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Spell resistance is a lame mechanic - essentially AC for spells. But not on all monsters. Just some monsters.
It's an extra hurdle - Saves are already like AC for spells.
It's often attached to creatures that have elemental resistances, making damage spells even worse options.
It has odd mechanical implications regarding what is real and what is magical (i.e. spell resistance doesn't protect against a magically conjured boulder falling on you, but does against magically created fire exploding around you), largely giving Conjuration spells a pass.
Related, it is often overlooked when developing new spells. Sometimes Spell Resistance is thought of as a balancing spell feature, sometimes it gets a 'No' because that leads to physical impossibilities*, and sometimes because the spell author just wrote something based on the school and it was never revisited.
It has no flavorful hooks, making to give responses to knowledge checks other than 'is resistant to magic!', which ceases to be an interesting tidbit after the 80th time.
It isn't immunity, so monsters cannot really say 'I am above your mortal magic'.
It applies to spells uniformly, making it less a puzzle (the way elemental resistances are), and more an exercise in finding which spells say 'Spell Resistance: No'.
Proposals to fix it:
Get rid of numeric spell resistance. It effectively only comes in 3 'strengths': 5 + CR, 10 + CR, and 15 + CR. Why not have something more like a 50% miss chance instead of 10 + CR, which works out about the same?
Whenever possible, change spell resistance to something more interesting. Imagine if, instead of having SR X, a Succubus was instead immune to Enchantment spells. That's fitting (Can't b&!&@+*$ a b&$$!@%+ter), is something interesting to reveal via knowledge check, and is something that the spellcaster can work around, instead of doubling down and hoping for a high roll or looking for SR: No spells.
Abilities that are more interesting than SR:
Immune to one or more schools/descriptor of magic.
Evasion/Improved evasion or the equivalent for Fort and Will saves.
Bonuses to saves against magic (Hi there, dwarves!)
Un-typed magic damage resistance, to soak up the damage from spells like magic missile, disintegrate, or slay living that avoid the resisted elemental types.
Walking through a wall of force would be nice.
It's a barrier of pure magic - why can't a "spell resistant" or spell immune creature such as a golem or someone benefitting from greater spell immunity simply waltz right through it.
You can walk through walls of fire and if the SR holds up it will let you walk through the much higher spell level prismatic wall.
Edit:
KISS: Why not make it a blanket racial saving throw bonus on saving throws against spells and spell-like abilities? Racial bonuses stack with each other. Tack on that having SR adds Evasion and Stalwart only against spells and spell-like abilities.
The three strengths flip to +(racial HD), +(racial HD), +(racial HD plus 5) or, in the case of the spell, (+CL-5).
Just as a thought.
** spoiler omitted **
My point was just that wall of iron has SR: No because when you use it as an attack spell (by pushing it over), it becomes hard to visualize what 'resisting' it looks like. In comparison, figuring out what the room looks like after resisting a fireball or charm monster is a lot more straightforward. And that's fine: if resisting a spell doesn't make sense, it shouldn't be able to be resisted. That's a perfectly good reason for SR: No.
But when you work forward from that precedent, it becomes weird that the acid from an acid arrow is more real than the fire from a fireball, even though it's clear what being immune to acid arrow would mean (not taking damage).
SR is also pretty terrible because of how it's implemented. it's either crippling, or barely a speedbump depending on how the caster builds.
Conjuration specialists couldn't care less, nor do builds with high amounts of SR busting stuff.
However, it absolutely CRIPPLES casters who want to go with already weaker forms of casting (ike blasting) r don't want to specialize too hard in anything.
It encourages min-maxing an already powerful set of classes to overcome the challenge.
Which is essentially the opposite of what it's meant to do. Rather than providing a challenge or a power limiter for casters against certain enemies, it simply applies a "beef gate" effect, meaning all the weaker caster builds are shed over time to account for it, resulting in a mechanic that provides no challenge to the main thing it was supposed to challenge in the first place.
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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wall of iron doesn't allow SR.
That's why he used it as an example of one of the kinds of spells that gets designed with no SR.
SR is also pretty terrible because of how it's implemented. it's either crippling, or barely a speedbump depending on how the caster builds.
Conjuration specialists couldn't care less, nor do builds with high amounts of SR busting stuff.
However, it absolutely CRIPPLES casters who want to go with already weaker forms of casting (ike blasting) r don't want to specialize too hard in anything.
