MM Resistances, Immunities, Vulnerabilities, and Damage

[Yorrin]

I've seen a lot of estimation of how much each type of damage is resisted or dealt by creatures in the Monster Manual (and done a good bit of speculation myself), but I decided to go through and actually count how many of each there were. The following is the result:

	Damage	Resistance	Immunity	Vulnerability
Acid	21	18	15	0
Cold	23	46	20	4
Fire	46	37	40	9
Force	12	0	1	0
Lightning	22	35	10	0
Necrotic	22	11	11	0
Poison	43	5	95	0
Psychic	11	1	10	1
Radiant	14	4	0	1
Thunder	4	14	2	1
Nonmagical	Most	60	17	0
Magic Weapons	13	1	0	0
Bludgeoning	Many	8	0	4
Slashing	Many	6	2	0
Piercing	Many	10	0	0
Spells	Several	1	0	0
Silver Bybass	n/a	13	4	n/a
Adamantine Bypass	n/a	3	4	n/a

Silver Bypass and Adamantine Bypass refer to how may resistances or immunities to nonmagical damage can be overcome by those materials, but they are also counted under the "nonmagical" column itself. The "Spells" entry was created for the Archmage, who is resistant to all damage from spells. Everything else should be self explanatory.

Conclusions to be drawn would include not specializing in Poison or Fire damage, and getting resistances to both those elements.

[GWJ_DanyBoy]

Hey thanks for doing the tally. Very useful info for comparing the possible strengths of different spells, weapons, and class focuses like the draconic Sorc. Not a perfect predictor, since the DM is still choosing which monsters the party faces.

Edit: Surprising to see so few vulnerabilities. I expected to see more for Radiant or Necrotic.

[Kyutaru]

Some of the conclusions we can draw from this remain the same as past editions.

Fire and Lightning are among the most commonly ignored elements with fire also featuring a few vulnerabilities. Good elements to toss around if the enemy isn't resistant to anything.

Poison and Fire are among the most common damage types players will get hit by. Poison-using rogues are also less effective than critical-based ones.

Force remains the most awesome damage type ever, with Radiant sharing in its neatness.

Acid and Necrotic are still fairly good midrange damage types with only certain types of monsters countering them.

Nonmagical weapons suck. Go big or go home.

The things I DIDN'T expect, however, are these:

- Cold damage is the most resisted basic element. Using cold spells is actually not that great of an idea. Luckily, the cold spells tend to have more damage than their fire and lightning variants because they are higher level.

- Thunder damage is a new hotness. Apparently similar to force damage in its capacity to damage almost anything, hitting people with sonic booms is not likely to be resisted.

- Psychic damage sucks worse than Force now.

[odigity]

You just cast a huge rain cloud over my planned Fiend-pact Warlock. :( The whole spell list is fire...

I suppose I could take Elemental Adapt, but I was already planning to take four feats. If I take a fifth, it means I'll be stuck at Str/Cha 16 forever.

Edit: Forgot to mention - great post! That must have been a lot of work, but the results are very useful.

[Easy_Lee]

Force remains the most awesome damage type ever, with Radiant sharing in its neatness.

Can we go ahead and confirm that warlock/sorcerer brings the most consistent damage out of any build? Seems like we're unlikely to find a more consistent source of damage, what with only two creatures in the entire DMG not taking full damage from two EB's per round (one immune, archmage half because spell).

[Demonicattorney]

Radiant is better than it appears here, because it shuts down regeneration on a few creatures, like the Vampire. Force is a little worse, because of creatures like the Rakshasha.

[Easy_Lee]

Radiant is better than it appears here, because it shuts down regeneration on a few creatures, like the Vampire. Force is a little worse, because of creatures like the Rakshasha.

So a vengeance paladin and warlock-sorcerer teamed up kills the world? Interesting.

[hymer]

Force is a little worse, because of creatures like the Rakshasha.

Have to admit, I don't get it. Why?

[Cambrian]

Conclusions to be drawn would include not specializing in Poison or Fire damage, and getting resistances to both those elements.

Awesome work!

It looks like fire is actually okay to specialize in with Elemental Adept. The forty creatures immune to it might be a problem (don't overspecialize!) but having nine creatures are vulnerable to it and variety of fire spells in the PHB means it wouldn't be bad.

Poison either works or it doesn't (only five creatures resist it). Given undead and constructs are always immune to poison it does remove much of the guess work. If you know you won't be facing poison immune creatures then the damage type becomes useful for a prepared caster.

