Café de Nuit

hi all,

I have the RL 3E book, the campaign setting and the D&D Core Rules 3.5. This leads to a bit of confusion, since I'm running my campaign in 3.5. I heard that 3.5 had reduced Damage Reduction across the board, and now I see hints of it: in the RL book, lycanthropes have DR 15/<material>, but in the MM 3.5 they are 5/silver for an infected lycanthrope and 10/<silver> for a true lycanthrope. Are these consistent with RL 3.5?
Also, the Shield of Ezra (iirc the name of the power) gives DR 25 to the anchorite. Has this been changed too? How much should it be then?

Thanks all.

Ail

About the Lycanthropes it seems strange to me. I believe they should have 5/silver and 10/silver as you said.

About the anchorites I believe it should be 20/epic

Ail wrote:I have the RL 3E book, the campaign setting and the D&D Core Rules 3.5. This leads to a bit of confusion, since I'm running my campaign in 3.5. I heard that 3.5 had reduced Damage Reduction across the board, and now I see hints of it: in the RL book, lycanthropes have DR 15/<material>, but in the MM 3.5 they are 5/silver for an infected lycanthrope and 10/<silver> for a true lycanthrope. Are these consistent with RL 3.5

Well, in 3E, magic items could pierce special material damage reduction but in 3.5E ONLY silver can pierce 5/silver damage reduction. That is why I think that it is lower; to compensate for the lack of versatility of weapons that will work.

Conversely, some creatures which originally had DR #/+? in 3E now have an increased DR # in front of the slash, to compensate for the removal of "plus"-graduated "magic" vulnerabilities. Thus a monster that had DR 10/+2 in 3E might have DR 15/magic now, because it's now vulnerable to any magical weapon. This would mostly be an issue for dread elementals and golems, so check how the 3.5 rules treat DR for the "standard" (=non-'dread') versions of those monsters.

The 3.0 MM has lycanthropes with 15/silver. The 3.0 RLCS just allows for different metals for the different phenotypes, it doesn't change the 15.

The 3.5 MM reduced the DR for lycanthropes to 5/silver and 10/silver (as Stygian Inquirer said, to compensate for magic weapons not working on DR #/silver). The 3.5 RLPH, being a relatively poor update rules-wise, missed that and still lists the same 15/<metal> choices as in the RLCS. I would recommend making it 5/<metal> and 10/<metal>. I assume that's what would've been done if the RLPH was updated correctly.

EDIT: Oh yeah, the anchorites. In the RLCS it's 25/+5 vs. metal weapons. The RLPH says 25/magic against metal weapons. This is kind of terrible. Since the point is that ezra protects her faithful with a near-perfect sheild against metal weapons, it seems silly to let a simple +1 weapon bypass it. I think alhoon is right. It should be #/epic, or more accurately: #/(epic or non-metal), which I think is legal in 3.5. As for what the number should be, I'm not sure. 25 is pretty darn high. Wait... the Tarrasque. In 3.0 it had 25/+5. In 3.5 it's got 15/epic. so I say that the shield of Ezra should be the same: 15/(epic or non-metal)

Can I quote you on this, gonzoron? I think it may become very applicable to my character on the epic-level adventuring front.

Well, that's how I would rule if I were DMing.... and it's how I would advise a DM that I was assisting. But in that case the final say would naturally lie with him, not me.

Besides, the 25/+5 is for LG Anchorites. If I'm not mistaken, your character doesn't have that manifestation of the Shield of Ezra.

Also the DR for ancient dead and advanced vampires is all wrong. First rank ancients have a DR 5/silver, but the higher ranks have Magic overcoming the DR. I think this should be changed to magic across the board. As for the vamps, given that a fledgeling vampire (i.e. the one in the 3.5 MM) has DR 10/silver and magic, the mature vamp should not have DR 20/silver and magic. Here's how I would do it:

Mature 10/silver and magic

Old 15/silver and magic

ancient 15/silver and magic

eminent 10/epic and magic

patriarch 15/epic and magic

epic and magic? isn't that redundant? do you mean silver and epic?

gonzoron wrote:epic and magic? isn't that redundant? do you mean silver and epic?

Oops. Yeah, I meant silver and epic. Thanks for catching that.

Thanks for all the answers. I wasn't aware of the change towards magic weapons, I was stil convinced a magic weapon could bypass a lycanthrope's DR. But then, special material weapons now should be a lot more expensive!

What do you think are the advantages of the 3.5 system respective to 3E? 'Cause right now, without having still thought about it, I believe I'd prefer to keep 15 / magic or silver for my lycanthropes.

Ail

well..the advantage is that there is actually a point to researching a creatures material weakness rather than nabbing a +1 sure-striking weapon and cutting a swath through whatever you encounter.

artent wrote:well..the advantage is that there is actually a point to researching a creatures material weakness rather than nabbing a +1 sure-striking weapon and cutting a swath through whatever you encounter.

yes, but on the other hand, I had had this idea that a priest of some cult told them of a myth of an ancient sword forged by gods now lost (Andral) that has been buried in Mt Baratak for ages. This would be a +1 magical sword, but with enough history to sound precious. But if a magic sword isn't useful anymore, why would they risk to die in the mountains to get it?

Ail

It's still useful if it bypasses all the creatures with DR x/magic. If you want it to be more useful, make it a silver +1 weapon. Also, if your pc's are low enough level, +1 to attack and Damage, isn't shabby either.

There is an enchantment somewhere, I think that alters the weapon to whatever material would bypass the creature's DR, but I don't receall the name of it.


I have conflicted feelings on the 3.5 DR system. I stil use 3.0 in my game, since we started that way, but I don't know what I would use if I started a new one. I guess the part I dislike most is lumping x/+1, x/+2, ... x/+5 together as x/magic. If they're going to have the x/epic possibility, they acknowledge that the degree of magic in the weapon matters, so why not keep the previous graded system, rather than having the huge jump?

I use a combination of the 3.0 and 3.5 styles of damage reduction. I have kept the x/+1, x/+2, x/+3, x/+4, x/+5, x/+6 system instead of the x/magic system but I don't let magical weapons pierce special material reduction thereby promoting research as artent pointed out. I also never really got into the alignment based damage reduction beyond good and evil.