Archive for May, 2025

Random Thought Encounter: Replacing Energy Immunity with Resistance

May 23, 2025

The idea of trading out immunities—at least where energy damage is concerned—for varying levels of resistance is one that’s been around for a while.

By itself, that’s no surprise. After all, what the d20 Systems calls “damage reduction” is itself an immunity-to-resistance changeover from how AD&D used to handle weapon damage. If a creature in AD&D required a +2 weapon to hit, for instance, then you weren’t going to inflict any damage at all if you hit it with a +1 longsword, regardless of how many bonuses you had.

The notion of treating energy damage the same way has been discussed across numerous message boards, blogs, and websites by everyone from GMs to professional game designers. But while there’s a lot of enthusiasm behind the idea, things tend to stall out when the discussion gets down to brass tacks:

How much energy resistance should immunities be replaced with?

Some suggestions are for static values, such as 30 points of resistance, 60 points, or even 100 or more points. Others eschew that in favor of a percentage reduction, e.g. trading fire immunity for ignoring 50% of fire damage. A few suggest tailoring the amount of resistance to each particular creature or option that offers immunity, though the sheer amount of work this would require tends to be enough to put all but the most dedicated of enthusiasts off.

To that end, here’s a simple guideline for trading out energy immunities for resistances in monster listings:

A creature with innate energy immunity instead has resistance to that energy type equal to twice their natural Hit Dice.

So under this paradigm (in D&D 3.5), a fire giant is going to have fire resistance 30, a balor demon will have fire resistance 40, and a great red wyrm will have fire resistance 80.

For the above, a 10d6 fireball (average 35 points of damage) will maybe singe a fire giant slightly (if he fails his saving throw), but do nothing to a balor unless you Maximize or Empower it, and you’ll need to do both of those together to have any chance whatsoever of injuring the great red wyrm this way. Which seems about right given the relative power of those enemies.

So what about other sources of energy immunity? After all, PCs can gain immunity too, and they (usually) don’t have natural Hit Dice. For that, we have the following corollary:

Energy immunity gained from class levels instead grants resistance to that energy type equal to twice a creature’s level in that class. If this immunity comes from a prestige class, it instead grants resistance equal to twice their level in that prestige class plus a single base class they possess.

For example, a human sorcerer 8/bard 2/dragon disciple (blue) 10 will have gained the dragon apotheosis ability from his 10th level of dragon disciple, which would normally make him immune to electricity damage. Under this system, he instead picks one of his base classes (opting to take the sorcerer), adds his levels in that to his levels in dragon disciple (for a total of 18), and doubles the result, giving him electricity resistance 36 (the same as a young adult blue dragon).

Of course, there’s also templates such as half-dragons to consider. So let’s come up with a rule for them too:

If a creature gains energy immunity from a template, it instead gains energy resistance equal to twice its natural Hit Dice or from twice its levels in a single class (or a single base class and a single prestige class, as outlined above), whichever is higher.

So a griffon with the half-dragon (white) template applied would have cold resistance 14 (i.e. twice its 7 natural Hit Dice). Whereas a lizardfolk with the half-dragon (black) template would start out with acid resistance 4 (for its 2 natural Hit Dice), with that value going up if it ever gained three or more levels in a class.

Finally, we want to deal with any instance of spells or magic items granting energy immunity:

If a spell or magic item grants energy immunity, it instead grants energy resistance equal to twice its caster level.

This one doesn’t come up too often, as there are fewer spells and magic items that offer total immunity to a particular energy type. But for something like a ring of energy immunity, this lets us set its value (e.g. resistance 40, since its caster level is 20).

Finally, these values follow the normal rules for having energy resistances from two or more sources (i.e. two different sources of resistance to the same energy will overlap, rather than stacking). So an ice mephit (having cold resistance 6 from its 3 natural Hit Dice) that receives a resist energy spell keyed to cold from a 5th-level spellcaster will have cold resistance 10, not cold resistance 16.

Of course, none of this deals with things like immunity to poison or mind-affecting effects, but those either have smaller damage ranges (e.g. poison) or don’t make use of numerical damage values (e.g. mind-affecting effects), so we can overlook them here.

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Third-Party Support: Spontaneous Spellcasting and Prestige Class Simple Templates

May 12, 2025

In my previous article, I mentioned Fat Goblin Games’ PF1 supplement CLASSifieds: Core Prestige Class Simple Templates, and I wanted to expound on that some more.

Specifically, on an issue with several of those templates’ spellcasting.

But let’s back up for a moment.

