D&D 5E Why Are Skeletons Weak To Bludgeoning Weapons?

[Tony Vargas]

Why do we even have the bludgeoning/piercing/slashing distinction in the rules at all?

Because the last edition didn't have that distinction, and everything that edition did was wrongbadfun. ;P

Seriously, though, it's another attribute which to distinguish one weapon from another, 5e did away with some from prior editions, like threat/crit, so it added one back in.

IIRC, in the olden days it wasn't a specific attribute of a weapon that it did a type of damage, it was just implicit. Obviously a mace was a bludgeoning weapon, it didn't have a keyword or property or damage type associated with it, it was just mace.

Of course, when you were a kid unfamiliar with the minutiae of pole-arm nomenclature, it was equally obvious that a Lucern Hammer also did bludgeoning damage...

 

[Xeviat]

It's funny because the DMG suggests not giving things Weapon damage weaknesses but instead cut their hit points in half. It's probably more efficient to give them the one weakness instead of a host of resistances.


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[Henry]

I'm trying to recall how previous editions handled it, but I can't remember. I want to say that it used to be just that they took half damage from piercing weapons, and weren't specially vulnerable to bludgeoning. That makes more sense to me, anyway.

In AD&D, skeletons took half damage from slashing, and just ONE point of damage from piercing, no matter how powerful.