DR and immunities

[Firedancer]

When PC's encounter a creature with DR or spell immunities how do you convey to them their attacks are ineffective?

Do you give a spot check, tell them straight after a number of rounds, or give a bit more detail to the combat and see if they pick it up? Or do you just leave them to it, the villain getting maximum benefit from his energy protection?

Cheers

 

[eric mcloins]

I just tell them "your weapon seems not to be very effective against this guy".
After all, if your arrow flies through the skeleton's ribcage, you probably see it.

 

[starwed]

The rules for DR actually mention this explicitly:

Sometimes damage reduction is instant healing. Sometimes damage reduction represents the creature’s tough hide or body. In either case, characters can see that conventional attacks don’t work.

 

[Firedancer]

Starwed, ta! Whilst I can undertand the idea, what do you do if its DR5 and they routinely do 10 or more damage? DR rarely negates all damage, so if an attack is still doing damage, (just less) would you reveal straight away its reduced effect?

 

[painandgreed]

Starwed, ta! Whilst I can undertand the idea, what do you do if its DR5 and they routinely do 10 or more damage? DR rarely negates all damage, so if an attack is still doing damage, (just less) would you reveal straight away its reduced effect?

You tell the players that the creature has DR as soon as it happens. If you want to give it flavor text, then do so as you wish, but in either case, my interpretation of the rule is that anytime DR takes off damage, the player and character are made aware of it. Claiming that because some damage makes it through that it does not fall under the rules because a conventional attack is working doesn't fly in my book. If the damage is reduced, the conventional attack is not working as expected.

This is a sore spot with me as I had a character die hacking at an immune monster in 1E. Nothing was described any different than any other D&D combat, meaning it wasn't described at all except by metagame hit and damage done. It killed me and only then did the DM pipe up and tell me I never even did any damage to the creature.

 

[Merkuri]

Our DM usually indicates to us that the creature has damage reduction or immunities with description. Sometimes he'll drop an OOC comment telling us exactly what it is, but most of the time we have to make an educated guess on the mechanics behind why our weapons aren't very effective. I know one time we mis-read his signs. He told us a character's arrow went right through a monster in gaseous form with no apparent harm, so we assumed it was immune to arrows and/or physical attacks, and proceeded to take it down laboriously with the few magic attacks we had at the time. It turns out that the arrow had simply missed (attack roll was not higher than the creature's AC). The DM asked us later why we stopped shooting at it. I guess he didn't realize his description could've been taken to mean the creature had immunity to our arrows.

I see nothing wrong with describing certain things in terms of OOC mechanics, especially when such a thing would be obvious to the characters but would be hard to explain in-character. A character hacking at a monster covered in stone scales would probably realize pretty fast that only his strongest attacks seem to be damaging it, so I see no harm in telling the party "It has damage reduction" or even "It has damage reduction 5."

 

[el-remmen]

I describe it based on what is happening.

If a creature has DR 10 and the character is doing 10 or less each round - even if just because of bad luck on damage rolls - I will say something like, "It seems like your blows are completely ineffectual".

If a few points of damage are getting through I might say something like, "Even your hardest blows seem to have little effect."

Or if the PC is still doing significant damage despite DR: "While not quite as effective as normal, your blows still seem to do significant damage. . ."

 

[Mercule]

Case by case. It's always obvious, in some way. There have been a couple of times when the PCs have mistaken my description for really fast regen, but they considered that a plus for flavor.

I've also had monsters use illusions to specifically mimic DR. That was fun.

 

[IcyCool]

I've described it every time it happens, sometimes with a generic "You feel like your blow should have done more damage than it did", and sometimes with fun descriptions like, "The senator raises his hand in a defensive move as your crossbow bolt flies at him. The bolt sinks halfway into his open palm and he grunts in pain. He relaxes his stance and slowly pulls the bolt from his hand. As it clatters loudly to the stone floor, you notice that the wound on his hand closed almost instantaneously after he removed the bolt. He looks up at you with malice in his eyes and says, 'That wasn't very smart'."

 

[Stalker0]

DR is pretty clear, immunities less so. Did a creature not get effected because:

1) You didn't beat his SR?
2) He made his save?
3) He's immune?