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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jgsugden" data-source="post: 9643940" data-attributes="member: 2629">Hollywood disagrees with you.  There are countless movies where the hero has no weapon that can hurt the monster... but they have to stop it anyways.  That is exciting, cinematic and dynamic stuff around which to build a situation.  When you reduce the idea to, "I need my weapon to hurt the monster in order for my weapon focused PC to have any value" you're already missing the point.  We want monsters to provide significantly different challenges.  To do so, they have to have significant differences.  We moved away from goblins, orcs, kobolds, gnolls and all other humanoids feeling like bags of hps for a reason - and it was because we want creatures to be distinctly different and this type of ability ENABLES significant differentiation that requires people to do more than just whack off with their weapon.My experiences for over 4 decades disagrees with you.  As I've stated over and over and over - you can't argue that the approach I advocate doesn't work because I've used it, and seen it work, for decades.  This isn't up for debate - it is a fact that it DOES work if used well.  Period.  If it doesn't work for you - consider that there are other ways to approach the situation, including the ones I discuss above, that can work.  If I'm being honest here: When I find games where DMs stick to their guns on this issue I see it as a red flag.  It tends to be indicative of a DM that wants to control everything.  They're the DMs that don't want PCs to do anything that is not in their checklist of abilities on their character sheet.  They don't want the monster to get pushed off a cliff so they'll stop it.  They don't want the shatter spell to collapse the ceiling on the monster.  They don't want the ranger to lure the monster away from the rest of the PCs and then escape it.  Instead, they want a proper exchange of HPs where the PCs should utilize roughly 40% of their resources so that they can handle one more 40% utilization before their next rest, in which they'll short rest and recover enough abilities for one more encounter.  These DMs tend to be the DMs that are playing their own game and letting the players use some of their toys - they tend to not be the DMs that create a game with their players.  So when a player tries to be inventive the DM makes it nearly impossible to work.  This is not universally true - but it has a pretty darn high cooccurrence.  D&D is an RPG - a role playing game.  Characters play a role in a story.  Look at the great stories we have in books, movies, tv, comics, etc...  The idea that a monster can't be beat with brute force is a common trope - and it works!  It results in great stories.  We have so many of them.  This type of mechanic enables those types of stories - and based up[on over 4 decades of my experience - they can be used to tell fun and exciting stories ... and most specifically, fun stories where the players feel like they did something special.  Something memorable.  Not just another 48 damage over 3 rounds.  If you disagree with me I PROMISE you that you could benefit from trying to see it my way and giving it a chance.  If you think you have, and it has not worked, ask yourself why it was worked for others.  What might you try differently to see what it is like when it does work?  NONE of us are perfect DMs.  We should all be trying to get better all the time.  I've learned A LOT by reading these forums over the past 23 (gulp) years and applied it to my games.  Whether it was mechanical interactions, storytelling techniques, hidden rule interactions, implications of the math behind the tables in the game (I was not the first person to note that you likely will not find a magic weapon before level 5 under the 2014 rules) ... we should be open minded and consider what people are saying ... and if you think something does not work and someone else says, "Hey, it worked for me and it was great," consider that you might be missing something.</blockquote>

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