Since you now understand the basics of damage types, let me throw a few curveballs your way, since they’re bound to happen. If you’re interested in learning more, keep reading. Every attack has a damage type, and it’s important that we know what’s going on.
A basic understanding of damage types is so important to not being constantly confused while playing D&D. Hopefully, you have everything you came here for. Typically, you’ll just be telling the DM your damage, and they’ll worry about any instances of resistance or vulnerability that might come into play. You roll your damage, add in any bonuses you might have lying around, and then half or double your damage. Resistance and vulnerability are applied after any modifiers. If a creature has no immunities, resistances, or vulnerabilities to fire damage, they’re taking the amount that shows up on your dice. The default is that creatures take the damage as written. No modifier – The hidden fourth relationship that creatures can have to a damage type. It’s important to understand the four relationships a creature can have with a certain damage type, so let’s discuss them. Hitting a creature with fire damage does not automatically mean they catch on fire, hitting a creature with poison damage does not automatically mean they are poisoned, so on and so forth. However, it is very important to remember that those are extenuating circumstances. Often spells or weapons that deal a specific damage type will inflict a condition as well. They do not have any extra effects, such as poisoning, burning, or freezing. These determinations are decided by vulnerability, resistance, and immunity.
You got a taste of it in the introduction, but damage types determine how much damage is dealt to specific creatures. Calling it holy damage alone does no justice for just how powerful this is. It’s pure energy of light so powerful that it sears whatever it’s attacking. Radiant: Radiant damage is probably best known for its use in a paladin’s divine smite. My goal here today is that when you’ve read through this article you can not only go back and understand that introduction but apply it to your games to become the best player you can be. Frankly, if I hadn’t written all of that, I would be too.ĭamage types can be one of the hardest things to understand in D&D fifth edition. There is a lot of information I threw at you right there. Since treants are vulnerable to fire damage, that damage is doubled, allowing this dwarf, which could be only fifth level, to defeat a 9 CR monster in one turn of combat. Since he’s using an enchanted flame tongue sword though, it deals an additional 2d6 fire damage. You see, the dwarf’s greatsword would normally only deal 2d6 slashing damage. Well, a large part of that is due to the fighter being able to let off an insane amount of attacks in one turn, but the other has to do with choosing the right weapon for the battle. He uses his action surge to make another attack action and deals 29, and then gets a critical hit dealing a massive 52 points of damage, and fells the awakened tree in a single turn of combat A hardy dwarf fighter swings his flame tongue greatsword at a menacing treant and deals 30 damage to it with one blow, 28 damage with the second.
The party is in the middle of combat in an ancient forest of the feywild.