Orion wrote:Why even have DR at that point?
Why have DR if magical enhancements are going to cut through anything given enough pluses?
Fluff-wise, DR is supposed to represent monsters being resistant to weapons but weak to one specific thing. Usually this is to emulate myth- werewolves and vampires being harmed by silver, demons and fae being harmed by iron, etc. So it's a flavor thing that happens to have a mechanical impact. With fae and demons, it should really be
just fluff, with a side of "put away the quarterstaves and clubs" because cold iron is stupid and goes completely against the idea of the myth it's trying to emulate. Werewolves should probably just get regeneration so that it's entirely possible to beat them down with whatever's on hand, but they won't stay down unless you're using silver. I could see doing something similar with vampires, giving them a weakness to silver
and fire and perhaps making explicit reference to the whole "stake it, decapitate it, and burn the whole fucking thing" method of vampire destruction as a way to kill it once you've beaten it into submission.
In fact, I'd almost say that regeneration shouldn't even get a number, that it should just be "all damage from sources that aren't X is nonlethal" and then Fast Healing should be written as #/(time unit) rather than being specifically X/round. So Trolls would have Regeneration (Fire, Acid) and FH 5/round and Werewolves can have Regeneration (Silver, magic, energy attacks) and FH Con Mod/Hour or something.
Monsters that take extra damage from a sort of weapon should have Vulnerability rather than DR. So Fae and Demons have Iron Vulnerability and take double damage from iron weapons, and demons and vampires have Blessed Vulnerability and take double damage from weapons which have been ritually blessed by a god opposed to them. And if you smack a demon with a blessed iron weapon, yes, it takes four times as much damage (or three times if you want to stick with D&D's weird math).
DR should be reserved for things that are actually resistant to damage in general, but not unkillably so, with some attack forms that get through that. Something wrapped in a hard shell should probably have DR X/Bludgeoning, and maybe a trait where if you deal enough damage, they lose their DR because you've smashed through their shell. Skeletons having the same deal because of all the empty space is cool too, but there might be a better way to model it. Maybe piercing weapons have a miss chance against skeletons.
I could even get behind sparing use of something like "
Indomitable: The monster cannot be damaged at all, even nonlethally, except by specific weapons noted parenthetically" so the Nemean Lion is a huge fuck all lion with Indomitable (bludgeoning, internal damage) to say that it's skin can't be broken and you have to attack it's insides to kill it. So a club is fine, you're trying to break bones and inflict internal trauma, and grappling it and choking it to death is cool too. And of course you explain that it in it's stat block. And then you have some very rare boss monsters who have shit like Indomitable (mortal forged weapons) who boast about how no weapon forged by mortal hands can kill them, and the PCs have to go find a divine weapon or realize that the "forged" part is very important and lay about him with clubs, stone-headed arrows and weapons made of pure magical force.
