Force damage in D&D 5E is too poorly-defined to be a good part of the game and exists solely for when the designers don’t want any characters or creatures to have access to resistance against the thing in question. Either we need an actual description of what happens to a thing that gets hit by it or it should be cut; the vast majority of the things that deal it could perfectly easily be magical bludgeoning / piercing / slashing. Spiritual weapon and Bigby’s hand are particularly egregious
I don’t know what or if there are any cannon explanations, but I always had understood force as well… force. Bludgeoning, piercing, slashing are damage amplifiers that make do with limited force. But if you trying to damage say, a rock, they are basically irrelevant. But you put a rock in a hydrolic press and apply a enough force, and boom it cannot withstand. So being hit by an eldritch blast is less like being shot and more like being hit with a high pressure oil leak.
We know what the damage type of a crushing force is in 5E, though. It’s bludgeoning. That’s why the grasping hand effect of Bigby’s hand does bludgeoning, as does any constricting attack from the likes of giant snakes.
High-pressure fluid jets can cut through things if sufficiently narrow and fast, but at that point you’re still just looking at piercing or slashing. The injury isn’t different to being poked with a sharp stick other than that you are also wet now. If it’s not enough to cut with… well that’s bludgeoning again
High pressure fluid injuries are significantly different, but we’re moving off track.
Let’s come from the other direction. Bludgeoning, slashing and piercing all do damage through the application of force. However, the damage they do is amplified and relise on a particular susceptibility of the victim.
Bludgeoning amplifies is force through rapid impact time.
Piercing amplifies is force through a sharp hard single point.
Slashing is more complex, but it amplifies with a sharp hard edge kinda.
But these ‘tricks’ to deal more damage don’t work on everything. For example bludgeoning requires ‘inelastic deformation’ before movement. I.e. a bat breaks a skull but not a tennis ball. I can see why crushing is put in this category, it recognises that damage is due to the susceptibility of the target to be inelastically deformed (bruised, broken bones, crushed organs w/e). Everything has an inelastic deformation point, put a tennis ball in a press and you can crush it. But in this case it’s not that the ball is susceptible to bludgeoning damage, it’s just that you have applied lots of force.
Same with piercing, the effectiveness of a spear is reduced by something that can distribute its force over a larger area. Which doesn’t matter if the ‘spear’ has a huge amount of force behind it. At which point it doesn’t matter if it was a spear with a sharp point or just a rod (or jet of fluid).
There’s also armour of resistance and potion of resistance in the DMG, which can be force resistant. But that’s very few items, and in 5E the magic items you get are entirely dependent on your DM giving them to you. Note how they’re all in the DMG, after all. Compare this to, say, fire damage. Three player races have resistance, the 1st-level absorb elements spell gives most casters easy access to fire resistance, and two barbarian subclasses and two sorc subclasses can get it regularly. With force damage, I think the only option presented to the player is one of the aforementioned barb classes and a couple of abilities that give general resistance to all damage.
On the DM’s side, of the literally several thousand creatures published for 5E, there are 5 with immunity, 12 with resistance, and 2 with vulnerability. 19 total creatures out of over 3,000 have any unusual interaction with the damage type. Compare this to 90 for radiant, another very low one; 552 for fire; 671 for bludgeoning (including the ones that only interact with mundane bludgeoning). 19 creatures is so vanishingly rare that I don’t think my description is an unreasonable one.
Force damage in D&D 5E is too poorly-defined to be a good part of the game and exists solely for when the designers don’t want any characters or creatures to have access to resistance against the thing in question. Either we need an actual description of what happens to a thing that gets hit by it or it should be cut; the vast majority of the things that deal it could perfectly easily be magical bludgeoning / piercing / slashing. Spiritual weapon and Bigby’s hand are particularly egregious
I don’t know what or if there are any cannon explanations, but I always had understood force as well… force. Bludgeoning, piercing, slashing are damage amplifiers that make do with limited force. But if you trying to damage say, a rock, they are basically irrelevant. But you put a rock in a hydrolic press and apply a enough force, and boom it cannot withstand. So being hit by an eldritch blast is less like being shot and more like being hit with a high pressure oil leak.
Physically this doesn’t make sense. Bludgeoning piercing slashing all have effects on breaking a rock.
A hydraulic press is just a slow application of high forces from a pressure trick.
Getting hit by a high pressure oil leak can certainly resemble being shot.
See, as an example, water jet cutting
We know what the damage type of a crushing force is in 5E, though. It’s bludgeoning. That’s why the grasping hand effect of Bigby’s hand does bludgeoning, as does any constricting attack from the likes of giant snakes.
High-pressure fluid jets can cut through things if sufficiently narrow and fast, but at that point you’re still just looking at piercing or slashing. The injury isn’t different to being poked with a sharp stick other than that you are also wet now. If it’s not enough to cut with… well that’s bludgeoning again
High pressure fluid injuries are significantly different, but we’re moving off track.
Let’s come from the other direction. Bludgeoning, slashing and piercing all do damage through the application of force. However, the damage they do is amplified and relise on a particular susceptibility of the victim.
Bludgeoning amplifies is force through rapid impact time.
Piercing amplifies is force through a sharp hard single point.
Slashing is more complex, but it amplifies with a sharp hard edge kinda.
But these ‘tricks’ to deal more damage don’t work on everything. For example bludgeoning requires ‘inelastic deformation’ before movement. I.e. a bat breaks a skull but not a tennis ball. I can see why crushing is put in this category, it recognises that damage is due to the susceptibility of the target to be inelastically deformed (bruised, broken bones, crushed organs w/e). Everything has an inelastic deformation point, put a tennis ball in a press and you can crush it. But in this case it’s not that the ball is susceptible to bludgeoning damage, it’s just that you have applied lots of force.
Same with piercing, the effectiveness of a spear is reduced by something that can distribute its force over a larger area. Which doesn’t matter if the ‘spear’ has a huge amount of force behind it. At which point it doesn’t matter if it was a spear with a sharp point or just a rod (or jet of fluid).
Broach of shielding grants resistance to force damage
There’s also armour of resistance and potion of resistance in the DMG, which can be force resistant. But that’s very few items, and in 5E the magic items you get are entirely dependent on your DM giving them to you. Note how they’re all in the DMG, after all. Compare this to, say, fire damage. Three player races have resistance, the 1st-level absorb elements spell gives most casters easy access to fire resistance, and two barbarian subclasses and two sorc subclasses can get it regularly. With force damage, I think the only option presented to the player is one of the aforementioned barb classes and a couple of abilities that give general resistance to all damage.
On the DM’s side, of the literally several thousand creatures published for 5E, there are 5 with immunity, 12 with resistance, and 2 with vulnerability. 19 total creatures out of over 3,000 have any unusual interaction with the damage type. Compare this to 90 for radiant, another very low one; 552 for fire; 671 for bludgeoning (including the ones that only interact with mundane bludgeoning). 19 creatures is so vanishingly rare that I don’t think my description is an unreasonable one.