[Kyutaru]

So a vengeance paladin and warlock-sorcerer teamed up kills the world? Interesting.

6 Paladin/2 Warlock/12 Sorcerer = Almighty Gish Destroyer

Can turn his blade into a radiant weapon.
Can fire force blasts out of it instead.
Can buff and heal himself.
CHARISMA UP THE WAZOO!!!

[Easy_Lee]

6 Paladin/2 Warlock/12 Sorcerer = Almighty Gish Destroyer

Can turn his blade into a radiant weapon.
Can fire force blasts out of it instead.
Can buff and heal himself.
CHARISMA UP THE WAZOO!!!

Not even bad. Could add a warlock level or two for blade pact and lifedrinker for even more damage on your holy paladin smites.

[BW022]

Yorrin,

Thanks for the research. I don't think it is that surprising. However, you may need to be a bit more careful on your conclusion.

a) You do have to factor in how common certain opponents are. This is really hard to determine and could easily be altered by the campaign, setting, the players, levels of the campaign, how long players are at certain levels, etc. For example, PCs are probably likely to run into more NPCs, humanoids, or animals than say devils, demons, or elementals. The later are simply rarer.

b) You have to look at how effective certain spell may be at non-immune creatures. A fireball might not be effective vs. a demon, but it's extremely affective against mobs of most other creatures, while a lightning bolt... let so. Certain spells are also useful objects. Fire spells can still collapse a rope bridge or destroy some scrolls on a table. Cold... probably not.

c) You have to remember that all casters cast spontaneously and that many spells can be cast effectively into higher slots. A caster with magic missile, could specialize in fire spells and fall back on magic missile if they run into some fire elementals. You pay less of a penalty for specializing that say a 3.x wizard.

[Galen]

Very useful analysis. I allowed myself to elaborate on it slightly by adding "Resistance Index", which is equal to <number of monsters resistant> + 2 x <number of monsters immune> - <number of monsters vulnerable>

Poison 195
Fire 108
Cold 82
Lightning 55
Acid 48
Necrotic 33
Psychic 20
Thunder 17
Radiant 3
Force 2

So Poison is by far the worst damage to inflict, with Fire distant second. Radiant and Force are by far the best.

[Easy_Lee]

What about mundane damage from a magical weapon? Looks like only one thing resists, so that would be technically the most reliable type, I think.

[Yorrin]

Hey thanks for doing the tally

great post! That must have been a lot of work, but the results are very useful.

Awesome work!

Thanks!

What about mundane damage from a magical weapon? Looks like only one thing resists, so that would be technically the most reliable type, I think.

Demilich is resistant to "mundane" damage from magic weapons (and immune to nonmagical weapons!) and the "Bludgeoning" "Slashing" and "Piercing" entries on the table count for any type of weapon, magical or not.


From looking at things I think that if one is going to specialize in something other than Force one is probably going to pick up Elemental Adept, which makes the resistance for your element of choice disappear. That being assumed it's the immunities that you really need to watch out for, which means

Force~Radiant>Thunder>Lighting=Psychic>Necrotic>Ac id>Cold>Fire>Poison

Note that if you're getting resistance to an element it's almost backwards, as might be expected:

Fire>Poison>Cold>Lighting=Necrotic>Acid>Radiant>Fo rce>Psychic>Thunder

Acid seems to be a relative loser in both lists, with Lightning being a well-rounded "middle of the road" choice if you're both dishing it out and receiving it.

[Demonicattorney]

Have to admit, I don't get it. Why?

Radiant is a damage type that is dealt through a few spells, but typically through Paladin smites, Spiritual Weapon, (though there are some exceptions like flame strike, and guiding bolt). Force damage is dealt primarily by Eldritch Blast and Disentegrate. Some things are immune to all spells(below level 6), like Rakshasha (below level 6), or are immune to how Force does damage, like the Tarrasque. These things don't typically apply to Paladin smites, Divine Favor etc. Meaning that in practice, Radiant is typically better than force, because during some really tough fights your abilities still work.