It encourages min-maxing an already powerful set of classes to overcome the challenge.
Exactly. Replacing it with a more varied set of specific resistances prevents 'Golden hammer' builds,* while making different monsters fight differently.
Compare a Golem's magic resistance with a Colossus's selective antimagic aura.
The acid conjuring spells should be properly classified as Evocation spells, along with the attendant SR: Yes. The acid spells can be adjusted accordingly with little effort. acid arrow drops to a 1st level spell, for example, or gets beefed up in accordance with a 2nd level Evocation spell.
Golems have specific spell susceptibilities for good reason. They shouldn't care about all that much of anything else. If a new spell thematically fits in with such susceptibilities, the spell description should call this out, not SR. Example: demilich and boneshatter, the latter could have a sentence added stating to the effect of "creatures x/y/z or otherwise susceptible/vulnerable to shatter made of bone do not enjoy SR / spell immunity to this spell ".
I like the idea of retooling Spell Resistance.
SR was intended to emulate 1e's caster level-biased Magic Resistance near as I can tell. Instead it became less useful than it should be while overly factored in as purely a CR-sourced statistic rather than the customary racial HD basis, caster level basis or class/character/total HD basis.
wall of iron doesn't allow SR.That's why he used it as an example of one of the kinds of spells that gets designed with no SR.
I caught that and deleted the reply. *I* failed THAT reading comprehension check! ^_^
Even a Selective antimagic aura is too much of a pain in the neck to make a proper replacement for SR. Antimagic Field takes 3 seconds to cast, and requires the game to then come to a halt for an hour while people make entirely new character sheets so they can figure out what their stats and such are without their magical gear.
Perhaps if it was MORE Selective, ala Spellbane (these specific spells don't work, or spells of this specific school don't work, as opposed to everything BUT these schoos desn't work).
Turin, I think you're missing my point.
I'm fine with Conjuration having elemental attack spells (as long as they are weaker than similar evocation spells.) I will admit this is not as vital as it was in the days where Prohibited Schools were actually prohibited, and not just costing two slots.
What I am not okay with is spell authors treating 'SR: No' as a property of the school instead of the spell.
Re: Golems and Colossi
Golem spell immunity makes them different from other types of monsters. In that sense it is good. I agree that their specific spell vulnerabilities are difficult to interpret to similar new spells, but that's not the problem I'm trying to address, here.
Antimagic field is a huge pain - Colossi are mythic, high CR monsters not meant to be encountered regularly. My point wasn't the 'aura' part, more the 'selective' part.
My point, though, is that right now fighting a demon is a lot like fighting a golem - You use SR: No spells, buff your allies, or do lateral thinking like using disintegrate on the bridge its standing on. Because buffing an ally is at least 50% as effective as an offensive spell, which you will lose half the time to SR.
It would be a bit more interesting if different monsters had different weakpoints, with more varied victory conditions than 'have a higher CL'. It increases the value of knowledge checks and the ability to prepare different spells.
/nods affirmatively/
A combination of the above, perhaps?
- Evasion/Stalwart vs. spells & (Sp) at "5+CR";
- additional +5 racial bonus on all saves vs. spells & (Sp) at "10+CR";
- 'thematic immunity' when appropriate - such as the succubus example;
- racial bonus on all saves vs. spells & (Sp) at "15+CR".
Fighting a demon with magic for many casters that want to attack directly is almost a "no problem scenario" in PF between two feats, possible racial bonuses and a possible favored class bonus or two.
anti-magic field is a hassle as quite a few higher CR foes have sufficient innate "buffs" and stat blocks that do not list their unenhanced information. AM Field isn't often used - but it does get used.
I'm for anything that takes the "status effects" out of the game in place of passive/always-on benefits.
Fighting a demon with magic for many casters that want to attack directly is almost a "no problem scenario" in PF between two feats, possible racial bonuses and a possible favored class bonus or two.
That's the opposite end of the problem, as Rynjin pointed out. If you're an Elf, who spent two of his precious few feats, and found a couple other +1s (from a different rulebook) then you can largely ignore SR.
But that's a lot of resources. If you're a human and the ARG isn't in play, Spell Penetration is definitely a help, but it isn't an auto-win.
I guess my basic complaint is that SR is overused and poorly implemented. It is ubiquitous enough that builds are built around beating it. It essentially negates turns, which makes players feel useless. (A save partial or DR against physical attacks blunt a player's effect, but don't make the whole turn a waste of time.)
