Step 2: Determine The Damage Type

Once you’ve calculated how much damage you deal, you’ll need to determine the damage type. There are many types of damage and certain types are applied in different ways. The smack of a club deals bludgeoning damage. The stab of a spear deals piercing damage. The staccato crack of a lightning bolt spell deals electric damage. Sometimes you might apply precision damage, dealing more damage for hitting a creature in a vulnerable spot, or when the target is somehow vulnerable.

Damage Types

Damage has a number of different types and categories, which are described below.

Physical Damage

Damage dealt by weapons, many physical hazards and a handful of spells is collectively called physical damage. The main types of physical damage are bludgeoning, piercing and slashing.

Bludgeoning damage comes from weapons and hazards that deal blunt-force trauma, like a hit from a club or being dashed against rocks. When you defend with Strength defence, you have -1d to your Strength defence vs melee attacks that deal bludgeoning damage. When you defend with Dexterity defence, you have +1d to your Dexterity defence vs melee attacks that deal bludgeoning damage.

Piercing damage is dealt from stabs and punctures, whether from a dragon’s fangs or the thrust of a spear.

Slashing damage is delivered by a cut, be it the swing of the sword or the blow from a scythe blades trap. When you defend with Strength defence, you have +1d to your Strength defence vs melee attacks that deal slashing damage. When you defend with Dexterity defence, you have -1d to your Dexterity defence vs melee attacks that deal slashing damage.

Ghosts and other incorporeal creatures have a high resistance to physical attacks that aren’t magical (attacks that lack the magical trait). Furthermore, most incorporeal creatures have additional, though lower, resistance to magical physical damage (such as damage dealt from a mace with the magical trait) and most other damage types.

Another special type of physical damage is bleed damage. This is persistent damage that represents loss of blood. As such, it has no effect on nonliving creatures or living creatures that don’t need blood to live. Weaknesses and resistances to physical damage apply. Bleed damage ends automatically if you’re healed to your full Stamina.

Mental Damage

Sometimes an effect can target the mind with enough psychic force to actually deal damage to the creature. When it does, it deals mental damage.

Mindless creatures and those with only programmed or rudimentary intelligence are often immune to mental damage and effects.

Elemental Damage

Many spells and other magical effects deal elemental damage. Elemental damage is also dealt from effects in the world, such as the biting cold of a blizzard to a raging forest fire. The main types of elemental damage are corrosive, cold, electric, fire and sonic.

Corrosive damage can be delivered by gases, liquids, and certain solids that dissolve flesh and sometimes harder materials.

Cold damage freezes material by way of contact with chilling gases and ice.

Electric damage comes from the discharge of powerful lightning and sparks.

Fire damage burns through heat and combustion.

Sonic damage assaults matter with high-frequency vibration and sound waves.

Often, you deal elemental damage by casting magic spells and doing so can be useful against creatures that have immunities or resistances to physical damage.

Magical Damage

Two special types of damage specifically target the living and the undead.

Sacred damage harms undead creatures, withering undead bodies and disrupting incorporeal undead. Sacred damage can sear mortal flesh like fire and overloads the spirit with power.

Profane damage saps life, damaging living creatures as it withers matter and even the soul.

Powerful and pure magic can manifest itself as energy damage. Few things can resist this type of damage. Not even incorporeal creatures such as ghosts and wraiths.

Poison Damage

Venoms, toxins and the like can deal poison damage, which affects creatures by way of contact, ingestion, inhalation, or injury. In addition to coming from monster attacks, alchemical items, and spells, poison damage is often caused by ongoing afflictions, which follow special rules described here.

Decay Damage

When living cells degenerate and break down, this is known as decay damage.

Precision Damage

Sometimes you are able to make the most of your attack through sheer precision. When you hit with an ability that grants you precision damage, you increase the attack’s listed damage, using the same damage type, rather than tracking a separate pool of damage. For example, a non-magical shortsword Strike that deals 3d6 precision damage from a rogue’s sneak attack increases the piercing damage by 3d6.

Some creatures are immune to precision damage, regardless of the damage type; these are often amorphous creatures that lack vulnerable anatomy. A creature immune to precision damage would ignore the 3d6 precision damage in the example above, but it would still take the rest of the piercing damage from the Strike. Since precision damage is always the same type of damage as the attack it’s augmenting, a creature that is resistant to physical damage, like a gargoyle, would resist not only the shortsword’s damage but also the precision damage, even though it is not specifically resistant to precision damage.

Precious Materials

While not their own damage category, precious materials can modify damage to penetrate a creature’s resistances or take advantage of its weaknesses. For instance, silver weapons are particularly effective against werecreatures and bypass the resistances to physical damage that most devils have.