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At 6th level, Monks get the Ki-Empowered Strikes feature which states (emphasis mine):

Starting at 6th level, your unarmed strikes count as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage.

Meanwhile, the Heavy Armor Master feat states (emphasis mine):

[...] While you are wearing heavy armor, bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage that you take from nonmagical attacks is reduced by 3.

How do these features interact, especially given that Ki-Empowered Strikes are not actually magical? Would Ki-Empowered Strikes count as magical to ignore the damage reduction of Heavy Armor Master, or can they only count as magical specifically for resistance and immunity?

Exempt-Medic
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    I know you know that "reduces damage by 3" isn't "resistance" according to the 5e rules. Is there a basis for this question or are you just asking it to "get it on the record"? –  Feb 04 '22 at 04:16
  • @Non-human The question came up for me today, so I figured I'd ask it – Exempt-Medic Feb 04 '22 at 04:37
  • was there a specific context or argument made as to why it should work? –  Feb 04 '22 at 06:47

3 Answers3

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Technically speaking, "damage [...] is reduced by 3" is neither Resistance nor Immunity, so it doesn't get overcome by a monk's fists.

That said, player-side effects like these don't often come into contact. It's certainly possible for two PCs to get into a fight where this matters, most often due to confusion, domination, etc., but ending up with this particular pair of abilities in conflict is the edgiest of edge cases. Monsters almost always use basic Resistance for this purpose. While I can't guarantee there's no enemy or spell anywhere that gives nonstandard damage reduction, I haven't seen it.

Because of that, as a DM, I can't see any balance issues with taking a broader reading that monk unarmed strikes just count as magic weapons any time it matters to an attack. I would not get too hung up on the exact text. It's never fun to tell your players "no, that doesn't work", especially when they seem at first glance to have a class ability that's specifically made for the situation at hand.

Normally, restrictive rules can be traced to one of two sources: a restriction to enforce game balance (such as, say, the rule about only being able to cast a cantrip at the same times as a bonus action spell), or a restriction to enforce the flavor of a specific ability (such as sneak attack being limited to small, quick weapons). Since this doesn't appear to do either, I'm left to wonder why it would be written this way. I suspect this is one of those situations where "helper text" accidentally made the ability more limited than it was meant to be. If the monk's ability simply said "the monk's fists count as magic weapons", that could immediately make your player ask "What does that mean? Why do I care?" (or worse, start thinking their unarmed strikes are innate +1 weapons), so I think they put in text that clarifies the benefit that magic unarmed strikes bring -- and it covers 98% of situations, but incidentally excludes a couple of weird corner cases that it maybe shouldn't.

