Mike Mearls Games
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Damage Types, Yes or No?
🕑 Added 2025-02-05 19:33:29 +0000 UTCIf you had a chance to read over the first draft of Odyssey, you can see that I've dropped damage types from the game.
Instead, I'm using a system of tags to describe objects in the game. Weapons are labeled as bludgeon, blade, and so on.
If it's important that a creature interact with these, it could have a feature like this:
Brittle: If this creature takes damage from a bludgeon, it must make a trained Constitution check (DC 15) or take an additional 2d10 damage.
For things like energy resistance, I'm considering adding a clause to specific spells like this:
Fire Creatures: A fire creature takes no damage from this spell.
A fire elemental would be a fire creature. Here's a counter example. Imagine a spell that fires a jet of water to knock a target back.
Fire Creatures: A fire creature takes an additional 2d10 damage from this spell.
The benefit of this approach is that it allows more interesting spell interactions and gives a designer finer control over how spells work, at the cost of added complexity.
To keep things simple, I'm removing the distinction between resistance and immunity. I'd rather have a bigger effect, than one smaller one and one larger one. It reduces complexity and means that we have only one tag to add to a creature.
My sense is that this would mean that damage types overall become much less important. They are no longer attached to every spell or attack. When they matter, they have a bigger impact and are worth the slow down.
What are your thoughts on damage types?
Comments
Nuntius Mortis
If I understood this correctly, tagging weapons, objects, creatures would end up building a set of keywords would result in a system similar to damage types. I can see the benefits of this system, but if you want to reduce complexity and encourage creativity, I advise dropping labels/tags on one side of the damage interaction - damage givers (weapons/spells) or damage takers (objects/monsters) - and leave it to the DM to decide when immunities/resitances/vulnerabilities apply and to what extent, with maybe some descriptive guidelines on the tags list, but not make it a hard rule.
Matt W.
I like this approach. The division between B/S/P for physical (normal) damage was almost always a waste of ink since many weapons can do multiple types but players aren't asked to declare a slashing or thrusting attack, or if they are using the hammer or spike. Obviously there is a type of player who wants weapon type, weapon speed, individual weapon mastery, etc (It's me, I'm that player) but I think the vast majority of people see that as an unfun slow down (It's also me, I want the juice but I don't want the squeeze.) But if it's a tag (like brittle) maybe the fighter sheaths his sword and pulls out a mace for that situational benefit.
