D&D (2024) 2024 - Do magic weapons bypass resistance now?

[AlViking]

I'm glad they made the change for multiple reasons. First, I've been in a game were we hit werewolves and the fighter couldn't do diddly-squat. He may as well have sat the fight out for all the use he was. Second as a DM I want to be able to use things like wererats against low level parties ... but if I wanted them to survive I had to give them magic or silvered weapons long before I wanted to.

It's also a boring trope at this point to me. Everyone knows about the immunity and it's not a surprise. Lycanthropes are only a big bad because of their resistance, once the party has weapons that can hurt them they're seriously underpowered and need more HP. So depending on the group they're either virtually unstoppable or aren't tough enough for their CR.

Throw in all the other side effects like two werewolves couldn't hurt each other with their natural weapons. You could drop a mountain on one and according to the rules it would take no damage. The list goes on.

It was interesting the first time. The tenth or hundredth time? No thanks.

 

[TiQuinn]

I'm glad they made the change for multiple reasons. First, I've been in a game were we hit werewolves and the fighter couldn't do diddly-squat. He may as well have sat the fight out for all the use he was. Second as a DM I want to be able to use things like wererats against low level parties ... but if I wanted them to survive I had to give them magic or silvered weapons long before I wanted to.

It's also a boring trope at this point to me. Everyone knows about the immunity and it's not a surprise. Lycanthropes are only a big bad because of their resistance, once the party has weapons that can hurt them they're seriously underpowered and need more HP. So depending on the group they're either virtually unstoppable or aren't tough enough for their CR.

Throw in all the other side effects like two werewolves couldn't hurt each other with their natural weapons. You could drop a mountain on one and according to the rules it would take no damage. The list goes on.

It was interesting the first time. The tenth or hundredth time? No thanks.

I don’t know why they just don’t replace it with regeneration. That way you can damage a werewolf all day long and beat it long enough to get away from it, but you can’t kill it without the silver or magic weapon. Gives the party a lot more flexibility to be effective but still makes the lycanthrope a potentially recurring problem.

 

[TiQuinn]

The issue with Magic and silver weapons is that if you don’t have those weapons, the question isn’t really “how will the PCs beat the monster?” It’s “what answer for beating the monster will you accept as DM” and “did you provide a dynamic enough environment with options for the players to interact with to give them a viable solution?”

I’ve encountered many a sparse dungeon where there’s no indication that there’s anything in the room that I can use to fight the monster that my weapon is useless against.

To put it another way, monster as something to fight versus monster as puzzle requires different tools from both the system and the DM, and handling those differences are often not included or considered.

 

[AnotherGuy]

My Homebrew

Incorporeal
Immunity to mundane (non-magical) damage.
Resistance to magical weapons
(Spells are pure magic, whereas weapons still have some tie to the natural world and thus suffer resistance)

Skeletons
Resistance to piercing
Hardness 5 (only for piercing attacks)

Vampires
Resistance to non-magical weapons.
Hardness 5 for mundane weapons.
Silver and magical weapons do full damage.
Holy/Blessed weapons negate regeneration.

Dragons
Hardness depending on Age and Type

Werewolves
Resistance to non-magical weapons.
Resistance to magical weapons, slows regeneration.
Silvered weapons beats resistance and negate regeneration

Elementals
Resistance to BPS (natural or magical)

Fiends
Resistance to non-magical weapons
Magical weapons to full damage.
All fiends have a Hardness rating which is applied after resistance.
Silvered weapons bypass resistance and Hardness.
Holy/Blessed weapons bypass resistance and Hardness and negates regeneration.

There are other corner cases but you get the idea.
Then you have to decide about all the other cool materials (Adamantine, Darkwood, Mithril etc).

 

[Sulicius]

I suppose it would be easy enough to hack monster entries, provided you don’t bother with CR and all that jazz.

Especially if you’re running a “Witcher” type campaign.

I doubt that 5e will break if you give a werewolf immunity to everything, including magic weapons, unless they’re silvered. Or undead to everything unless it deals radiant damage.

In my campaign, I plan on giving vampires the equivalent of Troll regeneration (but weak to radiant instead of fire damage).

