Can only be hit by magical weapons.....

[rangerjohn]

I think this "only magical weapons" rule is rather stupid because the difficulty of the fight heavily depends on your equipment (and, ultimately, your DM's generosity). If you happened to have a +3 crossbow back in 2E, you could kill rakshasas with little difficulty; if you didn't, you were as good as dead.

Well now you better have a +1 crossbow, with an armory of different bolts. Alchemical silver, cold iron, adamantine, mithral, and a friendly spell caster to cast align weapon. Which are you more likely to have? A +3 crossbow at that level, or all those weapon and a cleric with that spell prepared.

 

[Pax]

Horoku, that effect still exists. That wererat would have DR10/silver or DR 15/silver - so unless the fighter was wieldign a SILVER mace ... the description would hold just fine!

Let's say the fighter has a normal mace, rolls average damage, and is NOT a max-strength, raging barbarian and/or halforc. He'd do, say, 1d8+3 damage (1d8+5 if he's specialised). That means 7-8 average damage (9-10 if specialised), which bounces off the DR 10/silver of an afflicted lycanthrope.

The trick is, in 2E days - it didn't matter WHAT you did, nor HOW well you rolled, if you didn't have the right weapon, you coudl NEVER do even a SINGLE hitpoint of damage in combat with that were-rat.

Now, the fighter can hope for maximum damage (11hp, or 13 if specialised - gettign 1hp or 3hp through each time he does that) and a LOT of luck in NOT being hit, and he can pray for a critical hit, so that he rolls 2d8+6 or 2d8+10, averaging 15 or 19 damage, and getting a moderate amount "through" the DR.

The odds are, if the were-rat is a tough one, the Fighter will need HELP, in order to survive. But at least a single wererat can't kill an UNLIMITED number of first-to-fourth level characters.

Think about it: in the absence of magic weapons, silvered weapons, and spellcasters ... ONE werewolf could destroy an army of TEN THOUSAND warriors - assuming they didn't all just up and RUN, of course. Just one werewolf!

Now, at least, with good and well-trained warriors, equipped with good, high-damage (but still neither magical nor silvered) weapons ... there's a very high chance that, though losses might be very high, that army of non-enhanced, un-spellcaster-supported "normals" will take the werewolf down.

I prefer "it's going to be insanely hard to hurt this guy, 'cause your weapons don't seem to be very effective right now" to "you must be THIS HIGH to enter" nonsense.

 

[Pax]

Well now you better have a +1 crossbow, with an armory of different bolts. Alchemical silver, cold iron, adamantine, mithral, and a friendly spell caster to cast align weapon. Which are you more likely to have? A +3 crossbow at that level, or all those weapon and a cleric with that spell prepared.

Bah.

A +1 Sure-striking Truesilver crossbow (market price +3), with mostly cold iron bolts ... and a handful of adamantine bolts for the rare beasties that need 'em.

Sure-striking was updated in the Players guide to Faerun; it now adds ALL FOUR alignments to any weapon so enhanced, for thepurposes of overcoming DR. It's market price is +1.

Truesilver is from Ghostwalk, and the weapon is treated as being silver - in addition to it's normal properties - for the purposes of overcoming DR. It's market price is +1.

So the described crossbow can even overcome the DR of a Balor. And it costs all of 18,450gp, IIRC the price of a heavy crossbow (150gp, right?). Add 20 adamantine bolts (1,202gp) and the slew of cold iron bolts (say, 40 of 'em for 8gp), and you're all set, for under 21,000gp, against ANY penetratable DR.

 

[Kalanyr]

My personal weirndess with the new system is that a commoner with a normal Scythe/Axe/Longsword (anything capable of doing more than 15 damage per hit) can theoretically (though very very very unlikely) kill a Balor but he can never ever ever kill a shadow (incorporeal) or a Gelugon/Cornugon/Pit Fiend (rengeration), just strikes me as kinda weird or maybe it just sucks to be a demon.

 

[Liquidsabre]

Horoku, that effect still exists. That wererat would have DR10/silver or DR 15/silver - so unless the fighter was wieldign a SILVER mace ... the description would hold just fine!

3.5 lycanthropes have reduced DRs so now it's DR 5/silver (afflicted) and DR 10/silver (natural). Much more manageable now if a party happens to be without a silver weapon at the moment, not to mention if the fighter has power attack.

 

[Capellan]

Well now you better have a +1 crossbow, with an armory of different bolts. Alchemical silver, cold iron, adamantine, mithral, and a friendly spell caster to cast align weapon. Which are you more likely to have? A +3 crossbow at that level, or all those weapon and a cleric with that spell prepared.

The "+1 crossbow, with an armory of different bolts. Alchemical silver, cold iron, adamantine, mithral, and a friendly spell caster to cast align weapon", since all it needs is a small amount of cash and a 3rd level caster.

In fact, the crossbow doesn't even need to be magical, since every caster in the game has access to magic weapon.

I've found 3.5 DR a significant improvement on earlier editions (including 3.0), as both a player and a DM.

 

[Horoku]

Horoku, that effect still exists. That wererat would have DR10/silver or DR 15/silver - so unless the fighter was wieldign a SILVER mace ... the description would hold just fine!

etc.

You make a good point. On the other hand, I figure a decent army in a fantasy world would have at least a couple of battlemages. You definitely make a good point, though. The army should, at the very least, be able to briefly incapacitate, if not outright kill, the werewolf.

Or, maybe they could just trap him somehow?

I dunno. I do bow to your logic, though. Big army > Werewolf.

 

[ARandomGod]

Celestial bodies such as asteroids or the earth never counted as weapons in any version of D&D, as odd as that may apparently seem.

That IS odd.
Unless you're playing in a non-magic world, the world should be the penultimate magic weapon. And everybody KNOWS that asteroids or other "metals from the sky" sources are potent magic. Or else why are they so highly sought after for the higher level magic items?

 

[Tuzenbach]

Think about it: in the absence of magic weapons, silvered weapons, and spellcasters ... ONE werewolf could destroy an army of TEN THOUSAND warriors - assuming they didn't all just up and RUN, of course. Just one werewolf!

Now, at least, with good and well-trained warriors, equipped with good, high-damage (but still neither magical nor silvered) weapons ... there's a very high chance that, though losses might be very high, that army of non-enhanced, un-spellcaster-supported "normals" will take the werewolf down.

I prefer "it's going to be insanely hard to hurt this guy, 'cause your weapons don't seem to be very effective right now" to "you must be THIS HIGH to enter" nonsense.

It's funny you should bring up the "just one werewolf" theme. Five years ago I played a D&D game where, including the NPCs, there was a party of about a dozen of us. However, we were all around 2nd level. No magic weapons to speak of. We encountered a single werewolf. After our 1st level spells were depleted, we could do nothing else but climb trees and hide. The DM ruled that the werewolf could not climb trees (dunno why). But at the time, I wasn't thinking in terms of "if only werewolves could be hit by normal weaponry", but "if only 3 or 4 of us had some nice magic weapons". Why? I didn't want to "cheapen" the werewolf.

 

[Tuzenbach]

Ah! I see now. I've just read some of the bits pertaining to damage reduction in the 3E MM. Yes, I guess it makes more sense than the standard "can only be hit with a +1 or better". Thanks for the info.