How does DR work? Layman terms please...

[Tecnoturc]

1. My character has DR10/Fire. Does this mean 10 fire damage will be prevented?

2. What types of attacks get prevented by DR? Su, Ex, etc.? (Perhaps in perspective of a SU fire attack on a creature that has DR10/Fire.)

As I was reading other posts that were related, I was getting the impression that DR10/Fire would prevent 10 damage from any other type except fire and spells aren't affected by DR (which are something completely different from what I thought).

[Talcrion]

ok there are two separate abilities here you are looking at

DR is for physical attacks, resistance is for elemental attacks.

So you wouldn't have DR10/Fire. But if you have 10 fire resist, it is simple, you just ignore the first 10 points of fire damage from every attack.

When DR is listed, such as DR10/Slashing, The number of the slash is what IGNORES the damage reduction, and everything else is reduced by the amount , (in this example, you ignore the first 10 damage of every physical hit that is NOT slashing)

EDIT: I'm not all knowing, perhaps I'm mistaken and there is a DR10/FIRE that I've just never seen, in that case it would be everything but fire is reduced, as you assumed.

[Dasrak]

1) DR prevents damage from physical sources, but typically has some method of bypassing it. So DR 10/magic reduces all damage by 10, but magical weapons bypass it. Similarly, DR 10/slashing reduces all damage by 10, but slashing weapons bypass it.

Because fire is elemental damage, it always bypasses DR, so DR 10/fire is meaningless. DR 10/- means nothing bypasses the DR.

2) Any source of physical damage. Elemental damage, magical damage, ability score damage, and anything else is not affected by DR.

Fire is subject to resistances instead of DR.

[Rynjin]

Damage Reduction is only for physical attacks, first off. DR 10/Fire is not a thing.

How DR works:

The number is the amount of damage blocked. The word after the slash is what OVERCOMES the DR.

So, if you have DR 5/Slashing, you chop 5 points off of every physical attack that comes at you, unless it is a Slashing weapon.

Any non-physical attacks automatically overcome the DR, even DR/- (which is otherwise insurmountable by physical attacks).

If this would take the damage to 0 or below, you take no damage (so if someone can't deal more than 5 damage to you with a non-Slashing weapon, you're effectively invulnerable to them weapon-wise).

Energy Resistance is different. If you have ER 10 Fire, that means you just ignore 10 points of fire damage. If someone hits you with a Fireball and rolls 50 damage, you only take 40. Likewise with DR, you're immune to any fire damage that deals less than 10 damage (or whatever your ER amount and damage type).

[Tecnoturc]

Thank you all for your responses! I've learned a lot from this. I now have another question but I will save it for another post since it's unrelated. :)

-DR isn't ER.
-Type after "/" is what bypasses DR.

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