I have given my vampires this kind of regeneration, only it only triggers when they are reduced to 0 hp. It keep tracking the hp to a minimum, and it works just as well for the players.

 

[Rune]

I'm not entirely sure that its impact was all that heavy, though. If (big if) the monsters followed guidelines, the most significant impact resistances had on effective hit points (and thus CR) was in the low CRs (1-4) and the effect reduced as more characters were expected to have magic weapons.

That said, as practical matter at the table rather than a theorycraft one, one of the areas I found where monsters were most lacking for their CR was in hit points. I almost always beefed up the hit points in any significant monsters in an encounter to make it more of a challenge to my players. So, it's entirely possible the impact of resistances was still to heavy in the CR calculations.

I did find I had to regularly double or quadruple hit points at the higher levels if I wanted something to stick around for more than a round or two.

 

[Clint_L]

You didn't catch my point here. The puzzle was not to get a magic weapon. It was how to deal with a foe you couldn't damage when you didn't have one. The challenge presented to a low level party was similar to the challenge protagonists face in horror movies when they fight an invulnerable supernatural foe. "I may not be able to kill you, but I can XXXXX". What is XXXXX? That is the puzzle.

In the 1980s I encountered my first Jackalwere. I was a fighter named Dryken DeLerosh...

Magic items, especially weapons, were mostly given out like candy in AD&D (check any official published adventure from that time). Sounds like you had an awesome experience, but lack of access to a magical weapon would not have been a plot point in most campaigns, and there is nothing stopping a current DM creating a low level monster that can only be hit by magic items.

I thought immunity to non-magic weapons was basically a joke category even in 5e 2014, which has lower magic item reliance, generally speaking, than AD&D did (AD&D relied on magic items for much of the character progression that is now worked into class design). It was extremely rare with low level foes, and was basically a ribbon ability for most of the monsters who had it.

 

[jgsugden]

Magic items, especially weapons, were mostly given out like candy in AD&D (check any official published adventure from that time). Sounds like you had an awesome experience, but lack of access to a magical weapon would not have been a plot point in most campaigns, and there is nothing stopping a current DM creating a low level monster that can only be hit by magic items.

The big criticism of the published adventures was their absolute failure to follow the treasure guidelines.

I thought immunity to non-magic weapons was basically a joke category even in 5e 2014, which has lower magic item reliance, generally speaking, than AD&D did (AD&D relied on magic items for much of the character progression that is now worked into class design). It was extremely rare with low level foes, and was basically a ribbon ability for most of the monsters who had it.

Didn't you stop and think about the situation? If something seems senseless, meaningless or wasted - it is often a great idea to stop and ask yourself if you might be missing something. Don't just brush it off as someone else being wrong/bad/dumb ... look for meaning and ask yourself if there is something you might be missing.

If you followed the guidelines for treasure provision in the 2014 DMG, most parties did not get a magic weapon until around level 5 or 6. Some got it As early as level 1. Some didn't get them until you were pretty deep into the second tier. But, using the tables and following probability ...

12 out of every 100 hordes rolled on table F. 23 out of 100 numbers on table F were magic weapons. You got 1d4 items.

3 rolled on G for their hordes. 24 out of 100 on table G were weapons. Only one item.

Let's combine those and be generous and say that 15% of hordes had a 25% chance to having a magic weapon. You got 7 hordes. If you pulled items in the horde you got 1d4 items. 0.0375% is the chance of pulling an F or G horde and then finding a weapon in it as one of your weapons. That comes out to less than a 50% chance by the time you reach level 5. That gave you four levels where it was unlikely you'd have a magic weapon.

Jackalweres, with their CR 1/2, were meant to be used during these levels when magic items were infrequent if not non-existant.

If you want to take it further, between levels 5 and 10 you get 18 hordes. 14% have 1d4 Fs, 4% have 1d4 Gs, and 2% had 1 H with a 19% chance to be a weapon. The odds are not that much greater that you'll pull one here, but cumulatively you pass the 50% mark likelihood of pulling one sometime in level 5 or 6 if hordes are distributed roughly proportionately across levels (depending upon whether you distribute them just by level, or by the amount of time expected to be adventuring at each level as calculated by reverse engineering encounter design recommendations, monster experience, CR, EL, etc...)

