Element resistance to help overland difficulty, build variety
soelslaev
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The other day, in Elsweyr, a bunch of folks were fighting a dragon that breathed lightning and several of us were harming it with heavy attacks from a lightning staff, and I thought to myself, "If this were 1st edition AD&D, we'd all be dead." Because you cannot harm a lightning breathing dragon with lightning. I think you might even heal it. LOL. Anyway, there is your answer to both (one aspect of) overland difficulty and build variety.
So, folks are rightly complaining about overland difficulty, but you don't want to do what Skyrim does and just crank up the health bar. That just makes things a slog. Tone done the pure health bar increase but additionally, have a slider for natural elemental resistance. The current value would be 'regular' (in my opinion 'weak'), but have a 'tough' and 'invulverable' option. Then, lightning dragons would be (respectively) much harder to damage with lightning or impossible.
Obviously, this carries over appropriately to most other monsters. Breathing Dragonknight fire on a flame atronach, same effect. You can get creative with it, like vampires can be slowed by cold but not harmed. Iron atronaches resist physical damage. Zombies immune to disease and poison. Skeletons should be immune to arrows. You get the idea. Oooo! I just thought of something. Some monsters the resistance is inverse, that is, they are immune to everything except one or two types. I like the idea of guar being resistant to everything except healing staff, just for fun.
This also helps with build variety. Every dungeon has multiple bosses. And those bosses might have cosmetics or lore that suggest only certain vulnerabilities. Therefore, someone doing some popular and widely known PVE build of the moment might suddenly not be the best choice in every case because some bosses are immune to most of that type of damage used by that build. People have to think and plan their build before going into the tougher dungeons.
For an example of this, I recall cranking up the difficulty on Witcher 3 and having to do this. I have to make potions and poisons of a certain variety in order to get past certain tough foes.
Edited by ZOS_Icy on July 6, 2025 5:11PM So, folks are rightly complaining about overland difficulty, but you don't want to do what Skyrim does and just crank up the health bar. That just makes things a slog. Tone done the pure health bar increase but additionally, have a slider for natural elemental resistance. The current value would be 'regular' (in my opinion 'weak'), but have a 'tough' and 'invulverable' option. Then, lightning dragons would be (respectively) much harder to damage with lightning or impossible.
Obviously, this carries over appropriately to most other monsters. Breathing Dragonknight fire on a flame atronach, same effect. You can get creative with it, like vampires can be slowed by cold but not harmed. Iron atronaches resist physical damage. Zombies immune to disease and poison. Skeletons should be immune to arrows. You get the idea. Oooo! I just thought of something. Some monsters the resistance is inverse, that is, they are immune to everything except one or two types. I like the idea of guar being resistant to everything except healing staff, just for fun.
This also helps with build variety. Every dungeon has multiple bosses. And those bosses might have cosmetics or lore that suggest only certain vulnerabilities. Therefore, someone doing some popular and widely known PVE build of the moment might suddenly not be the best choice in every case because some bosses are immune to most of that type of damage used by that build. People have to think and plan their build before going into the tougher dungeons.
For an example of this, I recall cranking up the difficulty on Witcher 3 and having to do this. I have to make potions and poisons of a certain variety in order to get past certain tough foes.
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