Role-playing Games Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for gamemasters and players of tabletop, paper-and-pencil role-playing games. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
This is a broader version of this question about barbarians and slashing-immunity.
There are many creatures that are immune and/or resistant to the normal sources of physical damage, such as a Black Pudding, or Lycanthrope. This can make combat difficult for physical damage based characters (rogues, barbarians, etc).
How can I, as a player, prepare my character for combat with these creatures?
(This might count as a sign post where the other question answers this question)
If you only have a single type of damage, then a single resistance will counter you. If you're a physical character, carry slashing, bludgeoning, piercing weapons. Carry enchanted, silver and cursed weapons. Keep Torches with you for Fire damage, buy poisons for Poison damage, use racial features (like the Dragonborn's Breath Weapon) if available. If necessary, multi-class or follow a spec with access to spells.
As a magical character, pick spells that do different damage types. For example, Chromatic Orb is excellent in this regard. Also try to pick spells that focus on different Saving Throws (don't just have everything being resisted by a DEX save).
Prepare beforehand for a combat. If you know you're going to fight undead in a Zombie apocalypse, get some bludgeoning weapons, or hand grenades. If you know you're fighting Vampires and Lycanthropes, coat your weapons with silver. This isn't always possible, but studying your environment and probable enemies can give you an edge when actually facing them. Those INT checks do come in handy!
That being said, you don't always have to do everything. Let's imagine you're a melee barbarian, fighting some creature immune to physical damage. Sometimes, you just can't do anything. In this case, think outside the box. Protect your team, grapple the enemy, but mostly, support the players that are efficient here.
I will almost replicate my answer, but make it a little broader.
Many creatures are immune to one type of physical damage, such as Black Pudding is immune to Slashing. Having at least one weapon that you can use from each type (Slashing/piercing/bludgeoning) is usually worth it. If you are low level and short on gold, take the cheap options, 1d4+STR is still more than zero.
But that depends on your DM giving you a magic weapon that solves the problem. For example, if you are fighting a Black Pudding, it depends on your DM giving you something with elemental damage. If any damage done by a magic weapon is fine, then simply having any magic weapon is enough. At higher levels, this is the solution that is going to work most of the time, since you might have accumulated enough items if your DM was kind to your party.
Many monsters are affected by non-magic weapons as long as they are silver-coated. It shouldn't be too expensive to get some silver-coated weapons.
You should know where you are heading - and your party can do some research on what should be effective there. You know you are going into a cave full of skeletons, and someone in the city should be able to tell you that a Mace is more effective than a Shortsword against them.
Well, this one is an optional rule and should be done carefully to not be awful, but yeah, some classes rely TOO MUCH in only physical damage. Multiclassing into something that can deal some magic damage, or buff your weapon so it is treated as magical, should work.
As I mentioned in the other answer, if you are a melee fighter (without a magic weapon) against a Black Pudding, you just run. It is clearly designed to wreck melee fighters and your rangeds should be doing the job. It is slow and can be kitted efficiently, most of the time.
Obviously that doesn't mean "do nothing the entire fight" - check what other actions you can do to help. Aid/help is a possible action to give your ranged members constant advantage. Yes, it feels lackluster to just help the other guys in the fight, but well, it is also lackluster to be the guy with 8 CHA in the heavily social part of the game, and it is lackluster to be a skill monkey in most combat situations. Point being you should be used to situations where you can't shine at all and the spotlight is for someone else.