Yes, the publishers didn't follow their guidelines. Yes, a lot of DMs just used published adventures and missed out on how the game was designed to work. HOWEVER, the creators are on record discussing the intent of these abilities and how they should be used ... which as I discussed above, is something you should have picked up on. Why have an ability if it is meaningless? You put a mechanic in a game to give it meaning. If it has no meaning, consider that you might be missing something.

If you go back on Enworld you can probably find 200 posts over thew last decade where I go into these phenomena and suggest DMs follow the guidelines. At least once a month during my active periods ...

When I worked with a new DM, it was always something I worked into conversation to let them know how published adventures and the guidelines differed. Some DMs considered my words and what was in the books - and used the guidance. Others gave me a +3 weapon at level 1 because that was fun to them. I did have fun in both types of games ... but the games worked better and were more dynamic far more often in the games that followed the guidelines.

A lot of people complained 2014 didn't work well but NEVER played per the guidelines in the book. If you followed all of them, including how to make easy encounters interesting and using the treasure as sparingly as indicated ... the game was much better. I felt like a lot the complaints I saw in 2014 were from people complaining that their Soda Stream made lousy coffee.

 

[AlViking]

The big criticism of the published adventures was their absolute failure to follow the treasure guidelines. Didn't you stop and think about the situation? If something seems senseless, meaningless or wasted - it is often a great idea to stop and ask yourself if you might be missing something. Don't just brush it off as someone else being wrong/bad/dumb ... look for meaning and ask yourself if there is something you might be missing.

If you followed the guidelines for treasure provision in the 2014 DMG, most parties did not get a magic weapon until around level 5 or 6. Some got it As early as level 1. Some didn't get them until you were pretty deep into the second tier. But, using the tables and following probability ...

12 out of every 100 hordes rolled on table F. 23 out of 100 numbers on table F were magic weapons. You got 1d4 items.

3 rolled on G for their hordes. 24 out of 100 on table G were weapons. Only one item.

Let's combine those and be generous and say that 15% of hordes had a 25% chance to having a magic weapon. You got 7 hordes. If you pulled items in the horde you got 1d4 items. 0.0375% is the chance of pulling an F or G horde and then finding a weapon in it as one of your weapons. That comes out to less than a 50% chance by the time you reach level 5. That gave you four levels where it was unlikely you'd have a magic weapon.

Jackalweres, with their CR 1/2, were meant to be used during these levels when magic items were infrequent if not non-existant.

If you want to take it further, between levels 5 and 10 you get 18 hordes. 14% have 1d4 Fs, 4% have 1d4 Gs, and 2% had 1 H with a 19% chance to be a weapon. The odds are not that much greater that you'll pull one here, but cumulatively you pass the 50% mark likelihood of pulling one sometime in level 5 or 6 if hordes are distributed roughly proportionately across levels (depending upon whether you distribute them just by level, or by the amount of time expected to be adventuring at each level as calculated by reverse engineering encounter design recommendations, monster experience, CR, EL, etc...)

Yes, the publishers didn't follow their guidelines. Yes, a lot of DMs just used published adventures and missed out on how the game was designed to work. HOWEVER, the creators are on record discussing the intent of these abilities and how they should be used ... which as I discussed above, is something you should have picked up on. Why have an ability if it is meaningless? You put a mechanic in a game to give it meaning. If it has no meaning, consider that you might be missing something.

If you go back on Enworld you can probably find 200 posts over thew last decade where I go into these phenomena and suggest DMs follow the guidelines. At least once a month during my active periods ...

When I worked with a new DM, it was always something I worked into conversation to let them know how published adventures and the guidelines differed. Some DMs considered my words and what was in the books - and used the guidance. Others gave me a +3 weapon at level 1 because that was fun to them. I did have fun in both types of games ... but the games worked better and were more dynamic far more often in the games that followed the guidelines.

A lot of people complained 2014 didn't work well but NEVER played per the guidelines in the book. If you followed all of them, including how to make easy encounters interesting and using the treasure as sparingly as indicated ... the game was much better. I felt like a lot the complaints I saw in 2014 were from people complaining that their Soda Stream made lousy coffee.

