Not sure if a similar thread already exists, couldn’t see anything and I’m not sure what to look for?

I have been thinking about monster resistance, especially to martial damage, in some fights I ignore it as it feels anti fun. Usually if feels like punishing the martial character as spellcasters usually aren’t as impacted. This is doubly true with undead who are sometimes incorporeal etc. I am running CoS and using a lot of undead naturally, but I plan encounters and end up not using some monsters because they have a tonne of resistance and I doubt my players will have fun or feel the combat is a grind.

One idea I have is that if a party id balanced it’ll be roughly 50/50 melee to magic so if melee is getting half damage and monster who has resistance could have 25% extra health instead? That way the fighting is a bit hard but everyone is doing full damage. I’m a bit concerned it might make some monsters a hit point sponge, although I’d only apply this to monsters with resistance not every monster. An alternative would be to increase monster damage, so they die faster but hit harder?

My question is how do DMs balance encounters so players don’t feel useless, and rules don’t feel like they are simply punishing players?

I had an encounter previously where the rogue asked me what he’d done in combat, they had gotten some good roles and tallied about 70 damage but the monster was resistant so it was more like 35 damage, can’t remember if the monster also had regeneration but if felt bad as a DM to say they had hardly hurt the monster. I lied and said I’d lost track of single player damage because I didn’t want to spoil their fun.

When I read the title, I certainly wasn't thinking of balancing HP damage for the benefit of each individual party member's skill set as more fun. I suppose I just look at things a little differently, as that thought had never before crossed my mind.

I think of set encounters as, "At this time and place, this is what's here. The PCs interact with it however they will, up to and including retreat, or death." Not every encounter is conquerable, at least at the party's current level. No monster should be expected to fairly distribute its destruction and death among the party. Random encounters I will adjust, depending on the party's overall health and resources.

My opinion. If taking on that additional work seems like fun to you, and will make the game more enjoyable to your group, then go for it.

Interesting reply and usually I’d do the same. The reason I’m asking is because I’m currently running CoS so almost all monsters are undead and many have resistance, so it feels disproportionate. I imagine this is not a significant issue in other settings, I’ve previously run dragon heist and it was never an issue.

At the moment in easy to moderate encounters spellcasters will easily do 40 damage but melee characters will struggle to achieve 10 damage because of resistance. As the players are now lv6 many monsters to challenge the party are loaded with resistances. My players are pretty good, so monsters without resistances tend to die quickly, but monsters with resistances just become a slog which isn’t the same as a challenge. I also feel I can see the melee focused characters frustration when their turns take a fraction of the time of the castere and they roll multiple attacks to only do a few points of damage. 

A melee weapon that's especially effective against undead; perhaps X strikes/charges, then disintegrates. Other short term magical boost to be discovered. Perhaps an amulet that protects from X. If you think they need help, then give em that. Adjusting monsters now just sets a precedent for the players, on what to expect from those monsters in the future.

Another option is to grant the creatures resistances to magical effects, as well.

As an example, in my upcoming campaign I have a host of creatures wo immune to certain kinds of planar or elemental damage -- the kinds of damage that spells do.  One in particular, "grendels" is resistant to bludgeoning, lightning, smoke, poison, frost, fire, acid, force, sun, radiant, necrotic, shadow, nether, celestial, and infernal damage. This leaves a limited number of options -- piercing, thunder, slashing, falling, and assorted odds and ends.

Grendels are 7 to 8 feet tall, and basically look like a feral version of Stitch from Lilo & Stitch.

The las time I ran a Strahd campaign, I did exactly that. I gave the undead resistance to cold, thunder, and other magics (in addition to charm and the like) because they are dead. Fire was also useless.

Changing the monsters around makes them more interesting to deal with, requires more creative thinking, and doesn't involve creating some new thing that you probably have to take away from the players. It is especially useful when player's are in a rut and tend to use the same spells over and over again as "all purpose stuff".  

Also, zombies that are on fire are a really useful foe, since they can catch what they grab on fire as well, and if you want to really play with it, then what happens after they burn all the flesh and collapse is that they rise as skeletons.

Magic weapons are the least resisted damage type in 5e (looks like UA will change that to force) so just giving PCs magic weapons will solve the resistance problem. There aren't a lot of magic weapons in CoS that appear before mid-campaign so you might need to add something minor (even a trivial item like a moon-touched sword is sufficient to bypass resistances).

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

Magic weapons are the least resisted damage type in 5e (looks like UA will change that to force) so just giving PCs magic weapons will solve the resistance problem. There aren't a lot of magic weapons in CoS that appear before mid-campaign so you might need to add something minor (even a trivial item like a moon-touched sword is sufficient to bypass resistances).

 Nice!

[Edit: Translation, me likey!]

It's the rogue's job to tally the amount of damage they've done in combat, if they care. Your job is to tell them if the hit did full, partial or no damage. Then they can adjust accordingly.

It's not a video game where damage, healing and tanking are being tracked for the min/max. This is a game where the party is expected to work together to survive. Not one where they try to one up each other. 

I have never looked at this mechanic as punishing players. Undead usually have a method to bypass their "melee resistance" such as silvered or magical weapons. Casters, on the other hand, need to pick up a feat to bypass resistance for one specific damage type. If they want to bypass all their elemental resistances then they have to use up all their ASIs on doing so.

