D&D 5E (2024) Can you get resistance to all 13 damage types?

[Horwath]

Rings of Resistance do not require attunement, as of 2024. And apparently, there is no rule that you cannot wear multiple magic rings (This was debated on another thread a year or so ago).

So you can buy, craft, or find 10 of them to get 10/13 of the way there.

 

[Chaltab]

Is it possible to get resistance to all damage types? Or how many is possible?

acid, bludgeoning, cold, fire, force, lightning, necrotic, piercing, poison, psychic, radiant, slashing, and thunder.

Species gives 1 (dwarf for poison seems rarest)
Bear Barbarian 3 gives 5 (including 2 any)
Ancient Paladin 7 give 3 (including psychic that Bear can't get)
Boon of Energy resistance gives another 2 (also can reflect often)
= 11

Any other way to add one?
Any force resistance anywhere?

You can get at least 8 resistances from Rings of Resistance alone...

More if you allow rings in other places like toes, tails, or horns.

 

[Tessarael]

You can get at least 8 resistances from Rings of Resistance alone...

Why is why D&D 2014 required attunement. That said, because they required attunement and were highly situational defensive items, those attunement slots were often better off used on something else instead. Which is why I presume that D&D 2024 dropped the attunement requirement. It is not going to break things that much to allow characters multiple rings of resistance, as the bulk of monster damage (bludgeoning/piercing/slashing) is typically not something the ring of resistance helps against.

 

[bedir than]

I had a D&D 2014 Barbarian with Path of the Totem Warrior and Bear aspect for resistance to all damage except psychic. It was a very tanky character, but you're trading off reduced damage by not going Path of the Berserker. And the resistance only applies while raging, and raging requires a bonus action to activate, so you're not always raging, particularly with limited rage uses per day. It seemed reasonably balanced in play across that long term campaign. We did get hit by psychic damage occasionally.

Now permanently having resistance to all damage types all the time, that would be excessive!

Also they tend to have poor AC and because of MAD their Dex save also isn't great.

It's a fun concept because they keep getting walloped

 

[Koloth]

Very likely the resistance character will be dealing half the damage as everyone else. So the DM won't need to double the damage.

Depends. If the GM decides that character needs to be threatened, then the rest of the party will suffer. But it will likely be mostly ignored. That is what happened to the extreme multi class character. GM decided to just mostly ignore it. Hard to hurt. But it had a hard time threatening anything. Most CR 15 critters can safely ignore the Lvl 15 character casting 1st level spells with a caster level of at best 3(some classes added for caster level). Or the level 1 fighter abilities. And that 1d6 sneak damage probably won't penetrate the critter's DR.

 

[Tessarael]

Re: Totem Barbarian with resistances
Also they tend to have poor AC and because of MAD their Dex save also isn't great.
It's a fun concept because they keep getting walloped

Yes, agreed. Because they are often using reckless attack, they do take a lot of damage, albeit halved when raging due to resistances. It works pretty well. It's a pity that they removed necrotic resistance from Wild Heart Barbarians in D&D 2024.

 

[Maxperson]

I would worry more about that character having its throat cut by the rest of the party during rest after getting tired of the GM doubling or tripling damage to burn through the damage resistance. The resistant character comes out of encounters mostly unscathed. The rest of the party suffers repeated near death experiences.

Half his throat cut.

 

[Maxperson]

Rings of Resistance do not require attunement, as of 2024. And apparently, there is no rule that you cannot wear multiple magic rings (This was debated on another thread a year or so ago).

So you can buy, craft, or find 10 of them to get 10/13 of the way there.

You also need to find a Monty Haul DM to allow that, though.

 

[Rabulias]

Rings of Resistance do not require attunement, as of 2024. And apparently, there is no rule that you cannot wear multiple magic rings (This was debated on another thread a year or so ago).

Now all those AI illustrations of D&D characters with extra fingers make sense...