Too much of a thing that once might have been good

DnD has lots of mechanics that are holdovers from previous editions, some of which are good.  Some... not so good.

I have been thinking about the mechanic where monsters are resistant to non magical weapons.  In old DnD this would have been total immunity, which is a really nutty ability.  It has a place in stories, no doubt, as 'oh no, we can't hurt the werewolf with our regular weapons, we have to find something better!' is a fine place for a story to go.  I like that source, that idea.  A few monsters have special powers that require special solutions.  I dig it.

But lately there are way too many copies of this ability lying around.  We have mostly fought our way through Gardmore Abbey and it was often a frustrating experience.  In modern editions monsters aren't totally immune to nonmagical weapons, instead they are simply take half damage instead.  While that is safer from a balance perspective, it isn't a good mechanic. 

Magic weapons are already good.  Making anyone without a magic weapon suck a lot of the time isn't making the story work - they don't usually have an option to get a magic weapon.  If they did, they would already have gotten it!  All this does is make the people without magic weapons feel stupid, and people with magic weapons feel powerful.

You can have lots of powerful monster abilities that totally wreck certain characters.  That is valid!  But if half of the fights involved huge AOE silences the spellcasters would rightfully be grumpy.  Do it occasionally, and it becomes something to work around.  Do it constantly, and they just feel like they chose the wrong class.

Weapon resistance is an example of this done wrong.  Many of the fights in this module offered a variety of targets, all of which were weapon resistant.  No strategy there, the characters without magic just suck.  If you had a fight where some enemies are resistant and others aren't, that at least has some play.  The characters without magic weapons can focus on the enemies they can affect.  But when you toss weapon resistance around like crazy and don't give any opportunity to work around it you are just kicking the people who are already down, because they are weapon wielders who don't have magic weapons already.

As you might have guessed, I was one of the two characters without a magic weapon.  The guy who got a magic weapon right away pounded through all the weapon resistant monsters with glee, while the other two of us sucked.  Overall my character was still extremely powerful, don't get me wrong.  Crossbow specialists are ridiculous.  But the weapon resistant mechanic is not a way to cope with that, especially when it hits other characters too, making them weak.  Get rid of this stupid mechanic, and nerf crossbow specialist somehow, that seems like a good compromise to me.

I am happy with some weapon resistance, especially when there is some counterplay available, or when it is a plot point.  But making it commonplace means it isn't exciting, it isn't surprising, it is just a way to keep down the people who are already weaker.