Resistance
| Main > Abilities |
A creature with resistance has the ability (extraordinary or supernatural) to ignore some damage of a certain type per attack, but it does not have total immunity. This resistance may be due to the ability to instantly heal the damage, or to simply ignore it to a certain degree.
Some magic creatures have the supernatural ability to instantly heal damage from weapons or ignore attack altogether as though they were invulnerable.
The numerical part of a creature’s resistance is the amount of damage the creature ignores from normal attacks. This followed by a parenthesis in which is noted which kind of damage is resisted. This information may be followed by a slash denoting a type of attack that ignores the resistance. For example, "resistance 5 (weapons/magic)" means that a creature takes 5 less points of damage from all weapons that are not magic. If there is no slash, then the resistance is effective against any attack that does not ignore resistance.
| Resistance Type | Description | Overcome Types | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| weapons | includes both manufactured and natural weapons | adamantine, cold iron, silver | types of materials |
| bludgeoning, piercing, slashing | types of physical damage | bludgeoning, piercing, slashing | may overcome weapon resistance |
| energy | protects against all the types of damage below | good, evil, law, chaos | alignments |
| acid, cold, electricity, fire, force, necrotic, psychic, radiant, sonic |
types of energy damage | acid, cold, electricity, fire, force, necrotic, psychic, radiant, sonic |
may overcome energy resistance |
| magic | magical weapons or spells may overcome specific types of other damage |
Whenever resistance completely negates the damage from an attack, it also negates most special effects that accompany the attack, such as injury poison and injury-based disease. Attacks that deal no damage because of the target’s resistance do not disrupt spells.
If a creature has resistance against the same type of damage from more than one source, the two forms of resistance do not stack. Instead, the creature gets the benefit of the best resistance in a given situation. If a creature has multiple resistances against different types of damage, each type of resistance can be applied against each type of damage. For example, a creature with "resistance 5 (weapons) and 3 (fire)" that is hit by a flaming sword for 8 slashing damage and 2 fire damage, can reduce the slashing (weapon) damage to 3, and the fire damage to 0, ignoring any chance of being set on fire, but still being affected by injury-based poisons on the sword.
Ammunition fired from a magical projectile weapon is treated as a magic weapon for the purpose of overcoming resistance. Similarly, ammunition fired from a projectile weapon with an alignment gains the alignment of that projectile weapon (in addition to any alignment it may already have).
Examples
resistance 5 (weapons) Reduce all weapon damage by 5.
resistance 5 (slashing) Reduce all slashing weapon damage by 5.
resistance 5 (fire) Reduce all fire damage by 5.
resistance 5 (weapons/magic) Reduce all weapon damage by 5, except against magic weapons.
resistance 5 (slashing/silver) Reduce all slashing weapon damage by 5, except against silver weapons.
resistance 5 (energy/fire)Reduce all energy damage by 5, except fire.
resistance 5 (cold and fire) Reduce all cold and fire damage by 5.
resistance 5 (cold and fire/magic) Reduce all cold and fire damage by 5, except from magic.
15. COPYRIGHT NOTICE
System Reference Document. Copyright 2000, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.; Authors Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, Skip Williams, based on material by E. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson.