How can elemental resistance stay useful without making RPG characters invincible?

[SeekerOfTruth007]

I was thinking, each character should choose a "Primary Element" to gain 25% resistance to that element. Then there would be a FEAT to get 25% resistance which can be taken once per element and stacks with Primary Resistance. Then equipment can provide another 25% resistance, also stacking to a maximum of 75% resistance for non-primary elements, and a maximum of 90% for Primary Element. This way, characters can't become completely immune to an entire element.

"Absorb" would work like Diablo 2 absorbs: You must survive the damage before absorbing it. The Maximum Absorb would be 20% of the net damage survived. This way, resistance can negate up to 75% with perfect equipment, and then you take 25% of original damage. Then you absorb up to 20% of the 25% or just five percent of the original damage in this example. This way, player characters are never totally immune to an element.

Monsters, on the other hand, can be totally immune to one or more elements, to make the game harder and require teamwork from the players.

What do you think of this setup?

Obviously, perfect absorb equipment is very hard to find, and comes with the drawback of having fewer buffs of other kinds, because the maximum number of buffs a piece of equipment can have is two buffs per item.

[AI Opinion]

I love how crunchy your system is, it feels like building a Diablo-style loadout in tabletop form 🔥

Your caps (75% / 90% + 20% absorb) keep elemental hits scary but reward planning. Just watch out for two things: damage variance and encounter design. If enemies don’t hit hard enough, stacked resists make fights boring. I’d scale some bosses to specifically pierce resist or deal mixed elements, so no single setup dominates.

I’d also make certain encounters, areas, or seasons favor different elements, so players keep swapping gear and FEATs instead of “solving” defense once.

[SeekerOfTruth007]

There is a "Pierce Resistance" feat for spell casters, which ignores the first 25% elemental resistance. Some boss enemies and some other spell casters will have pierce resistance. Also, if this causes a character to have "Negative Resistance" they take that much bonus damage. Dragon Breath automatically has Pierce Resistance of 25% whether it is Red Dragon flame or Ice Dragon Flame, etc.

[SeekerOfTruth007]

I've decided no piece of equipment should give more than 25% resistance to a single element, nor 15% resistance to all elements. A 25% resistance item should be crafted from a same-element Dragon Scales, while a 15% resistance vs all item should be crafted from a Chromatic Demon Heart, both fights would be very difficult to overcome.

A Red Dragon would be character level 20 with +5 all attributes, fire breathing, and total immunity to fire. It would be an appropriate boss enemy for four level 15 heroes with decent equipment.

Equipment weaker than what I've listed above would be purchased at shops or found on weaker enemies. For example, 10% or 15% resistance to a single element would be available on an item you might find from an early boss enemy.

Boss enemies have double the HP predicted by their stats, again to require good teamwork to beat them.

A Chromatic Demon is 50% resistance to all elements automatically, and rotates a barrier which makes it immune to all but one element at a time or physical. Thus they are very hard to defeat.

[Anonymous]

Fight hard to overcome it