D&D 5E Does Slashing/Piercing/Bludgeoning even matter?

[DammitVictor]

Id love to see the Gallagher sub class running around smashing everything with a giant hammer.

Eldritch Knight with a warhammer in his left hand, a produce flame in his right, crushing the jeweled thrones of turtlekind beneath his giant wind-up boots.

 

[Charlaquin]

I know I’ve seen a list once of all the places it mattered. IIRC, there were only like a dozen or so.

EDIT: Found it, it was on rpg.net and there were 8 monsters in the monster manual, armor of vulnerability, and one vague reference in the DMG to objects having resistance/vulnerability/immunity to certain damage types at DM discretion. Though this was just the core 3, so it’s possible there are more cases in later books where b/p/s matters.

[5E] The few mechanical implications of... bludgeoning, slashing or piercing damage | Dungeons & Dragons / Fantasy D20 Spotlight

Following my attempt to list every mechanical effect of Alignment: http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?750542-5E-The-few-mechanical-implications-of-Alignment and a thread on the WoTC boards querying whether non-piercing finesse weapon would be overpowered if it was in competition with the...

forum.rpg.net

 

[Coroc]

The damage type is no longer as prevalent as it was in previous editions. This is in my opinion, a net loss for the game. Why use a maul when a great sword will be better? Weapon vs Armor was also a good thing and I sometimes wonder if it would be nice to make a table adapted to 5ed.

As a DM I also added the cleave damage type for axes. Cleave is blend of blunt and slash damage type. It always work best against whatever it up to. But the damage is usually not on par with a sword or a full blunt weapon on a non resistant target but it would always be at full capacity. Since orcs have a lot of shaman using undead, mainly skeletons, it was this efficiency that the dwarves liked so much about axes (in my campaigns at least).

Well I think you are a bit off here. Versus unarmored targets, an axe even might cause the most damage.
Versus armored targets an axe is more effective than a sword generally. And most professional "blunt" weapons in fact are edged or piercing weapons with a weight and center of gravity being near their tip.
Think flanged mace, or a mace with small metal pyramids on a spherical head, or war hammer.
All designed to concentrate the force into a smaller area on impact.
Of course with a cudgel you do not have this so much.

 

[Helldritch]

Damage wise you're right. But swords are faster and it was this that was taken into account. It was easier to hit an unarmored opponent (or lightly armored) with a sword or spear than it was with an axe or a mace. 1ed captured it with the to hit modifier table of weapons vs armor and the amount of damage said weapon was doing. A wee bit too complicated but it gave more flavor to some weapons. Why do you use a broadsword over a long sword? Why not use a mace? It often depended on the most common enemy type and the armor type the soldiers of the enemy would use. Different problems, different weapons. It was a simple and elegant reason to justify the different weapons. It was, however, a bit hard to implement at all times.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Id love to see the Gallagher sub class running around smashing everything with a giant hammer.

So your typical Dwarven Cleric?

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Are these legacy traits at all useful mechanically, or are they there so that we understand the narrative behind the weapon?

Asking, because I've considered a subclass that specializes in one of these (as opposed to light, finesse, ranged).

Currently it doesn't matter much. - I'd like to see it matter more.
If you want to base a subclass around a specific damage type, perhaps use riders appropriate to the weapon and damage type to distinguish it?
So the Slashing subclass might be able to spread damage among multiple opponents, bludgeoning to incorporate shoving into their attacks etc.

 

[R_J_K75]

So your typical Dwarven Cleric?

There is a "striking" resemblance.

 

[jayoungr]

I'm the DM

Are you running published adventures, or homebrew? If homebrew, just make sure that damage types matter to the monsters you use most often, or add homebrew monsters that it matters to. If you're running published adventures, go through the monster list ahead of time, note how many monsters are differently affected by certain types of damage, and add damage effects to some of the others if you think more of that needs to be in the game.

 

[Todd Roybark]

It would be a lot cleaner to call them all "physical damage."

The Heavy Armor feat gives 3 points of damage resistance to piercing, bludgeoning, and slashing damage. It matters. I don’t think it is a bad thing to get players and DMs into the habit of specifying damage type.

d love to see the Gallagher sub class running around smashing everything with a giant hammer.

I would love to see the opposite: A giant animated Watermelon with a hammer, smash Gallagher.



D&D, making dreams happen, since 1975.

 

[Dausuul]

The Heavy Armor feat gives 3 points of damage resistance to piercing, bludgeoning, and slashing damage. It matters.

That is not an example of where it matters. There is no difference between slashing, bludgeoning, and piercing here. Heavy Armor Mastery applies equally to all three. If S/P/B were merged into "physical damage," Heavy Armor Mastery would give 3 points of DR to physical damage.

The cases where it matters are the ones Charlaquin linked: A few monsters and one magic item. For the sake of those few things, the rulebooks are stuffed with unwieldy references to "slashing, piercing, and bludgeoning damage from nonmagical weapons" and the like.