Source
r/dndnext•
Herestheproof

Resistance to bludgeoning piercing and slashing damage from nonmagical attacks

Hot Take

Is the worst feature a monster can have. It’s terrible design that messes with balance and misleads DMs.

What does it do? Well it makes a monster tankier against attacks from martials who don’t have magic weapons. What purpose does this serve? Martials are the classes that don’t have options for what type of damage they deal, so a martial in a fight with a monster resistant to their damage feels bad. Martials with magic weapons and casters pretty much don’t care. There is no problem to be solved here, there’s no way for a martial to fix their lack of ability to deal damage, they just suck it up and hope they get a magic weapon soon.

Balance wise, this artificially inflates the cr of the monster and/or actually makes it less tanky. Since CR assumes the resistance is effective the monster loses hp to compensate, making it much squishier. A monster with resistance to nonmagical bps is almost always easier than its cr indicates, which is fine if you’re an experienced DM using milestone leveling, but can throw off newer DMs and rewards more xp than the encounter difficult calls for.

If a monster is resistant to weapons it should be resistant to all weapons, magical or not. This would be much easier to design and balance around.

Posted Feb 5, 2022, 7:11 PM UTC

021
Jafroboy•

It does have its downside, but it, and the immunity version, are KEY for making it so that the Town guard need the HEROES, to deal with the problem, rather than mobbing it with the town Militia.

It is very good narratively.

It also makes it so hiring loads of followers, and summoning loads of creatures, both of which slow down gameplay, are not the super effective tactic they would be otherwise.

11
AffectionateBox8178•

The point of that resistance is to protect then from weaker creatures. It's a holdover from older editions when fiends and the like were immune or resistant to weapon damage except for a +# threshold(+1,+2,+3, etc).

Resistance to non magical weapons helps against most conjure spells. Being attacked by 8 giant owls means less.

10
HerestheproofOP•

Yeah, and that’s great, but it’s not relevant when a party has magic weapons (unless they rely on conjured stuff). The side effect of that is the monsters have reduced hp to compensate, which throws off encounter balance.

-5†
Starrkx•

What level of the tier are we talking about, by tier 2 most players should have a magic weapon of some type for this to not matter?

7
HerestheproofOP•

Yeah, that’s exactly my point. When every martial has a magic weapon this feature is useless, which results in monsters with inflated cr and lower hp, which throws off encounter balance. A cr 6 “barbarian” type monster should not have 65 hp (white abishai).

5†
Starrkx•

Looking at it, it seems to me this would be a boss encounter for a lower-level party where magic items are not a thing because it also as magic resistance. A party of 3-4 level 3s would have a decent time fighting this. A pretty good fight for a party who just unlocked their sub-class.

2
Fire1520Warlock Pact of the Reddit•

Imagine giving everyone magic swag that bypasses resistances, then complaining that the magic swag you specifically chose to give them is by passing the resistances you specifically chose to use against them...

Maybe I'm not getting it, but this seems to be a DM problem...?

1†
Nephisimian•

It's more a system problem. The way its designed means you can't give players cool weapons without also effectively giving them double damage output. If it was just blanket resistance to BPS, magical or not, it'd be a lot more functional.

8
HerestheproofOP•

It’s a dm problem, but the problem is that resistance to bps is super common, especially on higher cr monsters, and its easy for a dm to not realize that their monster is much squishier than cr would suggest. Avoiding resistance to nonmagical bps is difficult and limits a DMs available monsters.

3†
tomedunn•

If you read through the "Creating a Monster" section in chapter 9 of the DMG, you'll see those resistances are worth less and less the higher you go in CR. So this is only an issue at lower CRs.

5
demipyro•

^^^^^^^ this op probably had a bad fight cause he didnt know the monster

0
but_you_said•

It's a broader version for martial coverage than the caster version. Also it doesn't make since to have it on monsters that aren't special bosses. Since it is one of the epic boons a character can get.

2
dandan_noodlesBarbarian•

What purpose does this serve? Martials are the classes that don’t have options for what type of damage they deal, so a martial in a fight with a monster resistant to their damage feels bad. Martials with magic weapons and casters pretty much don’t care. There is no problem to be solved here, there’s no way for a martial to fix their lack of ability to deal damage, they just suck it up and hope they get a magic weapon soon.

This isn't true. It lets a monster absorb more party resources via a caster using the Magic Weapon [or elemental weapon] spell, leading to the martials actually doing more damage than they otherwise would thanks to the +1s

1†
HerestheproofOP•

Forcing casters to use a spell to make their allies useful is bad design (and feels bad for the martials, what if their wizard doest have that spell or doesn’t want to cast it?). And yes, the effect is that magic weapons deal more damage; the problem is that almost all martials past tier 1 are running around with magical weapons, so a monster with nonmagical bps resistance against anything level 5+ is just straight up weaker.

2
dandan_noodlesBarbarian•

I agree it's bad design, but it's wrong to say it doesn't address a problem. And if you're going by the book in terms of treasure tables, it's extremely easy to never get a magical weapon, which is why those monsters are worth more; they design around you not having a magic weapon, so you get the full reward of XP for the greater challenge the monster presents.

1
Radigan0Wizard•

Whether or not the problem is addressed doesn't matter if it's addressed poorly.

1
Nephisimian•

Except most monsters with BPS resistance also come with lower HP. If they didn't have this resistance, then they'd just have more HP. In practice, BPS resistance help damage casters keep up without having to make make do absurd damage, rather than punishing martials. It does break a bit when warlocks get involved though.

1
HerestheproofOP•

Yeah, they have lower hp. The problem is that most martials have magic weapons, so instead of doing anything the resistance just makes the monster squishier.

2
msfnc•

“I don’t like this feature” =/= bad design. It’s a very useful and flavorful effect. It’s not insurmountable, but it does require a party to choose between resource expenditure or reduced efficacy. As always, it’s your table. Don’t like it? Don’t use it.

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Machicolations107•

Look at it as something that is a part of the puzzle of dealing with a boss creature. What approach do the players take to overcome it? It's up to the party to figure it out or the content designer to design a solution for the players to use as a part of the adventure. Such as a quest to get magic weapons.

Or look at it as progression gating. Players must be at power level X of gear to be able to meaningfully engage with the gameplay of the tier with these many creatures with BPS resistance or immunity. It's then the content designer responsibility to make sure the players make it to that power level at a pace that suits the purpose of the design.

The feature is not a bad design at all. It's a piece of the designer's toolkit that can be used to provide specific challenges to the players in any content they are creating. If the designer puts monsters in their adventure with a feature that the players can't overcome without providing the players a method to overcome the challenge, that is poor design on the part of the designer, not the feature.

1
DragonAnts•

I completely agree if only because I give out magic items like candy.

It's a pain to do, but if you go to the DMG and look at step 9 and the table on pg 277 you can see why and how they determined the CR of something with those resistances/immunities. You can then work out what a monsters hit points should be to keep it at the same CR or what the CR would be without the resistances/immunities. Do this for all the monsters and you won't need to worry about it again.

It does get a little wonky for creatures right at the CR cutoffs, but at least it's still better than assuming your martials don't have magic items if you do give them out.

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[deleted]•

[deleted]

-2†