Mearls talks about how he hates resistances

[Derren]

Heyyyyy, thanks for the ad hominem attack! Been a while. I was feeling left out.

Let's go back to the core of this particular subtopic. D&D has five basic damage types as of 3E. There are a few more in 4E. But that's it. Those are the damage types. So the discussion as it takes place is valid because under the example (fire giant in the heart of the star) you have to pick what type of damage it is*. Assuming you pick "fire", the fire giant has immunity, and it takes no damage.

*Unless it does untyped damage. One of the interesting points brought out in this whole discussion is the notion that everything in D&D could just do untyped damage.

The problem with that example is that is is simply wrong and skewed. A star is not only fire so fire immunity would not make the fire giant survive on a star. It would make it die in a different way. Arguing that in D&Ds limited damage framework a star could only do fire damage doesn't matter. People likely don't think in D&D terms when thinking about this example and thus assume the giant could survive in a real star with fire immunity.
This example tries to link fire immunity to a overdrawn situation to make it look worse than it is.

Here is a more fair example:
When a fire giant is pushed into an active volcano does the giant burn to death or drown (unless it can swim very well).

 

[Mercule]

I don't necessarily agree. There could be magical poison. And fire from magical effects tends to imply a control over the element of fire - why shoudn't something made of fire be susceptible to this kind of effects?

I think these are where you get into design decisions and no game will be able to satisfy everyone. For example, I have a really hard time imagining even magic poison being a threat to a zombie. Now, if you want to say someone created magic poison specifically designed to deal with undead, I could buy that, but I'd probably expect the damage type to be Radiant, not Poison.

As far as fire damage coming from control of fire, I think that's a meta-setting issue. The core assumptions are that fireball summons fire, not that it manipulates existing fire. There isn't anything wrong with the inverse assumption, but a determination had to be made and it was. A smaller-grained system (say, Hero) could easily handle spells with either/both mechanics, but D&D has always been a pretty large-grained system and I can't think of a way any edition would have adequately handled that without adding more complexity.

D&D is what it is. It's large-grained, abstract, and archetypal. The new edition reminded me of that. I've walked away from D&D twice before and both times it was because I was trying to do something with the system that it wasn't intended to do. There is a limit to how far I am will to abstract the system, but some abstraction is necessary for the game to function, and always has been.

 

[Leatherhead]

I was going to suggest something along the lines of differing magnitudes of elemental power but then I had an epiphany:

It dosn't matter if a fire giant can fall through a star, PC's aren't giants, or stars for that matter. It dosn't matter if the god of fire can snuff out a fire elemental with its fire breath, PC's aren't the gods of fire or fire elementals.

We have creatures called minions, these minions have cinematic combat stats exclusively for the purpose of fighting PC's. From this we can extrapolate all monster combat statistics are for the purpose of battle with PC's. A PC isn't a fire elemental, or a red dragon, or a giant ball of gas floating about in space. The fire resistance any monsters have details how well protected they are from the fire attack of a PC, who would have weaker ties to fire than a being entirely made out of it.

So this leads us back to the topical problem here: Are resistances too high for elemental specialist themed mages? For a typical wizard who has access to multiple types of damage, resistances are fine. You just have to pick a different spell to use. For everyone else, I think the easiest and best solution is to simply create an elemental specialization feat that allows them to ignore part of the resistance (but not all of it) and perhaps a bit of extra damage or extra accuracy so that the feat isn't useless against other monsters.

Unless you were talking about 3rd edition, then we can totally go for setting up an order of magnitude.

 

[tomBitonti]

Mixing real world physics with D&D elemental questions seems problematic at best. Do stars even exist in the same form in D&D? And if they did, there are problems of radiation, pressure, and exposure to plasma, that would doom the fire giant rather quickly. Of course, you would run into these problems with any confinement of matter at million degree temperatures and anything close to every day densities (let alone the densities that you see at the heart of a star).

