Watched D4 Ranger vid, have thoughts

So, another entertaining D4 Deep Dive tier video in which I agreed with most things, but disagreed with a few. But nothing really egregious, just a few "hey I think Beastmaster is a B, not a C" kind of things.

What Colby said at the end of the video about Winter Walker and them bypassing cold resistance got me thinking. WotC really seems to tiptoe around straight up ignoring immunities. They seems to thinks it's this hugely powerful, destabilizing ability. But it's not. Vulnerabilities are. Those are what turns every hit into a double and makes epic fights into boring cake walks. But here's the thing: they've been pretty much expunged from 5 and 5.5.

Ignoring resistances and immunities just makes the contest more average. Unless creatures have commensurately lower HP pools to make up for a resistance/immunity, then it's uneven design that really accomplishes nothing besides frustrating the players.

TLDR: Ignoring a resistance and turning immunity into resistance should be a far more common feature than it is, and is basically a dropped ball by the designers.

>Ignoring a resistance and turning immunity into resistance should be a far more common feature than it is

It's barely even been a feature at all, showing up in one Planeshift document from like a million years ago (as an 18th level feature for the Kaladesh Pyromancer sorcerer) and nowhere in official material.

Maybe it's a lever they can pull at some point, but how you have undead take necrotic damage or elementals take their own type of damage that doesn't just amount to "We want to make people not feel bad for having builds that only ever deal one type of damage" feels hollow to me.

I think damage types as a whole are just so horrendously done in 5/5.5e. You’re NEVER incentivized for using a particular damage, you’re only ever PUNISHED for it. So damage types that are commonly resisted/immune are useless because there’s no upsides, only downsides. The very very few exceptions are specific monsters that have a mechanic that care about a damage type (hydra for example), but that like a handful of monsters out of the hundreds.

The entire lazy way resistance is implemented irks me. The fact that there are clear "good" damages to do and numerous "bad" damage types is so annoying.

I for one believe removing immunity is just ridiculous from a flavour point of view and should never be a thing.

Imagine, a fire elemental not getting damaged by fire. How is that supposed to work.

I agree with what you said, and would add in that the way they do vulnerability doesn't have to be so all or nothing either. If you do cold damage to something hot, let it deal an extra d4-d12 worth of damage. Nothing egregious, especially late game, but enough that it adds that cool element of finding a weakness and having just the right approach to exploit it. It might not be as overwhelming as Vulnerability is now, but that'd be more than worth it to have it spread out a lot more.

Or even just let a round of the right damage type turn off a feature. Lightning damage on the "Metal Knight" turns off its bonus action dash attack for that round. Necrotic on the plant monster halves its movement.

Stuff like that liberally peppered into the MM would make certain subclass features and such that suss out that kind of information really worthwhile and a fun addition, and even without those in the party it'd lead to fun discoveries for players.

Good point. Possible way to fix that is the same workaround they've done for nonmagical resistances now, and allow you to swap damage types if you like, but it would require like three extra sentences to make sure your "all I do is use Cold damage" character doesn't immediately fall apart when they switch to Radiant damage for a fight.

>They seem to think it's this hugely powerful, destabilizing ability. But it's not.

I think their reluctance has much more to do with flavor than mechanics. There are certain creatures with immunities that narratively would be difficult to rationalize removing. Like, I don't care what kind of magical abilities you have, doing fire damage to a fire elemental feels wrong.

I mean, how does it fall apart? I am currently playing a fire focused sorcerer and the whole difference when I transmute is ... I do 5 damage less once per cast.

I think he greatly overvalued Hunter. But that's just me. Superior Hunter's Prey really kills that subclass for me. The lack of an expanded spell list doesn't help either.

This is a non issue, you just flavor it as different fire. For example in third hellfire did half fire damage half unresistable damage. It’s just not normal fire at that point.

A better solution for characters with elementalist fantasies is to avoid campaigns that punish them. I tell this to players right from session zero. Im not going to rug pull them by having them excited to play a frost wizard and then all of their important combats are white dragons. Most will compromise with me by picking two elements they can do. Recently a player combined cold with Lightning or Thunder. But also if that is the fantasy they want to play, I just avoid critical encounters having immunities to Cold. Sure, some minions or smaller encounters might be allowed to have immunities but having the BBEG immune to cold when the wizard's best damaging spells are all cold themed feels bad.

You've gotten so good at the damage type that it's your own. You shoot blue fire or ice of pure white, that kind of thing

I use vulnerabilities frequently to give players the opportunity to easily solve encounters. Usually these are not critical path encounters but sometimes minions for a BBEG might be vulnerable to Cold and the spellcaster with Cone of Cold gets to feel cool wiping them once they figure it out.

The "elemental weakness is not damage, but shutting down things" is my favourite way to go for monsters that aren't mean to be destroyed at low levels.

Trolls losing their regeneration, the Magma Elemental they made a few months ago that when hit with Cold (an element that RESIST) would get a debuff on speed and have a powerful trait shut down, etc.

I think they should try to explore more this kind of interactions.