D&D (2024) Damage Threshold, the new "need a magic weapon"?

[dave2008]

Except then you are back to some strengs being carried over without weaknesses and other strengths being lost but maintaining the weakness because DT is no longer cumulative for each attack as long as the DT. Is exceeded

If Alice does an average of 6-13 (1d10+5) 3x/round she has low odds of having her entire attack eaten by misses and low impact overall if she misses one.

Meanwhile if Bob does one attack of 7-17(2d6+5) or something more like a smite he has a much larger chance of a miss eating his entire attack

Under DT alice keeps her play the odds strength and neither is especially impacted enough by DT2 DT5 or or even DT10 so neither feels pressure to switch to a less optimal weapon than a hypothetical magic one that increases the above example numbers even higher

Your main thrust was to give the DM tools. You can do this with DT too. DT can be type based (only effect on BPS damage). DT can be magic based (legendary weapons bypass DT). You can go for one large attack, risking a complete miss, over many smaller attacks which may not overcome DT.

So my point is that you can have most of that with DT.

Look, I am not going to argue for or against DR, DT, or simply resistance. I think they all have their place. Personally, I don't find DR, DT, or resistance particularly useful in my games. They simple don't impact the fun in a positive way so I stopped using them mostly. Now vulnerabilities and immunities have impact and I do use them.

 

[Stormonu]

I'd been considering for some monsters, I'm just not in love with it not reducing the damage taken.

I'd long wondered why it wasn't on certain constructs, like Stone and Iron Golems. I could see it stretching to Huge and Gargantuan creatures - DT 5 and DT 10 respectively. It's easy to imagine a giant not even flinching when stabbed with the average human-sized dagger and a dragon's "ten-fold shields" scale armor seems a great fit for Damage Reduction/Threshold.

 

[tetrasodium]

Your main thrust was to give the DM tools.

Yup

You can do this with DT too.

Just that bypassing the floor results in the excess and the floor going through while with DR the floor is always eaten unless bypassed through means other than pure damage. That difference eliminates some of the tools DR offers from DT

Skipping ahead though

DT can be type based (only effect on BPS damage). DT can be magic based (legendary weapons bypass DT). You can go for one large attack, risking a complete miss, over many smaller attacks which may not overcome DT.

So my point is that you can have most of that with DT.

Look, I am not going to argue for or against DR, DT, or simply resistance. I think they all have their place. Personally, I don't find DR, DT, or resistance particularly useful in my games. They simple don't impact the fun in a positive way so I stopped using them mostly. Now vulnerabilities and immunities have impact and I do use them.

The examples have been simple because I was talking about the tools themselves rather than why a gm might want to use them. I can see where some disconnect is coming in though.

Resist50% in 5e was deal a damage type§ and so was flat energy resist values. That was not how DR worked though, instead of you had something like DR5/good where you either needed an expensive good aligned weapon enchantment (holy?) or a cheap weapon made from something like flame touched iron that counts as good for purposes of overcoming DR.

Because the DR value went away from each attack unless bypassed by material or enchantment it was possible for even a small DR2 or DR5 on a monster to make it look real attractive for a player to sheath their +5 holy avenger and draw their +1 or even +0 flame touched iron/cold iron/byeshk/silver/etc weapon as appropriate to dramatically increase their efficacy. A GM could use that to do a few things, most obviously putting their thumb on the spotlight to bring some PCs up and others down, but that wasn't all. It could also be used to change target priority.. Alice might normally go after "trash" and other mooks while Bob & Dawn went after the bbeg, but DR could be used to create an encounter where that routine needs to be switched if the party wants to avoid the DR hurdle encouraging the role swap.

That DR2&DR5 was super useful but minor enough that players felt like they had a choice between using their fancy +5 holy avenger or some weaker option that bypassed it. With DT those 2&5 pt values do nothing against all but the weakest and most inept attacks right up until the DT value reaches a value where players feel like they have no choice but to accept that they are forced to swap

§ ie deal something other than nonmagical bludgeoning piercing or slashing on basically everything in 5e or deal an element other than fire/ice with a fire/ice elemental

Edit: I said it earlier and I'll say it again. Having DT as one tool in the GM's toolbox might be useful sometimes, but those use cases are lacking enough that it's not capable of replacing DR to the point that it can outright replace the no longer present DR

 

[ECMO3]

Hello

A big change in 5.0 was how some large magical monsters were suddenly more vulnerable to massed attack than before. This was particularly notable when combined with bound accuracy.

