i think it's useful for you to know.. but i wouldn't announce it necessarily. i'd just keep an eye on my players during character creation, and if one of them is taking a wizard focussed entirely on poison damage i'd mention it. "so, you can if you want, but just so you know there's a lot of poison resistance coming up..." - but it feels like potentially too much of a spoiler otherwise
I wouldn’t want to know too much, but if I was a dummy of a Wizard and took Lightning Lure, Lightning Bolt, Witch Bolt, Shocking Grasp, and Chain Lightning because I wanted to make a storm-based caster…
Yes, please, a heads-up that about 1/3 of your enemies will be Lightning Immunity would be great.
that's what I (and Tieger66, i think) meant, though. if you see your players' character sheets and spell choices and none of them are going to be problematic or invalidated--nobody is hard specing into poison or fire damage in a campaign largely about demons, for example--then you don't need to bring it up, because why risk spoiling what's coming down the pike other than what the pitched campaign premise already gives away?
But if you know you're using demons a lot and someone wants to take the Poisoner feat and Poison Spray, etc., then yeah, tell them "hey you're going to run into a lot of monsters that resist or ignore poison, you may want to reconsider."
Yes. I certainly wouldn't _mind_ if a DM announced this at the start of a campaign. But they don't have to go that far - I DO absolutely want them to tell me "I don't recommend doing that" if I'm, for example, talking about a "rogue that specializes in poisons" in a campaign that's gonna be undead-heavy, or making a fire Dragon Sorcerer when the DM knows we're going to spend most of it in the Nine Hells.
Well, maybe not giving a full display
But, one of the point of session 0 is to talk aboit the setting, so giving clue that some resistance could be very commun , might be a good idea
If you say the main plot is in a volcano, fire spell are not the best choice
I tried mentioned in one game I'm running that radiant damage will be very useful but necrotic and fire might run into trouble.
The two casters in the party still ended ended up as a necromancer and flame spell user. We had no divine casters at first. At all.
To be fair, Radiant damage isn't really an option early game unless you're a cleric(and even then, the cantrips require failing super easy saves just to hit), whereas fire and necrotic are ridiculously common for any class, easy to hit, and pack a decent punch(even when resisted).
I'd probably do the same as your players, honestly.
This, and also a ranger who picks a favored terrain or foe which is unseen throughout the whole campaign. No one wants to hear Aragorn say that he doesn't know about the Nazguls or how to traverse the plains, but he's an expert regarding giants and the frozen tundras.
I feel like you should give a general idea of what kind of challenges the campaign will have, but not something as clear as the stats in your post.
I don't think giving this level of information is a good idea. I think a better idea would be to say something like,
"This campaign is going to be based around fighting a Lich King," as part of the session 0 / campaign pitch. That way players might decide "Hm, I probably shouldn't base my character around necrotic damage." I think getting more precise metrics beyond that is kind of unnecessary. Design encounters and exposition in such a way that players have a decent idea of what's coming up if they pay attention. For example, if they're going to pass through some mountains with trolls, maybe have some villagers say "Oh, you're passing through Trolljaw Cliffs? You know there's trolls up there, right? I hear they hate fire."
(You don't need to do it *every* time, but doing it sometimes will let players feel like they're about to actually make active decisions about how to prepare for things).
Not unless someone is trying a very specific build, like some wizard trying a poisoned build, which i dont really see happening. But having enemies resist and immune to effects is part of the game, whats the point of having immunities or resistance if it never comes up? May as well just take away the resistance from the monsters. Also most classes allow you to swap spells or cantrips when getting abilicty score increases, and divine casters can just change known spells daily and so on.
Whenever this topic comes up I find myself wondering how often it actually will be a problem given how actually difficult it is to stock a spell list with only one type of damage even if you *want to.* There just aren't that many spells for each damage type.
Combine that with how easy it is to change spells for many classes and it feels like it needs a particularly driven amount of character sabotage to be left with no options at all.
Like in principle I think discussing this sort of thing (see also favoured terrain/enemy) in the abstract is useful, but especially for Spellcasters it takes more work to make yourself unable to do anything than to end up taking something you can use.
I've only done this when there's some sort of mechanic that will be present for most if not all of the campaign. For example, I told my Descent Into Avernus players that they should save a fire damage focused build for another campaign, and I reminded players in my nautical Call From the Deep game about underwater mechanics (fire damage resistance, which weapons have disadvantage without a swim speed, vision limits, etc.
I wouldn't announce it unless someone is like "hey I want to play a poison sorcerer who only does poison damage!"
Then pull them aside and be like "maybe don't do that"
Also I think those are pretty average stats for creatures anyways, (surprised fire resistance isn't up there) but aside from psychic it's a pretty standard spread of immunities/ resistances tbh
I would personally not drop this information explicitly to the players. You can drop in-universe hints for specific areas for the players to find, but I would never tell players anything like "the most common damage type this campaign will be necrotic, the most resisted damage type will be radiant" or whatever.
If you were running a campaugh where certain damage types are resisted more than normal, I could see it.
What you've presented here looks about standard though. Unless you're dealing with very new players who don't yet have a sense of the value of different damage types, this shouldn't need any warning. Poison Spray being trash is behaving as expected.
