Hybrid Damage
Today we have a different sort of homebrew for you. In part, we have a few new spells for you to add to several classes’ toolkit. But more importantly, since I'm about to talk about it for a whole article, we’ll introduce you to a variant rule of my own creation. Hybrid damage, as I have dubbed it, has some far-reaching implications, if you or your DM choose to implement it, which we'll get into soon.
But, first of all, the actual content:
Hybrid Damage Spells
Presented here are a variety of spells that deal more than one damage type, originally created for the "Hybrid Damage" rules variant. Each is usable within standard 5e rules, but can be expanded upon using the variant rules that follows.
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Monsters and mages have always shown great ingenuity as they find new ways to destroy their enemies. Some of these specialized methods are hard to show in the standard rules. If you want more room to represent these stranger forms of harm, consider using the following variant:
Hybrid Damage
Some effects deal damage that has two types simultaneously, known as hybrid damage. Creatures with damage resistances must have resistance to both types to have resistance to hybrid damage. In addition, any effects that reference damage type apply to hybrid damage if either of the hybrid’s types are the referenced type.
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Spells
Level Spell School Conc. Ritual Class
0 Frostburn Evocation No No Artificer, Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard
3rd Mephistopheles's Lash Evocation Yes No Artificer, Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard
3rd Night Serpent's Fang Conjuration No No Cleric, Warlock
4th Baskrobbinon's Brainfreeze Transmutation Yes No Bard, Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard
4th Tesleman's Coiled Ward Evocation No No Artificer, Sorcerer, Wizard
6th Odunheim's Blighted Flash Transmutation No No Wizard
Baskrobbinon's Brainfreeze
4th-level transmutation
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 60 feet
Components: V, S, M (an ice cube and a walnut)
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute
You magically chill the fluids of a creature’s brain, causing extreme discomfort and drastically slowing its mental faculties. The creature must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or take 3d8 cold and 3d8 psychic damage, taking half as much damage on a success. On a failed save, the target is stunned for the spell’s duration.
A stunned creature makes another Constitution saving throw at the end of its turn. On a successful save, the effect ends for it.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 5th level or higher, the cold damage or the psychic damage (your choice) increases by 1d8 for each slot level above 3rd.
Frostburn
Evocation cantrip
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 120 feet
Components: V, S
Duration: Instantaneous
You magically subject the moisture in the air to extreme temperatures, creating steam with one hand and frost in the other. You then weave these magics together to create a short-lived bolt of unstable energy that streaks from your hands. Make a ranged spell attack against the target. On a hit, it takes 1d4 cold damage and 1d4 fire damage.
The spell's damage increases by 1d4 cold and 1d4 fire when you reach 5th Level (2d4 cold and 2d4 fire), 11th level (3d4 cold and 3d4 fire), and 17th level (4d4 cold and 4d4 fire).
Mephistopheles’s Lash
3rd-level evocation
Casting Time: 1 bonus action
Range: Self
Components: V, S, M (a scorched branch and a drop of fresh blood)
Duration: Concentration, up to 10 minutes
You evoke a murky black whip of hellfire in your free hand. The whip curls and wanders like an angry serpent, and lasts for the duration. If you let go of the whip, it disappears, but you can evoke the whip again as a bonus action.
You can use your action to make a melee spell attack with the hellfire whip. This attack has a reach of 15 feet, and on a hit, it deals 2d8 fire damage and 1d8 necrotic damage.
The hellfire whip sheds bright light in a 5-foot radius and dim light for an additional 5-feet.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 5th level or higher, the fire or necrotic damage (your choice) increases by 1d8 for every two slot levels above 3rd.
Night Serpent’s Fang
3rd-level conjuration
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 60 feet
Components: V, S
Duration: Instantaneous
You hurl a ghostly fang at a creature within range, calling a sliver of the power of Dendar the Night Serpent to transfix and cripple them. Make a ranged spell attack. On a hit, you deal 1d10 piercing and 3d10 poison damage, and the target must make a Constitution saving throw. On a failure, they are poisoned for 1 minute. While poisoned in this way, the target is blinded and paralyzed. At the end of each of its turns, the target can repeat the saving throw, ending the effect on a success.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 4th level or higher, you hurl one additional fang for each slot level above 3rd.
Odunheim’s Blighted Flash
6th-level transmutation
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 150 feet
Components: V, S, M (a shaving of lead, a hunk of graphite, and a poisonous mushroom)
Duration: 1 year
You fracture a tiny amount of matter at a point within range, creating a chain reaction that produces a sudden flash of destructive, poisonous light that lingers for months afterward. Each creature within 60 feet of the fracture point makes a Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, they take 2d8 radiant damage and 2d8 poison damage, and are blinded until the end of your next turn. On a success, they take 2d6 radiant and 2d6 poison, and are not blinded. All creatures exposed are blighted.