[Yorrin]

Yorrin,

Thanks for the research. I don't think it is that surprising. However, you may need to be a bit more careful on your conclusion.

a) You do have to factor in how common certain opponents are. This is really hard to determine and could easily be altered by the campaign, setting, the players, levels of the campaign, how long players are at certain levels, etc. For example, PCs are probably likely to run into more NPCs, humanoids, or animals than say devils, demons, or elementals. The later are simply rarer.

b) You have to look at how effective certain spell may be at non-immune creatures. A fireball might not be effective vs. a demon, but it's extremely affective against mobs of most other creatures, while a lightning bolt... let so. Certain spells are also useful objects. Fire spells can still collapse a rope bridge or destroy some scrolls on a table. Cold... probably not.

c) You have to remember that all casters cast spontaneously and that many spells can be cast effectively into higher slots. A caster with magic missile, could specialize in fire spells and fall back on magic missile if they run into some fire elementals. You pay less of a penalty for specializing that say a 3.x wizard.

Oh yes, this is certainly not an end-all be-all master index of what spells are best. Rather these are guidelines for a specialist, and if anything they show that you should probably have more than one type of damage at your disposal. Also not accounted for is which resistances/immunities show up together most often- for example many outsiders resist or are immune to Cold, Fire, Lightning, and Poison all at the same time, which makes specializing in two of those elements less effective than mixing one of those with Necrotic, for example.

[Easy_Lee]

Does anything have resistance/immunity to both force and thunder, or any damage type in which the sorcerer can specialize?

[Yorrin]

Does anything have resistance/immunity to both force and thunder, or any damage type in which the sorcerer can specialize?

The only thing immune to Force is the Helmed Horror, which does not resist Thunder. Demons have Cold+Fire+Lighting+Posion, but can't cover the full spectrum of Sorc options (I can't think of anything that does, besides Archmage which is resistant to ALL spell damage).

EDIT: The two Thunder immunities are Djinni and Storm Giant, neither of which have a ton of resistances anyway (Both are immune to Lightning, Storm Giant is also resistant to Cold).

[MaxWilson]

The only thing immune to Force is the Helmed Horror, which does not resist Thunder.

...although it could be immune to any given Thunder-based spell. (Creator gets to pick 3 spells it is immune to.)

[Easy_Lee]

...although it could be immune to any given Thunder-based spell. (Creator gets to pick 3 spells it is immune to.)

So I guess the warlock sorcerer needs to bring at least four sources of thunder damage plus EB to absolutely be able to kill anything.

[EvilAnagram]

I am appalled at how few creatures have vulnerabilities. Most of these deal extra damage to one creature? Why even have types like this? Why aren't more fire-based creatures vulnerable to cold? Why aren't undead vulnerable to radiant? Why would anyone ever us poison?

This confirms the impression I already had from the MM, but it's still so ****ing disappointing.

[Yorrin]

So I guess the warlock sorcerer needs to bring at least four sources of thunder damage plus EB to absolutely be able to kill anything.

That or dip 3 for a Pact Blade rapier and have a good Dex (which is already advisable). Honestly- Warlock 3 is a great start for just about any offensive build.

[odigity]

Why aren't undead vulnerable to radiant?

(spits out coffee)

What!? Undead are not vulnerable to radiant? How is that even possible? What then is the point of radiant damage other than fluff?

We just played our first 5e session this week, and my Paladin saved the party from an inappropriately high CR undead encounter because of radiant doing double damage... were we wrong?

[Rezby]

I am appalled at how few creatures have vulnerabilities. Most of these deal extra damage to one creature? Why even have types like this? Why aren't more fire-based creatures vulnerable to cold? Why aren't undead vulnerable to radiant? Why would anyone ever us poison?

This confirms the impression I already had from the MM, but it's still so ****ing disappointing.

Its almost as if the Monster Manual is a collection of monsters that may or may not see use in a campaign.

Poison works almost universally on human/humanoids, so if you're ever up against evil humanoids (I know, how unlikely), it might even be useful.

[Demonicattorney]

(spits out coffee)

What!? Undead are not vulnerable to radiant? How is that even possible? What then is the point of radiant damage other than fluff?

We just played our first 5e session this week, and my Paladin saved the party from an inappropriately high CR undead encounter because of radiant doing double damage... were we wrong?

Some undead are vulnerable to radiant, but differently than you might expect. For some, its the only damage they don't resist (for practical purposes it is vulnerable), for other it kills them without a save (zombies), for Vampires it prevents their regeneration from rendering your strikes useless. Second, Paladins smites do additional damage to undead anyway, they added it directly to the ability, and not to the creature.

[odigity]

Some undead are vulnerable to radiant, but differently than you might expect. For some, its the only damage they don't resist (for practical purposes it is vulnerable), for other it kills them without a save (zombies), for Vampires it prevents their regeneration from rendering your strikes useless. Second, Paladins smites do additional damage to undead anyway, they added it directly to the ability, and not to the creature.

