D&D 5E What is Force Damage?

[Kobold Avenger]

I think of radiant as radiation. Which technically fire is too, but I think of radiant as more like UV.

That page in the DMG with the entry on firearms whether it be Renaissance or Modern, also has Futuristic Weapons where it does indeed have Lasers doing Radiant Damage (I'd disagree, I think it should be Fire).

 

[Shiroiken]

I can't remember where this is from, but I recall it being a form of pure energy that crosses all realities at once. Given that it's the damage taken when you attempt to share space with another object, this concept makes sense since you have some dimensional overlap between objects.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Could always take a leaf from Final Fantasy XIV.

In that universe, "aether" (the raw stuff/energy of magic) permeates all things and is a vital component of any being with anything even vaguely resembling life, including disembodied souls and the like. Deplete a being's aether and it will die (some folks even sacrifice their lives to give the aether needed to defeat enemies, since aether powers magic). Food is nourishing not just because it contains nutrients, but because it contains aether necessary for life. Etc.

Some spells (such as Bio and Miasma, DoT spells) explicitly erode the body's ability to effectively use its aether, disrupting or even halting life processes. These spells, among many others, do "unaspected" damage, meaning they are pure, undifferentiated (or elementally-balanced) aether without a particular elemental focus (whereas a Blizzard spell would be ice-aspected damage).

Perhaps that's what "force" damage is. It's magical damage, but magic in a form that contains no bias or lean toward any elemental energy. (FFXIV even has an equivalent of radiant and necrotic damage types, in the form of "astral" and "umbral" aspects, which are less elements per se and more like...polarities. Astral fire is a rising conflagration, while umbral fire is a withering heat.)

 

[jgsugden]

I settled this for my homebrew setting:

In my setting, the Weave is the conduit for most magic. Divine magic is passed through the weave by Divine agents. Druids and Rangers pull magic from the Positive and Negative Energy planes via the weave to power their magic. Arcane spellcasters pull excess magic from the weave and craft it into spells. The Weave attaches to every molecule of the universe, and is inherently part of everything...

... except when the Weave is ripped away from your molecules by force damage. Force damage is the weave being torn away from you, damaging you on a molecular level. It reattaches instantly, but the damage is done.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

The one issue I have with the idea of Force being unrefined energy that's shaped into some other energy is that Force is generally a better thing to throw around then Fire or Lightning, it would be better not to refine things then since hardly anything is resistant or immune to Force Damage.

I do like the idea that it's something like Strong Interaction (the bond between subatomic particles in an atom).

 

[Tonguez]

But then some there's Telekinetic attacks, sometimes they're force but other times they are bludgeoning damage.

I've always assumed Force is pure Kinetic energy and thus primarily causes bludgeoning damage. However I also assume that things like Blade Barrier (which causes slashing damage) is also using Kinetic Force damage honed to an edge, Disintegrate happens by implosion of the kinetic force

 

[Iry]

Phased plasma in the 40-watt range.

 

[Yaarel]

Force damage seems to be the most nebulously defined damage types, sure the PHB describes it as "Pure magical energy in a damaging form" but it's not as clear as say Fire which is heat, Thunder which is sonic vibrations or concussive force, Radiant which is positive energy or occasionally radiation, or Necrotic which is negative energy or energy being drained away.

Force damage covers Magic Missile and Disintegrate, it also seems to cover teleportation mishaps or being incorporeal in solid matter. So in some cases would it be "physical pattern disruption"? But then some there's Telekinetic attacks, sometimes they're force but other times they are bludgeoning damage.

Also what's Force damage it generally supposed to supposed to look like? Some of the spells it seems to resemble concentrated light in the form of pulses like Magic Missile or beams like Disintegrate, but it could be invisible or maybe a distortion effect.

I make sense of D&D "force" as follows, employing reallife medieval concepts.

Force = gravity

... telekinesis ... flight ... ether ... magical energy

What makes force weird is that it is "physical" but not "material". There is no mass. But it does move things that have mass.

Where the four elements are earth (solid), water (liquid), air (gas), and fire (plasma), ether (force) is the fifth element.



In the sense that the ether of Ethereal Plane is psychosensitive magical energy, I have come to define the ether and the "Weave" as the same thing.

 

[Yaarel]

Force is the fundamental forces: gravity, strong and weak nuclear forces, and electromagnetic force.

While force normally equates to gravity and similar, force can also be the nuclear forces, whence disintegration, and so on.

I am torn between including electromagnetic force with "force" or "lightning" or "radiant". Probably the magentism is "force".

One can conjure a virtual object made out of force (Wall of Force, Tiny Hut, etcetera) in which case it might behave as if an object. I view quasi-real illusions as employing force.

 

[Lyxen]

Force is the fundamental forces: gravity, strong and weak nuclear forces, and electromagnetic force.

It was my original train of thought as well, but I dislike the fact that it forces us to think of matters as elemental particles in a physics model that matches ours, when there is no reason for it in a multiverse that has definitive elemental planes, so air in the D&D universe is "stuff from the elemental plane of air" and not an O2/N2/... atomic composition, because then it wouldn't be elemental.

That being said, the analogy is a good one if you think of "force" as something that binds the stuff of matter together (although it's actually half-half with electromagnetism and the Weak Interaction is a weirdo), because it then explain how you can direct that force through magic to either shake the stuff of matter (magic missile), disrupt it (disintegrate), or coalesce it into something that prevents matter from traversing an area (Wall of Force).

The last benefit is that this interpretation works more or less well enough whether you want a more real physics explanation or a more fantasy one.