D&D General Splitting, reshuffling, and creating new damage types

[Minigiant]

Yeah. I know there are a lot of them.

However a few things bug me about damage types. And with the number we already have, why not more.

Force is a stand-in for both magical energy and contact damage for magical constructs. In the last few editions, force damage has been slotted as the "low damage least resisted" category as well attributed more and more to created beings and transmute weapons. So now a warlock beaming something with Eldritch Blast and a sorcerer shooting energy from Disintegrate is the same type as the contructs of Spiritual Weapon, Blade Barrier, Bigby's, and Conjure Volley as well as the boosted enhancement of Hunter's Mark, Shillelagh, and Steel Wind Strike. Now splitting it 3 ways might be much but maybe one for "raw magical energy blasts" and one for "struck by magical constructs". Or shifting some of the "hit so hard it pierces defense" to Thunder. Thunder needs it.

Psychic. A relative newcomer. Psychic is another damage type slotted into the "low damage least resisted" realm. It runs the spread of raw mental assault, soul crushing fear, and in rare cases sickenly charm. Now psychic is so rare that splitting it into "Brain Damage" and "Emotional Damage" would be harder in core. However I feel that some character archetypes would be good at resisting one but terrible at withstanding the other. A paladin might be hard to charm or fear to death but their brains might not be strong against raw mental assault. Similarly, undead might be immune to emotion damage but their weak imitation of psyche would be easy to crack. Whereas aberrations form the Far Realm might have minds too strange to break but being forced to feel earthly emotions cause shortcircuit their alien brains.

Necrotic. Just add Bleed or Wound damage. It could just shift to the some of the enhanced weapon stuff off Force too. It could also allow for some "take damage to power additional effects" to get a dedicated damage type.

So what are your thoughts?
Any Damage types youd like to create or shift around?

 

[DEFCON 1]

Damage types ONLY matter so long as you have Resistances and Immunities to those damage types. And considering that the only game mechanic that comes out of Resistances and Immunities is "half damage" or "no damage"... I personally do not feel we are missing a thing by not having more fights where the DM has to calculate "half damage". We already calculate "half damage" plenty of times... creating even more instances and keywords to do it does not seem to be anything of need nor a really interesting or compelling thing to have to do more of... especially considering there is nothing story or narrative related to any of it?

 

[TwoSix]

I don't like Force as a damage type, generally. It's mostly just hitting people or stabbing into them. How is an Eldritch Blast beam or a Magic Missile that different from getting hit with a magic arrow? Why are elemental Earth effects Bludgeoning, but telekinetic effects are Force?

The system needs to move away from "resistant to physical but not magical effects" monsters.
If a monster is resistant to hammers and arrows, it should be resistant to Magic Missile and Eldritch Blast.

Make most Force damage into Bludgeoning, Piercing, or possibly Slashing or Thunder depending on the spell effect.


I also think elemental water effects tend to get the "cold damage" tag too often. Water magic and Ice magic are two different narratives; Water effects should generally be more tagged as Bludgeoning (the impact) and Acid (dissolving/erosion).

I also think Psychic might be overleveraged as all emotional damage, on top of being the "Neutral" portion of the Radiant/Psychic/Necrotic spiritual effects triad.

 

[TwoSix]

Damage types ONLY matter so long as you have Resistances and Immunities to those damage types. And considering that the only game mechanic that comes out of Resistances and Immunities is "half damage" or "no damage"... I personally do not feel we are missing a thing by not having more fights where the DM has to calculate "half damage". We already calculate "half damage" plenty of times... creating even more instances and keywords to do it does not seem to be anything of need nor a really interesting or compelling thing to have to do more of... especially considering there is nothing story or narrative related to any of it?

Sure, but that's kind of the point. Damage types are one of the key mechanical way of conveying the narrative of what a spell or monster ability actually does.

If you want to rely solely on description and narration to tell that story at the table, that's fine, of course, but relatively crunchy systems like 5e like consistent mechanics that assist the group with generating the narrative.