True, Divine Smite does say it does an extra 1d8 to undead/fiends, which is a far cry from doubling all radiant, which would give you 4d8-10d8 instead of 3d8-6d8. Also means the radiant dmg from Improved Divine Smite @ 11th level doesn't get doubled, nor does the extra 1d4 radiant from Divine Favor spell, which I was also using this week...

Lame.

[rhouck]

Sorry to bump an old thread, but Yorrin did an excellent job collecting this information. I was looking into resistances/immunities for a fire-based caster and I admit that, at first glance, fire seems like it could be a rough choice. But obviously the raw numbers, while useful, don't always tell the whole story, so I decided to take a closer look at what kinds of creatures had these resistances/immunities.

I counted 38 fire resistant creatures (Yorrin had 37, so I may have made an error) and 40 fire immune creatures. That sounds like a lot!

However, first it is important to remember that there are 430 stat blocks for monsters/creatures/etc. (I'll refer to them all as "monsters") in the Monster Manual. So even with 40 fire immune creatures, your DM still has stat blocks for another 390 monsters in the book -- a fire-specialized caster will hardly be useless against over 90% of the monsters.

Second, of those 40, 8 are "good" monsters, which you are unlikely to face.

Third, of the remaining 32 that are evil/neutral/unaligned, they are not evenly spread across the creature types:
- 13 of them are fiends (e.g., pit fiend, balor)
- 8 of them are elementals (e.g., fire elemental, mephits)
- 5 are evil dragons (e.g., red dragon)
- 1 is the Tarrasque

A similar pattern holds up for those that are fire resistant, with 21 of the 38 being "fiends".


So returning to the question that prompted this: is fire really that bad?
- Answer: it depends on your campaign. Fire resistance/immunity is heavily skewed due to fiends, with 34 of the fire immune/resistant monsters falling into that category -- nearly half of the total 70 non-good fire immune/resistant monsters. So if you will end up fighting a lot of fiends in your campaign, then fire might not be for you.
- Keep in mind, however, that of 21 fire resistant monsters, only 1 of them is not also resistant to cold (in fact, of the 38 total fire resistant creatures, 31 of them are also resistant to cold). And of the 13 fire immune fiends, 11 are also resistant (and 1 immune) to cold. Yorrin mentions this as a reason not to just carry fire and cold spells if you are worried about immunities.
- Fire has the most damage spells available, especially at the highest levels, especially for big AoE spells.
- There also 8 non-good monsters which are fire damage vulnerable.

It also makes me second-guess the elemental adept feat (which the raw numbers seemed to make it seem like a "must have" for a fire caster):
- It does nothing for fire immunity.
- Unless you are fighting fiends regularly, there are only 17 non-fiends with resistance -- less than 4% of all the monsters.
- I'm not sure if the damage boost is enough to make up for it (e.g, fireballs do 29.3 average damage instead of 28). I haven't done all the math, but boosting the primary stat to raise your spell DC seems like it will come out ahead for the vast majority of monsters.

tl;dr -- don't give up on fire or think it is a necessity to have elemental adept based purely on the raw number of monsters with resistances/immunities. Unless you fight a lot of fiends, it will rarely come up. It also makes me wish for the old Monstrous Manual stat of "Frequency" -- while that is obviously campaign dependent, it would have been interesting to see how these monsters fell into each category (e.g., pit fiends were "very rare" and that was on their own plane, whereas goblins were merely "uncommon" and found in any non-arctic land).

[KorvinStarmast]

I am appalled at how few creatures have vulnerabilities.

QFT. Why put that column in if one isn't goint to use it?
Side note:
At least Skeletons are vulnerable to bludgeon, but there are others who ought to be ... and aren't.

[ImperiousLeader]

tl;dr -- don't give up on fire or think it is a necessity to have elemental adept based purely on the raw number of monsters with resistances/immunities. Unless you fight a lot of fiends, it will rarely come up. It also makes me wish for the old Monstrous Manual stat of "Frequency" -- while that is obviously campaign dependent, it would have been interesting to see how these monsters fell into each category (e.g., pit fiends were "very rare" and that was on their own plane, whereas goblins were merely "uncommon" and found in any non-arctic land).

... Thanks for this, although this is frustrating news, as I was planning a Dragon (Fire) Sorcerer for Out of the Abyss, which will unfortunately feature fiends.

*sigh*