The simple answer is to declare that immunities are approximations of very high resistance values, and say that they should used cautiously in super extreme environments.

 

[Sir Brennen]

Well, the SKR article is merely pointing out how immunities can break down logically at the extremes, and with 4E including Epic play built in, extremes can be part of the existing play experience. Now maybe using the heart of a star or bowels of a fire god are beyond the realm of practical play (but hey, this is a fantasy game), but what about a 3E giant wading through a pool of lava (not an unlikely hazard when facing fire giants) or the breath weapon of a Red Great Wyrm (24d10 fire)? Just how "immune" should a creature of flesh and blood with "immunity to fire" be? It's going to be a matter of personal taste for a DM, but with resistances, at least they can set the threshold to something they feel makes sense.

I was also pointing out that 4E seems to have followed this path, and taken alot of these immunities out and replaced them with differing levels of resistance.

For instance, red dragons are no longer immune to fire in 4E. But an ancient red dragon could exist comfortably in his volcano-caverns lair with his Resist 40 fire. However, his fire aura alone would be enough to cook a red dragon wyrmling (Resist 5 fire) to death.

Fire giants have only Resist 15 fire, while the related - but more elemental in nature - Fire Titans have Resist 30.

Total immunity to fire seems to be reserved for those creatures which could logically exist within a conflagration, such as efreets and pyroclastic dragons.

Looking at the resistances of creatures across various levels, I don't think a feat which allowed a specialist to ignore an amount of resistance equal to their level against their chosen element of specialty would be out of line. Or maybe a feat which gave 5 points of penetration of a select resistance, and then a paragon path which made it equal to the character's level.

I still don't see making resistances into defenses as a good solution - they would either have to be low enough that an attack could still reasonably overcome it, thus making the creature still fairly vulnerable to its own natural environment, or high enough to allow it to live where one would expect, which would then basically change it from "resistant" to "immune" when it comes to attacks by the players using that element, with the exception of the occasional critical.

I also don't see the "just make attacks untyped" approach. Not only does it really break down some of the few remaining simulationist aspects of the game ("I can do full damage to a fire elemental with my fireball, because all instances of the word 'fire' in this sentence are just fluff."), but it chops out huge chunks of potential design space for powers, items and creatures.

 

[Primal]

For instance, red dragons are no longer immune to fire in 4E. But an ancient red dragon could exist comfortably in his volcano-caverns lair with his Resist 40 fire. However, his fire aura alone would be enough to cook a red dragon wyrmling (Resist 5 fire) to death.

I wonder how those wyrmlings ever get to hatch and grow up, if their parents kill them by their mere presence?

 

[Sir Brennen]

I wonder how those wyrmlings ever get to hatch and grow up, if their parents kill them by their mere presence?

We're talkin' Ancient red here... probably well past his breeding years.

 

[Ourph]

I was going to suggest something along the lines of differing magnitudes of elemental power but then I had an epiphany:

It dosn't matter if a fire giant can fall through a star, PC's aren't giants, or stars for that matter. It dosn't matter if the god of fire can snuff out a fire elemental with its fire breath, PC's aren't the gods of fire or fire elementals.

This! One of the things I love about the "tone" of 4e is that it gets away from taking standard, workable, rules and redesigning them to prevent or "correct" ridiculous corner cases that nobody really cares about when they sit down to play. Nobody's dog ever died because at one DM's table a fire giant falls into a star and dies, while at another DM's table, the fire giant survived due to fire immunity. It just doesn't matter enough to worry about. Let the DM make the call and get on with the game.

 

[Grazzt]

Ugh, I really dislike his suggestions on replacing resistance. You go from caster X being screwed over to caster X screwing over the whole party, sounds like it would make the situation even worse than before.

agreed

 

[Shroomy]

I wonder how those wyrmlings ever get to hatch and grow up, if their parents kill them by their mere presence?

Creatures with auras can drop or reactivate them as a minor action.