D&D 5E Damage types: How much is a point of [x] damage worth?

[houser2112]

This is awesome. Is there any chance you could provide your raw data?

 

[Dausuul]

Great info, thanks for doing this.

One small issue. In the second table in the Overall column the % Immune for Poison (21%) seems off. The CR<1 and CR1-4 groups are a bit over half the monsters and are at 21%. However, the remaining not quite half have somewhat higher percentages and should pull the average up a bit. From what's in the table, I calculate the Overall Poison Immune % should be something like 23.8, but there might be some rounding that makes it a bit different if calculated from original data. (All assuming I am interpreting the table correctly, of course.)

EDIT: Oh, wait, the data is in the 3rd table. It looks like it is the CR <1 % that is off, not the Overall. The CR <1 Poison Immune % should be 12, not 21.

Ack! Good catch. The "CR <1" column in the percentage table was a copy of the "CR 1-4" column. Fixed it.

Thanks for noticing that!

 

[Dausuul]

And the breakdown by CR is exactly how that's information is useful to me - well broken out and clearly presented.

You mentioned you did have the data to pull it in other ways - would it be possible to pull just the vulnerabilities? What you have is fantastic in picking damage types that will be effective, but if you have the luxury of picking multiple different damage types you may want to also pick up something that will be very effective in the right situation.

The second and third tables have breakdowns by vulnerability, resistance, and immunity, in percentage form (2nd table) and in raw counts (3rd table). The raw count will be more useful for vulnerabilities; vulnerability is so rare that much of the data is lost to rounding when converting to a whole-number percentage.

The most common vulnerability is fire (almost three times as common as anything else), but even that shows up on only 11 out of 537 monsters. If you're fighting mummies or walking trees, fire is a good bet.

 

[Dausuul]

This is awesome. Is there any chance you could provide your raw data?

Here's the raw data for the Basic Rules monsters:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NeElbNwWBIGhCkVk6hti5_vyDp8DVepFiLocUmSpuhw/edit?usp=sharing

Each damage type column contains 1 for immunity; 0.5 for resistance; 0 for normal; and -1 for vulnerability.

With the Monster Manual and Volo's stuff, that might be a bridge too far legally. Those monsters are copyrighted by WotC; just because some of that data is visible to the public on D&D Beyond doesn't mean I have the right to package and redistribute it. I think it's okay to summarize it as I've done here, but actually listing the monsters and their resistances/immunities is more than I'm comfortable doing.

 

[houser2112]

Cool, I'll check this out when I get home (my employer blocks Google Docs).

Something else I thought of... how common are monsters that absorb damage (like the Flesh Golem)?

 

[Ancalagon]

Thank you for putting that together.

It is *striking* how much resistance is more common than vulnerabilities. A bit disappointed by that really.

 

[Dausuul]

Cool, I'll check this out when I get home (my employer blocks Google Docs).

Something else I thought of... how common are monsters that absorb damage (like the Flesh Golem)?

Searching D&D Beyond for "absorption" and limiting the results to monsters yields six results: Giant strider, flesh golem, iron golem, clay golem, shambling mound, and Yestabrod.

Yestabrod is from Out of the Abyss, so if you wanted to put those in the context of the original post, the answer is 5 monsters out of 573. Two absorb fire, two absorb lightning, and one absorbs acid.

 

[Dausuul]

Another way to split the data up is by monster type. For instance, I'm aware elementals are immune to poison because of the number of hours I've spent running Princes of the Apocalypse. Characters in that story should avoid poison damage. However, poison damage may be more effective than necrotic damage in a Curse of Strahd game, or more effective than bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing in a game with lycanthropes.

Just added a monster type breakdown at the bottom of the original post.

 

[jgsugden]

I wonder how these numbers might change if you tried to adjust for the frequency of the monsters? For example, an end of campaign solo monster is countered in here with the same weight as a fire elemental, but you're likely to face fire elementals many times during a typical campaign. I'd be interested in seeing the data broken down for "common" (likely to meet the PCs several times) adversaries, "uncommon" (likely to be faced, but only once or twice) adversaries and "rare" (likely to be faced 0 to 1 time in a campaign) adversaries.

 

[Leatherhead]

I wonder how these numbers might change if you tried to adjust for the frequency of the monsters? For example, an end of campaign solo monster is countered in here with the same weight as a fire elemental, but you're likely to face fire elementals many times during a typical campaign. I'd be interested in seeing the data broken down for "common" (likely to meet the PCs several times) adversaries, "uncommon" (likely to be faced, but only once or twice) adversaries and "rare" (likely to be faced 0 to 1 time in a campaign) adversaries.

There is no practical way of doing that. The best you could do is separating out legendary monsters from non-legendary monsters. Even if you could, would that lead to a worthwhile result? Sure, zombies are more common than liches, but liches are more important targets for sure.

Also: [MENTION=58197]Dausuul[/MENTION]
Great work. I wish I had the books unlocked, I would really like to finish what I started by looking into saving throw proficiencies a while back.