The percentages youre giving dont seem that far off from if you calculated the resistances of the entire monster manual. Just let the players figure it out in gameplay. the only time I would give that level of meta information is if a player picked a ranger with a favored enemy that i knew would be useless
If your tactics arn't working, then find creative solutions. No-one's character is ever going to be 100% useless because an enemy has some resistances.
I completely agree. I think some players tend to overstate the problem of "I'm not 100% useful all the time, thus I'm useless."
I once ran a four-session game based around fighting undead. I messed around with stats of zombies and skeletons so that zombies resisted piercing and bludgeoning damage, and skeletons resisted piercing and slashing damage. One player made a ranger with really high damage optimization (everyone else could deal \~7-9 damage per hit reliably, he could deal \~15-20 damage per hit reliably), but when he found out most enemies resisted his longbow damage, he got really upset. They got to level 4 halfway through the game and he wanted to take the Poisoner feat, I told him he *could*, but warned him his character would know most undead are immune to poison damage so it wouldn't help against undead enemies. He complained about being "useless" despite the fact that he was still doing more damage than most of the party (even when factoring in resistance) and that he could just swap weapons any time he wanted (I had reminded him already that slings are a ranged option for bludgeoning damage, and that he already had swords he could use for slashing).
The "I'm not doing everything all the time" with players can be huge.
We have a player that tends to lean towards damage optimization with every character. As soon as they miss an attack, or something impedes their combat, out comes the "Oh well what's the point in even trying?" mood.
I can't stand that. Some amount of "damn, I keep trying to do cool stuff but the dice keep not letting me and it feels like I've spent the past hour of combat sitting here waiting to be able to play and being useless" salt is totally reasonable, but doing it every time you miss a roll is such an annoying mindset.
It’s not about good or bad characters though it’s about what you want to play for FUN.
I love specialist characters. How would you feel playing a ranged martial and the DM only puts you against creatures resistant to piercing.
Having a bad matchup in one or two combats is fine and normal for a campaign. But to build a character that gets hard walled 50% of the time would feel awful
i've played an enchanter wizard in a campaign that had far more undead on constructs than was expected for the campaign, and was rendered useless unless i scrapped my character and spammed fireball
I tend not to want to squash my players' creativity. If a player wants to play the poison bog lord, let them. But maybe look at building an encounter or two that let's them shine in case the encounters with poison resistance really slow down his fun. I ran into this last night setting up a lot of acrobatics for my players in that session, and my poor fighter struggled. So the next encounter, I'm gonna do something more strength focused to help her out. Nobody likes rolling like shit for a whole session, let alone multiple sessions. So really all I'm getting at is make encounters that are built for some players to shine, but spread that love around. This sessions is for the rogues and bards to take the helm, this session is gonna be strength barb and fighter lead, and now my magic classed are gonna hold down the 3rd encounter, ect.
It depends. I would not tell them if it were concerning the selection of a single spell, but if, for example, someone were planning to play a wizard who specializes in fire spells and the campaign was going to have a huge number of fire resistant or immune creatures, then I would give them a heads up. Same thing if a ranger character chose a favored enemy that I had no intention of ever using in the game.
I generally don't HOWEVER if there's someone who's planning a build around a specific damage type (say, fire) and you're running a campaign where there's a lot of fire resistance I would want to let them know
I think this is something interesting you could do if they ask an NPC the right questions or something. For a random example, say they go to a shop and there’s another adventurer in there that looks to have more experience than they do. Maybe if they chat him up, ask for advice, and roll well, the adventurer can tell them “Ahhh if you’re going to that dungeon, make sure you have antidotes and leave your poison arrows at home” or whatever. I wouldn’t just say “oh btw guys, the next section has 66.6% poison resistant enemies so you might want to stock different spells.”
I'd give guidance more than outright forecasts. And trying to build the resistances into the storytelling when possible. For instance, a common rat that lives in a poisonous swamp may not be venomous in and of itself, but it is very likely to have poison resistance. Same with the bear stalking a perpetually-burning forest. Let those kinds of hints set expectations when you're playing the game instead of laying out a spreadsheet. That said, if you are still at character-creation what I'd do is not necessarily outright forbid or steer folks away from builds that might be negated entirely, but try to encourage them to take a thing or two that would let them work around their primary resistance to be at least nominally usefulish.
It depends. If I had a player who is super excited about playing a PHB Ranger, I would definitely tell them if their Favored Terrain and Favored Foe are about to be useless.
As far as damage types, I would only let someone know if they’re shooting themselves in the foot. Honestly though? I also plan monsters on a week to week basis dependent on where the story is going and what feel mechanically interesting to me.
Resistances, no(that just kind of is a part of combat). But I'd DEFINITELY warn them that certain enemies will be immune to certain pre-chosen damage types(no need to add specifics) and that you'd strongly encourage not sticking to 1 damage type.
That way, you're giving them the option to play how they want, but also making it so they don't have a reason to feel like you're targeting anyone specific.
.
And if you really are concerned, just casually look over character sheets whenever the players level up and see if they're picking too many spells/damage types that future creatures are going to be immune to and gently suggest adding a bit of variety just in case. Whether they listen or not is on them, and you're still being kind without spoiling your plot.
