Do effects kick in if no damage is done?

[Will]

So there are several places where side-effects of damage have separate mechanics, like a marut's thunder fist. Sonic attack, and then a check to deafen.

My question is, if you have resistance to sonic that completely absorbs the damage done, would the deafen check be skipped? It seems sensible, but more specifically, anyone know a rules reference I can look at (or point out to folks)

 

[Camarath]

Well there is this for DR.

"Whenever damage reduction completely negates the damage from an attack, it also negates most special effects that accompany the attack, such as injury type poison, a monk’s stunning, and injury type disease. Damage reduction does not negate touch attacks, energy damage dealt along with an attack, or energy drains. Nor does it affect poisons or diseases delivered by inhalation, ingestion, or contact.
Attacks that deal no damage because of the target’s damage reduction do not disrupt spells."

And this for resistance to energy.

"When resistance completely negates the damage from an energy attack, the attack does not disrupt a spell. This resistance does not stack with the resistance that a spell might provide."

The fact that resistance to energy does not state "whenever resistance to energy completely negates the damage from an attack, it also negates most special effects that accompany the attack" can IMO be taken either of two ways, it does not state that becuase it does not do so or it does not state that becuase most energy attacks do not have special effects that accompany them and so stating such would not be of value but if a energy attacks did have special effects that accompanied it they would be negated jusr like with DR.

I am not sure which is the offical answer but if playing strictly by the rules as written I believe that resistance to energy would not negate most special effects that accompany the attack.

 

[robberbaron]

Trickey one that.

I mostly agree with Camarath but I think I would rule that if you are immune to sonic damage then you would be immune to a deafening effect as well.
If you only had DR vs. sonics then I think there is a case for still being subject to the special effect.

I mean, immune is immune, after all.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Of course, you don't want to get into the whole energy substitution whackiness where a fire-substituted shout will deafen you and do fire damage. Would fire immunity still leave you deafened?

I'm poking fun at the situation to illustrate that in D&D there isn't generally a direct correlation between energy type and special effects (unfortunately), resulting in the special effect happening even if the energy type is protected against. The only special case that comes to mind is that a Silence spell prevents everything sound-related happening within its radius, so that would counter sonic damage and deafening (but see whacky example above).

A related subject is special effects that happen on weapon crits vs creatures immune to crits - at least that is clarified now that crit activated features (e.g. flaming burst) can still activate if you roll a "crit" against an undead... you just don't do the double weapon damage. (this isn't the literal rules of course, but a quick check of the sources will clarify that if needed)

Cheers

 

[Will]

I think if someone fire substituted a shout, I'd houserule different effects.

Hmm. I think I'll rule it that 'you have to do damage' in this particular case. The problem is that D&D doesn't distinguish from effects that are real-world side effects of an unnatural effect and those that are simply additional magical effects. I'll houserule the differences.