One of the things that we've started to see in more recent monster designs is what might wind up being a pretty monumental change:
Since 2014, many particularly "magical" beings, from those at low levels like Ghosts and Specters to those at high levels, like Demon Lords and Liches, have had either Resistance or, in some cases, Immunity to "bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks."
The idea, I think, was to make creatures that would require a magical weapon to properly fight. This is, of course, a classic notion in fantasy - that a certain monsters, especially those that are legendary and suffused with magical power, can only be harmed by a special weapon.
But it's also something that, in D&D, has been kind of meaningless.
While, again, a low-level character might find themselves fighting some incorporeal undead (or even an imp) before they get access to a magic weapon, it more or less feels like a switch flipping around level 5 or 6, where martial characters just don't really have to worry about that anymore. Very, very few creatures released in the past ten years have had blanket immunity to all bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage - this "nonmagical" distinction is tacked onto just about every creature with such resistances or immunities.
Indeed, the oddness to this is also that if they take such damage from something that isn't an attack, even with their magical invulnerability, they'll fully take, say, falling damage. There is a funny irony that the relatively humble Clay Golem is actually immune to every bit of damage the Tarrasque can do, meaning that, after probably a very long combat (given how often the Golem is going to miss the Tarrasque, especially from within its belly) the Clay Golem will always win.
That is, unless you have the Tarrasque pick the Golem up and throw it about a mile in the air (which, as a 70-foot-long creature with 30 Strength, it probably can do).
One change we saw with classes like the Monk or the Circle of the Moon for Druids, or the beast companions for the Beast Master Ranger, is that the old features they had that made their attacks "count as magical" instead just change the damage types - Force for Monks and the Ranger pets, and Radiant for the Druids.
Thus, what I suspected we would get was that monsters would simply have resistance/immunity to bludgeoning/piercing/slashing damage full stop, but that magic weapons would now deal Force or other "non-kinetic" damage types.
However, that does not appear to be the case. A +2 Greatsword will still deal slashing damage, except when it's changed by being something like a Pact Weapon for a Warlock.
How about creatures, though? Did they just get rid of these resistances and immunities? Well, not if the Fire Elemental is any indicator - as predicted, it does have resistance to Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing damage, with no carve-out for magic attacks.
Meaning what? Well, it means that martial characters might find that they are, in fact, at a pretty significant disadvantage when fighting monsters of this sort - unless they can get their hands on some unconventional magic weapons.
As a note, not everything has retained its resistances. The Stone Golem only has its Poison and Psychic immunities (which are common for constructs) but nothing about bludgeoning/piercing/slashing. Likewise, the Succubus and Incubus have their "elemental" resistances but nothing you'd find on a typical weapon.
Thus, players will likely want to hold onto Flame Tongues, Frost Brands, and particularly Sun Blades, the latter of which fully converts your damage to radiant (the others will see bonuses like Rage, Strength/Dexterity, and feats like Great Weapon Master still reduced, as the primary damage is still kinetic.)
It is interesting - while spellcasters are generally considered the more powerful kind of character because of their versatility, martials are the characters who are built for single-target damage. But if you're a Barbarian with a +2 Greatsword, will you actually be able to out-damage a Warlock hitting with Eldritch Blast if you're fighting, say, an Empyrean?
Assuming the same chance to hit and crit, our high-level Barbarian might be hitting for 2d6+17 (+5 Strength, +4 Rage, and +6 from Great Weapon Master, and +2 from a +2 Greatsword) twice for a total of 48 damage, halved down to 24.
Our Warlock could be shooting four Eldritch Blasts for 1d10+5 per hit, so 10.5 four times or 42 - not reduced at all because it's Force damage.
Hell, even a Wizard could be doing nearly as good as this Barbarian with a simple Fire Bolt, dealing an average of 22 damage per hit.
I'm curious to see what the actual intent behind this design is: do martials need to be slowed down so that big boss monsters can have some time to be scary? And are we likely to see more spells and magic weapons that allow martial characters to deal other types of damage (given that we have the new DMG, I'm not sure that we are.)
I'm curious to see how often, if ever, we'll see full immunity to all three kinetic weapon damage types. I suspect we might see some with just one of them, like Ochre Jellies and their slashing immunity, but probably nothing that will fully lock out every weapon that isn't a Sun Blade or the like. Still, with such resistances remaining, it'll be something to really consider when designing adventures - make sure that you aren't totally screwing over your martial players by making a dungeon where everything's a ghost - unless you have some workaround for them.
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