Each blighted creature must make another Constitution saving throw every hour. On a failed save, they take radiant and poison damage, which increases in damage dice from the initial damage taken, for instance from 2d8 to 2d10. The damage dice decrease on a failed save, for instance from 2d6 to 2d4. The damage dice continue to increase or decrease in this way, up to d12s or down to d4s. If a creature succeeds on its save after the damage dice have decreased to d4s, the effect ends.
For the next year, any creature that spends more than 10 minutes within the area of the spell must make a Constitution saving throw. On a failure, they take 2d8 radiant and 2d8 poison, and are blighted.
Any creature with immunity to disease or poison has advantage on the saving throw against this spell, but effects that cure disease or poison cannot end this spell early. If greater restoration is cast on a blighted creature, they gain advantage on their next saving throw, and if they succeed, the effect ends.
Tesleman’s Coiled Ward
4th-level evocation
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Self
Components: V, S, M (a rod of iron tightly wrapped with copper wire)
Duration: 10 minutes
Arcs of electrical current dance up and down your body for the duration, shedding bright light in a 10-foot radius and dim light for an additional 10 feet. You can end the spell early by using an action to dismiss it.
The crackling shield grants you resistance to lightning damage, and advantage on any saving throw to resist being moved.
In addition, whenever a creature within 5 feet of you hits you with a melee attack, the shield leaps out at them. The attacker takes 1d8 lightning damage and 1d8 force damage, and if they are Large or smaller, they must make a Strength saving throw. On a failure, the creature is pushed up to 10 feet away from you and knocked prone.
I offer you these spells first just in case you’re a rules purist, but still want something fun to add to your game. For the record, I’d add all of these to the Wizard spell list, and all but Coiled Ward to the Sorcerer and Warlock list. Artificer can have Coiled Ward, but these don’t strike me as spells divine casters would be casting, generally, but you should do whatever you want, of course.
If you aren’t a fan of variant rules, these spells work just as written. However, these spells are designed to be used with the variant rule that we’re about to get to. Feel free to jot them down and jump ship before we start getting into the weirder stuff.
...Good? Then, to business!
Hybrid damage functions exactly like regular damage in most cases; 1d6 poison/radiant is still just 1 to 6 lost hit points, but hybrid damage interacts with resistances differently. Hybrid damage ignores resistances unless the target has resistance to both damage types. Similarly, damage immunities are less effective against hybrid damage types. If a creature is immune to one but not both damage types, they still take half damage, as if they had a resistance rather than full immunity. Vulnerabilities to hybrid damage, meanwhile, act as normal. A creature vulnerable to one or both damage types take double damage. Finally, in the unlikely case that a creature has immunity from one damage type, but vulnerability to the other, the hybrid damage is unchanged.
As for the last phrase, other things that care about damage type aren’t as picky about whether they apply. A Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer who adds their Charisma mod to fire damage would also add it to fire/lightning damage, or a Death Cleric whose necrotic damage ignores resistance would also ignore resistance for acid/necrotic damage, and so on.
That was a lot of specifics so let’s look at an example. A tiefling, an aasimar, an ancient red dragon, a shadow demon, and a human walk into a bar, and the bar explodes, forcing all five to make a save for half damage. All of them fail, and take all of the 20 fire/radiant damage.
The tiefling, with her racial resistance to fire damage, takes 20 damage, since she has no resistance to radiant damage.
The aasimar, meanwhile, is wearing a ring of fire resistance, and since he also has a racial resistance to radiant, he takes only 10 damage.
The red dragon, immune to fire but with no special defense against radiant, takes 10, as their immunity helps with but doesn’t fully stop fire/radiant damage.
The shadow demon, with vulnerability to radiant damage, takes 40 damage, and is especially upset.
Lastly, the human, who has no resistances, just takes 20, as with any other damage type.
So that’s how hybrid damage works, but math aside, what is this for? Well, I’m glad you asked. This rule has a lot of possible implications, and so I’ll be spending the rest of this article outlining just a few. It creates the possibility of more unusual sorts of damage to be represented, in new spells like the ones we started with, but it also helps to make a lot of existing items or spells more relevant.