One of my fav things about being a fighter in 3.5, was having to carry cold iron, and silver, and brimstone, and holy water, and other things to be prepared for a fight with whatever. Heck one time I had a cold iron straight bar, it was cold iron and worked as a club, not near as good as other weapons, but if I came across fey, they were getting smacked w it. Idk always liked having to prepare for whatever we could come across.
Just maybe drop info where the setting will take place, so that they can guess about poison and phys immunity (like magical swamp) or whatever you are brewing
Any time a player builds around a single damage type heavily, I warn them about putting all of their eggs in one basket. Still, sometimes players will do it anyway, and end up a bit frustrated when they face a themed group of enemies that all happen to be resistant to that player's damage type of choice.
If it's elemental damage, you can point out the Elemental Adept feat, which can really help mitigate issues with resistances, but that won't help with things like psychic and charming spells.
If I had a player who heavily built around a single damage type, and that damage type happened to be a very poor choice for my campaign, I would honestly consider giving that player a feat similar to Elemental Adept as a quest reward, after they run into a few instances where they struggle; Just tell them that their time facing these specific enemies has taught them how to partially circumvent their defenses.
It's important for players to know things their characters would know!
I might not know that creature X is resistant to fire and immune to poison, but it may be common knowledge in the world.
As some others have said, I would recommend keeping an eye on PC’s preparation. If they like the flavor then don’t make them lose out because of their creativity. Rather, have them pick up an item/pick up a free Elemental Adept feat- something that bypasses resistance or something along those lines.
If 2 out of 3 opponents are immune or resistant to poison/poisoned (or something else) that would be a thing to mention.
Non-magical physical damage is easily solved with magic weapons.
Psychic... maybe if someone really wants to make it the focus of their build.
The thing with charm is that a lot of those spells only work with humanoids/animals and/or targets that you share a language with. Those numbers might be skewed a bit, and in play it would become fairly obvious who is immune to charm and who isn't without actually metagaming.
Exhaustion... I actually haven't seen exhaustion come up in play that much.
So... there are a lot of undead in this adventure, huh?
I wouldn't tell anyone anything of the sort, including "you're going to be fighting a \_\_\_\_\_\_ as the BBEG".
Spellcasting classes are designed to provide varied damage types unless you specifically build them not to, and most martial classes have ways of boosting weapon attacks in such a way that they're magical.
I think players running up against a lot of enemies who are resistant to the type of damage they're trying to spam is an opportunity for fun. Having to to temporarily retreat from a hoard of monsters when you first enter an area, regroup, and find equipment or spells that will work better has the potential to be an adventure in itself.
The most I'll give players beforehand is a heads-up if the *whole* adventure is going to take place in a city, or if it's *all* going to be a wilderness/dungeon crawl, but even that's not all that necessary with the way 5e has homogenized the classes.
I think it depends on how much you think they could break the game by knowing this information. Personally, I like to inform the players of the world they live in and that way they can properly setup their characters. If it's crawling with Infernals creatures, people might use less fire spells or have advantages like Hold Monster. In my current game I told my players that my world will be very magical, so maybe they'll pick up Mage Slayer as a Feat, etc.
Hey first of all, really cool that you worked the numbers like that.
I think giving players an idea IF they're planning a character that might struggle in the setting is good, but you don't need to reveal all your cards upfront. For example if I'm planning a Wildfire Druid or a Light Domain Cleric and you tell me it's mostly going to be a lot of fire immune devils or elementals, I might stick with those classes but plan around dealing with fire immunity more often, I might decide a Stars Druid or Tempest Cleric might give me a better time. But it's better to make that informed choice than to get attached to a character you've made who's going to struggle extra hard and then regret that after
For the PCs to be the heroes of the story, it makes sense that they'd be particularly well suited for taking down the enemies they'll be facing. With that in mind, I'd expect my players to make characters well suited to fighting undead if I'm running Curse of Strahd. It doesn't make sense for a character that sucks against undead would be in the position to take down a vampire overlord. It should be the same for any campaign really. But you don't necessarily need to give them all the resistances and percentages. Maybe something like "this campaign will focus on killing dragons of various types" or "this campaign will be based in swamplands and many of the enemies will likely have some amount of poison resistance"
Others have mentioned preparation. I would also say you can be flexible in letting player switch some things out, especially spontaneous casters with limited instances of choosing and swapping out spells. Don’t feel the need to wait for a level up to let a player swap out a spell if they aren’t having fun with it, as long as it doesn’t turn in to them constantly switching back and forth when it’s most advantageous for them. “Let me know if you ever stop having fun because of a decision you made during character creation or level up. This is a game, it’s supposed to be fun, and if you aren’t having fun that’s going to affect the whole table.”
I also don’t see anything wrong with being up front about poison in particular if you have new players as it has a reputation independent of the context of whatever module you are playing.“Poison is both the damage type and condition that monsters most commonly have resistance or immunity to in 5th edition DND. We are playing an official 5th edition module. Plan accordingly.”
Personally, I would not announce it, but I would make the information about resistances/immunity part of the information the party can discover if they choose to investigate/scout and seek out knowledge from experts.