I like this, wasn’t sure if too many magic items would unbalance the party. I’ve seen plenty of horror stories about DMs who give the party loads of magic items then can’t balance any encounters. A few common items that offer no significant benefits beyond being magical could definitely help.

Maybe I’ll have them encounter another adventure party already killed by Strahd and sprinkle a weapon or two into the mix.

Not something I had considered, I usually build casters to have a variety of utility as much as possible so they won’t be as likely to be caught out by resistance. 

Yeah, resistance is basically equivalent to doubling hit points for that damage type.  The ghost stat block is identical to having double health and vulnerability to psychic, radiant, force and magical  weapons. Describing those as doing extra damage often feels better to players.

If you want to play with the resistance/ vulnerability mechanics there are things you can do like looking at the witcher style design  which is about unique resistances that players are expected to exploit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhjkPv4qo5w , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ztk39IcnsY . For COS this kind of design works really well for some of the named NPCs like strahd. Monsters can also have story based weaknesses like a ghost may be vulnerable to a weapon marked with something that relates to them like a personal item from their home. 

Another strategy is to soften weaknesses and resistances in the way that pathfinder does. In pathfinder resistances and weaknesses work like hardness in that they reduce damage by a certain amount.  In dnd this would make things that hit often like a fighter good at triggering weaknesses for bonus damage but also trigger resistances far more often  where as casters would be less vulnerable to resistance but also gain less from vulnerability.  

As for magic items,  you can give martials options without giving them more damage.  You can have weapons that give different damage types including special materials or special effects. Something like the sword of a saint whose damage is treated as radiant against unholy creatures  like undead and an unholy sword that can apply bane to anything but undead.  If you give them lots of small items like that and make switching easy like letting them do it as a bonus action then you can give them more tactical options. I also like to give martials some spell effects  like low level spells. An example would be the  color spray  on a holy symbol which  can be presented to blind evil creatures or a shield which  can cast absorb elements once a day.   Just keep in mind when you give  constant additions to damage or always on effects these are often straight up better than other items and become the default.  I know for this reason PF2e has an optional rule where magic items lose those effects and they are  instead put in character progression.

This is some really useful stuff. I love the idea of witcher style resistance and adjusting health. Also I keep forgetting the idea of basic magic items with a small boost like bane.

I immediately changed werewolves when I was running CoS so instead of immunity to normal weapons, they had regeneration that was stopped by silver.

I haven’t run the werewolves yet. The party hasn’t explored that far east. I think I’ll be stealing this idea. Thanks, I really like that idea, and the party does have a couple silver weapons so they should be able to figure it out 

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

I immediately changed werewolves when I was running CoS so instead of immunity to normal weapons, they had regeneration that was stopped by silver.

 I do that too. Just keep in mind their health is lower than what would be expected for a regenerating creature because of the immunity.  You might want to pump the hp to about 70 if you have regen 10 or .  Especially since the players are very likely to figure out this weakness quickly. 

You can also  give them resistances.  I've  run shadow werewolves which have the power of the shadow sorcerers umbral form while a wolf in addition to the regen. 

• Resistance to all damage except force and radiant damage
• Can move through other creatures and objects as if they were difficult terrain
• As a bonus action in dim light or darkness, as a bonus action,  can magically teleport up to 120 feet to an unoccupied space they can see that is also in dim light or darkness.

Though they are more of a low level boss meant to be a solo werewolf. 

Another thing you can do for a cursed creature like a werewolf is come up with a custom weakness which is tied to the origin of the curse. So for the COS werewolves which are worshipers of mother night  you could tie it to that worship with  a system like. 

• Werewolves can have their curse cured and don't have  regen unless if they have killed  a humanoid and sacrificed the body at the statue of mother night. ( this is only known by the werewolves)
• They have the regen only at night but if they die during the day return to life at night unless their body is destroyed the same day.   ( this is known by locals if players ask around) 
• They can lose the regen if they are cursed by mother night, fail to participate in an offering once per lunar cycle or if killed by some one more in favor with mother night for example by strahd or baba lysaga.  ( this is only known by the werewolves) 
• The werewolf curse can always return as mother night calls to the bloodthirsty of raven loft to build her shrines and complete the pact 

Of course to make progress players would still need to be able to knock them unconscious so when reduced to 0 while they have regen they make a con save of 5 + the damage dealt the same as undead fortitude. On a fail they are unconscious for 1d4 hours during which time they still regenerate if it is night time. 

Similar things can be done with figures like strahd. The obvious answer being he can only be defeated with the holy artifacts the quest line has you collect and baba lysaga with her only dieing if she fails to do her youth ritual. 

Quote from Solarsyphon >>

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

I immediately changed werewolves when I was running CoS so instead of immunity to normal weapons, they had regeneration that was stopped by silver.

 I do that too. Just keep in mind their health is lower than what would be expected for a regenerating creature because of the immunity.

58 hit points is actually fairly average for a CR 3, though AC is on the low side. I did give it troll-style regeneration (only dies if it fails to regenerate). For a lot of parties the regeneration is actually harder to deal with than the damage immunity.