Damage requirement and non damaging spells

[James 0]

So this came up, and experienced players were split. If a creature has a DR to poison, it obviously takes damage only when struck by poison. But what about compulsion spells? Does regular pin work, or only poison pin? Dominate, or natures command? Or all of these?

 

I ask because dr poison creatures are rare in that there is both poison damage and poison base compulsion. There is no "elven steel curse", so you use regular curse on a wraith and it works. I believe regular compulsion spells should work on something unless it is specifically immune to that spell or tree. What's the ruling here?

[Coroth 0]

DR is Damage Requirement - thus it applys only to damage- spells or otherwise. Unless noted by the creature description (for monsters ie some are immune to compulsion for example) or because of magical defenses non damaging spells work on everything.

[Kender 0]

DR and immunities aren't the inverse of eachother.

 

Coroth is correct.

 

Poison Immune means that "4 poison" and "poison pin" both fail.

 

DR Poison means that "4 magic" fails, but a magical "pin" spell works fine.

 

Our rules are a little confusing in that we have a number of damage types, and a number of ability types, and the words overlap in confusing ways. In the future we'll fix this by changing one to another word, for instance a fear spell could be "arcane fear" or something. Nothing concrete yet, but we're aware of an issue and are working to resolve it.

[James 0]

Perfect, this was my understanding as well. Thanks.