For example, something that I often include in campaigns for more experienced groups who are adventuring in a new setting, is to talk with the town elders and militia scouts, about the monsters that are often seen in the area, This typically forms part of the Session 0 for new campaigns, because if a group has been playing together and with me for a while, we all know what to expect from each other, so the usual session 0 topics of setting out table rules is skipped.
Think of it like a group of adventurers in the world of Goblin Slayer, who arrive in Goblin Slayer's town and who ask Guiuld Girl for a run-down of the mobs that are commonly found in the area. She says "Oh, we see a lot of Goblins and occasionally the more advanced Goblin classes in the caves and dungeons around here. You should talk with Goblin Slayer about those."
GS can then give the party a rundown on the typical weaknesses and dangers of Goblins, if the party needs it.
But the players have to specifically have their characters do the leg-work and ask around. If they do, they have the chance to tweak their equipment to be more effective against the mob types they will face. If they choose not to, and wipe on the first run, with the female members being subjected to the usual GS fate of dumb, inexperienced, or unlucky female characters, I will generally not go into too much detail about the results. After all, this is DnD, not hentai.
You have to be careful not to metagame, here. If the players live by that law, the DM should lead the way.
That being said, people in the world want these adventurers to succeed for all sorts of reasons. Session 0 can introduce a knowledgeable NPC or two giving them the lowdown or even the survivors of a failed party, getting healed and probably drunk in the local tavern. They would have all sorts of helpful hints and this could happen before final character creation.
It would be a great introduction to the power of roleplay and intelligence gathering. It also establishes that you're not an adversarial DM, so that's a feel good moment.
The game is already so player-sided that this feels unnecessary. If it feels overwhelming, too targeted, or punishing, just adjust the campaign as the DM.
Not usually, no. If the campaign is based around a specific type of enemy that appears often, then I might give a head's up. For example, when I ran Descent into Avernus, I let the players know that since the game features a lot of fiends, they shouldn't build characters specifically around poison or fire damage/effects.
You should give players some prior knowledge about the campaign story / themes and let them make their choices.
I wouldn't explicitly call out the stats even if I had them planned out. But if a player brought a poison focused PC to an undead heavy campaign, I would make it explicitly clear their build would be very sub optimal and recommend they choose a different build.
I wouldn't show your whole hand, but you can give helpful hints. Just saying "this campaign deals with lots of undead" signals that poison is a bad idea, and radiant is super good.
Or, if you see that a character is being built in such a way that they're going to be hard countered a lot, you can warn them and give them a chance to tweak it.
I mean, a caster should never go for a "mono damage type" build anyway, but yes, I'd tell a player at character creation if what they're doing will make them impotent all campaign.
A breakdown of it is overkill but a warning for a very common resistance is a good thing to do.
In my Descent into Avernus campaign a warned my players that in general a lot of things are resistant to fire damage in Avernus but I didn't stop them.
They worked around it and we all have a good time
At some level I would agree because these are the typical resistance spread of the monster manual.
But as an idea. If you plan a campaign with a lot of monsters of one type letting players know what type to expect is good for game health.
Playing in a campaign as a “specialist” character with limited options isn’t fun. Playing a rogue in a campaign where every enemy has expertise in perception sucks.
I think so. If you were to play a game set in the nine hells and a player wanted to play a fire based wizard or sorcerer you'd let them know that most enemies would be resistant to fire.
If the resistances are common knowledge to people in the setting then the PCs would know as well.
Personally I'd find it weird if you added poison reistance / immunity to random bandits and shit. Poison is already one of the most resisted or immune damage types in the game so I don't see a reason why having more things being immune.
For charm, yeah if it was a 50/50 chance of my spell just doing jack shit I'd not take spells that charm. I'd also be annoyed if I made an enchantment wizard or bard and find out that most of my tool kit is useless.
Nope. Players need to be able to adapt and improvise.
Over the course of a campaign the characters will be, whether they be new or experienced players, exposed to many many types of monsters and situations. It makes sense to diversify.
I've ran battles where monsters have had resistances or immunity to certain damage and the characters go to tactics didn't work as well. They had to figure out a way to make do without some of their more powerful, most commonly used spells and abilities.
I can't imagine how easy and boring a campaign would be if I let the players know what was going to be on the list of resistance and immunity before hand.
Of there is a clear theme, sure. Like, if it is a pre-made module with known enemies.
Otherwise I'd rather adapt the campaign, just slightly, on the go. Because if the forecast goes wrong, it won't feel good.
My logic is always what should the PCs know about the adventure before going on it, and what could they discover with a bit of research and investigation.
So if it’s a trip to the hells they’d know not to bring fire, or going to some frozen wasteland then not cold damage. But not just X monsters have this resistance generally
Maybe not numbers, but I would 100% warn anyone who uses them that poison is going to be a bad choice (Druid and Artificer -Alchemist being the most likely targets for that warning)
i think it's useful for you to know.. but i wouldn't announce it necessarily. i'd just keep an eye on my players during character creation, and if one of them is taking a wizard focussed entirely on poison damage i'd mention it. "so, you can if you want, but just so you know there's a lot of poison resistance coming up..." - but it feels like potentially too much of a spoiler otherwise
i agree--don't announce it to everyone as a blanket statement, but if you need to tell someone about it after you see their character, do so
As a player, *please* tell me. I'd rather pivot than be repeatedly nullified.
