DR/magic fix

[Darren Ravenshaw]

How about the following;

Vs. DR/Magic each +1 negates 3 points of the DR.

Vs. Other DR's such as Silver or Good each +1 negates 2 points of
the DR.

Vs. DR/Magic AND X each +1 negates 2 points of the DR.

Vs. DR/X AND Y(such as Evil and Silver)+1 negates 1 point of the DR.

This would allow a high plus weapon to still be useful, but no outshine specific weapon types.

 

[DreamChaser]

i like the idea of magical plusses reducing magical DR. I don't like the idea of it reducing other DR. This makes magical plusses TOO powerful compared to now.

DR */alignment = overcome by that alignment, all or nothing
DR */material = overcome by that material, all or nothing
DR */magic = mitagated by magic at 3 points per plus.

DC

 

[Zoatebix]

More ideas to be found overe here: http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=101915

 

[ecliptic]

+1 negates 1 DR
+2 negates 2 DR
+3 negates 3 DR
+4 negates 4 DR
+5 negates 5 DR

 

[Li Shenron]

What about this completely different idea?

Keep DR as it is now, but the +X enhancement has a linear cost of 2000gp each increment (like some special abilities).

 

[Zoatebix]

Okay - so what would happen if I allowed in my game for every "plus" of bonus to smack through 2 points of damage reduction regardless of whether "magic" is after the slash or not? How about if every DR factor you had right (material, alignment, damage type) negated a certain amount - say 3? And, of course, having all of the factors right negated the damage reduction completely. What would be different about that game - bugs, features, and all?

 

[Nifft]

+1 negates 1 DR
+2 negates 2 DR
+3 negates 3 DR
+4 negates 4 DR
+5 negates 5 DR

Now that's my kinda table!

Note also that each +1 is secretly also +2 damage (via Power Attack -- two-handed, of course, since you're dead set on doing damage). Thus, each +1 enhancement bonus is potentially +3 extra damage.

No need for extra rules here folks. We've got Power Attack. DR works great as-is.

Cheers, -- N

 

[the Jester]

An easy way to reward pcs with high enhancement bonus weapons is to make some monsters with DR x/+2, DR x/+3, etc. Even better might be to mix it up more- DR 15/+4 and adamantine make for a tough high-CR golem!

 

[azabaro]

Okay - so what would happen if I allowed in my game for every "plus" of bonus to smack through 2 points of damage reduction regardless of whether "magic" is after the slash or not? How about if every DR factor you had right (material, alignment, damage type) negated a certain amount - say 3? And, of course, having all of the factors right negated the damage reduction completely. What would be different about that game - bugs, features, and all?

Well, monsters with DR other than x/magic wouldn't be as strong as they are now. If you consider these monsters to currently be balanced for their listed CRs, you'd probably want to consider rebalancing them. In addition, some creatures could have low enough DR that any PC of the appropriate level to fight them with equipment appropriate to their level would be able to get through their DR based solely on their weapon's enhancement bonus (which sort of defeats the purpose of moving away from hierarchical DR penetration as seen in 3.0, where +1 is better than silver, etc.). For an example of this, consider the Horned Devil (MM pg. 55), which has a CR of 16 and a DR of 10/good and silver. Now, a party of 16th level characters is quite likely to have a number of +5 weapons, each of which can completely bypass the horned devil's DR without ever bothering to be Good or Silver. This obviously makes the creature a bit weaker than it would be otherwise.

What's worse, I think you'd end up depriving the Barbarian of his damage reduction (which, if I recall, only gets up to 4/-, and would thus be completely negated by a +2 weapon - ridiculously common at high levels).

Don't take this as an attack on your system. I just think it has the same problem as any other attempt to do something interesting with the DR system: you have to go through and tweak each race and class with DR to make sure it'll be balanced with your change in place. That can be quite a bit of work; are your proposed changes really worth that much effort? (I ask this as someone who has his own ideas for messing with DR, but who is also entirely to lazy to do all that rebalancing)

 

[maggot]

What about monks

For those of you that use some kind of "extra plusses negate some DR" systems, what do you do with monks? I'm using a very simple "extra plus" system, and I think I'm going to say that a monk's fists are equal to his level/4 rounded down. So at 8th level they have +2 fists for DR purposes, at 12th they are +3, etc.