Bad design. Damage Reduction is a wonky mechanic, unfortunally.
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Bad design. Damage Reduction is a wonky mechanic, unfortunally.
An example of not understanding what it is.
The point of DR that easily passable at higher levels for those creatures is to make them impervious to lower threats for mechanical-narrative purposes.
You can throw 30 level-1 soldiers at him and with regular weaponry they might not pass the DR even on a crit.
There's a reason armies cannot seriously damage an old dragon even with clear numeric superiority. It's hard to equip hundreds of soldiers with magical weapons.
(Also, what is sunder/disarm?)
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Not every character is going to buy straight +# items. A good number of characters may want a +1 Holy Thundering Impact weapon (or any other weapon abilities as these are just random examples).
This. While a straight +3 enhancement bonus is usually the strongest option you can buy for a +3 weapon, it's also boring. If people get special abilities instead, they will have to deal with DR.
It's also a hinderance to minions/summons.
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It might not be so useful against adventurers (who are basically the apex predators of Pathfinder's ecosystem) but it helps a great deal against just about everyone else: other outsider species, aberrations, swarms, elementals, animals.
It helps explain why it takes adventurers to put them down.
Also, it's quite significant against animal companions and summoned monsters, as well as druids in wildshape. Not everyone has the cash to buy one (or for a druid with AC, two) 28K +3 amulets of mighty fists. And even if you do, you're giving up other stuff for that.
I was looking at the rules for damage reduction along with some of the monsters and ran into a question. For a monster above CR 10, what is the point of having DR/cold iron or silver?
A specific example of this is the Ankou from Bestiary 4. It is a CR 14 monster with DR 10/cold iron. At the point when a party would encounter this monster has a hard encounter, their average level would be 12 (APL+2 = hard). At 12th level the character is expected to have ~108,000 gp in total wealth.
A +3 weapon is stated has being able to bypass DC/cold iron or silver in the core rulebook. Based on the magic item creation rules, said weapon should cost around 20,000 depending on material since the +3 bonus is listed as 18,000 gp. At level 12, that is less that a 5th of the characters total wealth. This virtually guaranties that every character in the party will be able to completely ignore the DR of this monster.
Based on all of this, why does this monster even have DR?
My group doesn't use weapon bonuses to bypass DR, if you need a silver weapon, you better HAVE one.
:D
Keeps things interesting.
greater magic weapon exists making generic pluses not as exciting.
Bane is an amazing ability, human, undead, evil outsider...
Many low level spells and abilities give your weapon the ability to ignore DR
Greater Magic Weapon, however, is not one of them. "This bonus does not allow a weapon to bypass damage reduction aside from magic."
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Greater Magic Weapon, however, is not one of them. "This bonus does not allow a weapon to bypass damage reduction aside from magic."greater magic weapon exists making generic pluses not as exciting.
Bane is an amazing ability, human, undead, evil outsider...
Many low level spells and abilities give your weapon the ability to ignore DR
I never made that claim, but I guess it is good to remind people.
Ascalaphus & Slithery D have both made points about it existing to make minions or summons less effective. However, both will still be just has ineffective if +3 bonuses did not bypass cold iron or silver. And on that subject, not every party is going to bring minions into battle.
But it is an answer to your original question. DR 10/Silver isn't great, but it isn't worthless to a CR 10 enemy since it protects them from summons, animal companions, secondary weapons, low-level allies, etc.
As for the separate question of, "Is it a good rule that +3 enhancement bonuses can bypass DR Cold Iron/Silver?" the answer is, maybe? Without it, melee PCs just have to carry around armloads of different weapons, while archers and casters are largely unaffected. On the other hand, it discourages flaming weapons, etc.
Why do you not count the price modifiers for some of those abilities when they also count for bypassing DR/epic? The actual text is "Weapons with special abilities also count as epic for the purposes of overcoming damage reduction if the total bonus value of all of their abilities (including the enhancement bonus) is +6 or greater."
Because the normal rule for bypassing DR says you have to have that many pluses on the enhancement bonus, so the to hit and damage.
The later DR/epic rule is an awful kludge/retcon introduced in the place of just giving us the possibility of +6 enhancement weapons. It leads to the absurd situation where a +1 Vorpal weapon overcomes DR/epic but not DR/silver, DR/evil, or DR/adamanatine. In practice it's less dumb because epic is going to be stacked with one of those other types, but it's still dumb.
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I don't want to post a rant but I feel like DR becomes pointless since most PC's at this tier will be hitting very hard.
By that logic extra HP also becomes pointless.
DR 10 (if it works) at CR 12 can easily stop 30-60hp of damage per PC which swings at it each turn.
Which also shows that it tweaks game balance away from TWF (which - ignoring DR & assuming pounce - has the highest DPR of any combat style by mid levels) and makes PA more valuable. (Especially useful at 11+ when PA otherwise gets a lot weaker.)