D&D 3E/3.5 Why the change in DR from 3.0 to 3.5

[Belzbet]

Personally I liked 3.0 DR. 3.5 DR is almost ridiculous to me. If a creature has DR 30/magic a level 7 PC to LV 20 PC can bypass it. If DR is DR/magic it becomes almost useless. And it is almost easy to get your weapon keyed to an alignment. So special material is the only important thing you need to consider, in terms of DR (and what melee PC doesnt carry both a +1 cold iron and silver weapon with them at all times, at least the melee PC that does the most damage [especially after level 10 when they can easily afford these items]?) I personally Dm with 3.0 edition DR rules. A creature with DR/+3 is a much biggerr threat to a level 8 party than DR/magic. What do you guys think about the change form 3.0 to 3.5?

 

[Jon_Dahl]

Well I have to disagree with you. I find it a bit more creative that you have to combine damage types with magic and special materials to be able to bypass different sorts of DRs. It would interesting to know how many weapons you'd actually have carry in order to be prepared for every single monster (from published books). In case of DR/+3 etc. it was more one-dimensional. Moreover, it didn't permit lower level PCs to reasonably challenge higher level monsters. I think forcing players to cover different angles is better than to tell them "you need a powerful magical weapon which you can't have right now".

In my next session I will pit my players against a spellstitched undead. Its CR is 6 and my players are currently at 8th-level without any +2 weapons. In 3.0 its DR would've been DR5/+2 but now it's DR5/magic silver. I'm not trying to make an edition war here but I hope you can see that this encounter would be unfair in 3.0, even though the CR is adequate.

 

[Belzbet]

Well I have to disagree with you. I find it a bit more creative that you have to combine damage types with magic and special materials to be able to bypass different sorts of DRs. It would interesting to know how many weapons you'd actually have carry in order to be prepared for every single monster (from published books). In case of DR/+3 etc. it was more one-dimensional. Moreover, it didn't permit lower level PCs to reasonably challenge higher level monsters. I think forcing players to cover different angles is better than to tell them "you need a powerful magical weapon which you can't have right now".

In my next session I will pit my players against a spellstitched undead. Its CR is 6 and my players are currently at 8th-level without any +2 weapons. In 3.0 its DR would've been DR5/+2 but now it's DR5/magic silver. I'm not trying to make an edition war here but I hope you can see that this encounter would be unfair in 3.0, even though the CR is adequate.

I see where you are coming from. But I do not think that a DR5/+2 creature is unfair to a party of level 8 PC's (even if no PC's has a +2 weapon). Also i do not thinks that 3.5 DR is that creative since PC's know which materials will bypass DR. I dnt want to make an editions war either but in 3.0 DR is much like SR, either you can beat it or you cant if you cant the creature is much harder (which I dont think is a bad thing). That enables DM's to create hard encounters [PC.s usually have the power or resources to combat any enounter of their party level]. In 3.5 DR is nothing likeSR its contigent on your weapons not your ability (to create a +3 weapon you must be at least CL 9 {i think} but you can buy a cold iron weapon at level 1; so in 3.0 you must be at a certain level {i.e. you must attain a certain ability}to beat a creatures DR; in 3.5 you simply must have a +1 weapon of a certain material and maybe a certain alignment).
It gets even more ridiculous at epic levels. Why would a lv. 22 PC with a +6 sword beat a 100HD creature with DR 20/epic?

 

[Sekhmet]

Things

Especially considering a level 8 party should have access to Greater Magic Weapon, which lasts long enough to take out a couple CR6 creatures.

 

[Ashtagon]

3.0e: Must have a +3 weapon to beat this monster

3.5e: Must have a magic adamantine weapon to beat this monster.

Both: Must be this tall to beat this monster.

Same problem, different criteria. Deckchairs on the Titanic.

 

[Celebrim]

Personally I liked 3.0 DR. 3.5 DR is almost ridiculous to me. If a creature has DR 30/magic a level 7 PC to LV 20 PC can bypass it. If DR is DR/magic it becomes almost useless. And it is almost easy to get your weapon keyed to an alignment. So special material is the only important thing you need to consider, in terms of DR (and what melee PC doesnt carry both a +1 cold iron and silver weapon with them at all times, at least the melee PC that does the most damage [especially after level 10 when they can easily afford these items]?) I personally Dm with 3.0 edition DR rules. A creature with DR/+3 is a much biggerr threat to a level 8 party than DR/magic. What do you guys think about the change form 3.0 to 3.5?

Like most things that were introduced in 3.5, I didn't like it much. I agree with you that DR X/magic is pretty pointless beyond level 5 or so except in the most low magic campaigns. I also liked that 3.0 was more faithful to the design of 1e, whereas 3.5 was increasingly a departure from that spirit.