I prefer a lower level magic item campaign. That scarcity of magic items is exactly why I dislike immunity like the Jackalwere's. At CR 1/2 I should be able to throw several of this monster at even a level 1 party but because they lack the proper equipment I never would. Instead of it being a 5 character party it often becomes a 2-3 person party, frequently with any spells that are ineffective against the enemy. Typical cantrips at that level are doing 3-4 points of damage if they hit or the save is failed so could easily take at least a half dozen rounds for a single monster. The fight becomes a boring slog if not a TPK. By the time the characters are high enough level to get magic items it's difficult to make a CR 1/2 monster a threat so they never get used.

There's also no big surprise or shock for anyone that has played the game for a while, it's just eye-rolling frustration that no matter what the players do it's typical for more than one character in the party to have a challenge they can do absolutely nothing about. I try to avoid puzzles that have no solution, and for character that rely on weapons there is no solution other than to have something magic. It's also not creative or inventive to know you need a magic or silver weapon, it's just an equipment tax.

 

[Nijay]

I kind of hate these 2024 changes from several angles, especially when I look at all the changes to the Werewolf.

First is that a silvered weapon is now a magic weapon. This information is hid away from players in the DMG instead of being in the PHB. How much does it cost to get a silvered weapon? Well, I guess it's a common magic item. You might be able to take an existing weapon and craft a silvered weapon from it for 50gp (uh, how much silver is going on this thing?) sometimes using a tool that isn't related to smithing, metallurgy, or alchemy. Or players might buy one whole for 100gp per the 2024 DMG, or buy it for 20-70GP per Xanathar's Guide - but how much to pay an NPC to silver an existing weapon? Which NPC? Are blacksmiths just casually making magic weapons now? No, an arcana check is needed. Who will pass an arcana check and do the alchemical process? An alchemist or sage or artificer, or arcane blacksmith, I guess?

2014 PHB:

SILVERED WEAPONS
Some monsters that have immunity or resistance
to nonmagical weapons are susceptible to silver
weapons, so cautious adventurers invest extra coin to
plate their weapons with silver. You can silver a single
weapon or ten pieces of ammunition for 100 gp. This
cost represents not only the price of the silver, but the
time and expertise needed to add silver to the weapon
without making it less effective.

2024 DMG:

Silvered Weapon​

Weapon (any simple or martial), common

An alchemical process has bonded silver to this magic weapon. When you score a Critical Hit with it against a creature that is shape-shifted, the weapon deals one additional die of damage.

Second, if you are fighting an enemy, it is only going to matter a low percentage of the time, because the only bonus is when you roll a crit. Most fights would not even know the difference between a silvered weapon or standard.

Third, the abstracted ammunition. In 2014 you got 10 pieces of ammunition. In 2024, it seems that all ammunition fired from a silvered firearm is considered magic - seemingly meaning that ammunition fired from a silvered weapon is considered silvered. So I would go to the extreme and say I guess you can just fire a silvered weapon and collect silvered ammunition indefinitely for an infinite money glitch. Even without going to the extreme, this really takes away the trope of scarce ammunition. You've found three silvered arrows in the murdered hunter's quiver...nope, now you've found a silvered bow and all your arrows are effectively silvered now.

Fourth, I still hate the idea of layering silvered weapons and magic weapons. It was never useful before, right, as magic weapons bypassed resistance and would be redundant? Silvered weapons were an in-between of standard and magical weapons. But now you have a separate mechanic for a silvered weapon, and nothing really arguing against silvering a magic weapon or having silvered versions of magic weapons. Because the language is "An alchemical process has bonded silver to this magic weapon." This reads as if you can bond silver to any magic weapon. This can lead to all sorts of dumb stuff like does it even work to silver a vorpal sword, does a silvered sun sword still emit light.

Fifth, the werewolf now has a long bow and shapeshifting is now a bonus action. So what is stopping them from kiting your champion with a silvered sword until you die? (Yes, the equipment doesn't transform with them, but I bet a medium wolf could carry the bow and quiver in its jaws.) At best, a silvered melee weapon / magic weapon looses effectiveness in an encounter that seems likely to start off ranged.