Uh...I think someone snuck a nasty little trick into the Co8 code (or maybe Troika slipped it into their patch and I hadn't noticed until now). Someone decided to give gnolls a damage reduction of about 5/physical. Which, you know, makes them really freakin' hard for a group of level 2 adventurers. Does anyone know how to edit that damage reduction back out? My poor party's getting slaughtered by the heyenas. Thanks ahead of time.
Oh, speaking of DRs that weren't there before, does anyone know how to return those Baraduhrs (or whatever) in the Earth Node back to a manageable difficulty? Anything with a flat DR of about 15 and two attacks that do 15+ damage sure as hell isn't a CR 4. Someone's been messin' with the monsters, methinks. Oh...and a rhetorical question...who decided to put a freakin' balor in a low level campaign? Someone at Troika needs to be smacked...
Gnolls have always had that DR, it's Gnoll Skeletons that should have it, though. Stupid Troika. About the Balor, anything can be scaled down...Speaking of stupid DR, anyone noticed how DR 5/Silver isn't affected by a +3 weapon? That's just wrong...It's the same for DR 10/Adamantium (Falrinth, in case you're wondering).
Damage reduction is supposed to work like that. The reason it was changed is because either your weapon had enough pluses to break through the damage reduction (which meant it was pointless and may as well not be there), or it didn't (in which case you probably couldn't hurt the thing at all and it would slaughter you, e.g. iron golems). So now, rather than a hierarchy which puts materials at the lowest level, thus rendering them completely pointless, it's now broken up and independent. Damage reductions were also generally lowered across the board (they don't go higher than 15), but that's more a change to go with the monsters that takes the new system into account than a change to the system itself.
I think DR/material is meant to challenge lower level characters who can't afford magical weapons. That would be why an alchemical silver weapon costs more money, but not as much as a +1 weapon would. And as far as I can recall, DR hasn't changed at all. Unless you mean from 2nd-3rd ed...? And what do you mean by "enough pluses to break through it, which makes it useless anyway?" Something with DR x/+3 can still be killed with a +2 weapon, it's a very rare creature that has DR 15/x. A DR 10/+3 or even DR 5/+3 monster is a suitable challenge for characters that only have +2 weapons. And besides, think realistically. The most powerful weapon in the world (we'll say +7, why not?) can't break through a simple werewolf's damage reducton? There was a reason for the hierarchy, and that's it. A weapon +3, remember, has been imbued with quite powerful magic. DR represents either a particularly tough shell, or wounds being instantly healed. In the case of the werewolf, it would be the healing thing, which is of course a magical ability and likely not enough to overcome a high-level wizard's magic.
Look through some damage reductions of the third edition monsters. Even the developers themselves said that they could replace a chunk of them with "immune to weapons that aren't at least +X" and it'd make no functional difference. The Iron Golem is a rather glaring example of this: you cannot break through a damage reduction of fifty. Admittedly, this was the high end, but most damage reductions started around ten, and only went up from there. DR was indeed changed, but the change was from 3E to 3R. In 3E, it was linear with special materials forming the absolute bottom. In 3R, it's just a yes/no thing: your weapon meets the requirements or it doesn't. It doesn't matter if your weapon is +20, it won't crack a werewolf's damage reduction. Which is the reason it was changed, to put some flavor back into DR and make it meaningful. There wasn't any point in worrying about what your weapon was made of, since once you got it up to +3 you could crack through almost anything, and just a simple +1 rendered all materials irrelevant. With the change, it matters a little: silver for werewolves, cold iron for fey, and other assorted traditional weaknesses. The challenge ratings are adjusted so that you can still fight something without the appropriate damage reduction and win, but having the right tool for the job makes it easier. It also loosened up the "pluses are all" school of thought for enhancing weapons, because you could do things like have a +1 lawful keen longsword and not be completely screwed when you ran into something with damage reduction. The writers gave a full run-down on why they were doing this, but I think it was lost when WotC changed board software.
Ahhh, I see. I just read through the DMG before coming on here and saw the change. I must say I don't really like it. It is reasonable though.
We are fully aware of this issue: Gnolls get 5/Bludgeoning. I have identified the Gnoll in question in protos.tab (not every Gnoll has 5/Bludgeoning). However despite repeated attempts to remove the DR by editing protos.tab, we have not succeeded. Adding and editing DRs for other Gnolls and creatures seem to be Ok but not the Gnoll we are interested in. The issue has been discussed at some length in our modding forum here. Make a search for it and have a look at the relevant threads.
