Resistance Revamped (3.5e Variant Rule)
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Resistance Revamped
In my years of making homebrew and playing with said homebrew I've found that the schism between resistance and immunity to something is massively huge, and at the same time there have been popping up a great number of special and super powerful variants of a certain damage type that partially or fully ignore immunity of that damage type, like hellfire and hellfrost, against which resistance is completely useless. And as a result of that, stuff like True Immunity started popping up to combat all of these super special energy types that bypass resistance and immunity which will no doubt prompt the creation of super duper ultra special forms of the already super special type of energy that bypasses even that and my head is starting to hurt just writing the introduction to this page because it's getting a little stupid.
I don't believe in absolute immunity, nor do I believe in absolute forms of damage. Any damage should be able to be prevented, and any immunity should be able to be pierced. That does not mean it has to be easy to do so, however.
Sliding Scale of Vulnerability, Resistance and Immunity.
Resistance to energy now comes in ranks.
- Rank -2 — Vulnerable: You take 200% damage from the energy type. You can't get more vulnerable than this.
- Rank -1 — Susceptible: You take 150% damage from the energy type (rounded up).
- Rank 0 — Normal: You take 100% damage from the energy type.
- Rank 1 — Resistant: You take 50% damage from the energy type (halved, rounded up).
- Rank 2 — Protected: You take 25% damage from the energy type (halved twice, rounded up each time).
- Rank 3 — Immune: You take no damage from the energy type.
- Rank 4 — Immune+: You take even more no damage from the energy type.
- Rank 5 — Immune++: You take a shitton of no damage from the energy type.
Basically, rank 4 or 5 (and possibly 6, 7, etcetera) are there to show how overresistant a creature can be, and that that resistance can still be overcome with enough awesome. For instance, spells and effects that confer resistance or immunity instead grant one or more ranks of resistance, and especially strong varieties of a specific damage type, such as the hellfire used in the above example, will no longer nix immunity altogether but rather reduce the affected creature's resistance to fire by one or more ranks.
Suggested Changes to Existing Source Material
- Resist energy confers a +1 enhancement bonus to the target's resistance rank against the chosen energy type.
- Energy immunitySpC confers a +3 enhancement bonus to the target's resistance rank against the chosen energy type.
- Protection from energy confers an effective +5 enhancement bonus to the target's resistance rank against the chosen energy type, but it disappears once 10 points of damage per caster level are absorbed by the spell (max. 100).
- Creatures that have vulnerability to an energy type instead have rank -1 resistance against that energy type.
- Creatures that have resistance to an energy type instead have rank 1 resistance against that energy type. A creature with a resistance of 20 or more instead has rank 2 resistance against that energy type.
- Creatures that are immune to a specific type of energy have at least rank 3 resistance against that energy type. If the creature also has the corresponding subtype (i.e. Fire), or is made of the energy in question, it has at least rank 4 resistance against that energy type.
- Spellcasters that focus on dealing damage with a specific element should probably have access to feats and/or abilities that negate one or more ranks of the corresponding resistance.
Resistances to other types of effect?
Work in progress. Wanna see a specific type of resistance. Feel free to write something on this article's talk page.
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