In an effort to move forward on a potential revision, I'd like to discuss the relative value of the various types of Damage Reduction offered by Tome Armors and various other 3.5 effects.
The weakest types of DR:
- "Negate X damage for any non-lethal attack"
- "Negate X damage from any critical hit or sneak attack"
The second one sounds good, as crits and sneak attacks are big-damage PC killers, but when you rephrase it as "DR X / non-critical hits that aren't part of a sneak attack" it becomes apparent that against most monsters it only triggers 5%-10% of the time, and while PCs have better access to higher crit ranges, it's still way less than half of the time for damn near everyone. You might think that Sneak Attack is more common, but it shows up in all of 3 critters in the Monster Manual, and all of like 6 out of the 100+ entries in the MM 3, so it's also under 10% of the time. I know the original treasure tables assumed Fortification was a big deal, but it's just not. Furthermore as crits are high-randomness attacks with a chance of PC kill, some MCs are already going to be fudging the worst of them to allow the narrative to continue - meaning that in games run by such MCs this is an ability everyone gets a version of for free. All in all this is a flavor ability, not a real ability, it can be handed out like candy as freely as profanity is used here on TGD without notably changing anyfuckingthing we give a damn shit about.
Slightly Better types
- DR X / Piercing
- DR X / Bludgeoning
- DR X / Slashing[/b]
However the fact a fair number of weapons are multityped, that most weapon-using enemies have both ranged and melee options, that most non-weapon using monsters have multiple natural weapon attacks and especially the way that Bite gets to be all three at once, means that most opposition is going to have an option (even if it isn't their best attack) to get through any of these.
All in all these can reduce the effectiveness of enemy attacks or force enemies to alter tactics often enough to matter and are therefore real abilities worth something, although not a great deal
The Good Types
- DR X / Alignment
- DR X/ Critical Hits
- DR X / Magic
DR X / alignment is useful whenever you are not fighting critters with the appropriate alignment subtype, nor against enemies with the ability to cast Align Weapon or to call on such critters. That means that it's going to be useful in most encounters, but it's occasionally going to be useless due to random chance on the encounter tables.
DR X / Critical hits comes into play the vast majority of the time against nearly everyone, however every single opponent has the ability to deal critical hits. So this is going to be useful most of the time, but occasionally a random lucky blow from an enemy will get through and ignore it.
DR X / Magic is actually pretty tricky to evaluate. It matters against all monsters who neither use weapons nor have DR X / Magic themselves - which is a pretty broad swath of opposition. However within the assumptions of both Core and Tome, it goes obsolete vs classed opposition past a certain level. Somewhere between 1st and 6th level enemy swordsmen will have magic swords, and/or access to magic weapon and similar spells. So this is a huge deal at low levels, freakishly strong if it can be had at level 1, but becomes progressively less and less of a deal as levels increase, becoming just slightly more than a flavor ability past level 9.
All in all, these are major abilities that will come into play in most fights and should not be handed out lightly.
The Really Good Types
- DR X / Special Material
- DR X / combination with 'and' (such as the Night Hag's Cold Iron and Magic)
- DR X / Epic
- DR X/ -
Seriously, in Tome these are going to be bypassed more often by class abilities and feats that let enemies ignore DR than they are going to be bypassed by special materials or appropriate weapons.
Lemme start with material DR: In the entire Monster Manual: the Hound Archon Hero wields a cold iron greatsword, the example half-celestial paladin and harpy archer each have 10 cold iron and 10 silvered arrows, the githyanki have their silver swords and the Titan has an Adamantine warhammer - and that's an exhaustive list. Unlike DR X / magic, critters with these as their own DR do not get to overcome it with their own natural weapons, nor are there low level spells like magic weapon or align weapon which allow weapons to ignore it temporarily, nor can you easily summon or gate in fiends or celestials with the right alignment types to overcome it. So aside from things the MC slaps together themselves, there are fewer than 3 enemies who these do not matter against.
Now DR X/ Epic is a little odder. Here critters with this form of DR also get through it, so in Core, that's vulnerable to the Tarrasque, the Titan as well as artifacts, and +4 or better weapons with the appropriate type of ___ Bane ability. However in Tome, scaling weapon bonuses are the norm, so if you're going with the text in the current Book Fragment of Gears in your Tome game, then any Magic weapon in the hands of a 16th+ level character just cuts through this. If instead you're limiting scaling to a +5 max to match the RoW Samurai ancestral weapon ability and other things written prior to the BoG text, you're back to core. So it's possible that this goes obsolete just like DR X / Magic, albeit at a higher level, but it's also possible it doesn't - and that depends on group houserules. However, games at or above 16th level are so rare in practice that I'm comfortable assuming that this will not be obsolete in any game which I am personally involved in, and is therefore effectively an always meaningful ability. If you are involved in such a game yourself, feel free to refigure this as an ability which has gone obsolete like X/ magic DR does.
All in all, it should be assumed that these forms of DR are always active when given out as PC abilities.