I have nothing against requiring special materials to by pass DR or regeneration when it makes sense - silver for lycanthropes, for example. But 3.X tended to encourage a golf bag mentality where you pulled out the particular combination of materials you needed to overcome the DR. That to me didn't really serve a purpose, and I preferred the way that 1e/3e had tiered the monsters according to when in your career you'd be expected to be able to overcome them.

On the other hand, I did have one critical problem with 3.0 as well and that was that typically the DR was too high of a number. I generally run with 3.0 DR, but I half its value. So, for example DR 5/+1 (rather than 10/+1) is fairly typical in my game, where as a high DR might be 15/+3 (rather than 30/+3). This makes DR less absolute and allows at least marginal brute force solutions to monsters when encountering them slightly ahead of the expected level and magical prowess. Also, I tend to make materials optional for bypassing DR, again according to the 1e standard. So, it would be more typical to have DR 10/good or +2 rather than DR 10/good and +2. That isn't to say that I wouldn't occasionally require both a material and a magical puissance, but it would really have to make sense from the mythic context.

 

[Empirate]

Similarly to Celebrim, I find the absolute DR values in 3.0 were much too high. 3.5 is much more reasonable in that regard. In 3.0, DR could be an all-or-nothing defense: you either did full damage, or none at all. Binary defenses = bad design, like AC or saves. In 3.5, it's more of a "this is either gonna be reasonably easy, or it's gonna be hard, but not impossible" case, which I like better.

However, DR x/magic is ridiculous at almost every level (like DR x/+1 was in 3.0). DR x/special material is interesting, but it is in fact really aggravating to put down your +3 Holy Wounding Greatsword, and get out your secondary +1 Mace, only because one is made of Silver, and the other of Cold Iron. Not even high level melee warriors are going to carry multiple level-appropriate weapons. So the melee guy (and game balance) is hurt further by the DR change. Especially when we also consider DR x/slashing etc. Those just put the hurt on even more. And they can be combined with other DRs, into something as hard to overcome as the Rakshasa's DR 15/good AND piercing, which is insanely difficult to overcome with any weapon that's actually good.

Finally, when enchantments like metalline and morphing came out, these suddenly replaced other weapon enchants as the go-to enchantments. This resulted in a) fewer really cool, flavorful enchants on your weapon, and b) DR doing less and less at higher levels. Basically, the "must be this tall to fight that monster" mindset had returned. But at least the Greater Magic Weapon doing everything 'problem' has been neutered, right? Well, too bad for Mr. Melee Guy!

 

[Li Shenron]

At first I thought the 3.5 version was an improvement, but later I realized that for me it was not. At best, the changes were unnecessary but they also caused some problem to the game as a whole.

It is true that 3.0 damage reduction was conceived as "mostly immune to normal weapons, or to weapons not magical enough", and there is nothing wrong with that! There are monsters immune to all spells, others immune to certain energy damage, others immune to mind-effects, others immune to some combat actions, others immune to sneak attack... Immunities require the players to think creatively. Maybe this time there's a monster immune to spells, so the Wizard has to cast other spells instead; next there are undead, so the Rogue cannot sneak attack and has to think about another strategy; and then there's a monster immune to weapons (or at least the party's current weapons) to the Fighter has to find other ways to help. How about trying to block, trip, entangle, grapple, lure the monster into a trap?

"All or nothing" is a problem for players who cannot think much else than the usual do-damage tactic. So what did 3.5 do? They lowered most DR values, so that now the do-damage tactic is still viable enough that everyone in fact does that, whether they have a weapon that bypasses DR or not, because DR is mostly just a "damage discount" (point taken: the DR name is more appropriate in 3.5 than in 3.0).

Also, the +1 to +5 range (which in reality was rather +1 to +3 because in the entire 3.0 PHB only the Tarrasque has DR +5 and only the Solar has DR +4) should not be thought in the light of a party where every PC either has the right weapon or not, because many times some of them had the powerful enough weapon and others did not, so part of the team could go the damage route while the rest had to think more creatively, but the party was rarely totally prevented to beat the monster (which incidentally isn't even a bad occurrence at all! Sometimes it's nice to have an encounter where the target isn't to kill the monsters but to save your rear cleavage).

The only thing I actually prefer of the 3.5 version is the introduction of Good and Evil weapons, which I think adds diversity.

About the materials, except Silver which was always intended as +0.5 ("half magic"), I would actually prefer that a special material dealt additional damage to some type of creature instead of bypassing DR.

 

[James the Newbie]

At the end of the day I think on an issue like this, its mostly down to the individual PC's. I much prefer the monster diversity in the v.3.5 MM to the v.3 MM, but you have inspired a new idea (for me, I am sure someone has thought of it before XD)

And that is to take the combination DR and mix it with a '+ X' ie, to beat a werewolf lord, which I don't feel silver is enough for in 3.5, I might make is silver and +3.

Just thought id share this in case you wanted to implement a similar system XD

 

[Vegepygmy]

What do you guys think about the change form 3.0 to 3.5?

I think it was a big improvement. Sorry.