Monsters having different resistances makes those monsters more interesting, and having different resistances in play makes the game itself more interesting because it requires adapting to new circumstances instead of applying the same hammer.
The only real catch I can see would be from spells with no save which would become the new 'Spell Resistance: No'
Spells without saves are already popular for exactly this reason. I'm not sure that would change anything.
Fighting a demon with magic for many casters that want to attack directly is almost a "no problem scenario" in PF between two feats, possible racial bonuses and a possible favored class bonus or two.That's the opposite end of the problem, as Rynjin pointed out. If you're an Elf, who spent two of his precious few feats, and found a couple other +1s (from a different rulebook) then you can largely ignore SR.
But that's a lot of resources. If you're a human and the ARG isn't in play, Spell Penetration is definitely a help, but it isn't an auto-win.
I guess my basic complaint is that SR is overused and poorly implemented. It is ubiquitous enough that builds are built around beating it. It essentially negates turns, which makes players feel useless. (A save partial or DR against physical attacks blunt a player's effect, but don't make the whole turn a waste of time.)
Monsters having different resistances makes those monsters more interesting, and having different resistances in play makes the game itself more interesting because it requires adapting to new circumstances instead of applying the same hammer.
I thought I was agreeing - apparently not. Oops on me for that. :)
For those of us who don't have time or can't track all the different SR creatures, how bad would it be to simply remove spell resistance from the game?
For those of us who don't have time or can't track all the different SR creatures, how bad would it be to simply remove spell resistance from the game?
I'm thinking that "it depends" applies then, especially regarding "magic immune" monsters...
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For those of us who don't have time or can't track all the different SR creatures, how bad would it be to simply remove spell resistance from the game?
It wouldn't be super-hard. It might get a little bit tricky in the case of some spells that don't allow a save, but do allow spell resistance.
And you might want to give anyone with spell resistance a bonus to saving throws vs. magic instead, and anyone with spell resistance penetrating power some kind of other bonus (elves, for example).
Expanding on what ben137 said, I've always found it odd that Monks suddenly become much harder for their allies to buff or heal when they gain SR at 13th level. It seems to me that maybe spells with the harmless tag ought to go through SR automatically unless the character actively chooses to resist them. It would make SR a better feature and give some purpose to the harmless tag.
Other than that I'm reasonably satisfied with SR as is, but if you were planning to remove SR from the game I think that might be another reason to look at changing the rules for touch attacks. A lot of no save spells like Enervation are pretty easy to touch foes with but can be defended via SR. Making it harder to hit with touch attacks would blunt the power of those spells a bit to make up for the loss of SR, and I think that making touch attacks less effective might help other areas of the game anyhow. I've also sometimes thought that bad saves should be a little higher. Implementing SR as a bonus to saving throws might work well with that.
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Spell resistance is a lame mechanic - essentially AC for spells. But not on all monsters. Just some monsters.
You know Ross, I'm going to go ahead and devil's advocate here, mostly trying to illustrate that there's more a language issue in your thesis than a logical one. So, with respect...
As phrased, you've already lost me as a sympathetic and open-minded reader, and here's why...
"X is [badthing]. It's [something else]. But [doesn't matter]."
You need to actually compare/contrast with established definitions if you want to convince anyone of anything. We (mostly) all agree that death is a bad thing, so it's reasonable to argue that "murder is bad because it imposes death on a living person."
The premise that SR is a lame mechanic because it is "AC for spells" directly asserts that AC is a lame mechanic in and of itself. That's what you're saying.
Worse, you're saying that it's lame because not every creature has it. You actually repeat yourself, to underline how lame that is. Strangely, bite attacks, grab, energy resistance, and darkvision are also features not all monsters share. As you've written your premise, those are also implicated in the lame-mechanic accusation.
See how this works?
It's an extra hurdle - Saves are already like AC for spells.
This lacks any exploration of what that's a bad thing, really. In a game where you've got DR, incorporeality, and concealment on top of DR, one starts to suspect that extra hurdles aren't some weird design flaw; they're a central premise of the system. It's completely, utterly by design that as levels increase, additional layers of defense - of all sorts - come into play.
Pathfinder is all about an arms-race. But you know that.
It's often attached to creatures that have elemental resistances, making damage spells even worse options.
