Magic weapons being given to NPCs because I am immune to nonmagical weapon attacks

Question

I'm playing a tiefling path of the totem warrior barbarian (my totem is bear) in D&D 5E and due to backstory reasons I have been given a feat called Skin of the Myrmidon.

Skin of the Myrmidon

• You have resistance towards weapon attacks from nonmagical weapons. If you already have resistance towards this it becomes immunity.

• You gain 1 extra HP for each level.

The main part is that when I activate my rage (which gives me a resistance to nonmagical weapon attacks except for psychic damage, due to the totem warrior's bear option) I become immune to nonmagical weapon attacks. So to make it easier to hit me logically every enemy would now have a magic weapon. For the purposes of the feat, a weapon is magical if it has any magical enchantment, no matter how insignificant. A weapon which can do a backflip by itself will still hit me.

The problem I have with this is that the rest of my team who are not as tanky as my character are kind of getting screwed over by this because they will have to take that extra damage or +(insert number here) on the chin.

I haven't asked my teammates about this yet (edit: so far they don't have a problem with it yet but once it becomes a problem they will tell me so we can work together to fix it) but it feels kind of unfair because now that every enemy has a magic weapon they are getting hit more often than I do because they take more damage since they don't have the amount of health that I do.

Is there any way I could try to fix this without having to confront the DM about it? He can get quite pissed off at criticism if I don't come up with a solution first.

Answer 1

Only your DM can fix the problems they caused by handing out a broken homebrew feat

OK, I'm sorry to say it so starkly, but this feat of yours is unbalanced, and your DM should know better than to give it to you.

5e as a game is designed to not require magical items, and that does include magical weapons. Most monsters will not be able to hurt you at all, when you are in "invulnerable to normal damage" rage.

Their solution also cannot be to now give magical weapons to all your opponents:

• Firstly, many creatures like beasts or monstrosities do not wield any weapons to begin with

• Second, this would lead to a massive inflation of magic weapons in your game. As per the guidance of the DMG, you could expect to have maybe one uncommon magic item like a +1 weapon per character by tier two. Giving +1 weapons to every mook in the game is not a feasible solution.

Has this actually happened? Maybe your DM is just fine with you essentially being invulnerable until you run out of rage.

So I think you have relatively little to worry about, but your DM should think hard of what they are doing to keep the game balanced and fun for all involved.

You also mentioned you are playing rather easy going, “it’s not a serious game”, so maybe a simple first step might be to just talk to the other players if it actually is an issue for them. It may not be, and you may be worrying about it without need. If it turns out you all feel the situation could be improved, you maybe can bring it up with the DM together - that way, no single one of you is criticizing them.

Answer 2

Give up your immunity.

You have an overpowered defensive ability, and the DM is countering it with by giving enemies magic weapons. This is the scenario where one PC is too powerful compared to the rest of the party, so an encounter which challenges that PC is deadly to the party, and an encounter which challenges the party can't scratch the one PC.

The source of the problem is this overpowered feat. Homebrew content often has this specific trait where if you already have the feat or item's ability, it gives you an even more powerful ability. You practically never see this in official content. Feats have to be balanced assuming players will use them optimally.

Nonmagical weapon resistance is also rare and highly powerful. The oathbreaker paladin (DMG p.97) gets it at level 15. The epic Boon of Resilience grants it at level 20. DMG p.277 notes that when a monster has this trait, it's enough to effectively multiply their hit points by as much as 2x for challenge rating calculation, so it's a big deal. Damage resistance in a feat is an enormous power.

Nonmagical weapon immunity from a feat is unheard of. The Armor of Invulnerability (DMG p.152) is a legendary item, and it grants resistance to nonmagical damage, with immunity to nonmagical damage for 10 minutes, once per day. Your feat is effectively as good as this item, except you can use it for multiple fights as often as you rage, which increases with level.

The balanced solution is mutual disarmament. The player gives up their immunity, and in exchange, the DM gives up their NPCs' magical weapons.

A compromise might be reached, such as the immunity only working on one rage per day. The DM could also have more enemies which don't use weapons, or limit the number of enemies with magic weapons to only one per encounter.

Answer 3

Not all magical weapons need to involve + to hit or + damage, sometimes a sword can have some super minor benefit or nothing but still count as magical. There are also other ways you can be damaged, like lighting, fire, or exhaustion.

Good luck with the game, sounds fun

Answer 4

Having most random low-level enemies running around with +1 magic weapons is implausible in most campaign settings. There are magic weapons with a rarity of "common", such as the "moon-touched sword" from XGE, which can be any type of sword.

Generic variant, common. Minor tier
In darkness, the unsheathed blade of this sword sheds moonlight, creating bright light in a 15-foot radius and dim light for an additional 15 feet.

Perhaps some group has been churning these out for [story reasons], and they're a lot cheaper to make than +1 items.

But still, not everyone in most groups of enemies should have them, unless there's been a recent lycanthrope problem this group was dealing with. The leader of a group of mooks might have a "common" rarity magic item in a high-magic setting where magic items in general are plentiful and cheap.

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Or maybe balancing combats becomes different when there's a PC that some of the enemies can't damage

You can still be grappled (or taken out of the fight by magic), and they can still kill your allies.

