D&D (2024) Damage Threshold, the new "need a magic weapon"?

[Ancalagon]

By itself, this is a fine mechanic. It just has to not be overused, like the many fine mechanics in 3E were.

Ah, but in 3e, the damage was reduced. Here it's a threshold.

Say you attack a monster with DR 10, and you do 2 attacks, doing 9 and 13 damage. First attack does nothing, second does 3.

But with a threshold of 10, the first attack still does nothing, but the second one does full damage, ie 13 hp.

It is slightly faster to resolve as there is no damage adjustment to do - it's a "yes/no" step, not a subtraction.

 

[Ancalagon]

A return of flat per attack DR in the new monster manual as described would be a good thing.

as noted, not a damage reduction, but a threshold. beat the threshold, you do all the damage.

 

[Zaukrie]

I agree with a poster above that this is great for minions (as Flee Mortals does it).

 

[Kinematics]

Obviously a DT of 10 would be really high for a living creature. For a thick door, though, it seems perfectly reasonable.

Using a dagger against a door isn't going to break through it no matter how many times you poke it, but an axe or a maul can manage with a few swings.


For the peasant army vs the dragon, I'd see it more likely to have a DT of 5 or so. Most of the arrows bounce off, but the occasional hit does normal damage. You'd need 370 villagers to take the dragon out in one round — 1/3 of them doing 6-7 damage on a hit (ignoring crits), and 1/4 of them managing to hit an AC 19.

The difficulty would be in getting that many archers together in one place before the dragon showed up, and getting to fire their arrows before the dragon's breath weapon decimated the field.

And they have to do that at less than 80 feet if they don't want disadvantage (in which case you need 4x as many archers). Get a line of archers three archers deep and the line needs to be over 600' long. A shortbow's max range is only 320'. Even placed in a square, it has to be 100' x 95', so a good chunk of the archers are still in the disadvantage zone even if the dragon flies right up next to them (not even counting the issue of firing through allies' spaces).

So that degree of DT would still allow peasant archers to be a theoretical threat, even if not actually quite so much in practice, unless you're willing to fully embrace the disadvantage range. Then have a city with 1500+ archers that can target a creature within about 100 yards. Won't be doing that in a village, but cities with a few hundred thousand people become a much harder nut to crack, even without heroes.

But heroes definitely make things easier.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Ah, but in 3e, the damage was reduced. Here it's a threshold.

You are responding to something I was not saying.

I think this is a good mechanic.

I just don't want it to be slapped on every mid and high level monster, as many good 3E mechanics were, whether or not it made any sense.

Damage threshhold is a good special mechanic. It should not be a default above a certain level.

 

[tetrasodium]

as noted, not a damage reduction, but a threshold. beat the threshold, you do all the damage.

Damage Threshhold was not an improvement in ways that justify it replacing DR. There might be scenarios where it could be a useful substitute tool in the GM's toolbox but DR had multiple workarounds for players when it came up & those multiple workarounds were

• Deal a damage type that was not impacted by the DR
  • Easy Maybe Bob's +5 holy avenger is bad with this creature because it deals slashing & isn't doing chaotic or fire damage. Coincidentally maybe his +2 mace works similarly as Alice's less optimized PC who is still using her best gear.
• Use a weapon made from a particular material or specially enchanted to bypass the DR
  • "Ruhroh guys, we should use weapons made from cold iron/byshek/flametouched iron/silver/etc against this instead of our good gear. We are still going to be ahead on damage but the monsters don't need to be statted to be such a slog & some things.
• Go for broke and hit it fewer times with more damaging attack(s) so the DR has fewer chances to chip away at damage & it eats a smaller fraction
  • Higher chance of missing or getting saved against on that all or nothing attack but Dave can expect a bigger payoff afterwards if he gets lucky
• Play the odds & do lots of attacks that (hopefully) all do more than the DR but add up to a number that makes it worthwhile
  • Better odds to regularly do something & it's going to be hard to miss or get saved against on all of your attacks but that DR is going to add up & both of those are a good thing for someone's build

Unfortunately 50% resistance is the worst of all things. All of the strengths of each method still exist, but only some of them maintain their weaknesses (ie fewer bigger hits is still a bigger chance of doing nothing while many smaller hits still has better odds of regularly being successful but both take an identical hit to damage & there is no cumulative counterbalance to the fewer/many individual strikes).


Having those different methods meant that the GM could juggle things with monsters & treasure as needed for the good of their table based on the individual PC builds. That could even be extended to mitigate the impact of "oops giving that out was a mistake I didn't anticipate" treasure often enough to allow the other players to not feel overshadowed while still infrequent enough to allow the player with that mistake feel good about having it.

