D&D 5E Weapon Damage Immunity buff

[jmartkdr2]

You're right, it's exactly like antimagic, it can enhance situations by having people detect that there's a problem, and make some choices and find clever tactics, but just don't shut down a player, especially not repetitively.

This is why the DRs n/X of 3e were interesting, it made one less efficient but not completely inefficient, 5e is a bit more all or nothing with the immunities. But then 3e was really complex so I can understand 5e not wanting to inject that complexity in the core rules.

The way regeneration works on 5e is closer to that - just make the ways of shutting down regeneration more interesting than a troll's setup.

 

[Lyxen]

The way regeneration works on 5e is closer to that - just make the ways of shutting down regeneration more interesting than a troll's setup.

Yes, and then you can have both regeneration and immunities...

All is fair in love and war, especially at high level...

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I think that approach makes sense. For some creatures, like lycanthropes, being harmed only by a particular material is a big part of their schtick. Making magic weapons, which most PCs already have, equally effective pretty much eliminates that genre convention from the game. Giving creatures immune to normal weapons resistance to damage from magic weapons would mean that seeking out, e.g., silver weapons for a fight against werewolves would still be a useful tactic.

I'm making a different change to lycanthropes. The newer presentation of wereravens gives up the immunity in favor of regeneration. It's deactivated by silver...but also by spells. Which is ridiculous because PC parties pack cantrips from first level.

My change to that will be that it has to be silver or a spell of 1st-level or higher to count. That way those low-level parties have to spend (and risk running out of) resources if they don't have any silver weaponry.

Now, the loup-garou is actually silver only, spells don't count, and that I can approve of.

 

[Ancalagon]

This is not true as a universal statement as you make it.

If you follow the DMG guidelines for treasure, and there are no ready places to buy magic items, then magic weapons are unlikely to be available for all PCs in a 5 PC party.

This used to be true, until Xanathar's guide broadly expanded access to common magical items, such as the moon-touched blade.

Edit: I should add that as a DM, I'm not... very pleased with this. It makes the resistance to non magical weapons almost meaningless. It also makes some of the magical weapons kind of... meh? Like a +1 sword isn't very exciting, but it's a magical weapon, that counts for something. Now, less so.

On the other hand, as a player, I like it because it means that I don't "need" to find a magical sword for my warrior because I can get a budget option. That way, a player who gets their first "real" magical item and is a warrior won't be upset if it isn't a magical weapon.

So clearly, both benefits and drawbacks.

Lastly, I will mention that something rather cool happened in a game where I am playing as a "warrior scholar" - a historian and an alchemist with such a "budget" magical sword. We started at mid levels, and my character's background is that he had learned the secret to creating a moon touched blade - a yearlong process involving elven prayers and moonlight; and had thus enchanted his own sword. Given that the item is common, it felt not too outrageous for a player who is a student of the arcane know this. The GM agreed

... a few levels later, my PC found the secret to transmuting a moon-touched blade into a sun blade. And if you think about it, it makes sense - what is moonlight but the reflected sun?

 

[toucanbuzz]

Alternate proposal. Like @Lyxen proposed, it's okay to beef monsters up if they aren't a challenge. For the Demon Lords (Out of the Abyss), it rubbed me wrong that these eons-old demigods could be struck down so easily. So, besides being beefed up in abilities, they also got immunity to nonmagical and resistance to anything below +3.

I'm also not averse to old-school "damage reduction." It's a simple and handy mechanism.

 

[Shiroiken]

Giving all these monsters resistance to weapon damage is going to seriously nerf martial characters. Older editions used to require a certain magical plus to bypass resistance/immunity. Since magical weapons no long have an inherent bonus, I'd recommend using rarity instead. Thus for a CR 17 monster, they'd be immune to non-magical weapons and resistance to magical weapons less than Very Rare. Since spells can also cause B/P/S damage, I'd probably group them by level, such as Common: Lv 0-1, Uncommon Lv: 2-3, Rare: Lv: 4-5, Very Rare: Lv 6-7, Legendary: Lv 8-9.

 

[toucanbuzz]

There could be special materials that could get past that resistance also, so maybe magic+adamantine or magic+silver or whatever based on the creature. But the main point is not having those very few epic creatures have an awesome looking feature that is in fact absolutely useless against any party fighting them.

It's all relative to what the DM hands out as treasure. As magic weapons tend to be pretty iconic for D&D, you can plan ahead and make ways the weapons do their job, but not against everything from Demon Lord to werewolf.

I quoted the above because it sounds pretty cool for characters to know they're facing the Golem Guardians of Xak-Made-Up-City, and they'll need adamantine blades, a +1 long sword won't scratch them.

Unfortunately, the only known source are drow elves....or lost in some fabled dwarven vault forged from strange meteorite material...and so on. It becomes a quest.

 

[Ancalagon]

Giving all these monsters resistance to weapon damage is going to seriously nerf martial characters. Older editions used to require a certain magical plus to bypass resistance/immunity. Since magical weapons no long have an inherent bonus, I'd recommend using rarity instead. Thus for a CR 17 monster, they'd be immune to non-magical weapons and resistance to magical weapons less than Very Rare. Since spells can also cause B/P/S damage, I'd probably group them by level, such as Common: Lv 0-1, Uncommon Lv: 2-3, Rare: Lv: 4-5, Very Rare: Lv 6-7, Legendary: Lv 8-9.

I like it... it might also make some weaker weapons "better" - like a vicious sword (rare) is objectively worse than a basic +1 sword (uncommon).

 

[Sword of Spirit]

The rarity idea did occur to me as a possibility to bypass the resistance. Still considering it.

Most of these creatures (and there are only a very small number—tarrasque and kraken are the ones that come to mind) also have immunities to the sorts of things that spells do also. So one thing I could look at is how much of an issue it is. If casters are already substantially nerfed against them, then martials doing half damage unless they get a special weapon isn’t necessarily a problem.

 

[Maxperson]

As for me, I do give a reasonnable amount of magic items, but out of those, most are not weapons and even less armor, actually. So while most characters at level 10 (my current campagin) have one magic weapon, most of them don't have a secondary magic weapon, for example for ranged instead of melee, or the other way round.

What I've done is say that only +1 or better weapons can hurt these creatures, not simply magic ones. That way I can still give out cool magic weapons without +s and the balance isn't destroyed. Not that I never give out a weapon with a +, but it's rare.