this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
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I think damage immunity is one of the goofiest things. Resistance is fine. But fully immune to non magical damage? Come on, cut the martials some slack, especially if you're stingy with magic weapons.
Something like a fire elemental being immune to fire damage is fine though.
How're you supposed to sword a non-corporal entity?
With determination!
One of the greatest flaws of D&D is insisting that martial classes ought to be completely mundane human beings. Pick your flavor, mythical heroes or anime characters, you'll find plenty of ways someone can deal with untouchable enemies and overwhelming forces using sheer brawn or precise finesse.
All that said, the most boring way to go about it is to just hit it because your sword has a number.
Especially when the martials already include things like "man literally too angry to die", "woman literally so angry that she gains the power of flight", and "sneak thief bastard can dodge an explosion while standing directly in the middle of it"
They're all already magic, they just don't do the magic by casting spells
When the power creep of One Piece devil fruit got too much, they just introduced Haki. Anyone who trains hard enough can do it at a base level, they even eventually broke the full mcguffin of sea prism stone eventually with training and determination.
I'm 100% with you. We don't need mcguffins we need grit! Which are still kinda mcguffins...
I was literally thinking of that!
It makes a lot of sense to me. If you are just a low level schmuck of course you might need a magic sword or some sort of specific macguffin to bypass immunities. But once you hit level 10 you are reaching superhuman level. You've likely killed hordes of undead already. Might as well say you mastered the technique of the spirit tailor cut to deal with those spooky-wooky bedsheet ghosts. Unless you are fighting higher beings, trifling things like incorporeality should be beneath your concern.
D&D is not like Call of Cthulhu where you are facing things you have no hope to even comprehend, it's to go from a feeble villager to a mighty hero of legend!
Punch them. Your body won't interact with them, but your soul will.
This is why you should always carry a live swordfish for use as an emergency anti-ghost weapon*
*If a live swordfish is not available, a wildshaped druid will also work
Nice
How's a non corporeal entity supposed to hurt me?
Magically. That's the point of this thread.
You don't see how it's shitty for a DM to throw magical enemies who can't be hurt by anything except for magic at players who have no way to do magical damage?
@[email protected] @[email protected] I mostly disagree here. I mean, yes, if the DM has set up a situation where the PCs are railroaded into a fight where they are required to "do damage" to something they have no way to do damage to, that's pretty lousy.
Usually, though, the PCs could flee, attempt to resolve the situation by "non-combat" means, or otherwise just avoid getting in that situation to begin with.
I do fully embrace your earlier point about non-corporeal beings hurting corporeal beings: I like the idea that there ought to be potential "enemies" with that limitation who can only harm the PCs indirectly (through trickery and deception, distraction, or some manner of influence over something that can hurt them). Not every opponent needs to be a "combat statblock".
"hey, this world has magic in it, let's all decide to go in fully unprepared to deal with it!" is not the fault of the DM
When the DM is largely responsible for giving the party magic items (as is the case with 5e), it is absolutely the fault of the DM for throwing something against them that multiple members of the party are fully useless against, especially at a low level.
If they're not giving out magic items then it's their fault.
In 3e, there were enemies that were immune to "any damage or effect from any creature whose level was lower than level 20"
I go with Keith Baker's explanation that a non-magical sword will still cut a werewolf and maybe even cause it pain, but damage immunity means that it gets back up and keeps fighting. Maybe it immediately regenerates, or maybe it just ignores wounds that ought to have killed it. In other words, you can stab the werewolf through the heart and the sword will in fact pierce it and come out the other side, but the werewolf simply won't die (and remains just as capable of killing you as it was before you did that).
This does imply that if you're strong enough to cleave the werewolf in two with one blow, it still dies - it can't reasonably regenerate half its body or keep fighting without legs. But at that point, you're either out of combat (bound werewolf, guillotine) or so much higher level than the werewolf's CR that it really doesn't matter.
Anyway, if I were the DM, I would only make players face a werewolf without magical weapons if either they were meant to be running away or they did something really stupid. I would also allow them to deal damage to it in creative but non-magical ways. Maybe they can lure it into a trap prepared ahead of time or even just cut off its leg, grab that leg before the werewolf can plop it back on, and then play keep-away. (Can you run faster than a werewolf can run on three legs?)
Goofy from a game design perspective, not from a lore perspective. It's just so unfair to tell a player there's no way they can hurt something when one of the ways they could've hurt it is with a magic weapon but you've refused to give them any.
Ah, in that case I generally agree. My guess is that D&D (3.5, I haven't played the newer ones) was designed with a subconscious "nerds rule, jocks drool" mentality. So of course the bookworm is going to be better than the big muscular guy who gets angry a lot.
The newer ones aren't as bad but it is still there at times.