D&D 5E Weapon Damage Immunity buff

[Sword of Spirit]

Some monsters are resistant to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage, and others are immune. The monster building guidelines treat the immunity as worth more. But if you have access to magic weapon attacks (whether through spells, features, or magic weapons) immunity is no better than resistance. At higher levels, in almost any game it can be assumed that anyone attacking with a weapon is attacking with a magic weapon, even if you are playing a game without magic items and they are just using class features and spells. And yet, even at 17+ level it is still enough to multiple their effective hp by 1.25 for design purposes. In other words, they still think it's going to matter.

In my experience, outside of the very lowest levels, resistances and immunities that can be easily bypassed by magic weapons and cantrips matter very little. They are just a way of giving players free XP by fighting creatures that aren't as tough as they are rated.

I'm not going to worry about trying to fix the whole thing, but there is one part that bothers me the most, and that's the part I have a potential fix for; submitted for your feedback.

Suggested House Rule: If a character is immune to non-magical weapon attacks, they are also resistant to magical weapon attacks.

There could be special materials that could get past that resistance also, so maybe magic+adamantine or magic+silver or whatever based on the creature. But the main point is not having those very few epic creatures have an awesome looking feature that is in fact absolutely useless against any party fighting them.

 

[HammerMan]

I have replaced "Resistant to non magical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage" to "Resistant to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing" saying it doesn't matter if it is magic or not... I am hesitant to do that with immunity.

Putting the resistant to B/P/S (no magic override) on to ones that are immune to non magic ones seems to fit.

 

[Lyxen]

Someone recently regretted that 5e does not really posses the concept of "you must be this cool to fight this monster" like previous editions did, but this is one of the only vestiges. It's not that hard to bypass, though, you're right.

That being said, although 5e kept it simple, it's perfectly OK, at higher level, to create monsters differently with different resistances, and to resurrect the 3e (it was one of the most developed) way of dealing with resistances and immunities.

Remember, the monster manual and the rules are not in chare, you are, and if you want to create a monster with DR 5/Adamantine, nothing in the system prevents you from doing it. You just have to be careful about the effects of bounded accuracy, which means that a lvl 20 5e character is barely equal to a lvl 12-15 in 3e in terms of damage dealing capacity, which means that creating monsters with DR 20/something would mean that almost nothing could damage the monster. But using 5/something or 10/something or even -/something (as long as it's restricted, like simply bludgeoning) is absolutely fine, and it allows for easy conversion as well.

 

[aco175]

I do not recall running any monsters that are immune to weapons but that may be a point on my campaigns not getting above 13-14th level. I tend to give out magic weapons to all PCs by 6-7th level so most of what is being said is true. I would not see the rare monsters with immunity be resistant to magic. Not sure how much this would limit the fun of those classes over casters.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I rather see high level monster's immunity or resistance to nonmagical weapons as:
only heroes can fight me. No army of peasants stands a chance.

 

[jgsugden]

Some monsters are resistant to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage, and others are immune. The monster building guidelines treat the immunity as worth more. But if you have access to magic weapon attacks (whether through spells, features, or magic weapons) immunity is no better than resistance. At higher levels, in almost any game it can be assumed that anyone attacking with a weapon is attacking with a magic weapon, even if you are playing a game without magic items and they are just using class features and spells....

This is not true as a universal statement as you make it.

If you follow the DMG guidelines for treasure, and there are no ready places to buy magic items, then magic weapons are unlikely to be available for all PCs in a 5 PC party. Using magic to get there would require a concentration slot be used, generally, for each magic weapon, which costs you one round of spellcasting unless you're always devoting your concentration to it (yes, most of these spells are bonus spells, so you could be casting a cantrip as well, but that still means you are not casting a higher level spell for benefit).

About 5 to 10% of the 5E games I've played in have not allowed magic items to be purchased, and have had typical levels of found treasure per the DMG. The games I run allow for the purchase of magic items, both items found and resold as well as items created on demand (although these are for profit situations - and the wizards making magic items are doing it to make as much as they can).

I also have retained tiered resistance in my homebrew rules, but use the higher tiers rarely. Creatures can be immune/resistant to common/uncommon/rare/very rare weapons or less. Generally about half of the monsters you encounter in my games that are listed as being resistant to non-magical weapons will be resistant to the type of magic item you could buy at your tier of power.

 

[Lyxen]

As for me, I do give a reasonnable amount of magic items, but out of those, most are not weapons and even less armor, actually. So while most characters at level 10 (my current campagin) have one magic weapon, most of them don't have a secondary magic weapon, for example for ranged instead of melee, or the other way round.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I'm not sure that making weapon attacks less effective would make the game more fun. Maybe a specific monster, that is subject to non-attack options on a fighter, could be fun, but in general if you can't hit it with weapons your fighter and barbarian can't do much.

Yes, you can grapple - if they aren't huge or gargantuan - but so what? They probably didn't want to move anywhere anyways (no need to get away from melee) and knocking them prone would give ranged attacks (like most spell attacks) disadvantage. It's a bad move, tactically, and fighters don't get a lot of alternatives.

Now, if there are damaging environmental effects to shove the monster into, (lava vents, poison gas, cliffs) that could be cool, especially if the pc is built for grappling.

It's kind of like anti-magic - make sure you're not just removing a pc without removing the player.

 

[Lyxen]

I'm not sure that making weapon attacks less effective would make the game more fun. Maybe a specific monster, that is subject to non-attack options on a fighter, could be fun, but in general if you can't hit it with weapons your fighter and barbarian can't do much.

Yes, you can grapple - if they aren't huge or gargantuan - but so what? They probably didn't want to move anywhere anyways (no need to get away from melee) and knocking them prone would give ranged attacks (like most spell attacks) disadvantage. It's a bad move, tactically, and fighters don't get a lot of alternatives.

Now, if there are damaging environmental effects to shove the monster into, (lava vents, poison gas, cliffs) that could be cool, especially if the pc is built for grappling.

It's kind of like anti-magic - make sure you're not just removing a pc without removing the player.

You're right, it's exactly like antimagic, it can enhance situations by having people detect that there's a problem, and make some choices and find clever tactics, but just don't shut down a player, especially not repetitively.

This is why the DRs n/X of 3e were interesting, it made one less efficient but not completely inefficient, 5e is a bit more all or nothing with the immunities. But then 3e was really complex so I can understand 5e not wanting to inject that complexity in the core rules.

 

[ninjayeti]

I think that approach makes sense. For some creatures, like lycanthropes, being harmed only by a particular material is a big part of their schtick. Making magic weapons, which most PCs already have, equally effective pretty much eliminates that genre convention from the game. Giving creatures immune to normal weapons resistance to damage from magic weapons would mean that seeking out, e.g., silver weapons for a fight against werewolves would still be a useful tactic.