D&D (2024) How will the 2024 rules do with monster resistances to P/B/S


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That’s not correct. Virtually nothing is immune or resists force damage. There might be two or three creatures but that’s it.


DND Beyond lists 6 monster's that are immune to Force and only 1 monster immune to Bludgeoning (Misty Servant of Luek-O)

There are more that are resistant to bludgeoning, but most of them are swarms and plants that you will be fighting at low level when the 6th level feature is not relevant.
 
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Meh, magic weapons will probably deal force damage or another elemental damage type, much like the beastmaster's beast attack or monk unarmed strikes or the high CR monsters that used to have the old "attack count as magical yadayada" in their attacks description.
I definitely hope not! Magical weapons bypassing damage resistance made damage resistance pointless. I'll be super glad if that is no longer a thing.

Bypassing damage resistance should be a super special property for an elite level magical weapon, not something that you get as soon as your sword can glow a little bit.

Plus, characters got a big damage boost from the rules update. Monsters need the help.
 

I definitely hope not! Magical weapons bypassing damage resistance made damage resistance pointless. I'll be super glad if that is no longer a thing.

Bypassing damage resistance should be a super special property for an elite level magical weapon, not something that you get as soon as your sword can glow a little bit.

Plus, characters got a big damage boost from the rules update. Monsters need the help.

I agree conceptually, but mechanically this is a huge nerf. The mechanics behind this will make Gish characters with Truestrike the best available "fighters" (role not class).

A Bladesinger, POB Warlock or Valor Bard is going to blow a Fighter or even a Paladin out of the water when it comes to melee.

A lot of people on this board are already upset that those classes can compete with "pure" martials and if this is true, the martial classes, other than Monks, are comparatively much weaker than in 2014 even though they got more abilities and a higher damage boost.

Personally I am ok with a set of weak classes (Fighters, Rangers, Paladins, Rogues, Barbarians) and a set of strong classes that are mechanically much more powerful (everything else), but a lot of people seem to want Fighters that can be the near-equivalent of a Wizard or Sorcerer and pull a nearly equal weight in combat.
 

I'm not too concerned with high level, optimized Gish characters; I never see them. I bet they are less than .1% of characters. You play a very different game than most. That is not a criticism, but an observation.

Martial characters have no problem keeping up with spellcasters in my games.
 

I'm not too concerned with high level, optimized Gish characters; I never see them. I bet they are less than .1% of characters. You play a very different game than most. That is not a criticism, but an observation.

Martial characters have no problem keeping up with spellcasters in my games.
Same here. As long as they have a couple of magic items, they do just fine.
 

Resistance to nonmagic bps damage has been an issue for me from the start.

Back when I started out as a DM, I used the DMG rules to make monsters. Their advice was to halve the hit points of a creature with such resistances. So what happened? The one character with a magic weapon just destroyed the monster. It felt more like the monster was weaker for it.

So what then? Not give people magic weapons? That wasn’t fun at all. It felt like it was up to me as the DM to decide that someone dealt half damage, because I decided when someone got a magic weapon.

My hope is that with the more generous allocation of magic items, the HP calculations of monsters is brought in line better.
 

I definitely hope not! Magical weapons bypassing damage resistance made damage resistance pointless. I'll be super glad if that is no longer a thing.

Bypassing damage resistance should be a super special property for an elite level magical weapon, not something that you get as soon as your sword can glow a little bit.

Plus, characters got a big damage boost from the rules update. Monsters need the help.

The worst thing was damage immunity, especially for things like gargoyles. Here we have a CR 2 monster, something I'd really like to throw at that party that hasn't had a chance to acquire magical weapons but I can't. Because they'll just die with only 1 or 2 members of the party throwing cantrips at the thing. Same with lycanthropes ... unless the group is prepared with silver or magic weapons they're likely SOL. Yet the level I would normally use monster with the CR of lycanthropes? In my game they're still scraping together every copper so that 100 GP additional cost of silver is pretty prohibitive. That, and of course it's just silly that lycanthropes can't harm each other with their natural attacks but that's just an odd quirk of the rules.

I don't want to go back to the golf-bag of weapons needed for 3.5. But I'd also be happy if we got rid of "magic weapons solve all".
 

Resistance to nonmagic bps damage has been an issue for me from the start.

Back when I started out as a DM, I used the DMG rules to make monsters. Their advice was to halve the hit points of a creature with such resistances. So what happened? The one character with a magic weapon just destroyed the monster. It felt more like the monster was weaker for it.

So what then? Not give people magic weapons? That wasn’t fun at all. It felt like it was up to me as the DM to decide that someone dealt half damage, because I decided when someone got a magic weapon.

My hope is that with the more generous allocation of magic items, the HP calculations of monsters is brought in line better.

Yeah, now I just assume magic weapons and double the HP of the monsters that have resistance to everything but magic. Then I make sure the people that need them have magic weapons before I use them, even if I'd rather run a more low magic campaign.
 

I'm not too concerned with high level, optimized Gish characters; I never see them. I bet they are less than .1% of characters. You play a very different game than most. That is not a criticism, but an observation.

Martial characters have no problem keeping up with spellcasters in my games.
I suspect this is yet another reason the DMG has a magic item distribution tracker SPECIFICALLY in there - to make sure martials aren't falling behind.

To me, it seems there's a lot of pearl-clutching for the poor single classed fighter in What If scenarios... meanwhile, many posts about paladins with smite or people with pact blades or gish that seem to be the focus on what people worry about.

I think the correct answer, if there is one, is that, like everything else, the game requires the DM to handle things, even down to acquiring magic items for the PCs - which it seems like they're making MUCH easier for PCs to make. I mean, look at Ensorcelled/Enspelled Weapon/Armor - having a suit of armor made where you can bust Shield out of it? A bow that can cast Hunter's Mark itself? Those might be handy to craft
 

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