Level Up (A5E) Incremental Die Bonus for Resistance/Vulnerability and ''double prof''.

[Tales and Chronicles]

Having read the rogue playtest, I absolutely love the idea of Expertise granting a bonus die, with every further instance of Expertise increasing the size of the die by one step. I hope that in the final document, the myriad of Origins that granted ''double proficiency'' to a skill will use that same feature, meaning a stacking (but not overwhelming) bonus to a skill.

Anyway, what would people think of having the same rule apply to resistance and vulnerability? Like, the Barbarian would grant 1 Resistance Rank when raging, gaining a base 1d6 damage reduction on a hit. Other instances that would grant resistance increase the size by one (1d6 to 1d8 to d10 etc). Same with Vulnerability: Hex and Hunter's Mark would give 1 Vulnerability Rank, creatures surprised by an Assassin would have one (or more!) Vulnerability Rank(s) etc.

 

[aco175]

I think I would rather have a static number on resistances coming at my PC. I think it is mostly to cut down on the dice rolling off turn and to keep it simple. I would not use it with monsters being the DM unless I have the players roll the resisted amount.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I think I would rather have a static number on resistances coming at my PC. I think it is mostly to cut down on the dice rolling off turn and to keep it simple. I would not use it with monsters being the DM unless I have the players roll the resisted amount.

I get that. Having the the old 4e's type of resist/vulnerable would be awesome for those who love granularity but want to spend less time rolling die.
Like Resist Fire 7, Vulnerable Cold 3 etc

Having Resistance and its opposite be all-or-nothing was nice in term of simplicity, but it removed a lot of design space for classes and archetype or spells.

 

[aco175]

I do find it simpler with resistance to be 1/2 damage like 5e has now, but can get on having the 4e like @vincegetorix is saying above where resistance be something like 5/10/20 over resistance (2d6)/(5d6). The higher level dice reduction appears like it will get out of hand.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

To be honest, I'm kinda okay with Resistance being a broad all-or-nothing feature.

The part that displeases me is Vulnerability. It is so strong that only a few creatures have them, and only a few features give Vulnerability. I wish there was more ways to inflict specific vulnerabilities to an element or condition in the game!

 

[tetrasodium]

I do find it simpler with resistance to be 1/2 damage like 5e has now, but can get on having the 4e like @vincegetorix is saying above where resistance be something like 5/10/20 over resistance (2d6)/(5d6). The higher level dice reduction appears like it will get out of hand.

changing from dr#/whatever & resist#/whatever messed up a lot of the balance between hitting something 1x very hard & hitting it repeatedly for a fraction on any individual strike. Instead of one or the other being situationally better it became almost always best because ability mod & weapon mods multiplied when you hit it repeatedly while the harder hit rarely exceeded the cumulative total of those lesser strikes & suffered from a larger hit to total dpr if that one big hit was resisted or missed. Here's an example:

• Monster has resistance per core 5e & takes half damage from both players
• Bob is going to hit it one time very hard, he deals 3d10+5 as a level 11 evoker wizard or level 11 fire dragon sorcerer casting firebolt for an average of 21.5 before it gets reduced & rounded down to an average of 10
• Alice makes 3 attacks that each deal 1d10+5 for an average of 10.5+10.5+10.5 for a total of 31.5 reduced & rounded down to 15
• Alice & bob both have a 60% hit rate meaning bob has a 40% chance of doing nothing this round while the odds of alice doing the same are something like half a percent chance on any given round if my math is right. Alice has higher damage and better odds of doing at least partial damage each round.
• Because alice is doing 3 attacks with a 60% chance of dealing 10.5 damage compared to bob's 1 attack totaling a 21.5 average she has a very good chance of not only hitting but equaling bob's damage by connecting on two attacks
• In the past this was balanced out because anything with DR or resistance X would multiply that reduction for alice maybe to the point of negating one or more entire attacks whole bob could still break through & deal most of his damage
• 5e didn't stop there though because it failed to include resistance on much of anything & found one hammer it liked for nearly everything else with "nonmagical piercing bludgeoning or slashing"

The example might have been an evoker wiz/dragon sorc vrs a warlock or a fighter with a long bow & 3 attacks, but it works with any combo... 5e just eliminated most of the martial hit it fewer times like a truck stuff or made them traps like the charger feat so I avoided the need for spherical cows in an example

 

[NotAYakk]

To be honest, I'm kinda okay with Resistance being a broad all-or-nothing feature.

