D&D 5E How do you rule multiple damage types versus reductions

[5ekyu]

It’s relevant because it answers your questions.

First, thanks for identifying the ability. They helps.

RAW, you total all of the damage first from a single attack. Then you apply all immunities, then all modifiers, then one resistance, then (in your case with the troll) one vulnerability.

The resistance and/or vulnerability applies to all of the damage that makes it through the other steps.

Likewise, the barbarian ability reduces the damage from the entire attack (apply all modifiers). So the DM in question is “doing it wrong” RAW.

This is for simplicity best I can tell. The times where the different damage types really make that much of a difference are few, and starting with the total for the single attack and then adding modifications streamlines things.

Can you provide a reference for the idea that you cite in this post - that first you combine all damage from an attack into a single total value - presumably even merging fire and slahs together into one damage result?

When i look at PHB every time it seems clear that resistances, vulnerabilities etc only afftect their respective damage type and not some combo of all damage types that come in with their respective type.

Or do i misread your position?

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[Greenstone.Walker]

As I understand it, it goes something like this:

Setup
• Conan the Barbarian is raging (resistance to bl/pr/sl damage). He is wearing an item which gives him immunity to acid damage.
• Totsramek hits Conan with a magic sword. It does 13 points of slashing damage, 6 points of fire damage, and 5 points of acid damage, total 24 damage.
• Conan uses spirit shield to reduce damage by 4.

Sequence
1. Immunity. Remove the acid damage. This leaves 13 sl and 6 fire, total 19 damage.
2. Modifiers. This is the bit where the rules do not specify what happens. Does Conan's player get to pick which of the 19 damage is removed? I'd rule that they can. The player chooses to reduce the fire damage by 4 . This leaves 13 sl and 2 fire, total 15 damage.
3. Resistance. Conan's resistance reduces the 13 slashing to 6 slashing. This leaves 6 sl and 2 fire, total 8 damage.
4. Vulnerabilities. There are none.

Net effect: Conan takes 8 damage.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

Trolls don't have fire vulnerability. They care about fire damage because it shuts down their regeneration. You did this same thing with the OP's question, assuming it was talking about resistance when it wasn't.

Of course you apply all modifiers. Nobody is suggesting that Spirit Shield should not be applied.

The question is what it applies to. If a fighter hit you with a sword for 5 slashing, and then a wizard fire bolted you for 4 fire, you certainly could not apply Spirit Shield to both. You'd have to pick one. The OP's DM argues that a flame tongue sword is the same thing: Two separate instances of damage dealing and you have to pick one to shield against. Based on how such hits are typically described in the rules, I'm inclined to disagree; I think a flame tongue hit is a single event and you can apply Spirit Shield to both the slashing and the fire damage. But the RAW is not 100% clear and the passage you quoted does nothing to clarify it. You've found a very nice hammer; but this question ain't a nail.

And there remains the secondary question: Say your troll buddy is hit for 5 slashing and 4 fire (total 9), and you reduce the total by 7. We agree that you can apply the reduction to the entire hit. So the troll will take 2 damage. That's all well and good, but the question is: Of the 2 points of damage that get through, is any of it fire damage? If yes, the troll can't regenerate. If no, it can regenerate as normal. So far as I can tell, RAW doesn't even hint at an answer to this one.

First, [MENTION=6857506]Harzel[/MENTION] - not harsh at all. Do I think it's nonsensical? Perhaps on a first glance. But then the way that you can move 30 feet, attack, and in many cases do something else while everybody else stands still is nonsensical to me too. If there's something that bothers me enough (like the combat thing), then I'll change it.

Having said that, (and in part in response to [MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION] and others), I'll try to clarify why I'm generally OK with this in a single post.

I think the spirit of 5e is tilted towards simplicity, but also making things mean something. So the attack is meaningful - a successful attack almost always causes some damage - and the resistance is meaningful too. That's why there's advantage/disadvantage instead of a bunch of +1 modifiers, why the proficiency bonus starts at +2, and why it's usually resistance instead of damage reduction.

So let's look at it from a different perspective. If your barbarian is using Spirit Shield, and is attacked by a flame tongue, does the damage type even matter? To that character, what is the difference between 2d6 slashing and 1d6 slashing + 1d6 fire? Nothing at all. It only matters if the target is immune, resistant, vulnerable, or has some other specific condition (like a troll) related to the damage type. SO in this case I think it's clear that you apply the reduction to the total damage caused by the single attack.

For the sake of argument, let's assume they forgot to clarify that you divide it equally against the types of damage. So the attack is 3 points of slashing and 6 points of fire damage. You roll 8 points of reduction.

If 3 points are applied to the slashing, and 4 to the fire, you might complain that you wasted 1 point against the slashing. I'd ask a different question. If you prevented the slashing damage, doesn't that mean you prevented the sword from hitting you? If so, then how did you still take fire damage?

Otherwise I think they would have stated: if the attack deals multiple types of damage, divide the points amongst them. Or something like that.

As for the resistance to a specific type of damage: I think it really depends on your preference. It's not that difficult to isolate that specific damage to modify by itself. On the other hand, simply dividing the entire damage in half due to resistance makes resistance more valuable, yet still ensures that you'll do some damage (unlike reduction). This to me is more a question of what the table things in terms of simplicty vs "accuracy." I'd probably only worry about it if there was a large discrepancy. For example, an attack that did 1d6 fire damage and 4d6 of other damage, and the creature was resistant only to fire. But for the most part I'm guessing it's probably not worth the trouble.