 

[Horwath]

We should 1st balance out number of monsters/features that have resistance/immunity/vulnerability to a certain damage type.

maybe now it's too much damage types, maybe not, but it should be more balanced.
maybe it can be cut down to:

physical damage(B/P/S/thunder)
mental damage(psychic)
fire
cold
nature(poison, acid, lightning)
necrotic
radiant
force/pure damage

8 damage types could be enough.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Sure, but that's kind of the point. Damage types are one of the key mechanical way of conveying the narrative of what a spell or monster ability actually does.

If you want to rely solely on description and narration to tell that story at the table, that's fine, of course, but relatively crunchy systems like 5e like consistent mechanics that assist the group with generating the narrative.

My point though is that there is no narrative. No "story". It's simply a keyword. You as the player say "My longsword did 13 points of "juju damage" (insert whatever keyword you want in place of "juju")... and if the monster has Resistance to Juju then they say "It looks like the monster didn't take the full amount from your swing" and they halve the damage before subtracting it from the HP of the monster. That's it. That's the extent of it.

That use of the word "Juju" is meaningless. So it does not actually matter how many of those keywords the game has... they are all just random words that the DM needs to remember to trigger halving damage, and the authors of the Monster Manual have to remember to insert into more monster statblocks under the Resistances and Immunities line.

 

[TwoSix]

My point though is that there is no narrative. No "story". It's simply a keyword. You as the player say "My longsword did 13 points of "juju damage" (insert whatever keyword you want in place of "juju")... and if the monster has Resistance to Juju then they say "It looks like the monster didn't take the full amount from your swing" and they halve the damage before subtracting it from the HP of the monster. That's it. That's the extent of it.

That use of the word "Juju" is meaningless. So it does not actually matter how many of those keywords the game has... they are all just random words that the DM needs to remember to trigger halving damage, and the authors of the Monster Manual have to remember to insert into more monster statblocks under the Resistances and Immunities line.

The broader point is that for a fairly large portion of the player base, mechanical terms help to build and foster narratives.

I'm aware that you believe otherwise, of course. But there are players for whom saying Fire Bolt does "1d10 damage" and Ray of Frost does "1d8 damage and slows the target 10'" would feel the loss of the differentiation the damage keywords provided.

Edit: My apologies, this is a bit of a thread derail and I won't be discussing "should damage types exist as a concept" further in this thread. Sorry to the OP!

 

[Minigiant]

Damage types ONLY matter so long as you have Resistances and Immunities to those damage types. And considering that the only game mechanic that comes out of Resistances and Immunities is "half damage" or "no damage"... I personally do not feel we are missing a thing by not having more fights where the DM has to calculate "half damage". We already calculate "half damage" plenty of times... creating even more instances and keywords to do it does not seem to be anything of need nor a really interesting or compelling thing to have to do more of... especially considering there is nothing story or narrative related to any of it?

The.. lets be frank.. laziness of 5e's damage type usages to foster simplification for conversion is not an excuse to do not.

We have Vulnerability but dont use it.

Weapon Mastery was created because damage type wasnt used enough to differentiate weapons.

We only have one status effect associated with damage type: Poisoned.

We only have onr hazard associated with damage type: Burning

 

[Minigiant]

The broader point is that for a fairly large portion of the player base, mechanical terms help to build and foster narratives.

I'm aware that you believe otherwise, of course. But there are players for whom saying Fire Bolt does "1d10 damage" and Ray of Frost does "1d8 damage and slows the target 10'" would feel the loss of the differentiation the damage keywords provided.

Edit: My apologies, this is a bit of a thread derail and I won't be discussing "should damage types exist as a concept" further in this thread. Sorry to the OP!

Discussion of damage types existing as a concept is allowed.

For example, lightning damage and thunder damage are closely linked.

Should they be combined to Storm damage or should Lightning and Thunder be constrasted more?

 

[Horwath]

Discussion of damage types existing as a concept is allowed.

For example, lightning damage and thunder damage are closely linked.

Should they be combined to Storm damage or should Lightning and Thunder be constrasted more?

damage types should be more utilized in monsters, except default boring humanoids, all creatures should have 1 immunity, 1 vulnerability and 1 resistance at minimum.

IE:
vampire:
resistance to non magical physical damage
Immunity to necrotic and nature damage(my former post)
resistance to cold damage
vulnerability to fire and radiant damage