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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tomBitonti" data-source="post: 9218809" data-attributes="member: 13107">I can (kindof) justify this because an attack of the wrong damage type will be less likely to take out an opponent.Continuing with the example of the 8 hit point target, with swords doing 4 (or 1-7) points of damage.  If the target has DR 5/Silver, then most attacks with a sword have a much lessened chance of harming the target.  If swords do the variable (1-7) damage, then they cause actual hit point loss only 2/7 of the time, and for only 1 or two points of damage.  A DR/5 Silver 8 hit point target needs to take, on average, 6 hits from a non-silvered sword which does 1-7 points of damage.That works in a probabilistic sense.  Does it really make sense?  I can't really say.  How well it scales, I have no idea.I think this is a problem because of the mistaken view (in my opinion) that resistance and damage reduction should be interpreted literally as written.  Doing so builds on the idea of "damage" being actual physical damage.  A more correct interpretation would be that resistance and damage reduction are a reduction in the chance of an attack taking out an target.  Equivalently, resistance and damage reduction increase the number of attempts which are necessary to take out a target.I do wonder if DR and/or resistance might be better handled simply as adjustments to AC.  Or with advantage/disadvantage, per 5E mechanics.  The question will become one of what gives the best play result: What "feels" right, and what has the best scaling / mathematical properties.TomB</blockquote>

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