So... how terrible an idea is this?
I'm planning a campaign world that is focused around the undead. I decided it might be a good idea to give the PCs races vulnerabilities. I've figured PCs with the 'natural' origin would get a vulnerability of 5/per tier to poison, while PCs with the 'fey' origin would get a vulnerability of 5/per tier to necrotic.
I'm thinking of doing this for two reasons:
1) To make undead a slightly more credible threat. I'm half-expecting my PCs to all make divine characters, and I'm fine with that. I'm comfortable letting them carve through an undead legion or two. But when I actually want to present a challenge, I want that challenge to come from the undead sometimes. With this change, all I have to do is slap some poison or necrotic damage onto their attacks (not difficult to justify for an undead creature), and watch them go to town. In effect, it will balance out the fact that 50% of the enemies in my game will be vulnerable to radiant.
2) Just as radiant will become more attractive to players, I'm expecting poison and necrotic to become less appealing. Almost all undead are resistant to necrotic, and if I recall correctly, all are straight-up immune to poison. I would apply these vulnerabilities to all characters of the given race, not just PCs. So, hopefully, I'd be able to tempt the wizard into carrying around a poison spell to lob at the human necromancer. You know, just to keep things interesting. I want to avoid giving players the message that whole huge swaths of spells are a bad idea, just because they give the wrong damage type.
The first problem I see with this is that not all PC races are natural or fey in origin. This gives power-gamers a loophole, allowing them to exploit the increased use of vulnerabilities in this world without having a vulnerability themselves. Even though this doesn't aid the two design goals given above, I'd have to give warforged, shardminds and deva new vulnerabilities, just for the sake of fairness.
So my question (other than 'is this a terrible idea?' I'm still totally willing to listen to arguments that it is), is which vulnerabilities should I give which races?
For shardminds and warforged, the construct races, I'm thinking thunder. Shardminds are made of crystal, it just seems to fit that sound could fracture them. Warforged may have delicate internal parts easily cracked. The only issue is that thunder damage doesn't come up terribly much, so these two races are still at a slight advantage. Still, shouldn't be huge enough to throw things off.
For deva, necrotic seems thematically appropriate. But then I'd just be negating their natural resistance to it, and I really want to avoid taking away anything from the races. Anybody have any suggestions?
Also, is there some other 'loophole' race that is neither natural or fey that I forgot about?
I'm planning a campaign world that is focused around the undead. I decided it might be a good idea to give the PCs races vulnerabilities. I've figured PCs with the 'natural' origin would get a vulnerability of 5/per tier to poison, while PCs with the 'fey' origin would get a vulnerability of 5/per tier to necrotic.
I'm thinking of doing this for two reasons:
1) To make undead a slightly more credible threat. I'm half-expecting my PCs to all make divine characters, and I'm fine with that. I'm comfortable letting them carve through an undead legion or two. But when I actually want to present a challenge, I want that challenge to come from the undead sometimes. With this change, all I have to do is slap some poison or necrotic damage onto their attacks (not difficult to justify for an undead creature), and watch them go to town. In effect, it will balance out the fact that 50% of the enemies in my game will be vulnerable to radiant.
2) Just as radiant will become more attractive to players, I'm expecting poison and necrotic to become less appealing. Almost all undead are resistant to necrotic, and if I recall correctly, all are straight-up immune to poison. I would apply these vulnerabilities to all characters of the given race, not just PCs. So, hopefully, I'd be able to tempt the wizard into carrying around a poison spell to lob at the human necromancer. You know, just to keep things interesting. I want to avoid giving players the message that whole huge swaths of spells are a bad idea, just because they give the wrong damage type.
The first problem I see with this is that not all PC races are natural or fey in origin. This gives power-gamers a loophole, allowing them to exploit the increased use of vulnerabilities in this world without having a vulnerability themselves. Even though this doesn't aid the two design goals given above, I'd have to give warforged, shardminds and deva new vulnerabilities, just for the sake of fairness.
So my question (other than 'is this a terrible idea?' I'm still totally willing to listen to arguments that it is), is which vulnerabilities should I give which races?
For shardminds and warforged, the construct races, I'm thinking thunder. Shardminds are made of crystal, it just seems to fit that sound could fracture them. Warforged may have delicate internal parts easily cracked. The only issue is that thunder damage doesn't come up terribly much, so these two races are still at a slight advantage. Still, shouldn't be huge enough to throw things off.
For deva, necrotic seems thematically appropriate. But then I'd just be negating their natural resistance to it, and I really want to avoid taking away anything from the races. Anybody have any suggestions?
Also, is there some other 'loophole' race that is neither natural or fey that I forgot about?
