(I'll refer to them all as "monsters") in the Monster Manual. However, first it is important to remember that there are 430 stat blocks for monsters/creatures/etc. I counted 38 fire resistant creatures (Yorrin had 37, so I may have made an error) and 40 fire immune creatures. But obviously the raw numbers, while useful, don't always tell the whole story, so I decided to take a closer look at what kinds of creatures had these resistances/immunities.
I was looking into resistances/immunities for a fire-based caster and I admit that, at first glance, fire seems like it could be a rough choice. Sorry to bump an old thread, but Yorrin did an excellent job collecting this information. Also not accounted for is which resistances/immunities show up together most often- for example many outsiders resist or are immune to Cold, Fire, Lightning, and Poison all at the same time, which makes specializing in two of those elements less effective than mixing one of those with Necrotic, for example. Rather these are guidelines for a specialist, and if anything they show that you should probably have more than one type of damage at your disposal. You pay less of a penalty for specializing that say a 3.x wizard.Oh yes, this is certainly not an end-all be-all master index of what spells are best. A caster with magic missile, could specialize in fire spells and fall back on magic missile if they run into some fire elementals.
Note that if you're getting resistance to an element it's almost backwards, as might be expected:įire>Poison>Cold>Lighting=Necrotic>Acid>Radiant>Fo rce>Psychic>ThunderĪcid seems to be a relative loser in both lists, with Lightning being a well-rounded "middle of the road" choice if you're both dishing it out and receiving it.Ĭ) You have to remember that all casters cast spontaneously and that many spells can be cast effectively into higher slots. That being assumed it's the immunities that you really need to watch out for, which meansįorce~Radiant>Thunder>Lighting=Psychic>Necrotic>Ac id>Cold>Fire>Poison What about mundane damage from a magical weapon? Looks like only one thing resists, so that would be technically the most reliable type, I think.Demilich is resistant to "mundane" damage from magic weapons (and immune to nonmagical weapons!) and the "Bludgeoning" "Slashing" and "Piercing" entries on the table count for any type of weapon, magical or not.įrom looking at things I think that if one is going to specialize in something other than Force one is probably going to pick up Elemental Adept, which makes the resistance for your element of choice disappear. You pay less of a penalty for specializing that say a 3.x wizard. probably not.Ĭ) You have to remember that all casters cast spontaneously and that many spells can be cast effectively into higher slots. Fire spells can still collapse a rope bridge or destroy some scrolls on a table. a demon, but it's extremely affective against mobs of most other creatures, while a lightning bolt. The later are simply rarer.ī) You have to look at how effective certain spell may be at non-immune creatures. For example, PCs are probably likely to run into more NPCs, humanoids, or animals than say devils, demons, or elementals. This is really hard to determine and could easily be altered by the campaign, setting, the players, levels of the campaign, how long players are at certain levels, etc. However, you may need to be a bit more careful on your conclusion.Ī) You do have to factor in how common certain opponents are. Psychic damage sucks worse than Force now. Apparently similar to force damage in its capacity to damage almost anything, hitting people with sonic booms is not likely to be resisted. Luckily, the cold spells tend to have more damage than their fire and lightning variants because they are higher level. Using cold spells is actually not that great of an idea. Cold damage is the most resisted basic element. The things I DIDN'T expect, however, are these: Poison-using rogues are also less effective than critical-based ones.įorce remains the most awesome damage type ever, with Radiant sharing in its neatness.Īcid and Necrotic are still fairly good midrange damage types with only certain types of monsters countering them. Poison and Fire are among the most common damage types players will get hit by.
Good elements to toss around if the enemy isn't resistant to anything. Some of the conclusions we can draw from this remain the same as past editions.įire and Lightning are among the most commonly ignored elements with fire also featuring a few vulnerabilities.