I was thinking of building a Summoner for a game of Pathfinder. I kinda like the idea of a cat-like Eidolon that can deal a lot of damage by pouncing a target and just shredding them. Going through the Summoner Handbook I found a build for just that, but it also noted the following:
This build revolves around getting lots of natural attacks, stacking extra damage onto them (from energy attacks, Power Attack, and a high Strength), then unloading them all on an enemy with Pounce. Very straightforward and very high first-round damage potential. Dependent on getting off that charge, so make sure you identify the kinds of things that can prevent charges and neutralise them (e.g. give the Eidolon flight so it can charge over difficult terrain, and position yourself in the marching order so that party members won't obstruct you). Your main weakness will be Damage Reduction: since you depend upon landing lots of hits even a small amount of DR will cripple your damage output.
Empathis mine. This got me to think though: just how common is Damage Reduction on monsters in Pathfinder? Does it appear a lot on monsters of a specific type (Aberration, Outsider), is it somewhat evenly spread or is it not as common as the text is implying?
Best Answer
A pretty good percentage of monsters have DR.
I have Hero Lab with all the various monster and NPC books loaded. When I use its Encounter Builder, I have the choice of 4169 monsters and pre-built NPCs.
When I search for DR, I get 1555 of them that have DR. So "37%" is the short answer. It's not necessarily biased towards higher CRs - in fact, there's a lot of fae and bugs and stuff under CR 1 with DR!
However, in many cases the DR is not high. If you are doing a lot of damage-stacking, DR does reduce your DPS but you're still able to get a lot of it through. DR of 5 or less, whatever, it's not much of a thing.
957 of the creatures in my list have DR 10 or better, but that starts at CR 14 minimum and includes all them demon lords and whatnot.
DR is much more common among fae, outsiders, and undead. In the current Wrath of the Righteous campaign I'm in, which takes place in the Worldwound and then the Abyss, I don't think we've run across an enemy without DR in months.