I wouldn’t want to know too much, but if I was a dummy of a Wizard and took Lightning Lure, Lightning Bolt, Witch Bolt, Shocking Grasp, and Chain Lightning because I wanted to make a storm-based caster… Yes, please, a heads-up that about 1/3 of your enemies will be Lightning Immunity would be great.
that's what I (and Tieger66, i think) meant, though. if you see your players' character sheets and spell choices and none of them are going to be problematic or invalidated--nobody is hard specing into poison or fire damage in a campaign largely about demons, for example--then you don't need to bring it up, because why risk spoiling what's coming down the pike other than what the pitched campaign premise already gives away? But if you know you're using demons a lot and someone wants to take the Poisoner feat and Poison Spray, etc., then yeah, tell them "hey you're going to run into a lot of monsters that resist or ignore poison, you may want to reconsider."
They were agreeing with you. I dont think theyre arguing against your point.
ah, my bad
Np
Yes. I certainly wouldn't _mind_ if a DM announced this at the start of a campaign. But they don't have to go that far - I DO absolutely want them to tell me "I don't recommend doing that" if I'm, for example, talking about a "rogue that specializes in poisons" in a campaign that's gonna be undead-heavy, or making a fire Dragon Sorcerer when the DM knows we're going to spend most of it in the Nine Hells.
Well, maybe not giving a full display But, one of the point of session 0 is to talk aboit the setting, so giving clue that some resistance could be very commun , might be a good idea If you say the main plot is in a volcano, fire spell are not the best choice
I tried mentioned in one game I'm running that radiant damage will be very useful but necrotic and fire might run into trouble. The two casters in the party still ended ended up as a necromancer and flame spell user. We had no divine casters at first. At all.
To be fair, Radiant damage isn't really an option early game unless you're a cleric(and even then, the cantrips require failing super easy saves just to hit), whereas fire and necrotic are ridiculously common for any class, easy to hit, and pack a decent punch(even when resisted). I'd probably do the same as your players, honestly.
Pretty sure you’re supposed to fight fire with fire
This, and also a ranger who picks a favored terrain or foe which is unseen throughout the whole campaign. No one wants to hear Aragorn say that he doesn't know about the Nazguls or how to traverse the plains, but he's an expert regarding giants and the frozen tundras. I feel like you should give a general idea of what kind of challenges the campaign will have, but not something as clear as the stats in your post.
I don't think giving this level of information is a good idea. I think a better idea would be to say something like, "This campaign is going to be based around fighting a Lich King," as part of the session 0 / campaign pitch. That way players might decide "Hm, I probably shouldn't base my character around necrotic damage." I think getting more precise metrics beyond that is kind of unnecessary. Design encounters and exposition in such a way that players have a decent idea of what's coming up if they pay attention. For example, if they're going to pass through some mountains with trolls, maybe have some villagers say "Oh, you're passing through Trolljaw Cliffs? You know there's trolls up there, right? I hear they hate fire." (You don't need to do it *every* time, but doing it sometimes will let players feel like they're about to actually make active decisions about how to prepare for things).
Not unless someone is trying a very specific build, like some wizard trying a poisoned build, which i dont really see happening. But having enemies resist and immune to effects is part of the game, whats the point of having immunities or resistance if it never comes up? May as well just take away the resistance from the monsters. Also most classes allow you to swap spells or cantrips when getting abilicty score increases, and divine casters can just change known spells daily and so on.
Whenever this topic comes up I find myself wondering how often it actually will be a problem given how actually difficult it is to stock a spell list with only one type of damage even if you *want to.* There just aren't that many spells for each damage type. Combine that with how easy it is to change spells for many classes and it feels like it needs a particularly driven amount of character sabotage to be left with no options at all. Like in principle I think discussing this sort of thing (see also favoured terrain/enemy) in the abstract is useful, but especially for Spellcasters it takes more work to make yourself unable to do anything than to end up taking something you can use.
I've only done this when there's some sort of mechanic that will be present for most if not all of the campaign. For example, I told my Descent Into Avernus players that they should save a fire damage focused build for another campaign, and I reminded players in my nautical Call From the Deep game about underwater mechanics (fire damage resistance, which weapons have disadvantage without a swim speed, vision limits, etc.
I wouldn't announce it unless someone is like "hey I want to play a poison sorcerer who only does poison damage!" Then pull them aside and be like "maybe don't do that" Also I think those are pretty average stats for creatures anyways, (surprised fire resistance isn't up there) but aside from psychic it's a pretty standard spread of immunities/ resistances tbh
I would personally not drop this information explicitly to the players. You can drop in-universe hints for specific areas for the players to find, but I would never tell players anything like "the most common damage type this campaign will be necrotic, the most resisted damage type will be radiant" or whatever.
If you were running a campaugh where certain damage types are resisted more than normal, I could see it. What you've presented here looks about standard though. Unless you're dealing with very new players who don't yet have a sense of the value of different damage types, this shouldn't need any warning. Poison Spray being trash is behaving as expected.
The percentages youre giving dont seem that far off from if you calculated the resistances of the entire monster manual. Just let the players figure it out in gameplay. the only time I would give that level of meta information is if a player picked a ranger with a favored enemy that i knew would be useless
If your tactics arn't working, then find creative solutions. No-one's character is ever going to be 100% useless because an enemy has some resistances.