The part that displeases me is Vulnerability. It is so strong that only a few creatures have them, and only a few features give Vulnerability. I wish there was more ways to inflict specific vulnerabilities to an element or condition in the game!

Yep. Something like:

Immunity (0 damage)
Resistance (1/2 damage)
Normal (standard)
Weakness (+1/2 damage)
Vulnerability (x2 damage)

Vulnerability is so big, it is like "you use this, the enemy loses" much like Immunity is "you can't use this to beat this enemy"; but worse, because (in general) attackers can pick with what they attack with, while defenders don't get to pick what they are attacked with.

Calculating +1/2 is only a bit harder than calculating 1/2, and it is meaty enough that you will care, but no so huge that it breaks the fight.

---

My issue with fixed resistance/vulnerability is only a bit about the extra math (which also sucks), but because it breaks the symmetry between "one big hit" and "many small hits" in ways that require reworking the entire combat engine to keep at all balanced.

You can do this, but it requires a lot of work. Look at starcraft, where armor is a fixed reduction, and how much insane amounts of tweaking they do to on exact damage values and rates of upgrade.

I'm not sure that level of work is worth the price (development time, focus, limitations on options) in a TTRPG.

 

[Faolyn]

The part that displeases me is Vulnerability. It is so strong that only a few creatures have them, and only a few features give Vulnerability. I wish there was more ways to inflict specific vulnerabilities to an element or condition in the game!

I think that's definitely possible, but it would be a rules-exception type of thing, done on a case-by-case basis, rather than a single rule. If you inflict cold damage to a water elemental, its slowed until the end of its next turn; if you attack a yeti or flesh golem with fire, it has disad on attacks until the end of its next turn.

A friend of mine wanted me to make a bunch of templates for him (he liked 3x templates a lot), and I went hog-wild with lycanthropes. I expanded on the idea of allergens from 2e's Van Richten's Guide to Werebeasts--y'know, the idea that wolvesbane is poisonous to werewolves, etc., which they haven't included in 5e so far. The lycanthrope could have either a mild or severe allergen to whatever, which would determine the DC of the Con save it would have to make, and then how much damage it took if the allergen was ingested, injected, or inhaled.

 

[tetrasodium]

Having read the rogue playtest, I absolutely love the idea of Expertise granting a bonus die, with every further instance of Expertise increasing the size of the die by one step. I hope that in the final document, the myriad of Origins that granted ''double proficiency'' to a skill will use that same feature, meaning a stacking (but not overwhelming) bonus to a skill.

Anyway, what would people think of having the same rule apply to resistance and vulnerability? Like, the Barbarian would grant 1 Resistance Rank when raging, gaining a base 1d6 damage reduction on a hit. Other instances that would grant resistance increase the size by one (1d6 to 1d8 to d10 etc). Same with Vulnerability: Hex and Hunter's Mark would give 1 Vulnerability Rank, creatures surprised by an Assassin would have one (or more!) Vulnerability Rank(s) etc.

This is probably a whole lot better than the 5e half/double damage, it's still only half of the need. Damage dealing abilities (attacks, spells, etc) fall into two relevant groupings. The first(A) is to play the averages with lots of attacks & the second(B) is to condense those attacks into one big attack. If everything(attack/bypassing resist/etc) is successful & there is no reductions in damage A is usually going to equal or exceed B in 5e's tightly tuned environment. If resistance comes into play A is usually going to exceed the damage of B because of things like +ability mod & +weapon mods counting multiple times and A is going to be less effected by a failure than B. Without damage reduction of a hard number not scaling with the amount of damage you do it really hurts hit like a truck (ie evoker's/red dragon sorc firebolt/fireball) compared to hit it lots (ie agonizing eldritch blast/weapons in the hand of classes with extra attacks) by putting them behind the curve in the very places they should shine.

This also has the benefit of being easy to convert between stock 5e monsters with resist & a5e style. It's lacking a way for baddies to have multiple levels of resist/vulnerability without templates or spells/debuffs unless we get new monsters or templates but I think that the benefits to the sytem's improved overall health outweigh the scaling there Linking the resist/vuln level to CR ranges might work too.