Does anyone else find DR X/magic useless?

[Mouseferatu]

I, too, like the whole 3.5 idea of DR x/material, so I keep that.

I agree that DR x/magic should have degrees, but I don't think we need to go back to the whole DR x/+1, DR x/+2, etc. I think that plus the DR x/material is too much.

What I've done is broken down DR x/magic into two categories:

DR x/lesser magic and DR x/greater magic.

The first incorporates +1 and +2 weapons. The latter incorporates +3 or higher.

I've not had much chance to test it in play, as I haven't been the DM for a while--burned out and needed a while to just play--but I think it works.

 

[Old Gumphrey]

As 3.5 was coming out I remember reading that the rationale behind eliminating the specific +'s was so that players weren't quickly scrounging for the highest plus available and would be freer to choose more more varied special abilities without risking party survival.

 

[green slime]

Bah, humbug.

I really dislike the way 3.5 treated enhancement bonuses to weapons, especially ammunition. The iconic magical arrow is now reduced to the ash heap of history. There will never be a cache of precious magical arrows found.

DR is another aspect of the same problem.

Magic provides too many defined bonuses, too easily.

 

[Victim]

Magic Ammo is still valuable for the ability to carry special properties. Especially if you buy in lots of less than 50. Getting 10 or so X Bane Arrows (or whatever else you need to handle a specific threat) isn't that bad of a deal, especially since the archer gets whatever magic is on the bow too. Instead of a +14 enchancement cap (+1 weapon with +9 in specials and a +5 GMW), the archer can get up to +23 if he's willing to invest insane resources.

 

[Stalker0]

On creatures, its only useful against summons, unless the creature is smart. Have it focus on disarming and sundering, or just dispelling the party's weapons. If you have 20 DR as the dragon, dispel the fighters big sword and you will live a lot longer.

Its still pretty useful for party members. A fair number of things they fight don't penetrate magic DR.

 

[D.Shaffer]

Disregarding the fact they'd only HIT him on a rare crit (AC 24), longbows deal 1d8/x3 - there's a good chance they'd do some amount of damage, even on a normal hit.

If it's a level 1 mook, they'd have to confirm the crit to do any major damage, so they'd need to roll a 20 twice in a row. Otherwise they're only doing an average of 4.5 a hit when they roll that first 20. DR/magic 5 handles most of that fairly well. Seems like it does fairly well to keep the mooks in line.

 

[Kerrick]

Actually that was Kerrick's post..

As to a lot of tracking, not really. Vrecknidj just laid out all the options instead of putting into sentence form.

The rule is basically:

A +1 weapons can bypass portions of DR X/magic. For each +1 beyond the first, reduce the targets DR X/magic by 5 points.

Actually, mine was slightly different. I like this version better - you can keep the DR x/magic instead of going back to x/+X, and it doesn't add a whole lot of extra bookkeeping - if you (the DM) don't want to keep track of who's using what, just tell the players, "Okay, it's got DR 10" or whatever. Course, that probably wouldn't work for some groups... depends on the maturity level and how prone they are to cheat ("I was using my +3 sword!" "You don't HAVE a +3 sword.")

As 3.5 was coming out I remember reading that the rationale behind eliminating the specific +'s was so that players weren't quickly scrounging for the highest plus available and would be freer to choose more more varied special abilities without risking party survival.

Yeah, that's exactly why they did it. It was a good idea, for the most part, because it lets players go for "cooler" stuff like keen, flaming, ghost touch, etc., but you run into the problem Monte points out - all you need is a simple +1 weapon until you hit epic. Psion's rule is good because it doesn't completely rely on additional plusses, but it does give players who go that route a bit of an edge, and if you combine that with Monte's variant, you can avoid "golf bag syndrome".

 

[frankthedm]

DR magic is not useless at all unless the DM uses kid gloves. Monsters with DR should routinely have Improved disarm or improved sunder. If something hurts them, they deal with the weapon first.

Dragon disarms the fighter and then flies away.

Fiendish giant snaps the blade like a twig.

 

[Vrecknidj]

What I've done is broken down DR x/magic into two categories:

DR x/lesser magic and DR x/greater magic.

The first incorporates +1 and +2 weapons. The latter incorporates +3 or higher.

The idea of lesser and greater magic seems compelling. And, I think there are several ways to back this up.

First, greater magic weapon gives a +1 per four caster levels. As it's a 3rd level spell (generally), this gives us the following:

CL	Plus
4	+1
8	+2
12	+3
16	+4
20	+5

Second, there's the rule regarding the creation of magic weapons "The creator’s caster level must be at least three times the enhancement bonus of the weapon." This gives us a different list:

CL	Plus
3	+1
6	+2
9	+3
12	+4
15	+5

Third, there's a way in which we can break the spells into groups based on power; not counting 0-level spells, we can group them into groups of three. Considering the wizard as the base:

CL	Spell Levels
1-5	1-3
7-11	4-6
13-17	7-9

There is a fairly nice, but not completely clean, overlap here.

Type of Magic	"Plus"	Caster Levels
Lesser Magic	+1, +2	1 - 6
Intermed. Magic	+3, +4	7 - 12
Greater Magic	+5	13 - 18
Epic Magic	+6	19+

This gives us DR/lesser magic, DR/intermediate magic, DR/greater magic and DR/epic magic. Sure, it's a bit much, and maybe dropping intermediate would be better. But, this looks like it's on the right track.

Dave

 

[deamonprince]

In Agreement

Its such a good idea, other people have had it too:

Damage Reduction: Certain damage reductions require a higher enhancement bonus than +1 or +6. If you do not want to use this variant, ignore the prefix. For the purpose of penetrating damage reduction, a bane weapon does increase the enhancement by +2 and a dread weapon increases the enhancement by +4. Using the power of a defending weapon does not change a weapon’s enhancement for the purpose of damage reduction.

Magic: +1
Greater Magic: +3
High Magic: +5
Epic: +6
Greater Epic: +8
High Epic: +10

Certain damage reduction also requires a more powerful enchantment than ‘holy’ or the other +2 alignment enchantments. This is noted by the prefix ‘major’. A weapon with the +7 enchantment ‘alignment power’ is required to penetrate such damage reduction. In addition, a caster using align weapon at 30th level or higher can cause a weapon to penetrate major alignment damage reduction. A creature of 30 Hit Dice or more whose weapons are treated as a particular alignment for overcoming damage reduction also penetrates major alignment damage reduction.

From http://community.dicefreaks.com/viewtopic.php?t=311