TOPIC: Why equip resistance when all damage unstoppable

I had a great time in my four runs this Gencon but I no longer see the point in running anything that gives resistance.

Have boots of lava walking? Still take heat damage.

Have poison resistance/immunitity? Nope, mushrooms are acid and spider bites are magical.

Have fire resistance? Still take damage as you burn the spiders off.

Have the wind set for immunity to missiles? Nope still take damage from hand crossbows.

Not to mention all the force and Eldrich damage.


I think in the future I will just take items that buff save and plus damage.

The onlyuseful things are free action and immunity from surprise. They will work around everything else.

I also find that annoying. Don't make the tokens effects if you are just going to circumvent them.

Ed

Havakavula wrote: I had a great time in my four runs this Gencon but I no longer see the point in running anything that gives resistance.

Have boots of lava walking? Still take heat damage.

Have poison resistance/immunitity? Nope, mushrooms are acid and spider bites are magical.

Have fire resistance? Still take damage as you burn the spiders off.

Have the wind set for immunity to missiles? Nope still take damage from hand crossbows.

Not to mention all the force and Eldrich damage.


I think in the future I will just take items that buff save and plus damage.

The onlyuseful things are free action and immunity from surprise. They will work around everything else.

Guess again. When we did Lycans, Shelly was grabbed from behind and held by the vine.

"But I have free action and immune to surprise," says she.
"Nope," says the DM. She's been a little miffed about that room for years.

Havakavula wrote: I had a great time in my four runs this Gencon but I no longer see the point in running anything that gives resistance.

Have boots of lava walking? Still take heat damage.

Have poison resistance/immunitity? Nope, mushrooms are acid and spider bites are magical.

Have fire resistance? Still take damage as you burn the spiders off.

Have the wind set for immunity to missiles? Nope still take damage from hand crossbows.

Not to mention all the force and Eldrich damage.


I think in the future I will just take items that buff save and plus damage.

The onlyuseful things are free action and immunity from surprise. They will work around everything else.

Most resistance/immunity tokens are mainly for combat, not puzzles.

Also note that the Wind set and Cloak of Blessed Silk do not apply to magical source of damage.

Brad Mortensen wrote: Guess again. When we did Lycans, Shelly was grabbed from behind and held by the vine.

"But I have free action and immune to surprise," says she.
"Nope," says the DM. She's been a little miffed about that room for years.

Free Action is just obscenely powerful and ubiquitous.

It was kinda okay when it was just available from the Boots (though back then there weren't many good boots) but now there are just so many tokens that grant that effect. Not to mention the ridiculously overpowered Boots of the Marauder.

I chalk it up to poor token design.

I agree with the overall general sentiment of this thread; such things have annoyed me to no end, and make me wonder why I bother with many of my tokens.

But I think part of the issue may be the DMs. There is a tendency with DMs in any sort of game of defaulting to the "no, because I say so" mentality whenever they are presented with an unexpected player action or an unusual circumstance.

Rather than rationally working through the situation and making a ruling, most DMs are either uncomfortable taking such initiative (especially since they are probably lectured on the importance of keeping the game consistent from group to group and DM to DM), or they don't want to appear indecisive so they blurt out the first thing to come to mind (i.e., no you can't do that because I'm not willing to take the time to decide if you should be able to do that).

Several times, I've noticed that certain player actions which a DM declared impotent or irrelevant in game were ultimately presented at legit solutions to a room once the published adventure booklets were released. I'm not sure if this means the room DMs are just being forgetful (which is reasonable, considering the avalanche of stuff they need to keep in mind) or if Jeff is altering the adventure as he writes it up post-gencon, taking into account what he heard were notable things players attempted. Or maybe a little of both.

Anyway. Regardless of the reason, I think it's a topic that deserves serious attention. It's tempting to shrug it off as something that we just have to put up with, but I think it's worth fighting against.

Havakavula wrote: Have boots of lava walking? Still take heat damage.

I absolutely sympathize with your frustrations. That said, I feel the need to point out that Boots of Lava Walking say right on the token that they don't grant any Fire resistance.
[img size=200,200] tokendb.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Boots-of-Lava-Walking-200x200.jpg [/img]

Incognito wrote: I chalk it up to poor token design.

Keep in mind Jeff let's all of us help and have input in the Token design.

If a player is able to swim through the lava and take damage, or walk on the lava and still take damage, then it's a worse-than-useless token because it makes players think that it has a function but doesn't do anything.

My understanding of "confers no Fire resistance" is that it doesn't have any effect on fire damage taken in any other fashion.

I felt the same way this year. I've outfitted the entire group with Shirts of Shielding since the Dracolich but hadn't seen retribution damage since. When we took fire damage after attacking the Salamander, I thought I'd finally get a use out of them, but the DM told me that it didn't count as retribution damage. I'm contemplating replacing the Shirts of Shielding, they don't seem of much use after all.

I remember when the Charm of Awareness came out, which I guess is still useful for initiative roll. But it didn't keep me from being surprised and trapped by a gelatinous cube the first year I used it. I thought "Really? How fast can those things move? And with the charm I was still surprised?" I guess if there's a storyline to tell in a room, don't expect any token to disrupt it.

Ro-gan wrote:

Incognito wrote: I chalk it up to poor token design.

Keep in mind Jeff let's all of us help and have input in the Token design.

And while I do appreciate the sentiment, there is the very real risk that that route ends up as mob rule or demagoguery. IMHO, the massive, recent power creep, especially last year, is largely due to power-hungry forumites depending overpowered tokens.

Herid Fel wrote: If a player is able to swim through the lava and take damage, or walk on the lava and still take damage, then it's a worse-than-useless token because it makes players think that it has a function but doesn't do anything.

My understanding of "confers no Fire resistance" is that it doesn't have any effect on fire damage taken in any other fashion.

That was my interpretation as well - that the Boots did not provide any fire resistance, particularly in combat.

Mike Steele wrote: I felt the same way this year. I've outfitted the entire group with Shirts of Shielding since the Dracolich but hadn't seen retribution damage since. When we took fire damage after attacking the Salamander, I thought I'd finally get a use out of them, but the DM told me that it didn't count as retribution damage. I'm contemplating replacing the Shirts of Shielding, they don't seem of much use after all.

Was this year's Sea Serpent electrical damage considered retribution?

Retribution damage occasionally pops up in Grind. During WYC, several monsters had minor retribution damage.