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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 7353970" data-attributes="member: 7006">There's definitely something to what you are talking about, where damage resistance to non-magical weapons is pretty much a non-factor to any campaign that isn't specifically run as low-(or no)-magic games.  And the urge to make monsters more resistant to less-powerful weapons makes total sense.  This is especially true in a campaign such as yours, Capn, where the ability to buy magic items is a central part of what you are trying to put together for your own game.On the face of it... I think your baseline works fine:Up to CR 10, you need a +1 magic weapon to overcome resistanceCR 10 to 20, you need a +2 magic weapon to overcome resistanceCR 20+, you need a +3 magic weapon to overcome resistanceNow that being said... I'll add on a few things that I personally would probably want to think about changing/using/making more important were I to go along this path.  None of this stuff might matter to other people (and if so for you Capn, feel to to ignore and just go with your baseline above as I don't see it being that big an issue.)First off... the thing I've always found a little troubling about Plus magical weapons is the lack of story to them.  Other than the fact that they are "enchanted strongly"... there's nothing about them that narratively gives them any heft.  How do you describe in-game the difference between a +1 and a +2 magic weapon?  There's no "hook" to help describe those mechanics from a story perspective.  And what's doubly troubling in that regard is that they then overlap but don't connect at all with the other narrative device of "more powerful" weapons, which is how the weapons are made or what with.We have qualities such as Masterwork, Silvered, Mithril, Adamantine etc. that we use to signal "better" or "more deadly", and these are narrative explanations.  A Silvered weapon has a story... "My weapon has been silvered, and thus is better against certain monsters".  But a +1 weapon is storyless.  It's just a non-descriptive "magic weapon" since this +1 is purely a game mechanics term and thus is nothing that a person in-world would be able to explain.  And I think this is why the game purely uses "damage resistance to non-magical weapons"... because there's nothing in the game world that a character could use to describe the differences between a +1 or +2 or +3.  Especially when going up against other characters who have story explanations to their weapon's qualities."This is my magic weapon... which is just more magical than your magic weapon.""Mine can burst into flames.""Yeah, but mine is... just more.  It's... one point... more... of magic? than yours."So in this regard... I almost have a desire (and this has been true in past editions too, not just 5E) to either throw out your basic Plus weapons, or make those Plus weapons have a story definition to them so that they can be described in-game.  I did this more basically in my last Curse of Strahd campaigns... where I said that +1 weapons were Masterwork weapons.  They still gave a +1 bonus to attack and damage and thus were better than an equivalent regular one... but that +1 now had a story as to why it was one point better-- it was built as a Masterwork.Getting back to the original point though... if this kind of tiering for damage resistance was to be introduced... I think I would make the tiering based upon story reasons, not game mechanic explanation reasons.  And to do that, I might think about making the "magical quality" of the weapon come from an in-story and explainable reason due to what it was made from, rather than just "it's magic!"  Especially considering our magical metals and such currently have rather unimportant and much less used uses if and when they do show up.  So for example, I might say:At baseline, you have regular weapons.  Non-magical, no bonuses.One tier up, you have Silvered weapons.  This is equivalent to and replaces the "+1" nomenclature.Up from that, you have Mithril weapons.  These are equivalent to and replace "+2".At the top, you have Adamantine weapons.  These replace the "+3" nomenclature.By doing this, you now have a narrative descriptor to attach to monsters that characters in game can use to describe things.  They know that some monsters are resistant to weapons that aren't Silvered or higher-quality weapons (these are the monsters under CR 10 that don't have damage resistance).  Some monsters CAN be harmed by Silvered weapons, and instead you need extremely special Mithril (or better) weapons to harm them (ones in the CR 10-20 categories).  And then there are the deadliest of monsters that require you to find or somehow forge the extremely rare Adamantine weapons (for monsters CR 20 or higher).By doing this... not only do you make the concept of Silvered, Mithril and Adamantine have much more of an impact in the game world (where they currently are kind of shoved off to the side because the Plus weapons are the ones that are used as the mechanical heft of the system)... but you also make weapon categories that PCs and NPCs can actually talk about in-game.***Now were you to do something like this... the next point is deciding whether or not Silvered, Mithril, and Adamantine should include the equivalent mechanical bonuses in addition to being the descriptor for power and overcoming resistance.  In other words... do all Silvered weapons grant a +1 to attack and damage, all Mithril grant a +2 and Adamantine grant a +3?  For my money... I really don't know if they have to?  And indeed, whether it's actually important to the game for magic weapons to do so?  There are already so many different basic ways to grant PCs bonuses to attack rolls and damage rolls, that having "magic weapons" do so too seems kind of superfluous and doesn't make them seem "special".  Instead, it's all the cool extra stuff that magic weapons grant that make those weapons special.  The Wounding properties, the Vorpal properties, Dancing, Bane, Venom, Life Stealing, Sharpness etc. etc. etc.  Those qualities have narrative heft and what make "magic weapons" special-- not the basic bonus to attacks and damage.I mean if we think about it from the most basic game mechanics level... a 1st Cleric can cast Bless... thereby granting three characters what is almost functionally a +4 magic weapon (25% of the time).  Yes, it is merely a +4 to attack rolls and not also to damage, but still.  How can we sit here and legitimately think that a '+3 magic weapon' is this ultra-rare, super-powerful item that only the highest level PCs should have... when functionally it is mechanically equivalent to a couple spells that PCs can get at 1st level?If you have a low-level Cleric and a Paladin in a group and they cast Bless and Divine Favor on the Paladin... the Paladin for an entire fight has ostensibly a variable +1 to +4 magic weapon (+1d4 attack roll bonus for Bless, +1d4 damage bonus for Divine Favor).  And the game then wants us to believe that having a +3 magic weapon is somehow this massive boon?  Not likely.  Hell... you take 1 level of Fighter and you get half of a +2 magic weapon for free (+2 damage from the Duelist fighting style.)And that's the problem as I see it with using Plus weapons as the indicator of "importance" for magical weapons.  They grant bonuses that PCs have already be getting since 1st level.  Sure, the bonus is "always on" and require no expended resources... but how many of us have ever NOT cast Bless because it was an expendable resource?  So for my money... we should just remove the Pluses from magic weapons altogether and use all the other magical properties and qualities to define the kind of power they have.  And save the attack roll and damage roll bonuses for your most basic of features and spell effects since we've been getting these since the beginning anyway.</blockquote>

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