If I made resistance work like evasion (half damage, save for none) instead of multiplicative (half damage, save for 1/4), how much does it seem like that would distort things?
Well, you just Nerfed the Rogue and anyone else that had evasion.
Worse, it also Nerfs casters. A lot of the time you are expecting the save to be passeddl, but doing it anyway in the knowledge that at least they will take SOME damage plus hopes someone might fail their save.
But my main objection is "Why?" I do not think anyone is going around saying that Resistance is too weak.
It would make combat less of a cakewalk at the expense of making it take longer. That is what I perceive to be the overall effect of house rules that reduce damage because they work both ways. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but that’s what I see being the overall difference.
IMHO, I prefer a bloodier fight that goes the same length of time as usual. But that’s just my preferred approach as DM. I know another DM who would probably love the idea. But she also prefers a longer fight that’s less bloody. Instead of damage dealt to make a fight seem hard, she uses number of rounds to emphasize the danger. It’s just a style preference.
The specific effect to the party is that will potentially benefit different PCs disproportionately in two ways. As a DM, one can adjust for this with a little extra consideration and work, though.
PCs with resistances will get a bigger advantage than those without. And those with resistance to more common damage types will get a bigger benefit. And PCs with attacks using other damage types will suffer less than those whose main damage types are more often resisted, rendering some spells/magic items far less effective than they were designed to be.
Those are my thoughts, but I could be missing something.
If I made resistance work like evasion (half damage, save for none) instead of multiplicative (half damage, save for 1/4), how much does it seem like that would distort things?
Well, you just Nerfed the Rogue and anyone else that had evasion.
Worse, it also Nerfs casters. A lot of the time you are expecting the save to be passeddl, but doing it anyway in the knowledge that at least they will take SOME damage plus hopes someone might fail their save.
But my main objection is "Why?" I do not think anyone is going around saying that Resistance is too weak.
It would make combat less of a cakewalk at the expense of making it take longer. That is what I perceive to be the overall effect of house rules that reduce damage because they work both ways. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but that’s what I see being the overall difference.
IMHO, I prefer a bloodier fight that goes the same length of time as usual. But that’s just my preferred approach as DM. I know another DM who would probably love the idea. But she also prefers a longer fight that’s less bloody. Instead of damage dealt to make a fight seem hard, she uses number of rounds to emphasize the danger. It’s just a style preference.
The specific effect to the party is that will potentially benefit different PCs disproportionately in two ways. As a DM, one can adjust for this with a little extra consideration and work, though.
PCs with resistances will get a bigger advantage than those without. And those with resistance to more common damage types will get a bigger benefit. And PCs with attacks using other damage types will suffer less than those whose main damage types are more often resisted, rendering some spells/magic items far less effective than they were designed to be.
Those are my thoughts, but I could be missing something.
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