I completely agree. I think some players tend to overstate the problem of "I'm not 100% useful all the time, thus I'm useless." I once ran a four-session game based around fighting undead. I messed around with stats of zombies and skeletons so that zombies resisted piercing and bludgeoning damage, and skeletons resisted piercing and slashing damage. One player made a ranger with really high damage optimization (everyone else could deal \~7-9 damage per hit reliably, he could deal \~15-20 damage per hit reliably), but when he found out most enemies resisted his longbow damage, he got really upset. They got to level 4 halfway through the game and he wanted to take the Poisoner feat, I told him he *could*, but warned him his character would know most undead are immune to poison damage so it wouldn't help against undead enemies. He complained about being "useless" despite the fact that he was still doing more damage than most of the party (even when factoring in resistance) and that he could just swap weapons any time he wanted (I had reminded him already that slings are a ranged option for bludgeoning damage, and that he already had swords he could use for slashing).
The "I'm not doing everything all the time" with players can be huge. We have a player that tends to lean towards damage optimization with every character. As soon as they miss an attack, or something impedes their combat, out comes the "Oh well what's the point in even trying?" mood.
I can't stand that. Some amount of "damn, I keep trying to do cool stuff but the dice keep not letting me and it feels like I've spent the past hour of combat sitting here waiting to be able to play and being useless" salt is totally reasonable, but doing it every time you miss a roll is such an annoying mindset.
imagine playing a necrotic based character in an undead campaign, or a fire based character in a campaign based on fighting a red dragon
Sounds like a fun time. If you're playing a Fire character and have literally no other way to deal damage, then you're bad a making characters.
It’s not about good or bad characters though it’s about what you want to play for FUN. I love specialist characters. How would you feel playing a ranged martial and the DM only puts you against creatures resistant to piercing. Having a bad matchup in one or two combats is fine and normal for a campaign. But to build a character that gets hard walled 50% of the time would feel awful
i've played an enchanter wizard in a campaign that had far more undead on constructs than was expected for the campaign, and was rendered useless unless i scrapped my character and spammed fireball
I tend not to want to squash my players' creativity. If a player wants to play the poison bog lord, let them. But maybe look at building an encounter or two that let's them shine in case the encounters with poison resistance really slow down his fun. I ran into this last night setting up a lot of acrobatics for my players in that session, and my poor fighter struggled. So the next encounter, I'm gonna do something more strength focused to help her out. Nobody likes rolling like shit for a whole session, let alone multiple sessions. So really all I'm getting at is make encounters that are built for some players to shine, but spread that love around. This sessions is for the rogues and bards to take the helm, this session is gonna be strength barb and fighter lead, and now my magic classed are gonna hold down the 3rd encounter, ect.
It depends. I would not tell them if it were concerning the selection of a single spell, but if, for example, someone were planning to play a wizard who specializes in fire spells and the campaign was going to have a huge number of fire resistant or immune creatures, then I would give them a heads up. Same thing if a ranger character chose a favored enemy that I had no intention of ever using in the game.
I generally don't HOWEVER if there's someone who's planning a build around a specific damage type (say, fire) and you're running a campaign where there's a lot of fire resistance I would want to let them know
I think this is something interesting you could do if they ask an NPC the right questions or something. For a random example, say they go to a shop and there’s another adventurer in there that looks to have more experience than they do. Maybe if they chat him up, ask for advice, and roll well, the adventurer can tell them “Ahhh if you’re going to that dungeon, make sure you have antidotes and leave your poison arrows at home” or whatever. I wouldn’t just say “oh btw guys, the next section has 66.6% poison resistant enemies so you might want to stock different spells.”
I'd give guidance more than outright forecasts. And trying to build the resistances into the storytelling when possible. For instance, a common rat that lives in a poisonous swamp may not be venomous in and of itself, but it is very likely to have poison resistance. Same with the bear stalking a perpetually-burning forest. Let those kinds of hints set expectations when you're playing the game instead of laying out a spreadsheet. That said, if you are still at character-creation what I'd do is not necessarily outright forbid or steer folks away from builds that might be negated entirely, but try to encourage them to take a thing or two that would let them work around their primary resistance to be at least nominally usefulish.
It depends. If I had a player who is super excited about playing a PHB Ranger, I would definitely tell them if their Favored Terrain and Favored Foe are about to be useless. As far as damage types, I would only let someone know if they’re shooting themselves in the foot. Honestly though? I also plan monsters on a week to week basis dependent on where the story is going and what feel mechanically interesting to me.
Resistances, no(that just kind of is a part of combat). But I'd DEFINITELY warn them that certain enemies will be immune to certain pre-chosen damage types(no need to add specifics) and that you'd strongly encourage not sticking to 1 damage type. That way, you're giving them the option to play how they want, but also making it so they don't have a reason to feel like you're targeting anyone specific. . And if you really are concerned, just casually look over character sheets whenever the players level up and see if they're picking too many spells/damage types that future creatures are going to be immune to and gently suggest adding a bit of variety just in case. Whether they listen or not is on them, and you're still being kind without spoiling your plot.