Of the ten prestige classes in the PF1 Core Rulebook, six of them improve your spellcasting progression. Of those, four (arcane archer, arcane trickster, dragon disciple, and eldritch knight) are specific to arcane spellcasting, one (the loremaster) is type-agnostic, and one (the mystic theurge) improves both arcane and divine spellcasting. However, only one of them—the dragon disciple—specifies whether the spellcasting progressions that they improve are prepared or spontaneous.

Which isn’t the case for the simple class templates in Fat Goblin Games’ supplement.

To reiterate, while the Core Prestige Class Simple Templates book does have the dragon disciple template casting spells spontaneously (though it only lists spells per day rather than spells known; given that it should have a spells known table and note that they get two “spells per day” slots for each spell level, I’ve listed a corrected table below), the other spellcasting class templates mandate being a preparatory spellcaster (and the loremaster mandates being an arcane preparatory spellcaster).

Dragon Disciple Creature Spells Known

HD1st2nd3rd4th
6-91———
10-1421——
15-19221—
20-24‡221
25+‡‡22

While the simplicity of a template necessarily reduces the options that a creature would have if they’d taken levels in a prestige class, this still seems like an unnecessary straitjacket. For instance, consider that making a creature cast preparatory arcane spells means that (with the possible exception of the loremaster) they’ll need to have a spellbook on them, which could mean that your PCs gain access to some spells you’d rather they not have. That’s not an issue with spontaneous spellcasters.

To that end, consider using the following rules where the corresponding prestige class simple templates are concerned (if not mentioned, presume that each template uses the spell list mentioned in its entry in the Prestige Class Simple Templates sourcebook):

Arcane Archer: When applying this template to a creature, choose if you want them to be a prepared or spontaneous spellcaster. If prepared, they use the spells per day table listed; if spontaneous, treat the listed table as their spells known, and they gain two spell slots of each level for every level of spells known.

A preparatory arcane archer uses Intelligence as their spellcasting ability modifier. A spontaneous arcane archer uses Charisma as their spellcasting ability modifier.

Arcane Trickster: When applying this template to a creature, choose if you want them to be a prepared or spontaneous spellcaster. If prepared, they use the spells per day table listed; if spontaneous, treat the listed table as their spells known, and they gain two spell slots of each level for every level of spells known.

A preparatory arcane trickster uses Intelligence as their spellcasting ability modifier. A spontaneous arcane trickster uses Charisma as their spellcasting ability modifier, and replaces this template’s ability score modifiers with the following: +2 Dexterity, +2 Charisma.

Eldritch Knight: When applying this template to a creature, choose if you want them to be a prepared or spontaneous spellcaster. If prepared, they use the spells per day table listed; if spontaneous, treat the listed table as their spells known, and they gain two spell slots of each level for every level of spells known.

A preparatory eldritch knight uses Intelligence as their spellcasting ability modifier. A spontaneous eldritch knight uses Charisma as their spellcasting ability modifier, and replaces this template’s ability score modifiers with the following: +2 Strength, +2 Charisma.

Loremaster: When applying this template to a creature, choose if you want them to be an arcane spellcaster or a divine spellcaster. If arcane, draw their spells from the sorcerer/wizard spell list; if divine, draw their spells from the cleric spell list. Then decide if you want them to be a prepared or spontaneous spellcaster. If prepared, they use the spells per day table listed; if spontaneous, treat the listed table as their spells known, and they gain two spell slots of each level for every level of spells known.

A preparatory arcane loremaster uses Intelligence as their spellcasting ability modifier. A preparatory divine loremaster uses Wisdom as their spellcasting ability modifier, and replaces the template’s ability score modifiers with the following: +4 Wisdom. A spontaneous loremaster of any kind uses Charisma as their spellcasting ability modifier, and replaces the template’s ability score modifiers with the following: +4 Charisma.

Mystic Theurge: When applying this template to a creature, choose if you want them to be a prepared or spontaneous spellcaster; this choice is for both their arcane and divine spells. If prepared, they use the spells per day table listed; if spontaneous, treat the listed table as their spells known, and they gain two spell slots of each level for every level of spells known.

A preparatory mystic theurge uses either their Intelligence or their Wisdom as their spellcasting ability modifier. This choice must be made when the template is first applied to a creature; once made, this choice cannot be changed. A spontaneous mystic theurge uses Charisma as their spellcasting ability modifier, and replaces this template’s ability score modifiers with the following: +2 Intelligence, +2 Wisdom, +4 Charisma.

I’ll close out by saying that, while there’s no official guidance that I’m aware of, my presumption is that spellcasting ability gained via a simple class template receives bonus spells for a high spellcasting ability modifier, the same as any other spellcaster.

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