Nonweapon Damage Types. Which ones and how many?

[Minigiant]

I still the title states the question well. So which damage types go and which ones stay?

I have no problem with keeping D&D classic five
Acid (just don't tie it to earth)
Cold
Fire
Electricity
Sonic (just don't forget it exists and make it so rare it's awesome)

Positive and Negative. Radiant and Necrotic. They can go as they will either be too rare to matter or show up arbitrarily all over the place. As much as I love my weird warlock shooting starry radiant energy everywhere, we dot need it. The strengths, weaknesses, and effect of these unnatural energies can be written directly in the slitems, spells, features, and monsters that use them.

Poison. I'm not getting in the argument of whether poison should be hp damage, ability damage, or an effect system. But if it is hp damage, again its own damage type is not needed. Poison, if made HP damage, should be made into a keyword or written in each usage.

Psychic damage. A tough one. I am willing to give it the Poison treatment. The internal nature of it, like poison, limits its usage and should be keyworded or written in features that use it.

Water, Wind, Earth, or Nature damage? No.

Falling damage. Okay I'll allow it.

I'm good with acid, cold, falling (heh), fire, electricity, and sonic.

 

[Hassassin]

Energy damage types: acid, cold, electricity, fire (+ sonic)

Aligned damage types: anarchic, axiomatic, holy, unholy

Anything else should, IMO, be merged into one of those or one of the physical ones:

Physical damage types: bludgeoning, piercing, slashing (+non-lethal)

I'm not sure about sonic. I think it could be changed into bludgeoning and/or non-lethal depending on effect. Crystalline creatures could be weak to bludgeoning. If you get rid of sonic, you have three nice groups of four damage types.

Positive and negative energy could just be holy and unholy. Ditto for radiant and whatever the other was.

 

[Deset Gled]

Energy: Heat, cold, chemical, electric

Aligned: Holy, evil, axiomatic, anarchic

Physical: Blunt, piecing, slashing

Ability score damage: By ability score

Other: Untyped, non-lethal

All the other damages that have been listed should be retyped as these. Poison, for example, gives untyped, energy, or ability score damage. Positive and negative energy are holy and evil. Falling gives blunt damage. Sonic is either blunt damage or non-lethal damage (maybe both) depending on the source.

Non-lethal damage doesn't belong in the physical axis, but should instead by applied on top of the other axes. It can come from beating, drowning, prolonged heat exposure, etc, and carry the other descriptions with it. I also think it should be much harder to apply with a weapon, but that's a different discussion.

Name-wise, I really don't care if it's blunt or bludgeoning, heat or fire, etc. Except for acid. I hate the term "acid damage" because it is used to describe all chemical damage, including damaged from strong bases (the opposite of acid!). It really should be changed to "chemical" or something else equally encompassing. If "acid" must be used for historical reasons, the DMG absolutely needs a note discussing the fact that it's used for convenience, and means any type of chemical damage. This is one of those things that just bugs me.

 

[CleverNickName]

I'd like to see one for each element, and one for each alignment.

Air - Electrical
Earth - Chemical (Acid)
Fire - Fire
Water - Ice

Law - Axiomatic
Chaos - Anarchic
Good - Positive (Sacred)
Evil - Negative (Profane)

Everything else could be filed under under broad, deliberately undefined categories of "physical" and "arcane" damage.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Psychic Damage should very much stay, especially when there was a lot of Psionic powers that did that back in 3e.

 

[Spatula]

I'm not convinced of the need for alignment damage types, myself. I think I would rather see those as extra qualities of an attack, if such things were to be present at all. e.g. "This is a holy attack." That way you can have a holy (or unholy) fire attack without having to muck around with having multiple damage types and how they interact with resistances.

My preferred list of damage types would be:

fire, cold, lightning, thunder, acid, bludgeoning, slashing, piercing, (untyped).

Possibly damage qualities that don't rate their own type: holy, unholy, lawful, chaotic, poison, disease, non-lethal, "force", weapon, magic

Acid is IMO too specific. It should either just be untyped or should be lumped into a "dissolution" type that would include anything that breaks down the fabric of matter (like a disintegrate spell).

EDIT: changed my mind about acid.

 

[Lanefan]

Acid is IMO too specific. It should either just be untyped or should be lumped into a "dissolution" type that would include anything that breaks down the fabric of matter (like a disintegrate spell).

Depends how one views disintegration; to me, it's all or nothing - you're either still in one piece or you're dust. It doesn't bother with the niceties of damage rolls or hit points...

Acid as its own type is fine, if only to give Black Dragons and various slimy pudding things something to do.

I'd go with:

Weapon: slashing, piercing, bludgeoning (can be combined with any below)
Common: fire, cold, acid, electric
Uncommon: sonic, holy, unholy
Rare: ability, psionic, other (includes Green Dragon chlorine breath, Jedi Force pushes, some poison effects, etc.)

The trick is not to worry about damage types, though, but to make resistance effects less common.

Lanefan

 

[BobTheNob]

Whatever it is, I just want to see less and more broad spectrum. Its dumb having electrical resist something when you spend the next x levels getting hit with everything except electrical.

 

[Mattachine]

Please, get rid of "untyped". If damage is going to generally have types, then it has types.

That is one of the things that bothers me about 4e is that a lot of damage is untyped, like weapon damage. If the game is going to classify damage, then it needs to classify all damage.

 

[Lanefan]

Please, get rid of "untyped". If damage is going to generally have types, then it has types.

That is one of the things that bothers me about 4e is that a lot of damage is untyped, like weapon damage. If the game is going to classify damage, then it needs to classify all damage.

Er...why?

"Untyped" is just shorthand for "this damage doesn't fall into any of the various types that have special rules and-or mechanics attached".

You could just as easily simply call it "damage". In fact the "untyped" designation is unnecessary, as if there was a type attached it would (I hope) say so in every instance; and the absence of a type means - well, that there isn't any.

Lanefan