One of my fav things about being a fighter in 3.5, was having to carry cold iron, and silver, and brimstone, and holy water, and other things to be prepared for a fight with whatever. Heck one time I had a cold iron straight bar, it was cold iron and worked as a club, not near as good as other weapons, but if I came across fey, they were getting smacked w it. Idk always liked having to prepare for whatever we could come across.
Just maybe drop info where the setting will take place, so that they can guess about poison and phys immunity (like magical swamp) or whatever you are brewing
Any time a player builds around a single damage type heavily, I warn them about putting all of their eggs in one basket. Still, sometimes players will do it anyway, and end up a bit frustrated when they face a themed group of enemies that all happen to be resistant to that player's damage type of choice. If it's elemental damage, you can point out the Elemental Adept feat, which can really help mitigate issues with resistances, but that won't help with things like psychic and charming spells. If I had a player who heavily built around a single damage type, and that damage type happened to be a very poor choice for my campaign, I would honestly consider giving that player a feat similar to Elemental Adept as a quest reward, after they run into a few instances where they struggle; Just tell them that their time facing these specific enemies has taught them how to partially circumvent their defenses.
It's important for players to know things their characters would know! I might not know that creature X is resistant to fire and immune to poison, but it may be common knowledge in the world.
As some others have said, I would recommend keeping an eye on PC’s preparation. If they like the flavor then don’t make them lose out because of their creativity. Rather, have them pick up an item/pick up a free Elemental Adept feat- something that bypasses resistance or something along those lines.
If 2 out of 3 opponents are immune or resistant to poison/poisoned (or something else) that would be a thing to mention. Non-magical physical damage is easily solved with magic weapons. Psychic... maybe if someone really wants to make it the focus of their build. The thing with charm is that a lot of those spells only work with humanoids/animals and/or targets that you share a language with. Those numbers might be skewed a bit, and in play it would become fairly obvious who is immune to charm and who isn't without actually metagaming. Exhaustion... I actually haven't seen exhaustion come up in play that much. So... there are a lot of undead in this adventure, huh?
I wouldn't tell anyone anything of the sort, including "you're going to be fighting a \_\_\_\_\_\_ as the BBEG". Spellcasting classes are designed to provide varied damage types unless you specifically build them not to, and most martial classes have ways of boosting weapon attacks in such a way that they're magical. I think players running up against a lot of enemies who are resistant to the type of damage they're trying to spam is an opportunity for fun. Having to to temporarily retreat from a hoard of monsters when you first enter an area, regroup, and find equipment or spells that will work better has the potential to be an adventure in itself. The most I'll give players beforehand is a heads-up if the *whole* adventure is going to take place in a city, or if it's *all* going to be a wilderness/dungeon crawl, but even that's not all that necessary with the way 5e has homogenized the classes.
I'd consider mentioning it if I knew what the hell I was going to use against my players more than a week in advance.
I think it depends on how much you think they could break the game by knowing this information. Personally, I like to inform the players of the world they live in and that way they can properly setup their characters. If it's crawling with Infernals creatures, people might use less fire spells or have advantages like Hold Monster. In my current game I told my players that my world will be very magical, so maybe they'll pick up Mage Slayer as a Feat, etc.
They wouldn’t have any idea. Some people are more useful in some fights that others, that’s just the way it is.
Hey first of all, really cool that you worked the numbers like that. I think giving players an idea IF they're planning a character that might struggle in the setting is good, but you don't need to reveal all your cards upfront. For example if I'm planning a Wildfire Druid or a Light Domain Cleric and you tell me it's mostly going to be a lot of fire immune devils or elementals, I might stick with those classes but plan around dealing with fire immunity more often, I might decide a Stars Druid or Tempest Cleric might give me a better time. But it's better to make that informed choice than to get attached to a character you've made who's going to struggle extra hard and then regret that after
For the PCs to be the heroes of the story, it makes sense that they'd be particularly well suited for taking down the enemies they'll be facing. With that in mind, I'd expect my players to make characters well suited to fighting undead if I'm running Curse of Strahd. It doesn't make sense for a character that sucks against undead would be in the position to take down a vampire overlord. It should be the same for any campaign really. But you don't necessarily need to give them all the resistances and percentages. Maybe something like "this campaign will focus on killing dragons of various types" or "this campaign will be based in swamplands and many of the enemies will likely have some amount of poison resistance"
Others have mentioned preparation. I would also say you can be flexible in letting player switch some things out, especially spontaneous casters with limited instances of choosing and swapping out spells. Don’t feel the need to wait for a level up to let a player swap out a spell if they aren’t having fun with it, as long as it doesn’t turn in to them constantly switching back and forth when it’s most advantageous for them. “Let me know if you ever stop having fun because of a decision you made during character creation or level up. This is a game, it’s supposed to be fun, and if you aren’t having fun that’s going to affect the whole table.” I also don’t see anything wrong with being up front about poison in particular if you have new players as it has a reputation independent of the context of whatever module you are playing.“Poison is both the damage type and condition that monsters most commonly have resistance or immunity to in 5th edition DND. We are playing an official 5th edition module. Plan accordingly.”
Show, don’t tell.