Again, this doesn't explain why this is a bad thing. Just as it is an established baseline that some weapons are a better choice than others, some spells and spell types will be better choices than others. There's a reason why there aren't a bunch of options to ensure that a guy with a dagger in his hand deals as much damage as a guy with a greatsword. Greatswords are (generally) more lethal than daggers. So... dominate monster is (generally) more lethal than fireball.
So be it. If you choose suboptimal ways of winning a battle, those ways will be suboptimal.
It has odd mechanical implications regarding what is real and what is magical (i.e. spell resistance doesn't protect against a magically conjured boulder falling on you, but does against magically created fire exploding around you), largely giving Conjuration spells a pass.
Decent argument, but one I disagree with. It's not difficult to get that conjuration makes something, and that something is permanent, with no ongoing requirement for magic to sustain its existence. A fireball on the other hand only exists for the duration of the spell, and consists of inherently magical fire, not real fire.
Once you accept that the game provides a mechanism to make ongoing magical effects and to make non-magical objects by use of magic, it becomes kind of... obvious... that something called "spell resistance" wouldn't conjured items.
Related, it is often overlooked when developing new spells. Sometimes Spell Resistance is thought of as a balancing spell feature, sometimes it gets a 'No' because that leads to physical impossibilities*, and sometimes because the spell author just wrote something based on the school and it was never revisited.
Uh... so... authors writing for RPGs need to know things and Do It Right?
It has no flavorful hooks, making to give responses to knowledge checks other than 'is resistant to magic!', which ceases to be an interesting tidbit after the 80th time.
What? Come on Ross, you're stretching here. You can't present this as if it were fact without simultaneously deriding almost every other attribute in the game. Fey have DR/cold iron because... reasons. Dragons get blindsense because... reasons. It gets really tired to discover that undead are immune to anything with a Fort save because... uh... a Knowledge check said so.
It's up to the DM to micro-manage flavor if they and their players want it. We all try to describe natural armor... "the creature has a chitinous segmented shell, looks like getting at the tender bits is going to be tough." We describe dragons as being so canny, so attuned to the world they predate in that even invisible creatures can't totally hind from them. Apex indeed!
So... "after generations of wizard-wars, the drow have evolved an odd trait where their bodies literally absorb weak magic, absorbing it harmlessly. Sometimes, when they resist an enemy's spell, they hear mental echoes of their long-lost ancestors' suffering from mutilating war-magic."
DMs make flavor. AC, saves, fast healing, all of the game's mechanics... our job to make interesting. And this one is not at all more difficult to define, describe, or justify than most others.
It isn't immunity, so monsters cannot really say 'I am above your mortal magic'.
And this is bad why? Resist cold 5 isn't immunity, so monsters that have it can't say 'I am above your chilly cold stuff.' Yeah, the game has ablative and reductive layers of defense as well as negation layers. This is not news, and it's not lame.
It applies to spells uniformly, making it less a puzzle (the way elemental resistances are), and more an exercise in finding which spells say 'Spell Resistance: No'.
Wait. You started by doubly stating that it's lame that only some monsters get it (ignoring that you can just as easily imagine an omitted SR 0), and now it's bad because it applies to spells uniformly? You want consistency, or not?
But really, casting is book-keeping. You're already memorizing which spells require Reflex saves, Will saves, Fort saves. You're already worrying about which ones are mind-affecting, which ones are charms, compulsions, fear-effects, and which ones are within the right range. As a player of spell-casters, you know up front that your job is going to involve KNOWING THINGS. Your job isn't to say "I swing my sword this round".
This is a feature, not a bug. This is another beautiful, awesome way in which advanced players have another thing to play with, both offensively and defensively. It's another tool in a DM's arsenal to try to design the ideal four-round combat once their players have obtained spells like win the game. It introduces another value that casters have to pump in order to try to reach the munchkin holy grail of unstoppability. Leaving things at saving throws and resistances isn't the answer because it's really not hard to focus your max-min efforts on your save DCs, and to pick up a few different spells to address different resistances.
No. SR is a mechanic that levels the playing field. It widens the footprint a caster needs to burden himself with so that randomness remains in the system, just like a high-level barbarian missing on his lower iteratives.
Sometimes you succeed, sometimes you don't, and we NEED these layers as players level up.
SR does nthing to "level the playing field" however. It does quite the opposite.
It widens the gap. Optimal builds become THAT MUCH BETTER because they effectively shrug off a hurdle that less optimal builds are crippled by.
That is the exact opposite of good game design. Making bad options worse, and good options better through a mechanic that was meant to apply to all equally counts as a failure to achieve your goal.
