[3.5] Damage Reduction & Andy Collins

[BryonD]

You're obviously implying that my argumentation here is deeply dishonest. How about you tell me what's wrong with it instead of smugly pretending to be superior?

HA!!

So when you toss these debate avoidance lines out everthing is fine. I simply infer that they might apply to you and YOU get offended.

Sheesh.

Like I said before. You settled in as an anti-3E tar baby. If you have said a positive thing about a single change, I missed it.

If I thought I could exchange ideas with you, I'd be happy to.

 

[BryonD]

Never mind.

I almost failed my will save.

But I must have used a luck stone to re-roll.

 

[coyote6]

Why is it that, in every battle I've ever seen in D&D from 1st edition onward, that when PC's faced skeletons or zombies, that they never changed their weapons out, and proceeded to hack the living daylights out of the enemy with whatever they had handy?

Really? My group's largely different; we've often switched weapons when fighting skeletons or the like (except for the high Str half-orc barbarian with a greatsword, who kills regular skeletons in one swing, half-damage or not; DR 5/bludgeoning will be even less of an impediment). In one campaign, I even went so far as to give the ranger my character's quarterstaff to use.

(Of course, we were vastly outnumbered, out of spells, those skeletons kept getting back up, the ranger's lowish Str-and-shortsword combination was proving remarkably ineffective, and my character was a monk, so that wasn't a typical situation. )

(That does remind me, though -- for low damage types, like your stereotypical rogue-with-a-rapier, DR 5/bludgeoning is actually harsher than half damage; at half damage, he's still doing something with every hit, but if he's doing 1d6+1, DR 5 means 2/3 of the time, he's doing zip. For high damage types, DR 5/bludgeoning is better, because instead of losing 10+ points of damage per swing, it's just five.)

(We now return you to your regularly scheduled BryonD-Elder-Basilisk exchange.)

 

[BryonD]

(We now return you to your regularly scheduled BryonD-Elder-Basilisk exchange.)

Heh, thanks, but you are welcome (read: begged) to step in.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

I just want to know why I keep reading all this crap.

Oh and Henry that's because skeletons suck enough where it doesn't matter. Give something enough HP where the DR actually makes a difference in the fight, and people will switch weapons if they can.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

Heh, thanks, but you are welcome (read: begged) to step in.

don't you watch your toons the coyote is a super genious, he may get foiled by that dastardly road runner but he aint dumb enough to step between you two.

 

[coyote6]

Heh, thanks, but you are welcome (read: begged) to step in.

Well, I'm afraid I don't have a lot to say; from a flavor standpoint, I think the new DR rules sound fun. From a rules mechanical, what-effect-will-it-have standpoint, I simply don't have the information to judge, or even make a wild-ass guess. Besides, I expect that I'll be fairly lenient with PCs (e.g., one dwarf war cleric has an axe that has spontaneously exhibited powers, apparently as a sign of divine favor; I wouldn't mind if, at an appropriate occasion, it was divinely transmuted to adamantine, silver, or even mithral-that's-treated-as-silver-or-adamantine).

 

[BryonD]

don't you watch your toons the coyote is a super genious, he may get foiled by that dastardly road runner but he aint dumb enough to step between you two.

Fair enough.

But at least I'm the happy one.

EB can say I'm just hiding behind my NDA, but I KNOW that I am having a LOT of fun playing with the new rules. 3E was a great game. 3.5 is the same game with just a few things tweaked after ten of thousands of extra hours of play test.

Do I like all the changes? NO WAY!
But overall I will buy the new books in a heartbeat (and I already have draft copies of two)

 

[Jhyrryl]

The sky is not falling!

Different characters are more or less capable of taking on different critters. Sometimes my rogue stands back and tells the mage, "This one's yours." Sometimes the tank does the same. Sometime I tell the mage to quit wasting fireballs on puds and let my rogue deal with them quietly. And of course, heads always turn towards the cleric when undead and evil outsiders are encountered.

The new DR system simply stretches this concept of some characters being better equipped (literally) than others at killing some types of critters. Namely, those who've taken the (fairly inexpensive) route of having multiple weapons will be better at taking on certain types of creatures. Alignment-based DR won't change. For the most part, most people in the party will (still) be relying on clerics/paladins to cast magic weapon-type spells.

And as has been stated by WotC before, a group being better equipped to handle one type of creature over another is not important to evaluating a critter's CR, whether the equipment is holy weapon against devils, or lots of fire-based spells against trolls. CR is a baseline average difficulty; it doesn't rate the critter's difficulty for your specific group.

 

[BryonD]

Well, I'm afraid I don't have a lot to say; from a flavor standpoint, I think the new DR rules sound fun. From a rules mechanical, what-effect-will-it-have standpoint, I simply don't have the information to judge, or even make a wild-ass guess. Besides, I expect that I'll be fairly lenient with PCs (e.g., one dwarf war cleric has an axe that has spontaneously exhibited powers, apparently as a sign of divine favor; I wouldn't mind if, at an appropriate occasion, it was divinely transmuted to adamantine, silver, or even mithral-that's-treated-as-silver-or-adamantine).

YOU ARE WRONG

YOU ARE WRONG



Heh, just kidding!!!

Seriously, I completely respect what you said. I wish more people would slow down and give it a chance. The funny thing is, the whoel DR thing is just not a big deal.