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I'm wondering how this would interact if the PC scored a critical on such creature. Are the Flaming Burst and Frost abilities considered magic/spells which then completely bypass DR? If not, do you total the damage up and just take the 20 points of damage off from the non-fire-based damage? Or do you count the sword's damage and each of its individual abilities as separate damage pools and the only pools of damage that are reduced is the sword's damage and the Frost damage?
Energy damage (like Fire) isn't subject to DR, so there's no such thing as DR 20/Fire. Where did you see this come up?
But yes, the physical damage from the sword, the fire damage, and the cold damage are all separate damage types, which must bypass any DR or energy resistance separately.
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Beat me to it. Even mundane fire is not subject to DR.
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Energy damage (like Fire) isn't subject to DR, so there's no such thing as DR 20/Fire. Where did you see this come up?
But yes, the physical damage from the sword, the fire damage, and the cold damage are all separate damage types, which must bypass any DR or energy resistance separately.
My mind was focused on fire this morning apparently. I meant something more like DR 20/bludgeoning or DR 20/-. I think I found the answer anyway.
"Damage reduction does not negate touch attacks, energy damage
dealt along with an attack, or energy drains."
That it must be a weapon or natural attack along with a blurb about DR/-, both are clarified in the Universal Monster Rules.
"The creature takes normal damage from energy attacks (even nonmagical ones), spells, spell-like abilities, and supernatural abilities."
"When a damage reduction entry has a dash (—) after the slash, no weapon negates the damage reduction."
In order to avoid elemental damage the creature would need to have an ability like resist fire 10 or resist cold 10, which negates that much damage of that particular type. (Or the creature might be immune to a particular type of damage, like standard skeletons are immune to cold damage.)
The DR 10/- works against physical attacks, but the resist fire 10 works against fire attacks. It works like DR in the sense that it negates the first 10 points of damage done by fire.
A flaming burst weapon would just have a larger value of damage that the fire resist 10 would subtract from.