The 3.5 golf bag of weapons criticism absolutely lost any shred of merit when wotc started cracking jokes about it while hyping the new stuff like this:

 

[AnotherGuy]

I love the concept.

So, in the toolbox we have

• Damage Resistance
• Damage Threshold
• Resistance to a particular damage type
• Resistance to non-magical weapons
• Immunity to non-magical weapons

One can also add the silvered, adamantine, blessed...etc

 

[dave2008]

Hello

A big change in 5.0 was how some large magical monsters were suddenly more vulnerable to massed attack than before. This was particularly notable when combined with bound accuracy.

Imagine a dragon, 200 HP 19 AC, swooping down to attack a town with her breath weapon. Unknown to her, a militia of peasants with bows lies in ambush. Say they have +3 to hit, 1d6+1 damage. Not even counting critical, on average it would take about 180 peasants to kill the dragon in a single volley. My math may be off a bit, please feel free to "reproduce" this thought experiment, but the general point remains: masses of lowly archers can murderize a lot of things.

It didn't used to be that way. In 3.X, the dragon would have had some kind of damage resistance, which could be overcome with either a lot of damage or magical weapons.

But check this out. From the Glossary:

Damage Threshold
"A creature or an object that has a damage threshold has Immunity to all damage unless it takes an amount of damage from a single attack or effect equal to or greater than its damage threshold, in which case it takes that entire instance of damage. Any damage that fails to meet or exceed the damage threshold is superficial and doesn’t reduce Hit Points. For example, if an object has a damage threshold of 10, the object takes no damage if 9 damage is dealt to it, since that damage fails to exceed the threshold. If the same object is dealt 11 damage, it takes all of that damage."

I speculate that this is the new 5.5 "you need a magic weapon or a spell to hurt this powerful monster" rule.

This damage threshold of 10 (for an example) can easily be defeated by tier 2 heroes! Now, weak attacks like cantrips may not be reliable, but it's a reasonable obstacle. The same damage threshold would make the dragon virtually immune to the lowly archers.

So heroes are needed again, but said heroes don't have to have a magical sword.

I've been informed that this rule existed in 5.0, but only for ships (from Saltmarsh).

Am I correct in predicting this? If I'm wrong, would it be a nice house rule? It would favor "a few big hits" vs the "many small hits" type of martials...

I have used it for years with 5e, ever since they introduced as a thing in 5e with ships IIRC. I put it on dragons, giant monsters, etc. However, since it is overly negative for martials (many attacks at lower damage) it had to be low enough for martials to overcome on a regular basis at a certain level . Therefore it really became a story telling device and not mechanically relevant so I stopped using it.

 

[dave2008]

Damage Threshhold was not an improvement in ways that justify it replacing DR. There might be scenarios where it could be a useful substitute tool in the GM's toolbox but DR had multiple workarounds for players when it came up & those multiple workarounds were

• Deal a damage type that was not impacted by the DR
  • Easy Maybe Bob's +5 holy avenger is bad with this creature because it deals slashing & isn't doing chaotic or fire damage. Coincidentally maybe his +2 mace works similarly as Alice's less optimized PC who is still using her best gear.
• Use a weapon made from a particular material or specially enchanted to bypass the DR
  • "Ruhroh guys, we should use weapons made from cold iron/byshek/flametouched iron/silver/etc against this instead of our good gear. We are still going to be ahead on damage but the monsters don't need to be statted to be such a slog & some things.
• Go for broke and hit it fewer times with more damaging attack(s) so the DR has fewer chances to chip away at damage & it eats a smaller fraction
  • Higher chance of missing or getting saved against on that all or nothing attack but Dave can expect a bigger payoff afterwards if he gets lucky
• Play the odds & do lots of attacks that (hopefully) all do more than the DR but add up to a number that makes it worthwhile
  • Better odds to regularly do something & it's going to be hard to miss or get saved against on all of your attacks but that DR is going to add up & both of those are a good thing for someone's build

Those can all apply to damage thresholds too. So I am not understanding this part of your argument.

 

[tetrasodium]

Those can all apply to damage thresholds too. So I am not understanding this part of your argument.

Except then you are back to some strengs being carried over without weaknesses and other strengths being lost but maintaining the weakness because DT is no longer cumulative for each attack as long as the DT. Is exceeded

If Alice does an average of 6-13 (1d10+5) 3x/round she has low odds of having her entire attack eaten by misses and low impact overall if she misses one.

Meanwhile if Bob does one attack of 7-17(2d6+5) or something more like a smite he has a much larger chance of a miss eating his entire attack

Under DT alice keeps her play the odds strength and neither is especially impacted enough by DT2 DT5 or or even DT10 so neither feels pressure to switch to a less optimal weapon than a hypothetical magic one that increases the above example numbers even higher