Talk:Energy Anti-Resistance (3.5e Creature Ability)

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RatedOppose.png Spanambula opposes this article and rated it 0 of 4.
This is old but still bad. While I'll call out specific problems, the main issue is a common one with Luigifan: there's a creative and good idea here, but instead of adapting the idea to D&D rules, Luigifan tries to adapt D&D to his idea. This results in overly complicated formulas that don't share anything in common with existing rules, and long, often confusing passages of text trying to reinvent the wheel.

Here are more specifics: 1. Fluff is fine in its proper place. Its proper place is NOT in with mechanics and formulas. Luigifan, you're not a bad creative writer, but you don't know when to stop being a creative writer and be clear, concise, and keep everything as simple as possible. It may be clever to say something is "not not not not untrue," but it's much easier to your readers to just say "false."

2. Qualifying statements are poison to clarity. Words like "usually," "most," "some," have no place in a rule description unless you are immediately spelling out exactly what those exceptions are. In general (ha), if you notice that your mechanic needs a bunch of exceptions, then you've done something wrong. This is why using existing mechanics is so important, because those mechanics and the exceptions for them have already been spelled out and are understood already by players.

3. Adding in obvious comments or reiterating basic rules is unnecessary and causes further confusion.

4. "Anti-Resistance" is itself confusing. Call it Energy Penetration or something that doesn't have the word "resistance" in it, especially if you're going to type out sentences like "anti-resistance is equal to resistance minus anti-resistance but resistance anti-resistance resistance resistance something anti-resistance resistance OH GOD STAAAHP.

So how do we fix this? Here: "This quality can be added to any attack that would normally be affected by energy resistance or energy hindrance. Energy Anti-Resistance negates Energy resistance on a point-for-point basis. For example, Fire Anti-Resistance 10 would negate Fire Resistance 10. In the case of Energy Hindrance, it lowers the percentage instead, so Fire Anti-Resistance 10 drops Fire Hindrance 50% down to 40%." THE END. FULL STOP. You don't need to come up with complicated formulas to deal with immunity and absorption, because this is anti-RESISTANCE. But instead you try to adapt D&D to your idea, and the result is a barely readable mess that no DM or player is ever going to use at their table.