Thanks for the peptalk! We usually play as close by the rules as we can before we start to implement house rules.Wait, you're the DM? Then what's your problem? If it's important, then do your job and make the decision. You don't need the book to tell you - you're the DM, not a robot following a code laid down by a set of rules someone else wrote!
The official explanation is under silvered it says "some", then in the monster manual some of the monsters say under resistances "from bludgeoning, slashing, and piercing non magical weapons that are not silvered", while other monsters most of them with resistance vs weapons say resistance "from bludgeoning, slashing, and piercing non magical weapons."
So it seems pretty clear to me that the monster will call out if a non magical silvered weapon will bypass it's resistance.
So only lycanthropes?
That seems like a near total waste, especially in a world with very limited magic.
It seems jacklewares, lycanthropes, all devils, wights, and wraiths are what I find in the MM. So it depends on the campaign, and how prevalent those creatures are at the lower levels before the characters realistically would have magic weapons.
No one knows whether or not nonmagical arrows fired by a magical bow are counted as being magical or not? That seems bizarre. We even have the first half of the first Adventure Path out (the second half was just released on WPN stores and goes to like 14-15th level). And still no one knows? This is important, one of my players are hesitating to playing an archer if he is dependent on the DM providing fresh amounts of magical arrows.
Thanks for pointing out how empowered I am, you are the second person in this thread to do so. Like I mentioned in my reply to Mistwell, my group wants to play the game as close by the rules as possible before we decide what (if anything) we want to house rule.Why don't you just make a ruling? It's not like the entire game will break, so who cares if you call it one way and then Mearls later states that it's meant to be the other way?
Edit: some DMs are going to allow plentiful magic arrows anyway (as it's up to the DM how easily available magic items are). What's the difference between abundant magic arrows and a magic bow that grants similar benefits? Very little, that I can see, so I don't think this will break the game in any way.
Anyway: this is 5e. DMs are empowered to make judgement calls.