Imagine a dragon, 200 HP 19 AC, swooping down to attack a town with her breath weapon. Unknown to her, a militia of peasants with bows lies in ambush. Say they have +3 to hit, 1d6+1 damage. Not even counting critical, on average it would take about 180 peasants to kill the dragon in a single volley. My math may be off a bit, please feel free to "reproduce" this thought experiment, but the general point remains: masses of lowly archers can murderize a lot of things.

It didn't used to be that way. In 3.X, the dragon would have had some kind of damage resistance, which could be overcome with either a lot of damage or magical weapons.

But check this out. From the Glossary:

Damage Threshold
"A creature or an object that has a damage threshold has Immunity to all damage unless it takes an amount of damage from a single attack or effect equal to or greater than its damage threshold, in which case it takes that entire instance of damage. Any damage that fails to meet or exceed the damage threshold is superficial and doesn’t reduce Hit Points. For example, if an object has a damage threshold of 10, the object takes no damage if 9 damage is dealt to it, since that damage fails to exceed the threshold. If the same object is dealt 11 damage, it takes all of that damage."

I speculate that this is the new 5.5 "you need a magic weapon or a spell to hurt this powerful monster" rule.

This damage threshold of 10 (for an example) can easily be defeated by tier 2 heroes! Now, weak attacks like cantrips may not be reliable, but it's a reasonable obstacle. The same damage threshold would make the dragon virtually immune to the lowly archers.

So heroes are needed again, but said heroes don't have to have a magical sword.

I've been informed that this rule existed in 5.0, but only for ships (from Saltmarsh).

Am I correct in predicting this? If I'm wrong, would it be a nice house rule? It would favor "a few big hits" vs the "many small hits" type of martials...

Maybe but I hope not. The damage threshold is one of the things I hated about 3E and the Dragon SHOULD fear an army of peasants.

FWIW the green dragon statblock revealed at Gen Con did not have this.

 

[ECMO3]

The best use of thresholds on creatures is MCDM's Flee Mortals where they use it for minions. It is set pretty low but basically the minions die if the threshold is met and live otherwise.

That is not how minions work. Minions die if they take ANY damage from an attack or a failed save. 1hp damage from an attack kills a minion always.

The only times the hit points come into play is if they take damage from something that is not an attack or a failed save (where it works like you said) or if you do more than the hit point maximum to one minion and then extra damage spills over and kills another minion in reach (and a third if you do more than that).

 

[dave2008]

Edit: I said it earlier and I'll say it again. Having DT as one tool in the GM's toolbox might be useful sometimes, but those use cases are lacking enough that it's not capable of replacing DR to the point that it can outright replace the no longer present DR

I will say it again as well: I don't find DT, DR, or resistances particularly useful in play. I have used all of them from 4e - 5e and I came to the conclusion that they just didn't make the game more fun. So I am sorry you don't have what you want (though it is easy to add it), but I can't get to worked up because, IME, it just isn't that impactful in a positive way.

 

[dave2008]

... and the Dragon SHOULD fear an army of peasants.

Everyone's fiction is different, but I think any army of peasants should only be a threat to a young or possibly adult dragon. Ancient dragons should be outside the reach of peasants IMO.

 

[dave2008]

FWIW the green dragon statblock revealed at Gen Con did not have this.

There is no evidence of it becoming a wide spread use for monsters, if used at all for monsters.

 

[tetrasodium]

I will say it again as well: I don't find DT, DR, or resistances particularly useful in play. I have used all of them from 4e - 5e and I came to the conclusion that they just didn't make the game more fun. So I am sorry you don't have what you want (though it is easy to add it), but I can't get to worked up because, IME, it just isn't that impactful in a positive way.

It's actually quite difficult to add in without feeling arbitrary. DT might be in the DMG instead of DR, but the MM &PHB also stripped out the mechanical hooks needed to hang support for either.

It's anyone's guess if the new MM will do better next year

 

[dave2008]

It's actually quite difficult to add in without feeling arbitrary.

If it feels arbitrary when you add it, it would feel arbitrary if it was there to begin with IMO. Unless what you do makes no thematic sense to the monster involved.

DT might be in the DMG instead of DR, but the MM &PHB also stripped out the mechanical hooks needed to hang support for either.

There are no monsters that I know of that had DT in 2014 - 2023 products. There could have been one I missed I guess. I don't think there is any plan to change that for 2024. IMO, that is a good thing. DT and DR don't add anything useful to play IME.

It's anyone's guess if the new MM will do better next year

For me, the 2024 MM is doing better just based on the previews already. However, adding DR or DT would not be an improvement IMO. However, that varies from DM to DM and group to group.