So, to begin with weirder types of damage. It has been a frustrating gap for some, including me, that there is not really an accurate way to represent ‘radiation damage’ in the base rules for 5E. You could make an argument for radiant, or poison, or maybe necrotic, but no one seems to capture the strange way radiation works. With hybrid damage, however, we can represent it as a combination of types, to hone in on that very specific sort of harm. This question of how to represent radiation is what gave me the idea for hybrid damage, and I’m quite pleased with the way it handles the issue. In particular, I like poison/radiant as the pairing for ‘radiation’ damage, but there could be other pairings that might be more technically accurate, or just seem more right to someone besides me. I’m neither a scientist nor your father, so do what you think is best.
The other thing that I think hybrid damage could do really well is make some more underwhelming items and effects more useful. For instance, it’s no secret that poison damage is one of the weakest damage types in 5E, since so many creatures are resistant or immune to it. One of the only things every undead has in common is their immunity to poison, and considering how many DMs rely on skeletons or zombies as cannon fodder, would-be poisoners are pretty thoroughly fucked. However, with hybrid damage, poison becomes a more useful way to get around resistances. Vanilla rules basic poison lets a weapon deal an extra 1d4 poison after a save, but hybrid can do better. Try this instead:
Basic Poison (vial)
You can use the poison in this vial to coat one slashing or piercing weapon or up to three pieces of ammunition. Applying the poison takes an action. While the poison retains its potency, the poisoned weapon or ammunition deals slashing/poison or piercing/poison damage, based on what damage type the item normally inflicts, and deals an extra 1d4 of the same hybrid type. Once applied, the poison retains potency for 1 minute before drying.
With this version of basic poison, creatures with resistance to poison are just as harmed thanks to the way it is used on them. At the same time, poisoning your weapon becomes a way to make a non-magical weapon effective against certain tougher monsters. A great many mid-tier monsters resist non-magical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage, but a weapon coated in poison and doing hybrid damage is much more likely to be able to circumvent those creatures’ defenses. A party without the cash to silver their weapons against a werewolf, for instance, might be able to afford or find poison, and gain an upper hand for a brief window.
Other sidelined damage dealers could also benefit from also becoming hybrid damage. The morningstar is a straight downgrade from the warhammer or rapier, but if it dealt 1d8 bludgeoning/piercing damage, it could become a strategically viable option, as its hybrid damage type will get around resistances in certain cases. This also has the added benefit of being more accurate than the vanilla morningstar, as the real weapon is designed to hurt in two different ways at once, which is why it has a heavy metal weight and spike on the end. Similarly, flame strike, a 5th level spell that deals as much damage as a 3rd level fireball, could gain more use if it dealt 8d6 fire/radiant rather than split 4d6 fire and 4d6 radiant. That, and there’s interesting flavor to the idea of the spell calling down energy that’s not quite holy light, but not quite fire either, existing somewhere between the two. I could go on for a long time explaining more, so I’ll just rapid fire a few more so you get a sense for where to look for ways to tweak existing effects. So, in no particular order:
the sun sword magic item could deal slashing/radiant;
a sword of life-stealing could deal slashing/necrotic, or piercing/necrotic;
flame tongue swords, and the flame blade spell, could deal slashing/fire;
javelins of lightning and the lightning arrow spell could deal piercing/lightning;
certain varieties of poison could deal acid/poison, cold/poison, or any number of possible pairings for other odd creatures and their venoms.
As I said before, there are a lot of implications to a new style of damage, and the number of ways that this variant could affect existing and new content are impossible to guess at.
One last thing before we wrap up; there are some changes to the strength of certain effects in 5E if you use this variant. Most notably, resistances to damage are not as strong, as more types of damage can get around them. To compensate for this, I recommend changing a few things, mostly to make resistances more common and easier to acquire. Resistance-granting spells, like protection from energy or stoneskin, could be treated as a level lower than normal, making a now weaker effect cheaper to use, and magic items like potions or rings of resistance could be more commonly available and/or cheaper to buy. On the DM’s side, appropriately intelligent or otherwise dangerous monsters could have more resistances and immunities, so that the PCs are forced to experiment and plan in order to slay more deadly enemies. I haven’t had an opportunity to field test such changes, since I can’t run dozens of campaigns simultaneously, so you’ll have to use your judgement to figure out how best to keep things balanced. One thing I urge you to keep in mind, as you tweak things: this variant isn’t meant to make gameplay more or less punishing, but to make more strategies viable and make more interesting choices for players to make.
That’s about it for this variant, at least for now. If you use hybrid damage, let us know how it turns out, and if it inspires new homebrew, tell us! We’d love to hear about it. I hope this variant can add fun new options to your next campaign.
-James the Snickering Ghoul
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