base resistances in early game

[quarague]

If you look at the 4 base resistances, they first start popping up around d-level 10 individually and by around d-level 30 you start seeing items that give all 4 at once. Before d10 you don't really need any of them and after d30 you are essentially expected to have them. But inbetween there is some room where the typical character will have some of them but not all.
This situation can be made interesting gameplay wise if you find monsters that are relatively harmless with the resistance and rather dangerous without. Hounds seem to me the obvious candidates for this. But the way they are implemented now, they are just melee creatures that occasionally breath their element. A cold hound does 3d3+3d3+2d6 melee damage and a 1 in 10 chance for 11 cold damage. Which means, if you see a bunch of them, having cold resistance is pretty irrelevant, the question is whether you can take on that much in melee or have a way to kill them quick enough at distance. I would suggest something more like 1 in 4 for 30 cold breath and only 2d6 freeze melee. Ie fairly nasty without cold res but not that dangerous with. Similarly for fire, water and energy hounds. That would also make the early rings of fire res etc actually useful. Probably make the same change for the other hounds so they all follow the same scheme: dangerous without the appropriate res and good xp with the res.