D&D 5E Non magic damage resist

[GMforPowergamers]

so some monsters in 5e have resistance and far fewer but some immunity to non magical slashing piercing and bludgeoning damage. How does this work out in your campaigns?

I find it is either a MAJOR game stopper, or not even a foot note and nothing between.

if all your characters (or at least 2/3 or more) only can deal non magic weapon damage it turns the encounter SUPER lethal.
if on the other hand they have magic weapons, or cantrips, or some other non B/P/S damage type no one notices...


A campaign with a paliden a ranger a rogue and a fighter all with no magic weapons can find all of there attacks halfed
a campaign with a hexblade, druid, bladsinger, and artificer can find they don't even notice the resistance

 

[Maxperson]

so some monsters in 5e have resistance and far fewer but some immunity to non magical slashing piercing and bludgeoning damage. How does this work out in your campaigns?

I find it is either a MAJOR game stopper, or not even a foot note and nothing between.

I factor it in when setting up an encounter. Half damage still gets the job done, and as you say, if they have magic weapons it's not even a foot note. In my first campaign everyone eventually had a magic weapon and they blew through encounters that were supposed to be challenging due to those weapons, which leads me to the next paragraph.

I believe that a good part of the challenge rating is that resistance, so I did two things. First, I made magic weapons really rare, but that wasn't very much fun for the players. Second, I got rid of the first thing I did and instituted a house rule that instead of needing a magic weapon, you needed a weapon that was +1 or better. That way I could hand out cool magic weapons that didn't have a + attached without screwing up the encounter balance.

if all your characters (or at least 2/3 or more) only can deal non magic weapon damage it turns the encounter SUPER lethal.
if on the other hand they have magic weapons, or cantrips, or some other non B/P/S damage type no one notices...

Super lethal if it was already a hard or deadly encounter. If you factor it into the challenge, it doesn't have the same impact. Just view those creatures as having double hit points and keep that in mind when comparing the monster to what the group can do.

 

[iserith]

I don't really think about it as DM. Some of those monsters are on the random encounter tables, so whatever the players do about them is their business.

As a player, the people who can't affect them well use Help actions, Dodge to soak attacks, or grapple-prone the monsters so the others can give them a beatdown.

 

[Thommy H-H]

Damage resistance/immunity is taken into account in CR - it basically counts their hit points as double for defensive CR purposes, but only if they're relativity low CR monsters. At higher level, everyone has magic weapons or spells. This is one instance where bounded accuracy breaks down, because the idea that certain creatures can remain threats at higher levels falls apart in the case of low-CR monsters with resistance/immunity to nonmagical attacks.

The biggest offenders are lycanthropes, whose CR is calculated on the assumption that they have twice the hit points they actually have. As I found out in my own game, if you set up a situation where a whole city is run by various werecreatures and hope to make some of them threatening, don't wait until the PCs are level 11 before they visit. A number of what were supposed to be quite nasty run-ins with werewolves to sell them as a powerful faction were basically speed bumps, if that! It rather undermined the plot, and I had to beef up fights on the fly. My lycanthropes now use the newer paradigm of having Regeneration that's negated by silvered weapons, and a lot more hit points to help them reach their CR.

So yes. It's a very swingy element of the game. The way resistances work isn't quite granular enough to avoid the problem of such creatures being either an absolute nightmare or utterly irrelevant, with no in-between. Essentially, a CR 3 werewolf becomes CR 1 if someone has a +1 longsword.

 

[DND_Reborn]

so some monsters in 5e have resistance and far fewer but some immunity to non magical slashing piercing and bludgeoning damage. How does this work out in your campaigns?

I find it is either a MAJOR game stopper, or not even a foot note and nothing between.

Pretty much as you said.

Magic is so prevalent in the system via casters and half casters and feats, that for the most part past tier 1, resistance or even immunity to non-magic damage is hardly an issue.

Now, I run a lower-magic style game, with non-spammable cantrips rules, fewer magic items, etc. but there are still many options to overcome those obstacles.

In tier 1, it can be an issue, but then it becomes the "MAJOR game stopper", as you said.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Damage resistance/immunity is taken into account in CR

I mean I don't really think WotC has CR mean anything... it is very weird.

The biggest offenders are lycanthropes, whose CR is calculated on the assumption that they have twice the hit points they actually have.

yeah the lycanthropes is what brought this up... In Curse of Strahd I have a party with no magic items and only 1 with a reliable damage cantrip (and it is d4) so even at level 3 or 4 running into 2 werewolves is a death sentence.

in my last homebrew world also at level 3 we had everyone with a way to damage them (and even our weapon user was a soul knife rogue) so we would curb stomp groups of 3 or 4 werewolves...

As I found out in my own game, if you set up a situation where a whole city is run by various werecreatures and hope to make some of them threatening, don't wait until the PCs are level 11 before they visit.

ouch... yeah

A number of what were supposed to be quite nasty run-ins with werewolves to sell them as a powerful faction were basically speed bumps, if that! It rather undermined the plot, and I had to beef up fights on the fly.

oh my were wolf barbarians rage... and are bear totem, and have action surge... that's the ticket.

My lycanthropes now use the newer paradigm of having Regeneration that's negated by silvered weapons, and a lot more hit points to help them reach their CR.

I swear that was how it worked at one point...

So yes. It's a very swingy element of the game. The way resistances work isn't quite granular enough to avoid the problem of such creatures being either an absolute nightmare or utterly irrelevant, with no in-between. Essentially, a CR 3 werewolf becomes CR 1 if someone has a +1 longsword.

 

[Quickleaf]

I very frequently homebrew damage resistances/vulnerabilities to tell a better story & make player choices more consequential.

For example, there was a deceiving fiend who had resistance to any spell cast without fiend's blood as a component, and also resistance to any weapon damage that wasn't "holy" (which was defined as wielded by a LG character, anointed in holy water, enchanted by a cleric/paladin, forged by gods/angels, etc). However, it was also vulnerable to damage by anyone who spoke the utter truth (which had to be deeper than "I will swing my sword at you now" and more about revealing deeply personal secrets).