Ok, maybe I'm the only one who has ever been bothered by this, but I think the DR system needs a little revamp in Planescape. My reasoning here being that Law and Chaos are just as important as Good and Evil on the Planes, but the former two are almost never considered for DR purposes. For example:
Modrons. Creatures born of the purest essence of Law. Of course DR X/Chaotic is reasonable
Yuggoloths: Creatures born of the purest essence of Evil. Again, DR X/Good is appropriate
Baatzu: Creatures born of an equal amount of Lawful and Evil essence. But they only have DR X/Good. Doesn't make sense to me
Now, I think that an outsider's DR should be tied more closely to their actual alignment subtypes in the same way that their natural attacks are aligned. Thus, a Baatzu, (which in the MM has DR X/good and has the Lawful and Evil subtypes) would have DR X/good or chaotic. Matierial DR would remain as it is (IE silver, cold iron, etc.)
The only sticky point I can see would be Rilmani who would either get hosed (vulnerable to all forms of aligned weapons) or be much more powerful (vulnerable to no aligned weapons, or possibly only weapons with 2 alignments)
Not only does this system make more sense to me from a mechanics standpoint, it also helps to explain low-level Bloodwar combat. As the system stands, when a lemure and a manes meet on a battleground, they could just hack away at each other for days without bypassing each other's DR. Now, at least one of them would die in under a minute
Any thoughts?
Makes sense. Rilmani could be settled by upping their DR but giving them more vulnerabilities.