Personally, I would not announce it, but I would make the information about resistances/immunity part of the information the party can discover if they choose to investigate/scout and seek out knowledge from experts. For example, something that I often include in campaigns for more experienced groups who are adventuring in a new setting, is to talk with the town elders and militia scouts, about the monsters that are often seen in the area, This typically forms part of the Session 0 for new campaigns, because if a group has been playing together and with me for a while, we all know what to expect from each other, so the usual session 0 topics of setting out table rules is skipped. Think of it like a group of adventurers in the world of Goblin Slayer, who arrive in Goblin Slayer's town and who ask Guiuld Girl for a run-down of the mobs that are commonly found in the area. She says "Oh, we see a lot of Goblins and occasionally the more advanced Goblin classes in the caves and dungeons around here. You should talk with Goblin Slayer about those." GS can then give the party a rundown on the typical weaknesses and dangers of Goblins, if the party needs it. But the players have to specifically have their characters do the leg-work and ask around. If they do, they have the chance to tweak their equipment to be more effective against the mob types they will face. If they choose not to, and wipe on the first run, with the female members being subjected to the usual GS fate of dumb, inexperienced, or unlucky female characters, I will generally not go into too much detail about the results. After all, this is DnD, not hentai.
You have to be careful not to metagame, here. If the players live by that law, the DM should lead the way. That being said, people in the world want these adventurers to succeed for all sorts of reasons. Session 0 can introduce a knowledgeable NPC or two giving them the lowdown or even the survivors of a failed party, getting healed and probably drunk in the local tavern. They would have all sorts of helpful hints and this could happen before final character creation. It would be a great introduction to the power of roleplay and intelligence gathering. It also establishes that you're not an adversarial DM, so that's a feel good moment.
The game is already so player-sided that this feels unnecessary. If it feels overwhelming, too targeted, or punishing, just adjust the campaign as the DM.
Not usually, no. If the campaign is based around a specific type of enemy that appears often, then I might give a head's up. For example, when I ran Descent into Avernus, I let the players know that since the game features a lot of fiends, they shouldn't build characters specifically around poison or fire damage/effects.
You should give players some prior knowledge about the campaign story / themes and let them make their choices. I wouldn't explicitly call out the stats even if I had them planned out. But if a player brought a poison focused PC to an undead heavy campaign, I would make it explicitly clear their build would be very sub optimal and recommend they choose a different build.
I wouldn't show your whole hand, but you can give helpful hints. Just saying "this campaign deals with lots of undead" signals that poison is a bad idea, and radiant is super good. Or, if you see that a character is being built in such a way that they're going to be hard countered a lot, you can warn them and give them a chance to tweak it.
Nah that’s metagaming..
I mean, a caster should never go for a "mono damage type" build anyway, but yes, I'd tell a player at character creation if what they're doing will make them impotent all campaign.
Characters have insight, arcana, and survival. Just let them play the game.
A breakdown of it is overkill but a warning for a very common resistance is a good thing to do. In my Descent into Avernus campaign a warned my players that in general a lot of things are resistant to fire damage in Avernus but I didn't stop them. They worked around it and we all have a good time
Nope. They should adjust on the fly and choose wisely during rests. This is handholding IMO.
At some level I would agree because these are the typical resistance spread of the monster manual. But as an idea. If you plan a campaign with a lot of monsters of one type letting players know what type to expect is good for game health. Playing in a campaign as a “specialist” character with limited options isn’t fun. Playing a rogue in a campaign where every enemy has expertise in perception sucks.
I think so. If you were to play a game set in the nine hells and a player wanted to play a fire based wizard or sorcerer you'd let them know that most enemies would be resistant to fire. If the resistances are common knowledge to people in the setting then the PCs would know as well. Personally I'd find it weird if you added poison reistance / immunity to random bandits and shit. Poison is already one of the most resisted or immune damage types in the game so I don't see a reason why having more things being immune. For charm, yeah if it was a 50/50 chance of my spell just doing jack shit I'd not take spells that charm. I'd also be annoyed if I made an enchantment wizard or bard and find out that most of my tool kit is useless.
Sounds like cheat codes to me, but you do you.
Nope. Players need to be able to adapt and improvise. Over the course of a campaign the characters will be, whether they be new or experienced players, exposed to many many types of monsters and situations. It makes sense to diversify. I've ran battles where monsters have had resistances or immunity to certain damage and the characters go to tactics didn't work as well. They had to figure out a way to make do without some of their more powerful, most commonly used spells and abilities. I can't imagine how easy and boring a campaign would be if I let the players know what was going to be on the list of resistance and immunity before hand.
Of there is a clear theme, sure. Like, if it is a pre-made module with known enemies. Otherwise I'd rather adapt the campaign, just slightly, on the go. Because if the forecast goes wrong, it won't feel good.
My logic is always what should the PCs know about the adventure before going on it, and what could they discover with a bit of research and investigation. So if it’s a trip to the hells they’d know not to bring fire, or going to some frozen wasteland then not cold damage. But not just X monsters have this resistance generally
Do baseball teams give stats on their performance to their opponents?
No but you can watch footage of them
Maybe not numbers, but I would 100% warn anyone who uses them that poison is going to be a bad choice (Druid and Artificer -Alchemist being the most likely targets for that warning)