D&D 5E SR and DR; is there a place in Next for them?

[Yora]

I think the simple Resistance system from the Playtest rules is sufficient for Damage Reduction and Energy Reducion.
If damage is caused by X to which the target is resistant, or not by X, which is the only thing to which it is not resistant, the amount of damage is halved.

Having the right weapon still is a great advantage, but there's not threshold that you have to reach to have any effect at all. If you roll 19s and 20s all the time against a creature with DR 20, you don't do anything!
If you roll a 7 against a creature with resistance, you at least deal 3 points of damage. And the berserker with his huge axe who rolls a 29 also does 14 damage instead of 9 or 19. The difference is not so great for characters who can deal very high damage numbers, but makes all the difference for the characters who always roll small numbers only.
Do the 3 damage really help? That's really not nearly as important as the player thinking that he at least did something and not nothing.

For Spell Reistance, that approach doesn't work, since it has to deal with save or suck effects for which you can't have "half damage".

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Depends on how effective this type of resistances are.

I wouldn't mind seeing something that D&D 4 experimented sometimes with - giving the target benefits when it was hit with a type of attack it had some "affinity" to. Like Fire Elementals dealing more damage after they were hit with fire - still taking normal damage, but also getting more dangerous in the process. (I don't think this example is an accurate one, just to explain the idea.)

So, maybe something like this:

Spell Resistance (Basic):
A creature always has the advantage on saving throws against magic effects. If the effect does not normally allow a saving throw, the creature can make a saving throw to negate.

Spell Resistance (Advanced):
Like spell resistance, but if the creature succeeds on its save, it can either make an attack or cast a spell as a reaction, or move its speed.

So it suddenly becomes risky to use spells.


I am not so sure what to do with damage reduction. Maybe it should simply be that creatures that would have damage reduction normally have extra hit points, but take extra damage from anything they are not resistant against. So a Skeleton may have 25 % more hit points than normal, but it also takes maximum damage from every attack with bludgeoning weapons.

 

[Sadrik]

I would be ok with SR/MR going away by simply going away. Make it a trait that give them evasion vs. magic. On a made save there is no effect and ignore the effects of it. Provide a bonus to AC and saves too vs. magic.

DR is trickier but should also go away. DR/Hardness are integral to how items work. If a door does not have hardness or better a wall does not have hardness. Infinite magic can blast it down. weapons might dull ammunition may run out, but cantrips are infinite in the latest incarnation. You cannot simply give a door more HP or resist all damage because that just means it will take longer. It has to have some form of DR (or some other more creative mechanic that we have not seen yet).

For creatures with HP though, DR can go away, I would rather see DR expressed as more HP. But if items and structures are going to be expressed with HP and DR you might as well have that concept for creatures too. If an iron door has DR 10, I do not see why an iron golem should not have DR 10 too.

I also agree with the notion that DR, ER, and Hardness should be moved into the same system. Similar to DR, ER, and Hardness is Fast Healing and Regeneration. These could also be moved into the same system.

 

[Sadrik]

neat double post.

 

[Stormonu]

DR was too common in 3.X and SR was too easy to beat. I also didn't like that attack spells got a free pass on DR.

I really like being able to model the folklore like needing silver to defeat werewolves and the like. +X damage for having the right weapon/material models one half of the equation well, but I'm not sure I'm comfortable with regular weapons being normally effective against a werewolf.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

I do think there's a place for both of these mechanisms in the game - I very much reject the principle that players should never be challenged by anything other than a bucket of hit points.

For SR/MR, I would prefer a sliding scale to an outright advantage. Either use your SR in place of your saving throw, or add it to your saving throw, or grant a saving throw even if you are under the HP threshold, or some combination of these effects. Dwarves having +2 magic resistance (say +2 to saving throws against magic and you always get to save) would be pretty epic.

For DR, I would give a creature a pile of HP to act as a buffer against weapons they aren't vulnerable to, and their base HP would be accessibly by the right weapon or type of damage. I would also not be afraid to make things immune to certain types of damage - fire elementals are made of living fire, they shouldn't be hurt by it, ever.

 

[Yora]

DR was too common in 3.X and SR was too easy to beat. I also didn't like that attack spells got a free pass on DR.

I really like being able to model the folklore like needing silver to defeat werewolves and the like. +X damage for having the right weapon/material models one half of the equation well, but I'm not sure I'm comfortable with regular weapons being normally effective against a werewolf.

In that case you could say that werewolves don't have resistance to anyting but silver, but immunity. Simple as that.
But for skeletons, half damage from piercing weapons makes much more sense than immunity.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

I'm pretty confident that SR and DR are gone from 5e, if for no other reason than one of 5e's goals seems to be to reduce the amount of superfluous dice rolling and math (from 3e levels).

There are almost zero spells and effects that add flat bonuses to AC, ability scores, HP, etc. in the playtest, for the obvious reason that it's a pain in the ass to keep up with a bunch of temporary +1s and -1s. They certainly wouldn't want to make everyone to do an extra step of subtraction whenever they attack something with DR. And as Yora said, DR basically punishes certain builds (characters with lots of low-damage attacks) in favor of others (with fewer high-damage attacks) in annoying ways.

SR, meanwhile, is a whole extra dice roll every time you try to attack someone with spells.

Like Yora said, the playtest's resistance/immunity system (and also probably bonuses to defenses) seems ideal to me. Any time resistance seems too strong, you have to ask yourself: is the bonus really that important that it's worth all the extra math?

 

[delericho]

1.) Is the a place for DR/SR in the next edition of D&D?

Maybe.

2.) How should SR be handled to keep wizards from directly nuking, but still active in a fight?

SR should either work like 3e DR, or like 3e Evasion.

That is, maybe SR only applies to some spells (SR 5/necromancy, or whatever), and reduces the effectiveness of those spells without necessarily just negating them.

Or, alternately, SR works like evasion, in that whereas a normal character takes half damage on a successful save, the creature with SR instead takes no damage. Again, I'd be inclined to limit this to specific types of spells only.

3.) How should DR be done: all or nothing? Resist partial blows? Should it be against silver, magic, +X items, or various special materials based on monster?

In theory, I like the 3.5e model. In practice, I really don't like the golf-bag that results.

I'd be inclined to reserve DR for only specific, named monsters (so not "the Balor", but rather "Quirmth the Destroyer", who is a particular Balor), and make the "special material" similarly a specific, named magic item. That then presents the PCs with an interesting choice: do they quest for the required item (with all the risks inherent in this), or do they face the BBEG without?

I'd also be inclined to have DR mean that the creature takes half damage, rather than reducing the damage by a fixed number. The 3e mechanism definitely favoured the big-hitting Power Attack types over the "death by a thousand cuts" frequent hit/low-damage types.

4.) Should it be a module, or part of the core experience?

In principle, they should be in a module. Given that I doubt more than a fraction of possible modules will ever actually materialise, though, I'm leery of calling for too much to be deferred.

 

[Neonchameleon]

SR: No. Never. Direct magical immunity, possibly. Saving throw bonusses, probably. But SR is an additional pointless mechanic.

DR and resistances sometimes, yes.