Does a creature with swallow whole retain damage reduction inside?

Question

When a creature is swallowed whole in Pathfinder, it can attempt to attack the swallowing creature from the inside to cut its way out with a light or natural weapon. The armor class is 10+1/2 nat armor bonus. My question relates to the natural damage reduction of a creature having some effect on the inside.

Say for example a creature has a DR 10/cold steel and swallows my character. If DR applies on the inside, it would make it much tougher to cut ones way out of the beast. I'm about to use a monster with swallow whole and DR in one of my games and I would like to know how this would work together.

Answer 1

I don't believe there is a hard rule for this, so I would leave it to GM interpretation. I'd probably make it depend on the nature of the creature and the type of DR. If the creature has magical DR such as DR 10/cold steel then it's likely that the DR would still apply. Think of a classic werewolf's weakness to silver. It's going to get hurt by a silver bullet whether fired from inside or out but otherwise it has supernatural damage resistance.

On the other hand, if a creature has DR due to a natural resistance to damage due to an exceptionally thick hide (beyond natural armor bonus) then I might say that, since you're inside the creature the DR doesn't apply because you aren't cutting through the hide and instead are causing damage to internal organs.

Answer 2

It depends on the nature of the resistance (as LegendaryDude said). It also depends on how much you want to keep track of. It seems lazy to just give a creature the same resistances inside and out, but at least that's one less thing you have to keep track of. If you want a justification, you can say, "hey, these creatures evolved to eat things live and fighting, of course they'd be resilient on the inside as out."

There's another way, if you don't mind the complication and your players don't mind the sadism. If the setting is particularly nasty or deadly, then the creature might have a higher or a completely different resistance on the inside.