit]

Not sure how related these might be but I recently revisited a subclass that focused a bit on weapon/damage type.

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?641046-5e-Fighter-Archetype-Riskbreaker-(rework-of-Shikensu-Warrior)

[IChosePoorly]

I don't see the narrative hook for the game of "I take half damage from X and Y" you have designed.

There is also very little state involved. You are just playing "guess the opponents vulnerability" with no feedback (other than previous rounds of combat), but the opponent can change their vulnerability with a reaction.

I am not sure what fun gameplay you are attempting to generate here. I'm uncertain what story you are trying to tell with this gameplay to hook it into a greater narrative. The gameplay looks less interesting than rock paper scissors.

Thanks for the response and the opportunity to clarify! The narrative justification would be that at some level, the Fighter* just gets that much better at avoiding/defeating attacks - her martial abilities let her look at incoming orcs wielding battle axes and move to minimize the power from their slashes. Certainly her greater hp are part of this, but I figured that making a choice is more fun than just having a bigger number.

And since these are class features, the rock-paper-scissors wouldn't come up against most enemies - typical orcs aren't savvy enough to change their damage type to get around the fighter's resistance, but Gorthrak, the Chosen of Ilneval and Warlord Who Is To Come, might be. In that case, rather than simply standing toe-to-toe and swinging at each other, our fighter and Gorthrak are adding a little mini-game in their interactions with each other - one more decision point.

In terms of the feedback question - "what is the opponent's weak point" - that might be something that needs to be spelled out in the ability. Should characters KNOW if their damage is resisted? I would generally say yes, especially in melee; that helps them make informed decisions.

Does this clarify what I'm shooting for?

*Probably other martial classes, maybe at a delayed level? This is one of the things I'm knocking around.