D&D 5E Thoughts on Resistance

[dirklancer]

In The Old Days™, I was running a Masque of the Red Death campaign that didn't use magic items, so I adapted monsters to have vulnerabilities to other materials or simply used the standard ones as is, like silver for werewolves. With resistance still allowing some damage through, I was thinking of adopting this policy for any creature with a resistance that is overcome by some material. My thinking is this will give things a more "legendary" quality and make weapons of certain materials more valuable. And while I cant find anywhere and specifically states the old standard that magic weapons trump everything else, I want to actually houserule that out. So when that werewolf comes charging at you, that +1 battle axe will still only do half damage unless it is silvered. I just prefer this because it makes players have to think a bit more before going into battle. So when the infamous Iron Colossus of the Bleak Castle starts tearing around the countryside, they have to quest for adamantine weapons to be most effective instead of simply saying, "Oh, ok. I draw my +1 warpick and attack."
My concern is that my players will have to start carrying around golf bags full of weapons of various materials (Fey lord at 50 yards. Caddy, bring me my number 2 cold iron longsword). Technically they can still harm anything with a resistance, so they are not totally nerfed on damage. My thought was to borrow from the Harry Potter books, specifically the Sword of Gryffindor, and say that magic weapons can take on the traits of certain materials if exposed to a source of the material and time is taken to attune it to that material. So their prized magic weapon will be more effective if they seek out different things to attune them to.
What are thoughts on this? Has anyone tried this approach to damage resistance before, and did it add to the game or was it just an annoyance?

 

[Agamon]

They'll do half damage to things with resistance, but not immunity. For example, the werewolf is immune to piercing, bludgeoning, and slashing damage that isn't slivered or magical. So unless you houserule monster immunities down to resistance, I wouldn't blame players for keeping the old golf bag o'weapons.

 

[Sunseeker]

I mildly combine resistance and bonus damage.

EX: a Werewolf has resistence to all except Silvered weapons of 2. It's not a huge deal, I don't want it to be. BUT, a silvered weapon has a bonus damage of +2 to were-creatures and vampires. So in effect, you get a +4 for the combination. Sometimes I go a bit further depending on how tough I want the foe to be and give them regeneration +X, while the weapons they are vulnerable to stop that regeneration for one round.

I like resistence, I really do, it makes sense and I like things that make sense. However, I try to offer the carrot and not just the stick and who doesn't love a damage bonus? But I don't want my players to feel like they need to be prepared for every single eventuality. Unless they have good reason to believe they will encounter a vampire or a werewolf, I'm not going to encourage them to waste their time and money on special weapons to fight those things. I don't want them to feel incompetent against some runt werewolf either that might have simply been a result of a random encounter table.

Whatever I choose, with limited exceptions I never do extreme (90%+ reduction/gain to damage dealt) resistances or bonuses. Let the players choose to play the way they want to and not need to farm gold for specific gear. I'd feel really bad if Timmy the Pious can't get some silvered whatever because of his vow of piety and ends up being the one to die in the random werewolf encounter.

Now I REALLY want to see how they're going to work werewolves in 5th.

 

[The Shadow]

I recall a Dragon article from long ago that I rather liked. It featured weapons that were made of silver and cold iron alchemically bonded together. They were a bit expensive, but not egregiously so. That would tend to cut down on the golf-bag effect?

 

[Mouseferatu]

Just to be clear, everyone's talking about 5e-style resistance, yes? There's no number or degree attached to it. No "resistance 5" or whatever. If you have resistance to something, you take half damage from it. Full stop.

Just wanna be sure we're all talking about the same thing.

 

[Derren]

My concern is that my players will have to start carrying around golf bags full of weapons of various materials (Fey lord at 50 yards. Caddy, bring me my number 2 cold iron longsword).

And what is the problem with that? Too realistic (except in reality people used different types of weapons as each was effective against other types of armor, something not modeled by D&D)?

 

[Jer]

They'll do half damage to things with resistance, but not immunity. For example, the werewolf is immune to piercing, bludgeoning, and slashing damage that isn't slivered or magical. So unless you houserule monster immunities down to resistance, I wouldn't blame players for keeping the old golf bag o'weapons.

Ah, but the OP's proposed house rule deals with this situation as well:

My thought was to borrow from the Harry Potter books, specifically the Sword of Gryffindor, and say that magic weapons can take on the traits of certain materials if exposed to a source of the material and time is taken to attune it to that material. So their prized magic weapon will be more effective if they seek out different things to attune them to.

If it's exposed to silver and becomes the equivalent of a silvered weapon, then no problems - immunity is overcome because it's a silvered weapon.

I don't see anything immediately broken about it, except that your players are going to get creamed if you drop a monster with immunity on them and they don't have time to prepare for it by attuning their weapon. Since we haven't seen the MM yet, we can't really say how many monsters are going to have immunity to non-magical weapons, so I'm not sure we know exactly how bad the impact will be.

(I will say that I would strongly suspect that half damage for resistance means that at best combats take twice as long to resolve as they do if the PCs can bypass resistance and at worst combats become a lot more deadly for the PCs. Because this edition is supposed to be balanced around the amount of damage that monsters can take/dish out, and if the monsters are dealing out their expected damage for their level and the PCs are only dealing out half the expected damage for their level, then I'd expect either a slog of a battle or for the PCs to get overwhelmed. I guess we'll see how it plays out in practice.)