I was thinking about making a houserule to allow players to reflavor spells by changing their damage type. But I want to limit what damage type you can change a spell to, based on how "strong" the damage type is. This meaning how common resistance, immunity, vulnerability and other abilities that trigger from taking that type of damage (like a golem's absorption for example) are. So I wanted to rank them in no less than 3 and no more than 5 tiers and when someone wants to reflavor a spell, they can choose a type of equal or lower tier.
For more elaboration: You reflavor the spell when you learn it, so you can't cast fireball interchangably as fire, cold, acid or poison damage, but you would have to learn each as a separate iceball, acidball, etc spell.
So here is my damage type tier list. Im leaving out slashing, bludgeoning and piercing as those would involve the spell launching a physical object at the target, which can be reflavored without changing the damage type (such as ice knife [cold and piercing] to a magma rock spike [fire and piercing])
S : Force
A: Necrotic, Radiant, Psychic
B: Thunder
C: Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning
D: Poison
Would you agree with my assessment of where these damage types fall or would you change anything?
I have no idea how many moster resistence/immune/vulnareble to which type so i am basing the ranking according to this table which seem to be only MM
S : Force, Radiant
A: Necrotic, Psychic, Thunder
B: Acid
C: Cold, Fire, Lightning
D: Poison
If you want take account other book monsters you could use dnd beyond monster filter to see how many are resistence/immune/vulnareble and only include certain source book.
Someone did a count of the different resistances and immunities that monsters have and posted that count on one of these forums a couple of months ago. That’s what you need in order to do what you’re trying to do and make it balanced.
My thought is that if someone wants to reflavor a spell by changing the damage type, let them and don’t worry overly much about balancing the damage types. You’re the DM, you can also reflavor monsters as needed if someone abuses changing the damage type. There’s always a monster available that’s immune to lightning damage if a player reflavors all of their spells so that they do lightning damage instead of whatever their normal damage type is for example. I’m playing a Warlock right now and I made sure that he has a damage dealing cantrip other than Eldritch Blast because I think that it’s perfectly reasonable to reflavor the Shield spell so that it blocks all force damage and physical attacks instead of only magic missile and all physical attacks for example. Especially for the DM!
This is slightly off your main point, but... A Youtube group I like to watch, "The Dungeon Dudes", did an in depth look at the Elemental Adept feat, where they broke down each element and how many monsters in the MM are resistant and/or immune to that element, "ranking" the best element to take with that feat. In my opinion it would nicely answer your question and provide some great supporting evidence. The link is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2q-WBG2CXo&t=744s
Hope you find this helpful and interesting! Overall, I would agree pretty thoroughly with your list already, but agree with Palfatreos with moving up radiant to the top tier, especially if you are planning to have a lot of undead in a campaign, as they get messsssedddd up by radiant damage.
Barely related, but this makes me want to run a campaign that switches this up a bit. A main enemy type that is vulnerable to poison, and resistant to force. Proposal: racist human cult of "pure-breeds". They use a ritual to strip any vestiges of non-human ancestry from their initiates, which leaves them vulnerable to poison and disease from the lost genetic diversity, but protected from force damage as they have been sundered from half of their soul. They hate sorcerers and warlocks (mixing with the other), all other races obviously (although would ally with other races who strive to keep them all separate), druids and other beastly wild folk, and so on. Give the party a chance to punch a whole lot of Nazis...
Thanks, everyone for your input, valuable stuff here!
Especially the breakdown, DxJxC, thanks a lot for that. I knew that poison was the most commonly resisted damage type, but by a factor of 2 from the nearest one is crazy. I think fire might change its score a little bit of you figure in stuff like a troll or hydra's inability to regenerate after being hit by fire, but then there's also stuff like frost salamanders who get buffed when taking fire damage. Unless you counted that among vulnerabilities. Either way i dont think that would be significant.
Based on those scores I agree with your tier listing.
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Hi everyone
I was thinking about making a houserule to allow players to reflavor spells by changing their damage type. But I want to limit what damage type you can change a spell to, based on how "strong" the damage type is. This meaning how common resistance, immunity, vulnerability and other abilities that trigger from taking that type of damage (like a golem's absorption for example) are. So I wanted to rank them in no less than 3 and no more than 5 tiers and when someone wants to reflavor a spell, they can choose a type of equal or lower tier.
