Piercing Damage 5e
by Prince Phantom
It’s amazing how many things stop functioning properly once you put a few holes in them. Piercing damage covers the majority of ranged weapons, bite attacks, and a myriad of other methods of delivering a hole where one shouldn’t be. There’s a surprising amount of interesting data points here, so let’s get into the numbers.
Resistance, Immunity, and Vulnerability in monsters (out of 2624 printed monsters)
Resistant: 53
Immune: 0
Vulnerable: 1
Compared to the other two physical damage types, we have the most resistance, and the least immunities. Notably, most creatures resistant to piercing damage are either plants, skeletons, or swarms, so it’s pretty easy to tell what will be resistant if you know what you’re fighting. Even with this being the most resisted of the three, you’ll still hardly ever run up on something that you don’t want to target with piercing damage. Fittingly, the one creature vulnerable to piercing is a ballon monster.
Spells that Deal Piercing Damage
| Spell Level | Spells |
|---|---|
| Cantrip | Thorn Whip |
| 1st | Ensnaring Strike, Hail of Thorns, Hunter's Mark, Ice Knife |
| 2nd | Cordon of Arrows, Magic Weapon, Summon Beast |
| 3rd | Animate Dead, Conjure Barrage, Summon Fey |
| 4th | Faithful Hound |
| 5th | Insect Plague, Summon Draconic Spirit |
| 6th | Create Undead, Wall of Thorns |
| 7th | - |
| 8th | - |
| 9th | - |
The best options here are definitely Thorn Whip, Faithful Hound, and Wall of Thorns, which notably all revolve around moving enemies around the battlefield, so there’s some nice synergy there. Using a Thorn Whip to pull a creature into a Wall of Thorns is both powerful and flavorful.
See Also: Complete Guide to Piercing Damage Spells
Weapons that deal Piercing Damage:
Simple Weapons:
Dagger
Javelin
Spear
Light Crossbow
Dart
Shortbow
Martial Weapons:
Lance
Morningstar
Pike
Rapier
Shortsword
Trident
War pick
Blowgun
Longbow
Hand Crossbow
Heavy Crossbow
Notably, almost every ranged weapon deals piercing damage, but our options for melee combat are less interesting. Despite the fact that they totally should, Pikes don’t work with Polearm Master, and Lances don’t count as Heavy even though they also totally should, so they can’t be used with Great Weapon Master. The Rapier isn’t a bad thing to have around for a dexterity based character in case they get stuck in melee, but aside from that, you’ve got better options in other damage types for melee combat.
Synergies with Piercing Damage:
Piercer (Feat): This is easily the worst of the three damage type feats, adding less than 1 dpr to the average build. If you pick this, make it your last choice, and you better be rounding up your Dexterity to its next modifier.
How worried should we be about Piercing Damage:
435/711 monsters in the Monster Manual and Mordenkainen’s Monsters of the Multiverse can deal piercing damage.
Wow. That is by far the most out of any damage type, and it’s not even close. The other two physical damage types only just barely appear more often if we combine their numbers. This is nearly half of commonly used, printed monsters, meaning you should be expecting to see it constantly. If you have a feature that lets you pick a damage resistance like the Fiend Warlock’s 10th level ability and don’t know what you’ll be fighting next, pick piercing, it’s easily the most likely to come up.
How do we get resistance to Piercing Damage?
Class Abilities:
Barbarian Rage
War Cleric Avatar of Battle (non-magical only)
Forge Cleric Soul of Forge and Fire (non-magical only)
Stars Druid Full of Stars
Oathbreaker Paladin Supernatural Resistance
Fiend Warlock Fiendish Resilience
Spells:
Barbarian Rage is really the only low level option, as the next lowest level is the Fiend Warlock’s level 10 feature. Spell options are similarly limited, as Blade Ward is a spell that really only works on specific builds that can take advantage of it, and Investiture of Stone is just a bad spell.
To Summarize:
Piercing damage is the most common type of damage to be dealt by monsters in the game, and you should expect to see it very frequently. If you have a magic item or ability that lets you choose a damage resistance, you’re probably best to pick piercing if you don’t know exactly what you’ll be fighting next. For players, dealing piercing damage will be largely relegated to ranged attacks, and you won’t really have to worry about resistance much more than you would for the other two physical damage types.
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