So we had an arena style session in 5e last night, and at one point, I was playing a sorcerer, and was facing a barbarian. The barbarian was raging, giving him resistance to slashing, piercing, and bludgeoning. I cast Cloud of Daggers, which does specify slashing damage.
So my question is: even though it is slashing, does it count as magical damage for the sake of overcoming resistance?
Best Answer
In this particular case, the magicalness of the damage matters not.
The Barbarian has resistance to piercing/slashing/bludgeoning damage regardless of whether or not it it's from a magical weapon. Thus they have resistance to the damage from Cloud of Daggers.
However, if you did encounter someone who had resistance to slashing damage from non-magical weapons, that one is up in the air. It's probably magical since the source is from a spell, but that is not certain. Most likely, the reason why it's not spelled out clearly is that it's painfully obvious, these count as magic weapons. However, it's definitely something where you'd need to talk to your DM about it as they may choose to rule that they are, in fact, not magical.