Darth Pseudonym
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  • You're not always fighting monsters, sometimes you're fighting people, like potentially NPC mid-level monks. Certainly an unlikely case, and yeah probably more likely to happen due to a confusion or domination effect. (Or some DMs might even build some NPCs using PC classes and feats, although that's rarer and not generally recommended.) – Peter Cordes Feb 05 '22 at 16:52
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    Here I use "monster" in the general sense of "npcs that are here to be killed by the PCs", not "inhuman creatures only". NPC monks likely wouldn't have this particular ability, and if they did, it would likely be simplified to something like "the monk's attacks count as magic weapons" or some such thing. – Darth Pseudonym Feb 06 '22 at 07:46
  • "While I can't guarantee there's no enemy or spell anywhere that gives nonstandard damage reduction, I haven't seen it." - Interestingly the rules for resistance actually give an example of an aura that reduces damage by 5. I can't think of something like that, but there's some gloves of missile snaring that "reduce" damage too. Not sure what else. –  Feb 07 '22 at 02:34
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    The other reason the ability can't just say that the monk's fists count as magic weapons is that unarmed strikes don't use any weapon at all, and changing that would cause a bunch of weird rules interactions with unarmed strikes. – Ryan C. Thompson Feb 07 '22 at 02:36
  • This ruling would affect things like Kensei (obvious), but also path of the beast, battle standard of inferal power, wyllow, maegera, and about a dozen other monsters. –  Feb 07 '22 at 02:41
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    @RyanC.Thompson If we are second guessing designer intent, why not just say "you can use your unarmed strike to make magical weapon attacks" or "your unarmed strikes are magical" or "when you attack, your unarmed strikes make magical attacks" or any number of other wordings. etc etc –  Feb 07 '22 at 02:44
  • @Non-humanPerson No guessing at intent required. They specifically made an erratum to define unarmed strikes as weapon attacks that don't use weapons, which sounds nonsensical but eliminates some weird rules interactions. And the wording can't say "magical attacks" because it's not the attack that is magical, it's the weapon. I.e. there are no magical weapon attacks, there are only attacks made with magical weapons. – Ryan C. Thompson Feb 07 '22 at 03:31
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    @RyanC.Thompson WRT to Ki Strikes you are guessing intent. Why can't the wording say "magical attacks"? There absolutely are magical and nonmagical attacks in 5e. The rules for resistance even say "a magical attack is an attack delivered by a spell, a magic item, or another magical source". If the intent was for Ki Strikes to deliver magical attacks, it would simply state that. It doesn't, so the easiest thing to assume is that wasn't the intent. –  Feb 07 '22 at 03:37
  • @Non-humanPerson It's not that cut and dried. The PHB, as the first 5e book, has a lot of weird bits where they tried to be helpful and often tripped over their own feet doing it. Jeremy Crawford has talked about "unhelpful helper text" where they sometimes put in reminders or clarifications that accidentally make rules sound like they do something other than what they were meant to do. (Notably, the Dragon+ for 11/27/18 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaSdPL_pSgE&t=1600s ) – Darth Pseudonym Feb 07 '22 at 04:01
  • @DarthPseudonym Has he ever said specifically that Ki Strikes has "unhelpful helper text"? This seems like a huge attempt to guess designer intent. I am not even convinced that "for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage" is helper text in the first place. –  Feb 07 '22 at 06:20
  • No, this particular text has never been mentioned specifically as helper text, but most 'helper text' has never been specifically called out. I said this was only a suspicion. But the point is that "if they meant it, it would simply say that" isn't a good assumption because we have a number of examples where they DID in fact say more than strictly necessary and it caused the rule to read in an unintended way. – Darth Pseudonym Feb 07 '22 at 14:41
  • @DarthPseudonym It's fine to be aware that RAI clarifications can exist, but in lieu of them I don't see why we shouldn't take rules at face value. –  Feb 08 '22 at 02:18
  • You're welcome to read only the first line of the answer and run your game by only the precise and exact RAW. The rest is merely commentary on whether it's advisable to rule otherwise. Still, it seems strange to me that they'd put in a limitation like "only against resistance or immunity" that has such a vanishingly small effect on the game as played and no apparent story or flavor it's meant to support. That's what makes me suspect this is either unhelpful helper text or an artifact left over from an earlier version of the ability that worked differently. – Darth Pseudonym Feb 08 '22 at 03:04
  • "That said, player-side effects like these don't often come into contact." I (and apparently other people judging by the internet) use PC classes to create npcs with PC-like abilities, and/or port PC class or feat effects onto npcs (or monsters) when modifying them. Might be worth editing this answer to remove the assumption that DMs only ever use listed monsters with listed monster abilities, as it is very common at least around here not to. – user2754 Feb 09 '22 at 07:26
  • I suspect you're overestimating how common that is, but even if you regularly build PC-style NPCs, you're talking about a very specific pair of abilities coming into contact to make this even be a discussion. (For the record, I think I've personally built an NPC using PC rules once since 5e came out, and even then I edited it to remove abilities that were unlikely to meaningfully come up in play, to make the stat block more convenient.) – Darth Pseudonym Feb 09 '22 at 13:11
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Heavy Armor Master gives neither resistance nor immunity to nonmagical attacks. Ki-Empowered Strikes therefore has no interaction with Heavy Armor Master.

-6

You've emphasised the wrong part of the explanation of the Ki-Empowered Strikes feat. The explanation clearly states the 6th (or greater) leveled monk's fists "count as magical (weapons)". It is unequivocal, therefore that the resistance to nonmagical weapons granted by the Heavy Armour Master feat is nullified by the Monk's Ki-Empowered Strike.

