Radiant damage harms targets with beams of light, dazzling colors, and the like. The Astral Fire and Font of Radiance feats provide bonuses to powers with the radiant keyword. Undead are normally vulnerable to radiant damage, by either receiving extra damage or having their insubstantial ability deactivated.
What are undead weak to?
A very common weakness shared among The Undead is fire. Chopping such creatures into little bits may not stop them, but fire generally will. They also often burn more readily than is strictly realistic. In the case of vampires, a weakness to fire may be connected to, or contain, a weakness to sunlight.
How does making undead vulnerable to radiant damage work?
Of course, you are the DM, if you slip 1 more zombie into the pack or give the lich 25% more hp the effect of radiant vulnerability will be effectively cancelled out but the PC who picked paladin still gets to feel clever. There are two types of game balance: PCs vs. NPCs and PCs compared to each other.
When does radiant damage do extra damage in 5e?
Creatures only ever suffer extra damage from a type of attack if their statblock specifically states they have vulnerability to it. As a rule, 5e prefers to give damage resistances. many undead are resistant to a wide range of damage types eg nonmagical slashing, poison, etc.
Can a vampire be vulnerable to radiant damage?
Shadows ARE vulnerable to radiant damage. Vampires take radiant damage from exposure to sunlight, but are not particularly vulnerable to any other sources of radiant damage. In general, radiant damage is not particularly effective against most undead.
Can you use radiant damage on a skeleton?
However, skeletons (one of your most common garden variety undead creatures) do not have a vulnerability to radiant damage. You may be better off using a blunt weapon (which skeletons do have a vulnerability to) and keep your holy water for a more deserving undead or fiendish creature with less obvious and accessible vulnerabilities.
