Revised DR

[Speaker]

I love how you can walk away from a thread like this for 200 posts and come back right where you left off.

Its like watching baseball on TV. Fall asleep in the 3rd inning, wake up in the 7th, and its still 4 to 3.

PS

I jumped from the fifth page to the tenth and as far as I can see, nothing has changed.

You can't have a debate where one or both sides refuse to budge.

Hence, although I truly love speech and well reasoned arguement in every form, and thought for the first few pages that I would just HAVE to join in... I won't.

I am really dissapointed about this, hence this self-absorbed message that is ultimately pointless.

Bye now.

EDIT: That's not to say that I am disdainful of all the points made in this thread. Some of you have put a lot of thought into your posts. Well done.

 

[Petrosian]

Re: Sigh

Option 1: DR is so rare that its not an issue worth consideration for equipping characters.

Option 2: DR appears frequently enough to be an issue hen equipping characters.

Corollary to option 1: if its rare enough not to be an issue, why in the world go to all the trouble needed to change the rules for something that wont matter enough to provoke reaction?

Corollary to option 2: See golf-bag

You cannot have it both ways. designer dr cannot at the same time be a wondrous injection of flavor and story and at the same time be trivial to those it affects.

From the MM, creatures with DR:
Ok, 20 creatures (yes there are various demons, devils, and dragons) and 4 templates. That aint a whole lot folks. I stand by my statement that you could adventure to level 20 and only see a couple of creatures with DR, it isnt overwhelmingly likely because dms traditionally enjoy messing with creatures with DR, but its certainly possible. As far as how the DRs will be, weve heard that fey may pick up a cold iron DR, skeletons will get blunt DR, Pit Fiends will have holysilver, and Lyncanthropes will still have silver.

Technik

 

[mmu1]

Re: Sigh

Ok, 20 creatures (yes there are various demons, devils, and dragons) and 4 templates. That aint a whole lot folks.

That's nice... Now if you just didn't ignore how much these "various" dragons, demons, devils, other outsiders with multiple creatures per entry, elementals and golems inflate the number quite a bit beyond 20, things would be perfect.

Not to mention considering how often those "4" templates are going to come up in adventures, or the way the likelihood of fighting somethig with DR will drastically go up in anything but low-level games.

 

[Felon]

I imagine DR will be every bit as common as it is now. Of course, it's been pretty much irrelevant and nobody bothered to take note of it, so it will certainly seem much more common now

 

[Technik4]

Petrosian: Special Materials DR can at the same time be a wonderful injection of flavor and story and not affect the majority of creatures in the MM.

Per my post, from what we know now, only feys will have DR that dont already.

Actually going through the MM I was a little surprised, I would guess just by looking at the pictures whether or not a creature would have DR (Im not one of those that remembers all of these things) and I was right in all but 1 or 2 cases. The grick surprised me based on the name and the picture, but I must admit Ive never fought one.

Remember, according to what we know there will still be magical DR.

"Thursday morning, Mary Elizabeth Allen from WoTC Marketing; Anthony Valterra, the Category Manager for D&D; and Andy Collins, D&D R&D spoke to an invitation-only meeting of judges and volunteers about the upcoming D&D revision, which they called 3.5."

<snip>

"DR (Damage reduction) is being changed. Today it's hierarchical - a monster with DR 10/+1 can be hit by +2 weapons, for example. The change is to be more specific - DR 10/holy silver means just that. Magical weapons alone won't work, but only good-aligned silver ones. So, there will be DR bypass designations such as Silver, Gold, Cold Iron, Magical, Bludgeoning, etc. The DRs are also being lowered to make them more reasonable, and monks will have a couple of properties with unarmed attacks that will allow them to bypass certain sorts of DR. "

It was also stated that demons and devils would require holysilver. Both of them, and that probably includes the Fiendish template. Bludgeoning we know comes into play against a few monsters and skeletons. Cold Iron is vs Fey (as of yet, undetermined quantity, but there arent that many fey in the MM period). Silver is presently against many creatures in the MM. That leaves "gold" unaccounted for.

I speculate that golems, dragons, and elementals will retain magical DR with reduced values (for the amount reduced, not the plus required). I would furthermore speculate that Gold is the necessary ingredient to hurt celestials (dont have any of my older MMs so I cant look up if they were vulnerable to something in earlier editions). If gold does not do this, then maybe "evil-aligned" silver is required to hurt celestials. At which point I have no idea what gold would be for, possibly some of the creatures that presently use silver, so silver would be recognized as "the" material to fight outsiders.

So, yes this will inject some story into those said monsters. No, it does not appear rampant enough (imo) to justify a golfbag of weapons at almost any point.

The changes are not meant to be sweeping, rather they are supposed to do exactly what DR appears to be doing, injecting some needed (as in, was designed to work one way, worked one way in earlier editions, hence it is NEEDED in this edition) alterations.