To elaborate (as some are confused by my answer judging by the comments below) "resistance to" something in the rules is generally the case where a die roll is required to determine whether full or half damage is taken. When viewed in the context of physical (weapon) attacks however, which is what the OP is about, it would seem nonsensical - laborious and clumsy - to consider a gaming session where the GM has to roll a die for every physical attack made to determine whether full or half damage is taken. That would go against the essence of ADnD being a game and therefore being a vehicle for enjoyment.

This being the case, it is sensible to interpret the words "resistance to" in this instance only as being synonymous to "reduction". It simplifies the action, allows the game to flow without unnecessary interruption and increases enjoyment.

Leo_1452
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    What information would you like that is not already included in the OP's post? The OP already quoted the relevant information, which I referenced for context. Good answers tend to be concise, relevant and meaningful. I answered the question asked and pointed out what I believe to be a mistake by the OP. Is that not allowed here? – Leo_1452 Feb 08 '22 at 01:15
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    @Leo_1452 Sorry about the spam, it's just a bot, you can ignore it. Personally I don't agree with you because I think you cut off half the sentence. What do you make of the "for the purposes of ..." part of the sentence? –  Feb 08 '22 at 02:17
  • Okay, thanks for the notice about the bot. It's fine we disagree, but I want to lay out the reasoning behind my initial reply. The most important point to realise when answering any question regarding DnD (any version) is that it's a game, and the essence of any game is to be enjoyed. In that respect, simplicity rules and the simple answer to the OP's question is that "resistance to" and "reduction" have, in this context, the same meaning. – Leo_1452 Feb 08 '22 at 06:46
  • To follow on, there is no case, in my knowledge of any being characterised in DnD/ADnD rules having "resistance to" (i.e. necessitating a die roll to determine whether full or half damage is taken) normal (non-magical) weapons. Therefore we should interpret the words "resistance to" in the first case above to have the same meaning as "reduction", as that is what I believe the context demands and was the intention of the rule-writer. – Leo_1452 Feb 08 '22 at 06:50
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    So, if I understand correctly, you are saying that any reasonable person (outside the game) would probably read reduction and resistance as synonyms? I agree with that, I think that's fine. In 5e in particularly the designers definitely made a lot of effort to write the game rules in "plain English", so I think you have a point. But there are still "game terms", and I think that "resistance" is actually more of a keyword, I am not sure it's supposed to be plain English; https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/combat#DamageResistanceandVulnerability –  Feb 08 '22 at 06:53
  • Yes, NHP, I am saying that the terms are synonyms in this case - although not in the general case. "Resistance to" and "reduction" are generally different game concepts, as my point on die rolling for half damage attempts to point out, but the writer of this particular part of the rules confused the issue a bit by conflating them. – Leo_1452 Feb 08 '22 at 07:19
  • Hm, not sure I'm buying this explanation, but thanks for explaining it to me! It might be good to put a bit more explanation in your answer as this stack aggressively deletes comments unfortunately –  Feb 08 '22 at 07:33
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    This question is about D&D 5e, not AD&D, so several of your claims are quite plainly incorrect in the context of 5e. It appears as though you have written this from the perspective of AD&D, which makes it irrelevant to the question. – Thomas Markov Feb 08 '22 at 07:53
  • I'm always open to change if I make errors or if my understanding is inadequate, Mr Markov, so would you be kind enough to point out where my explanations are wrong/not relevant and I'll work to correct my understanding. – Leo_1452 Feb 08 '22 at 08:27
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    “"resistance to" something in the rules is generally the case where a die roll is required to determine whether full or half damage is taken” This is incorrect, resistance is something else entirely. “ GM has to roll a die for every physical attack made to determine whether full or half damage is taken” This is not how resistance or attacks work in 5e. Are you sure you are talking about 5e? Because it appears as though you are not just misunderstanding the 5e rules, but that you are talking about a different game entirely. – Thomas Markov Feb 08 '22 at 08:32
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    It would do a lot to actually quote the rules you are talking about, eg resistance, rolling dice for physical attack to do half damage, etc. I don’t know what you’re talking about because you seem to be talking about stuff from a different game. – Thomas Markov Feb 08 '22 at 08:35
  • This looks like you are answering as if you were talking about a different edition of dnd. – Akixkisu Feb 08 '22 at 10:00