For more elaboration: You reflavor the spell when you learn it, so you can't cast fireball interchangably as fire, cold, acid or poison damage, but you would have to learn each as a separate iceball, acidball, etc spell.
So here is my damage type tier list. Im leaving out slashing, bludgeoning and piercing as those would involve the spell launching a physical object at the target, which can be reflavored without changing the damage type (such as ice knife [cold and piercing] to a magma rock spike [fire and piercing])
Would you agree with my assessment of where these damage types fall or would you change anything?
I have no idea how many moster resistence/immune/vulnareble to which type so i am basing the ranking according to this table which seem to be only MM
If you want take account other book monsters you could use dnd beyond monster filter to see how many are resistence/immune/vulnareble and only include certain source book.
Nox - Adult Oblex - The Trials
Jartrin Ephok - Dragonborn - Zanoliv
Bunol - Grim Angel - The Floating Lands of Goriate
Someone did a count of the different resistances and immunities that monsters have and posted that count on one of these forums a couple of months ago. That’s what you need in order to do what you’re trying to do and make it balanced.
My thought is that if someone wants to reflavor a spell by changing the damage type, let them and don’t worry overly much about balancing the damage types. You’re the DM, you can also reflavor monsters as needed if someone abuses changing the damage type. There’s always a monster available that’s immune to lightning damage if a player reflavors all of their spells so that they do lightning damage instead of whatever their normal damage type is for example. I’m playing a Warlock right now and I made sure that he has a damage dealing cantrip other than Eldritch Blast because I think that it’s perfectly reasonable to reflavor the Shield spell so that it blocks all force damage and physical attacks instead of only magic missile and all physical attacks for example. Especially for the DM!
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Wow! That looks like a pretty equivalent system. Maybe move fire down to D? That is all I can think of.
I stole my pfp from this person: https://mobile.twitter.com/xelart1/status/1177312449575432193
This is slightly off your main point, but... A Youtube group I like to watch, "The Dungeon Dudes", did an in depth look at the Elemental Adept feat, where they broke down each element and how many monsters in the MM are resistant and/or immune to that element, "ranking" the best element to take with that feat. In my opinion it would nicely answer your question and provide some great supporting evidence. The link is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2q-WBG2CXo&t=744s
Hope you find this helpful and interesting! Overall, I would agree pretty thoroughly with your list already, but agree with Palfatreos with moving up radiant to the top tier, especially if you are planning to have a lot of undead in a campaign, as they get messsssedddd up by radiant damage.
I took it upon myself to check the total of MM, MToF, and VGtM. (Your welcome)
Immune/Resistant/Vulnerable/(Points 2I+R-V)
Poison 195/14/0/(404)
Fire 65/86/13/(203)
Cold 29/113/4/(167)
Lightning 25/84/0/(134)
Acid 24/32/0/(80)
Necrotic 23/30/0/(76)
Psychic 18/3/1/(38)
Thunder 4/23/2/(29)
Radiant 1/4/2/(4)
Force 1/0/0/(2)
Based on my results, I'd tier them:
S: Force, Radiant
A: Thunder, Psychic
B: Necrotic, Acid
C: Lightning, Cold, Fire
F: Poison
*to make poison spells more appealing, let them swap for the tier above. Or compress to 3 tiers of S, AB, and CF.
Barely related, but this makes me want to run a campaign that switches this up a bit. A main enemy type that is vulnerable to poison, and resistant to force. Proposal: racist human cult of "pure-breeds". They use a ritual to strip any vestiges of non-human ancestry from their initiates, which leaves them vulnerable to poison and disease from the lost genetic diversity, but protected from force damage as they have been sundered from half of their soul. They hate sorcerers and warlocks (mixing with the other), all other races obviously (although would ally with other races who strive to keep them all separate), druids and other beastly wild folk, and so on. Give the party a chance to punch a whole lot of Nazis...
Thanks, everyone for your input, valuable stuff here!
Especially the breakdown, DxJxC, thanks a lot for that. I knew that poison was the most commonly resisted damage type, but by a factor of 2 from the nearest one is crazy. I think fire might change its score a little bit of you figure in stuff like a troll or hydra's inability to regenerate after being hit by fire, but then there's also stuff like frost salamanders who get buffed when taking fire damage. Unless you counted that among vulnerabilities. Either way i dont think that would be significant.
Based on those scores I agree with your tier listing.