Technik

 

[Petrosian]

[/B][/QUOTE]

Petrosian: Special Materials DR can at the same time be a wonderful injection of flavor and story and not affect the majority of creatures in the MM.

Now here we have you becoming somewhat evasive and very misinformayive.

The percentage of creatures in the MM is an irrelevent stat. This comparison you now seem to make is meaningless, unless one tries to parlay that into a reflection of how frequently it is seen in play.

Which is of course, exactly what you did above in earlier posts but which you are carefully sidestepping now with this extremely limited scope comment.

lets look above to the followup in your post.

I stand by my statement that you could adventure to level 20 and only see a couple of creatures with DR, it isnt overwhelmingly likely because dms traditionally enjoy messing with creatures with DR, but its certainly possible.

And here is where the cat is out.

This is what my comment stems from.

If one wants to downplay the seriousness or impact of the new change by harping on how few AND how rarely they can be encountered, then at the same time the purported benefits are also diminished, which leads us to this being an unnecessary change.

If one believes the benefits will be seen and a wonderful injection of flavor and story... is one crowing about that happening rarely, only a couple of times in levels 1-20, a campaign stretching years?

I dont think so.

Put simply, the "benefits" and the "downsides" will appear proportionally, based on how often the Gm decides to use them AND how well he uses them in scenarios. There is one exception... the preemptive effects, the things it encourages the characters to do to prepare for the potential encounter, will be pervasive and be seen every adventure.

So, yes this will inject some story into those said monsters. No, it does not appear rampant enough (imo) to justify a golfbag of weapons at almost any point.

Would you suspect that disease causing monsters outnumber, either in play or in MM accounting the number of DR monsters in the MM? i wouldn't. My PCs often seek out cure disease items (usually expendable and cheap) ahead of time. It seems reasonable to them to take these out on adventures in case they get such an encounter, just like modern day people have first aid kits.

Would you suspect the number of level draining creatures to be more numerous (in actual play or MM accounting) than those who have DR? No? Me niether. However, my players often seek out restoration devices (scrolls or potions typically) and carry them around when they go adventuring just in case they have such an encounter. It seems reasonable, just like auto drivers often have road flares or an emergency flasher in their trunk... just in case.

Similar comparisons can be shown with creatures vulnerable to holy water, blunt weapons, and so on. heck the same sort of thing can be done with things like healing potions for that matter.

Do none of your PCs take these precautions? Do they find them all unjustified?

Your attempt to spin up the positives so that somehow with only a few instances over several years a wondrous injection of story and flavor will be added, and spin down the downsides so that the negatives wont be seen more than a few times in a 20 level campaign, and so on is rather transparent.

In a given campaign, either designer will be seen often enough to have a significant impact or it wont. this will apply to both the good and bad elements. However, the party preparations and considerations of these events will be in effect all the time.

The changes are not meant to be sweeping, rather they are supposed to do exactly what DR appears to be doing, injecting some needed (as in, was designed to work one way, worked one way in earlier editions, hence it is NEEDED in this edition) alterations.
Technik

The changes made are not needed, they are just changes. The changes which needed to be made include reducing DR blocking numbers for a few beasties AND raising the DR bypass numbers in some cases where the values were so low as to be silly. If this was done, the problems mentioned with Dr could have been addressed without the designer dr overhaul.

Didn't you say several pages ago that part of your arguments were just devil's advocating? if so why are you back in force once again? Boredom overtake you?

Do you actually mean what you are arguing this time, as opposed to last time, or is this again just arguing for its own sake?

Either way, you seem to be much more in spin than substance mode with trying to trump a MM accounting into a statement about frequency in play.

 

[Left-handed Hummingbird]

No golfbags...

Even if every darn monster the characters met had DR, I wouldn't expect any of them to tug the golf bag. Why would they? A magic sword of plain ol' steel would be sufficient to deal with most of them.

Compare a +5 steel long sword to a +2 nutella (whatever) long sword - when faced with the Gazebo with a DR of 5/nutella. The nutella sword with a +2 bonus to hit will damage for 3 to 10 HPs while the plain vanilla sword - using Power Attack to turn the to hit bonus down to effectively +2 - is going to hit for ...wait for it... 4 to 11 HP even though it doesn't bypass the DR!

Thus, it would be better to have a single +5 weapon than a +2 special weapon when faced with DR 5 monsters.

When the DR is very high - 10 for instance, the advantage of special weapons are higher, obviously. But that doesn't mean vanilla weapons will be useless: Consider the typical fighter fighting DR 10 monsters, he'll undoubtedly have +4 damage bonus from strength, and using the same comparison as above, that fighter would damage for 3 to 11 HP. Meager, compared to the special weapon wielding fighter who deals out 7 to 14 hp per hit - but not too shabby, considering the universality of the vanilla weapon. In most other cases (when fighting DR 0 monsters) it would be the other way around.

