D&D 5E Converting Old Adventures

[Azzy]

I've played around with adding a d4 fire damage, but I think now I'd just convert the damage type completely over to fire making shortbow deal 1d6+dex fire damage.

When I made mine, I gave 1d4 piercing +1d4 fire.

While I came up with 5e stats for a plethora of arrow types, no players have chosen to use them. ¯\(ツ)/¯

 

[James Gasik]

When I made mine, I gave 1d4 piercing +1d4 fire.

While I came up with 5e stats for a plethora of arrow types, no players have chosen to use them. ¯\(ツ)/¯

That's crazy, I'd be all over that.

I guess the issue I'll have is that my fire arrows might be too much of a pain to use. I was thinking "you can use your free object interaction and/or a bonus action to ignite a fire arrow" as a limitation, meaning you can't have more than 2 fire arrows a turn. That might turn people off right away, given how overloaded the bonus action is in 5e.

It's funny how that happened. The PHB had few uses for a bonus action (at least, I think that's true), showing they'd learned their lesson from 4e's Minor Actions. Now it seems like almost every character I see is reliant on having a bonus action to do something on their turn.

 

[LordBP]

This was an interesting YouTube video on fire arrows that just came out.

 

[cbwjm]

When I made mine, I gave 1d4 piercing +1d4 fire.

While I came up with 5e stats for a plethora of arrow types, no players have chosen to use them. ¯\(ツ)/¯

If I was playing an archer I'd be stocking up on special arrows using normal arrows for most, but special arrows for unique situations or trolls.

 

[Micah Sweet]

There is a reason 5e toned down that sort of thing. What happens when the party doesn’t have those damage types? Or they do have them but don’t know that? Then your encounter balance calculations are completely off.

Unless you are going to take a monster of the week approach and give the party the opportunity to research the monster before the encounter.

Not a good reason, IMO. Balance is already well into the party's favor as it is. Ignoring damage types just makes the setting less interesting to no benefit for the game.

 

[James Gasik]

Not a good reason, IMO. Balance is already well into the party's favor as it is. Ignoring damage types just makes the setting less interesting to no benefit for the game.

Yeah, I mean, why have, what is it, 11 damage types, if most of the time, it doesn't really matter what you're doing?

I won't even get into what nonsense "force" damage is.

But I just got into a very similar argument to this in another thread, and I'm having some difficulty collecting my thoughts about it. A resistance or vulnerability (or immunity) on a creature can have a huge impact on an encounter or none at all, based on a lot of factors. Obviously one can't expect to have every damage type on hand at all times, and some elemental types are simply better than others, both in how often they are resisted, and what abilities get them.

Throwing a player a bone on occasion is good, but not at the expense of other players. It's a difficult tightrope to walk, and I'll definitely take the concerns brought up here into consideration.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Not a good reason, IMO. Balance is already well into the party's favor as it is. Ignoring damage types just makes the setting less interesting to no benefit for the game.

Balance is whatever the DM throws at the party. If the DM doesn’t have to take into account the likelihood that the players don’t have the right tool they can use more powerful monsters.

There are occasions when you want to use it, but then you make the monster completely immune so the players have to go away and discover the McGuffin they need.

Fights in 5e are too short for players to trial and error the right damage type.

It’s also another way of punishing players for not playing casters, since casters have far more damage types at their finger tips.

In Call of the Netherdeep there is a mutant shark that can only be killed with radiant damage. There are no clues that it required radiant damage, and since there was no cleric, none of the characters did radiant damage anyway. In the end they managed to hit it with Hypnotic Pattern and run away, but I don’t think they found it a fun encounter. If they had had a paladin, the encounter would have been trivial, and they probably wouldn’t have noticed they needed radiant damage at all. I don’t think it’s a good idea to punish a party for not including the right classes.

 

[James Gasik]

Balance is whatever the DM throws at the party. If the DM doesn’t have to take into account the likelihood that the players don’t have the right tool they can use more powerful monsters.

There are occasions when you want to use it, but then you make the monster completely immune so the players have to go away and discover the McGuffin they need.

Fights in 5e are too short for players to trial and error the right damage type.

It’s also another way of punishing players for not playing casters, since casters have far more damage types at their finger tips.

In Call of the Netherdeep there is a mutant shark that can only be killed with radiant damage. There are no clues that it required radiant damage, and since there was no cleric, none of the characters did radiant damage anyway. In the end they managed to hit it with Hypnotic Pattern and run away, but I don’t think they found it a fun encounter. If they had had a paladin, the encounter would have been trivial, and they probably wouldn’t have noticed they needed radiant damage at all. I don’t think it’s a good idea to punish a party for not including the right classes.

That mutant shark is pretty bad design, yeah. I wasn't thinking of going that far, just the occasional "this thing is resistant to fire but vulnerable to piercing" so once that's realized, everyone can just murder it with crossbows.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

That mutant shark is pretty bad design, yeah. I wasn't thinking of going that far, just the occasional "this thing is resistant to fire but vulnerable to piercing" so once that's realized, everyone can just murder it with crossbows.

But will the fight last long enough for them to figure that out, and change tactics, or will it be a case of “that fireball only did half damage, but it’s nearly dead anyway so we might as well keep going”?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Balance is whatever the DM throws at the party. If the DM doesn’t have to take into account the likelihood that the players don’t have the right tool they can use more powerful monsters.

There are occasions when you want to use it, but then you make the monster completely immune so the players have to go away and discover the McGuffin they need.

Fights in 5e are too short for players to trial and error the right damage type.

It’s also another way of punishing players for not playing casters, since casters have far more damage types at their finger tips.

In Call of the Netherdeep there is a mutant shark that can only be killed with radiant damage. There are no clues that it required radiant damage, and since there was no cleric, none of the characters did radiant damage anyway. In the end they managed to hit it with Hypnotic Pattern and run away, but I don’t think they found it a fun encounter. If they had had a paladin, the encounter would have been trivial, and they probably wouldn’t have noticed they needed radiant damage at all. I don’t think it’s a good idea to punish a party for not including the right classes.

People used to carry military oil so they'd at least have a source of fire damage.