this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

exists solely for when the designers don't want any characters or creatures to have access to resistance against the thing in question

Broach of shielding grants resistance to force damage

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

There's also armour of resistance and potion of resistance in the DMG, which can be force resistant. But that's very few items, and in 5E the magic items you get are entirely dependent on your DM giving them to you. Note how they're all in the DMG, after all. Compare this to, say, fire damage. Three player races have resistance, the 1st-level absorb elements spell gives most casters easy access to fire resistance, and two barbarian subclasses and two sorc subclasses can get it regularly. With force damage, I think the only option presented to the player is one of the aforementioned barb classes and a couple of abilities that give general resistance to all damage.

On the DM's side, of the literally several thousand creatures published for 5E, there are 5 with immunity, 12 with resistance, and 2 with vulnerability. 19 total creatures out of over 3,000 have any unusual interaction with the damage type. Compare this to 90 for radiant, another very low one; 552 for fire; 671 for bludgeoning (including the ones that only interact with mundane bludgeoning). 19 creatures is so vanishingly rare that I don't think my description is an unreasonable one.