Now, if the DR is exceptionally high (15) the vanilla wielding fighter has a hard time making dents - hitting only for 0 to 7 HPs per hit. He is, however, still damaging the creature, but he is clearly undermatched by the special material guy whom does double damage, compared to the vanilla guy.

Yet this is most certainly the exception, and even if it isn't prepared for in advance - by bringing the weapon to defeat that particular foe with - it is still managable (if harder) to defeat the monster using your +5 weapon instead of your golf bag of +2 weapons.

The cost/benefit of the golf bag just isn't high enough that you would wish to divide your costs among seven or eight weapons, when you can make do in all but the rarest cases by pooling most of your costs into an uber weapon.

And probably those cases are even fewer if you chose to have +5 weapon of silver (or another special material the campaign monsters are susceptible to).

Now, just because it will be better most of the time to carry a single +5 weapon than to carry around six or seven +2 weapons doesn't mean the DR change isn't substantial or important, because WHEN the fighter - by good fortune or because she knew she were going to fight a Pit Fiend - happens to have the proper special material weapon she'll have a great time flavorwise.

As I said above. There is no need for the fighter to carry a golf bag. The problem is for the secondary fighters - though I agree with WizardDru that they have other powers. But just because there is no need for the golf bag, doesn't mean the change is irrelevant at all.

 

[Petrosian]

Re: No golfbags...

Again, i do not think anyone is claiming there will be golf-bags filled with expensive +2 weapons, except the side arguing how silly that would be.

The argument is they will buy very inexpensive mundane or at beast masterwork weapons of the special materials and types to fill the golfbag.

if they need them and want them magical, they will just cast GMW on the one desired, just like they do now.

so this "bunch of +2 weapons " vs " one +5 weapon" is a rather pointless example.

 

[Technik4]

I enjoy arguing

I like playing the arguing game, and I don't think minds can't be changed. While I was playing devil's advocate at points earlier in this thread, at other points I wasn't. The reason I started replying again is because of a statement about 30-40% of encounters containing DR. I did my own research and find those numbers highly misleading.

You seemed to want this comment:

"...you could adventure to level 20 and only see a couple of creatures with DR, it isnt overwhelmingly likely because dms traditionally enjoy messing with creatures with DR, but its certainly possible."

to read like this:

"...everyone will adventure to level 20 and only see a couple of creatures with DR."

Which wasn't my intent. I merely stated it was possible, and indeed if you are in one of many "low-magic" campaigns where the PCs spend the majority of their time fighting against orcs, drow, or another humanoid race, you may only very rarely see DR. Such as when the dm throws in a Dragon or has someone summon a fiend or elemental. The rules change is for all people who play D&D, not just certain subcategories, I was just pointing out that to a great many people it will be a welcome change.

I think its very reasonable to state that something can be more flavorful even if it does not necessarily come up a lot. I think its a good change for Role-players. It doesnt have to be some huge sweeping change, a slight change in the rules for some creatures, it will make said players appreciate those monsters.

You seem to think that if a change is small it is also unncecessary, maybe youd like to start a thread on 4e?

I agree with your statement about porportionality. I think modules are usually written with this in mind to some extent, to make every encounter interesting. Maybe a fire immune monster here, then a creature with high hp, then a creature with DR, etc.

Your comparisons to disease and level-draining are poor, imo. Those things are debilitating effects, and yes I have seen some very anxious players that make sure to stay stocked on those things. It also applies to poison. These are effects that could knock out a party character, these are not effects that cause them to be less successful in damaging an opponent.

I think it does NOT apply in cases with blunt weapons. In my experience (YMMV) most characters only take blunt weapons as a style decision, or if they are limited to simple weapons. For instance, a dwarf fighter who "sees" dwarfs carrying a warhammer. Or a cleric whose best weapon option is a morningstar. Someone who thinks the flail is a cool idea, or someone who wants to break the spiked chain. None of these people chose a blunt weapon for blunt damage, they chose it for other reasons.

Your attempt to convulute my words to your liking is very transparant. When I use the words "could" and "possible" I dont mean "extremely likely" and "always", though it does make your stance look better if you argue as if I did.

I explicitly stated that I wasnt much of a stats guy, I printed that list mostly for my own curiousity, but also so that people could get a look at the monsters that are really being affected. As far as spin versus substance, thats certainly your opinion, but Im stating the case as I see it. I'm not a lawyer, I just think people are looking at the change the wrong way. Maybe I can help people see my side of the story, maybe I will just get ignored.

As I said before, I plan on giving the new rules a chance, and I dont mind defending "changes" no matter how small or "unncessary".

Technik

 

[Left-handed Hummingbird]

Re: Re: No golfbags...

if they need them and want them magical, they will just cast GMW on the one desired, just like they do now.

Oh, but if he is bringing a spellcaster, they can just cast Golden Weapon on the weapon. No need for the golf bag, then.