Not all undead are immune to cold, just FYI.
I think that it is electricity, plus the fact that very few if any monsters have weakness to electricity.
Besides fire the most common resistance is cold closely followed by Electricity.
Acid immunity/resistance is a bit more rare and Sonic even more but nothing beats "the Force" ;-)
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Pretty clearly Fire, then cold, then electric, then acid (and then way down the line sonic). This is why there shouldn't be a +1d6 acid weapon enhancement (or sonic of course).
It is really too campaign and location dependant.
If you are running un undead heavy campaign, I'd expect to see alot more cold resistance.
If trying to find evidence of lost civilizations in the endless saltmarsh swamp, then acid.
If pirate adventure, I'd expect to see quite a bit of both cold and electricity use, not sure if there is all that much elec resistance.
Etc...
I think you have to know more about the GM's plans or at least the kind of monsters he likes. Is he really into elves, demons, etc...
I went through the Beastiary 1 with a friend a week ago and Electricity immunity was the most common, mostly owing to the fact that most of the plant creatures are immune to it. Cold surprisingly had few immunities, fewer than I thought at least. Fire resistance is the most common, with Acid being the least common.
I went through the Beastiary 1 with a friend a week ago and Electricity immunity was the most common, mostly owing to the fact that most of the plant creatures are immune to it. Cold surprisingly had few immunities, fewer than I thought at least. Fire resistance is the most common, with Acid being the least common.
yeah, but how aften are they encountered.
For example: our previous campaign, I think we only encountered plant monsters twice over 15 levels. So even though there are a bunch in the bestiary with elec immunity, doesn't mean you wil actually see them.
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For raw numbers, from a table taken from http://www.d20pfsrd.com/ that compiles a very large number of sources:
319 creatures with resistance/immunity to fire
305 creatures with resistance/immunity to cold
268 creatures with resistance/immunity to electricity
258 creatures with resistance/immunity to acid
52 creatures with resistance/immunity to sonic (a significant contingient of which are agathions)
0 creatures with reistance/immunity to force (is this right?)
The list does not include random one-off bizarre abilities that change the way creatures respond to different sorts of damage, general resistance to magic (like a golem has), etc., but those are mostly either loosely even across damage types (in the case of Magic Resistance) or are rare enough to not meaningfully adjust the totals.
Things to take note of: The four primary elemental resistances are all so close, that I wouldn't, in a "blind campaign" where the monsters I'm fighting are going to be truly random, really favor one over the other. However, there are significant baddie contingiencies that all resist or are immune to the same things. Demons are immune to electricity and resist acid and cold. Devils are immune to fire and resist acid and cold.
The general take-away is that which damage type is "best" is likely to be HIGHLY campaign-dependant. Fire is the "most-resisted", for example, but not by a huge margin, and if you're going into the abyss, it's a lot better than some of your other choices. The number of creatures that resist various energy types is inflated by the fact that many good outsiders are resistant to several energy types, but are very uncommon foes in most campaigns. Angels, for example, resist or are immune to all four major elemental damage types, but are often unseen throughout an entire campaign as foes, or are maybe fought once or twice.
Lastly, of the 101 listed undead creatures, 26 are immune to cold and 5 resist it. It's not actually the case that undead, in general, resist cold; the list of undead that resist cold just includes very common monsters (like skeletons) and very prominant monsters (like vampires and liches). Standard zombies, for example, do not resist cold.