Vulnerability & Resistance

In the current online game a monster hit Candelos with a power that does Fire and Necrotic damage.

Since Candelos is bloodied he gains vulnerability 5 to necrotic. He also has armor that gives him resistance to necrotic.

Since the power does Fire and Necrotic would only the vulnerability kick in?

Flame did 14hp of fire & necrotic damage. Would it instead do 14+5hp of fire and necrotic and since he doesn't have resistance to both he can't resist the necrotic?


Thought?

Without doing research, just off of memory, I think it is fairly clear. The damage is fire and necrotic. For the resistance to be effective, the PC has to have resistance to both fire and necrotic. Having resistance to only necrotic results in the PC taking full damage.

Now, if the PC is vulnerable to necrotic (only)then any type of necrotic damage, the PC will take more. Fire and necrotic has necrotic in it, so the PC would take the extra 5 points. I believe the "extra 5 points" would be lumped in as fire/necrotic damage (this is the key point).

So, the question is, even though the PC's necrotic resistance armor doesn't help at all in resisting fire/necrotic damage, can the armor at least offset an equal amount of necrotic vulnerability?

Unfortunately, I think the RAW say no, the PC takes the "extra" damage...seems really unfair however...

the damage is fire + necrotic, so his necrotic resistance isn't used yet. The vulnerability is necrotic only, so without reading the rules, I'd let them cancel.

I think it could go either way which is why I posted the question.


If resistance/immunity is based on the damage type. Then you have to be resistant to all of they types or your resistance doesn't count.

Vulnerabilities don't take other damage types into consideration. If you take damage of a type your vulnerable to then you take extra damage.


Although the RAW currently don't support this, you could deduct a vulnerability from any resistance you have. If you have 10 resistance to fire and gain 5 vulnerability to fire, then you would end up with 5 resistance to fire.

This is probably the most fair, but I can't find anything that lets resistance/vulnerability offset each other.

Page 19 of the Player's Handbook update better describes this situation.

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/UpdatePH.pdf

It says:

Resistance:

Against Combined Damage Types: Your resistance is ineffective against combined damage types unless you have resistance to each of the damage types, and then only the weakest of the resistances applies. For
example, if you have resist 10 lightning and resist 5 thunder and an attack deals 15 lightning and thunder damage to you, you take 10 damage, because the resistance to the combined damage types is limited by the lesser of the two resistances.

Vulnerability:

Against Combined Damage Types: Vulnerability to a specific damage type applies even when that damage type is combined with another. For example, if you have vulnerable 5 fire, you take 5 extra damage when you take ongoing fire and radiant damage.

According to this Candelos necrotic resistance is ineffective, but the vulnerability still kicks in.


Something that will probably happen with greater frequency in paragon and epic levels...