If you want to have a PC that can be invulnerable to weapons, I'd suggest leaning in to that and having the DM balance combats around it. This means you might be up against more or tougher enemies, and it's up to you to use your body to protect your allies.

Enemies that don't already know your invulnerable to non-magic weapons (while raging) will waste at least one attack on you if you get yourself in the mix, but clever enemies that know of your powers may have a plan to deal with you, and won't be wasting their actions on your big pile of HP until your allies are dead. (At which point they may grapple / restrain you, and maybe suffocate you, since that's lethal in a way other than doing weapon-attack damage.)

This could lead to interesting and different tactics than the usual, and you might find you need to be grappling to stop them getting past you. Or taking the Sentinel feat to make your opportunity attacks reduce their speed to 0. Otherwise focus more on protecting your allies than you would in a normal game where defence is very difficult.

Giving a feat like this, and then negating it by giving most enemies magic weapons (especially +1 magic weapons), seems to me like it defeats the purpose of what could be an interesting way to switch up how combat feels. If you and everyone else at the table is ok with you having this special role in fights against mostly martial enemies, at least.

If the DM feels the feat is a problem for how they want gameplay to run, it's probably best to talk about that meta problem and re-design the feat. (If you don't want to try leaning in to the different challenges you can deal with as someone invulnerable to weapons for a couple minutes.)

Answer 5

This may be a controversial take but as a DM I would not rule your character to be immune.

I apply all effects in the order they come up in. That means permanent abilities first, and any powers/effects that need to be applied or "switched on" come after that.

By this logic, Skin of the Myrmidon would just make you resistant since you don't already have resistance. When your character rages, they WOULD gain resistance if they didn't already have it. Just like Darkvision doesn't stack.

Answer 6

Don't rage unless it's critical.

If your allies are unfairly taking blows because of your immunity to damage, stop raging. Then you can take the brunt of the damage with your huge health pool. Once your health gets low, then you can rage.

This nerfs your character somewhat, and requires no DM action. You can give some roleplay reason, like your character has seen how enemies unfairly target your fellows and you want to bleed just like them.

In the long run, push for your allies to get op feats and powers.

In lots of games DMs like absurd power swings from absurd feats. Support your allies in getting absurdly op feats as well, so they can join you in the crazy hijinks.

Answer 7

There is no problem

Seriously.

You're ultimately concerned that the DM may take steps to mitigate the effectiveness of a Feat they created for you. But that is precisely what a DM does; it is their job to ensure that Characters and Players are challenged. It would be absolutely absurd for any Player to expect that they become god-like merely because they are powerful. As Characters grow in power, so too do the threats they face.

Tanks aren't just HP Pools

Additionally, it sounds like you (along with most 5e D&D Players) have a vast misconception of what a Tank is. Having high Hit Points makes you durable; that's it. Unless your fights take place within 5-Ft wide corridors, you're just a durable warrior.

A Tank must be able to control their opponents' movement or actions, or be able to incite their enemies to focus on them. If you have crazy HP, why would they keep attacking you? Any intelligent enemy is going to focus on the enemies doing high Damage; not even a buffoon is going to attack the highly durable melee combatant when they can reach the squishy backline no problem. Enemies aren't automatons who must attack the closest thing; that's what the Confusion Spell does.

If you aren't Grappling your opponents, using Sentinel Feat with a Reach Weapon to keep them from moving past you, or dealing immense amounts of damage compared to your allies...you're just a durable DPS. Enemies are not obliged to let a Character maximize their potential (in fact, that's literally opposite of how they should behave), and a good DM shouldn't let you effectively Tank just because you want to be one.

An IRL Tank is focused on in combat because their offensive power is too great to ignore, not because they are hard to kill. If one doesn't have the firepower to deal with that...they ignore it and go for the squishy infantry units. They don't continue engaging something they can't effectively destroy.

HP is not blood

Importantly, HP is not literal blows. It is an abstract concept, representing such things as Will To Live. Does your Will To Live reduce when someone punches you? Taking Damage means you get closer to death; that's it. A Hit doesn't have to draw blood, and in fact plenty shouldn't. Someone with 100 HP can't literally take a dozen arrows to their face. It's just that they can mitigate blows, ignore the impact of morale, and literally fight on where another would have given in to mortality.

Take the Werewolf, also immune to non-Magic Attacks. This doesn't mean you can't stab them; it is just that they just won't die. They may get mangled and bloodied, with bones exposed, but because they haven't taken Magical Damage, they keep coming like nothing is wrong. It would be quite a silly idea that arrows and blades just bounce off their fur.

So by the same token, Enemies shouldn't necessarily notice they're not dealing Damage immediately. That should only become apparent as you continue fighting, and they are confident you should be dead by now.

Magic is as Rare or Common as a DM likes

And lastly, an obligatory: all these posts about how it is unfeasible to give Magic Items so easily have clearly never played anything besides 5e D&D. Previous editions had every item slot filled before you hit 5th Level. Saying it is unfeasible or unrealistic for most Settings to do such is absolutely facetious; most Settings do have that ability, and only 5e neutered it. The poster-child for 5e, Forgotten Realms, has powerful Casters in most towns, and literally dozens of top-tier Casters (Szass Tam, Khelben Blackstaff, Elminster, Mystra's Chosen, Manshoon, etc.)