SR does nthing to "level the playing field" however. It does quite the opposite.
It widens the gap. Optimal builds become THAT MUCH BETTER because they effectively shrug off a hurdle that less optimal builds are crippled by.
That is the exact opposite of good game design. Making bad options worse, and good options better through a mechanic that was meant to apply to all equally counts as a failure to achieve your goal.
What kind is mechanic would work to make it a challenge to good and bad builds alike? Especially in terms of magical defense and spell casting.
Would a flat chance to ignore spells be better, like in the older editions?
Sort of yes, sort of no.
AC is kind of interwoven into the game as a whole, and has a few things that set it apart from SR.
1.) The investment required to trivialize AC is very significant.
2.) To-hit bonus and AC are BOTH factores that are in control of the characters, both PC and NPC, so Ac is more of an arms race than anything. Character A raise AB, Character B raises AC to compensate.
3.) It is the only "roll a die to see if you get to meaningfully act" mechanic in the way of a weapon hit.
SR, for better or worse, fits none of those 3 things. Raising your SR check is HARD. It requires at a minimum 2 Feats, and possibly a 3rd (Piercing Spell), or a magic item, along with desperatelys natching up an +CL abilities you can muster.
SR is NOT something a creature controls, it just is. Which means there is no "arms race". The caster who boosts their check to bust SR is permanently putting themselves ahead of the curve. So investment will then almost permanently negate the need to worry about SR, whereas AC will ALWAYS be a factor except in very extreme cases.
And to round things out, SR is the second (or first, technically) "roll to see if you do anything" mechanic a spell faces. Though this last is really a minor detail since at least casters can say "Screw it" and use SR: No, No Save spells, or buff their allies or themselves instead. There is no equivalent mechanic for AC or it would be a pretty meaningless mechanic too.
As for what would fix it...I'm not sure on that one. I think Ross Byers' idea of eliminating it entirely and replacing it with interesting, thematic immunities is a good start, though then you run into the issue of many types and subtypes giving immunities anyway, so it can be overkill ("Well see, this special vampire here is immune to all that undead stuff, AND all Evocation magic."), and the immunities not feeling special any more. So that might rquire a re-write of Types to eliminate many blanket immunities. Perhaps some Demons can be harmed by Fire, but not Mind Affecting, for instance.
It would require a lot of fiddling, but IMO just removing SR entirely and replacing it with nothing would not be too detrimental of a change. It removes a roadblock for sub-optimal caster builds, and barely matters to optimal ones.
In that case, would including more options for increasing and/or overcoming SR be better? Or even just overcoming SR?
For value 5 SR i give +2 saves against spells and spell-likes, value 10 is called improved and negates said effect on successful save, value 15 is called greater increases bonus to +4, base 20 is superior and reduces to half effect on a failed save. Spell resist yes now means allow save on everything but evocation spells.
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Anguish - I disagree with most of your assessment. Much of that is a matter of opinion: you find the conjuration/evocation split intuitive, while I find it to be something of a shoehorned explanation that erodes the underlying balance between the schools of magic. You find it to be another game mechanic for monsters, like the other Universal Monster rules, while I find it to be excessively common. You think some ways of playing are just better than others, I think 'Evoker' shouldn't be a trap option.
And I am not advocating that Spell Resistance go away entirely - I just think that in many cases, it could be replaced with a more interesting ability that would set it apart from its peers.
I'll try this example to perhaps give you my perspective. Spells already have saves, the same way attacks already have AC. (Some spells require attacks instead of/in addition to saves.)
Now add a monster that has a special resistance that requires another die roll. Something like a displacer beast, that has a 50% miss chance for attacks (but that doesn't affect spellcasters at all.)
That fight will certainly go differently than a 'typical' battle. That's fine - that helps keep the game interesting, and makes you consider the value of feats like Blind-fight.
But now imagine that an ever-increasing fraction of opponents are wearing a cloak of displacement. That gets less fun. It stops being 'this monster is special' and starts being 'another chance to fail'. And Blind-fight turns from 'feat that occasionally keeps you from being shut down' to 'mandatory', the same way Spell Penetration is now. No one wants to fight Pugwampis all the time.
I don't think I'm going to change your mind, but I hope this might help you see where I'm coming from.
Quite a while ago, my group decided to get rid of applying SR to evocation spells, and there were no resulting ill effects to game balance in my opinion. Really, only good things came of it in terms of spell casting options.