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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mesh Hong" data-source="post: 5010815" data-attributes="member: 73463">I've been trying to steer clear of this discussion because it is one of those things that gets more complicated the more you think about it. Sometimes it's easier to just accept something as is and move on. But where's the fun in that? (I suppose) To me Resistance to necrotic and vulnerability to radiant is just part of what happens when you stop being true living and become part of the undead. I can justify this as being necrotic energy infusing and empowering you (granting you resistance) and radiant energy (as the opposite force) disrupting and scalding you. Now there is nothing new in that, it is just how it works. Ok now we have got that out of the way lets consider the undead in general. The undead are an iconic element of the D&D experience, they are also something that an adventuring group can encounter anywhere from levels 1-30, "Undead" is perhaps the broadest and most common creature archetype in the game. For something that broad you need a common reliable theme that binds vastly different individual creatures together. Resistance and Vulnerability is a broad brush way of doing that, it is short hand for:  "Its a (level 25) zombie! It's probably roughly similar to that (level 3) zombie we fought when we went down the old abandoned well back in Little Hampton. Do you remember him, he was a nasty bugger. Didn't he try to eat our brains? I remember that he didn't like [Radiant keyword attack], hit him with [New uber level 25 Radiant keyword attack]." So consistant resistance and vulnerability builds a coherent theme, and a coherant theme is the glue that binds a coherent world. So (and I realise I am rambling like a fool), I think that the resistance and vulnerability concept is completely justified and a good approach for general creature design. Getting back to your main original point. You propose changing the way that resistance and vulnerability work for most undead, changing it to Light Aversion and Necrotic Absorption.   Light Aversion - This is OK, but slightly harder to keep track of (CA) and not removing all the vulnerability. So for creatures with more than 5 vulnerability this is a lot worse than just taking a little extra damage. It is taking extra damage and taking a -2 penalty to defences, and openning up more damage from attacks that key off combat advantage. Necrotic Absorption - This is a can of worms open to abuse. Admittedly abuse by the you as the DM by proxy through evil necromancers that have burst powers that deal small amounts of necrotic damage, or have necrotic auras. Giving a +2 bonus to attacks and defences is the equivalent of increasing the creature by 2 levels, its a pretty big deal. Please don't get me wrong, I think both of these alternate vulnerability and resistance effects are great. But really only for special case creatures, a lot of the time I think you might be better served with the system as it stands. Using the above sparingly would make for a nice twist to keep your PCs on their toes. To further elaborate, any monster is at base a big bag of HPs. The extra damage from radiant vulnerability is your friend, players love dealing extra damage (clerics expect to power through undead) so it keeps them happy and makes them feel powerful. Characters with necrotic powers are usually accepting that those powers are weaker against the undead. If you are using a lot of undead in an undead themed game then you just have to create special case creatures that challenge "the norm", but I would argue that you still need "the norm" in order to add excitement and interest to "the special". I regularly have standard creatures that are resistant to radiant or vulnerable to necrotic. In fact intelligent enemies that are aware of my PCs are more likely to have radiant resistance if they can get it, because the group includes a powerful paladin and cleric. I also use a lot of "standard spec" undead, and the cleric powers through them with his massive radiant burst attacks and turn undead (which he can sometimes use up to 3 times an encounter!). Who am I to steal my players thunder? Let them toast most of the undead, it keeps them chugging towards the powerful undead who are far more interesting. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Additional:Things I have done recently while the party were in teh shadowfell. 1: I had turn resistant ghosts that gained a +3 bonus to defences against channel divinity powers2: I had shadowfell empowered minions that had resistance 5 against all attacks (pre rod of corruption errata - to stop the warlock from auto killing them with curse damage) I would say that it is these additional occasional tweeks that make encounters interesting in a way that a blanket change wouldn't.</blockquote>

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