Alternate Energy Resistance Idea

[Amechra]

Energy Resistance (Ex or Su): A creature might have exceptional protections from a given form of Energy. Such creatures receive what is called a Energy Resistance Threshold; whenever they take damage of that type, they reduce the damage dealt by 1 die, reduce any precision damage of that type by 1 die, and convert any damage of that type beyond the Threshold into nonlethal damage. For example, a monster has a Fire Resistance Threshold of 10; whenever it takes Fire damage, it reduces the damage dealt by 1 die and any Fire damage beyond the first 10 points are dealt as nonlethal damage.

If a creature's Resistance Threshold is lower than 0 after any modifiers, it is considered to be 0.


Basically, under this system, a Fire Elemental would have a Fire Resistance Threshold of -20, for example. Searing Spell would instead increase your target's Fire Resistance Threshold by twice your Caster Level.

The simple way to convert monsters over to this system is to take their current Energy Resistance and subtract it from 30; Energy Immunity is considered to be Energy Resistance 50 for the purposes of this calculation.

If you want to apply the same modification to Damage Reduction, treat it as an appropriate Energy Resistance and triple its current value (to a maximum of 50).

[Garryl]

Wait, what? So a low threshold is good (nearly everything is nonlethal), a high one is bad, there's some fixed -1 die of damage effect attached, small diceless damage sources essentially ignore resistances, and if you're immune to nonlethal damage, it essentially acts as a cap on the damage you can take from a single hit?

[Gazzien]

I feel like it might work better as reducing damage by (Threshold/10) per die, and the first (Threshold) damage you take is non-lethal, or something like that. Still has the problem of diceless sources being stronger, though. To convert into this, just use the existing numbers for resistance, and treat immunity as 50.

[Amechra]

Wait, what? So a low threshold is good (nearly everything is nonlethal), a high one is bad, there's some fixed -1 die of damage effect attached, small diceless damage sources essentially ignore resistances, and if you're immune to nonlethal damage, it essentially acts as a cap on the damage you can take from a single hit?

Yep, that's right. It's awkward, but there's a seed of an idea there.

[Gazzien]

I don't think I've ever heard of a low threshold being good... huh. Okay then~

[faeryn]

This seems a bit counter productive... I mean... if your resistant to something then the weaker the source is the less likely it should be to harm you...

Just to put things into perspective... i'm going to break down a few situations...

1dX - Fire damage
Reduced to 0 at any Fire Resistance

Flat 1-10 Fire Damage
Deals damage as normal at most levels of Resistance

Flat 10-30 Fire Damage
Converts all or Partial damage to Non-lethal, deals 0-25 Damage as normal depending on Resistance level

XdX Fire Damage
Reduced 1dX and deals up to Threshold damage as normal before converting to Non-lethal

Any combination of dice and flat damage has the same result as XdX


Now... while converting damage over a threshold to non-lethal damage on a resistant enemy is a good thing... allowing damage under the threshold to get through is not... if your resistant then anything under your resistance should not affect you.

Your system effectively makes weak sources of damage superior against resistant enemies while strong sources of damage will merely incapacitate them quickly...

being incapacitated by a resistant damage type rather than killed is all-in-all a good thing and quite honestly makes more sense... however... being straight up killed by the weakest source of said damage type regardless of how slowly it happens makes no sense what so ever.

Seriously... should someone resistant to Fire Damage die from a taking 1 point of Fire Damage per round a number of rounds equal to their HD? NO... but this system makes that entirely possible.

To fix this problem I'd suggest the following:

Reduce damage by 1/2 Resistance value rounded up (Resist 5 = Reduced Damage by 3) & reduce damage damage dice by 1die
Damage UP TO Resistance*3 after reduction is non-lethal (Resist 5 = 15 non-lethal)
Immune targets become resistant 50 and treat all damage after reduction as non-lethal and further reduce that damage by 50%

Doing this would make it so that low resistance can still result in possible death to strong damage sources while reducing weaker sources to non-lethal damage at best, while higher resistance values would reduce all but the strongest of damage sources to non-lethal.

Immune targets would reduce damage by 25 + 1die and then take only half of the resulting damage as non-lethal and ignore the rest. If a target is healed by damage of it's immune type then it should still get it's normal healing effect as well...