This is related to the question [MENTION=6919838]5ekyu[/MENTION] asks: Do I think that all damage should be rolled together. I think that in 5e that's the general assumption. That is, something like searing smite says the attack does an extra 1d6 fire damage. I start with the extra 1d6. That is, the player grabs an extra d6, then rolls. There is no indication in the rules that they are tracking each damage type separately, using different color dice, etc. There's also no indication that you can't do that, but again the only time the damage type matters is against certain targets. So I think the default for most attacks will be just to roll the dice together. And maintaining that approach seems logical for most attacks.

So I think that what is described in XGtE is what I described. If the creature is resistant to any of the damage types, just divide the total damage in half and keep it simple. The times where it's a great benefit will be balanced out over time for when it's not. It's simple, and keeps things moving with the least amount of complexity. For a question like this I think that consistency - pick a method and stick to it - is more important than the actual rule used. I like that it would increase the benefit of resistance overall myself. And I also prefer less math while playing.

In terms of the troll. If you're making an attack that deals fire damage, and the troll takes damage from that attack, then the damage is fire damage. That is, if you successfully hit a troll with a flame tongue, then that damage is fire damage in terms of its regeneration, even if it only takes 1 point of damage. So if it's a troll barbarian with Spirit Shield and it blocks all but 1 point of damage, it still can't regenerate in that round.

YMMV, of course, but this all makes sense to me.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

As I understand it, it goes something like this:

Setup
• Conan the Barbarian is raging (resistance to bl/pr/sl damage). He is wearing an item which gives him immunity to acid damage.
• Totsramek hits Conan with a magic sword. It does 13 points of slashing damage, 6 points of fire damage, and 5 points of acid damage, total 24 damage.
• Conan uses spirit shield to reduce damage by 4.

Sequence
1. Immunity. Remove the acid damage. This leaves 13 sl and 6 fire, total 19 damage.
2. Modifiers. This is the bit where the rules do not specify what happens. Does Conan's player get to pick which of the 19 damage is removed? I'd rule that they can. The player chooses to reduce the fire damage by 4 . This leaves 13 sl and 2 fire, total 15 damage.
3. Resistance. Conan's resistance reduces the 13 slashing to 6 slashing. This leaves 6 sl and 2 fire, total 8 damage.
4. Vulnerabilities. There are none.

Net effect: Conan takes 8 damage.

I just have a problem with the "player gets to pick" part. How can they decide which part of a single attack is reduced? I'm sure I could think of some examples, but not something that would apply to every attack with multiple damage types.

If I were to apply it to individual damage tupes, then I'd say it's divided equally, but any extra applies to whatever damage is left. So that becomes 11 slashing and 4 fire, if we're applying resistance separately, then that's 5 + 4 at the end, with 9 points of damage. But that still might end up with a circumstance where an attack can do damage if the physical portion of the attack doesn't do any damage.

On the other hand, if we go with the idea that you just apply resistance to the whole thing, then you'd end up with 19-4 = 15. Divide by 2 for resistance and you get 7 points.

So with no selection you take 9 points of damage, with you getting to pick it's 8, or using the simplicity approach it's 7. None of these are game breaking. If it's consistent it will swing the other way sometimes. It means resistance is a bit stronger than it might otherwise be. And you can spend more time in the game world and less time doing math. A trade-off I'm happy to make.

 

[Chaosmancer]

If 3 points are applied to the slashing, and 4 to the fire, you might complain that you wasted 1 point against the slashing. I'd ask a different question. If you prevented the slashing damage, doesn't that mean you prevented the sword from hitting you? If so, then how did you still take fire damage?

There is precedence in saying that reducing the physical damage does not stop the elemental damage.

Clerics Divine Strike (as well as the Paladin Smites) are partly useful for their ability to turn physical attacks that a creature is immune to into at least partially successful attacks. Otherwise a creature immune to non-magical weapons would never take damage from a cleric hitting with a weapon that did bludgeoning and then also did radiant or fire or what have you.

And that makes sense to me, just because the sword doesn't break the skin doesn't mean a person doesn't get burned by the flames. You were hit with the attack roll after all.


I think the rest of your posts argue for taking the route of the least math, which can work in some instances, but it has too many potential pitfalls for my taste. Like making the resistance to weapon damage far more powerful than I think it is intended to be.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

There is precedence in saying that reducing the physical damage does not stop the elemental damage.

Clerics Divine Strike (as well as the Paladin Smites) are partly useful for their ability to turn physical attacks that a creature is immune to into at least partially successful attacks. Otherwise a creature immune to non-magical weapons would never take damage from a cleric hitting with a weapon that did bludgeoning and then also did radiant or fire or what have you.

And that makes sense to me, just because the sword doesn't break the skin doesn't mean a person doesn't get burned by the flames. You were hit with the attack roll after all.


I think the rest of your posts argue for taking the route of the least math, which can work in some instances, but it has too many potential pitfalls for my taste. Like making the resistance to weapon damage far more powerful than I think it is intended to be.

That makes sense. I can see certain circumstances where blocking the physical damage won't block the other damage. But a shield blocking a flaming sword wouldn't be one of them for me.

As for the math, I think that's the goal of the approach of how that clarification is written, yes. On the other hand, like so much of 5e (and one of the reasons I like it so much), is that it's really up to interpretation by the DM/table. Since multiple damage types seem to come up relatively infrequently, it probably won't have a big impact on most games to calculate them separately. On the other hand, in a game where combat and damage is abstract, I'd be comfortable going the less math route, yes.