cold spell in a cold land... why?

Bihor · Oct 24, 2004

I was looking at the reviews of frostburn, and I was wandering why have spells, feats, and magic items that do cold damage in a cold region?

All monster and people have some kind of protection against cold.

Should't people try to find spell with fire to make double damage or some thing like that?

Crothian · Oct 24, 2004

THe same reason frost giants of weapons that do cold damage, its part of the theme

tarchon · Oct 24, 2004

There was a thread recently about this - more than a few people have noticed this oddity as well.

http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=103607&page=1&pp=20

I would say that for natural abilities, frost creatures naturally have frost-oriented powers, but I totally agree that frost giant wizards are a lot more likely to prepare Fireball than Cone of Cold when operating in their native environment. For sorcerers, it's not so clear - depends on whether you think sorcerers learn new spells as an act of will or if they develop spells as part of their nature. For magic items, it probably depends on the original purpose of the item. A frost giant might reasonably have a frost sword if the frost giants were fighting a war with fire giants, but if they were fighting a war with yetis, yeah, they would probably not be creating a lot of frost brands.

It's possible that some frost creatures view fire weapons and effects as being dishonorable or abhorrent somehow (maybe like we view chemical weapons), but that might be a law-vs-chaos thing.

One time, I created a bloodline of arctic vampires for Vampire: the Masquerade, and one thing I did with them was give them a power that insulated them against cold _and_ heat, because I knew that the first thing any gamer does when fighting a frost creature is whip out fire effects.

Arcane Runes Press · Oct 24, 2004

Bihor said:
I was looking at the reviews of frostburn, and I was wandering why have spells, feats, and magic items that do cold damage in a cold region?

All monster and people have some kind of protection against cold.

Far from "all monsters and people" are protected against cold.

PCs run into the nasty monster types because that how it goes when you've got "Player Character" written on your underwear. The vast majority of beings, however, are going to spend most of their time running into polar bears, or bandits, or gnolls on the frontier - none of whom resist cold magic any better than you or I would.

Patrick Y.

Sejs · Oct 24, 2004

I was looking at the reviews of frostburn, and I was wandering why have spells, feats, and magic items that do cold damage in a cold region?

All monster and people have some kind of protection against cold.

Well, yes and no.

Most normal creatures and animals have no protection against magical cold - thick clothes and fur doesn't do jack all to protect you against a cone of cold.

And amonst those that do have some degree of actual Cold Resistance, the norm is around 5 whole points, which is enough to let you romp about in your skivvies in the snow and avoid environmental damage, but again... not all that great against a cone of cold.

Then there's the things that have the actual Cold subtype, like Frost Giants and White Dragons. Yeah, those you don't use cold against. They're more cold inherrantly than anything you can whistle up. On the up side they tend to burn real well. And really, they're not all that common. Things with the Cold subtype tend to be the Big Bads of the cold environment, rather than everything and its mom.

...and besides - it's keeping in theme, dagnabbit.

hong · Oct 24, 2004

Arcane Runes Press said:
PCs run into the nasty monster types because that how it goes when you've got "Player Character" written on your underwear.

That's a neat trick.

Hong "has enough trouble writing "player character" in the snow" Ooi

takyris · Oct 24, 2004

From another perspective, I don't have Frostburn, but I have seen, uh, real snow.

If I'm Joe Frosty the King of the Frost Giants, and my giant castle, carved from blocks of ice, resides in the center of a permanently frozen lake that sits at the base of a snow-covered mountain... flinging around fireballs just because I suspect that someone might come in from some totally different environment and not be expecting is not really a winner as strategies go.

Sure, it'll surprise those pesky adventurers who showed up to ruin my day, but the walls of my castle will be turning into slush, the icy surface of the lake isn't going to support my weight once that ice starts cracking, and a giant wash of heat in the wrong direction could conceivably cause an avalanche.

In the unlikely event that I found myself GMing somebody who played a frost giant but wanted to use a flaming weapon, I'd politely suggest that he wouldn't find it comfortable (like a good character wouldn't find an unholy weapon comfortable to use), just like I'd politely imply that while yes, many of the party's enemies are human, asking the human wizard to make a human-bane weapon for the human fighter to wield is not going to work.

Terwox · Oct 24, 2004

Nod.
It's like a good-aligned cleric casting spells with the evil subtype.
They're cold subtyped creatures.
It's anathema.
...and a lot more importantly, it's theme!

tarchon · Oct 24, 2004

Sejs said:
Well, yes and no.

Most normal creatures and animals have no protection against magical cold - thick clothes and fur doesn't do jack all to protect you against a cone of cold.

I submit though that magic swords and mid-level spells are not generally targeted to normal creatures and animals. Most anthropoid creatures will almost certainly use melee weapons primarily against others of their own kind, and so they aren't going to waste 500 XPs and 10000 GP to lay on an enchantment that doesn't do anything 99% of the time. I agree with the idea that frost giants are probably going to be leery of flaming swords (kind of like humans with human-bane swords or arrows of human-slaying), but I also find the idea that they carry around frostbrands for the sake of theme to be in the same vein as intelligent CR 15 monsters that sit around in 10 x 10 rooms waiting for adventurers to come and kill them. I would expect something neutral on the fire-ice axis like electricity would be the most common type of weapon enchantment.

Tav_Behemoth · Oct 24, 2004

And then there's the category of "creatures that live in a cold land and deal with it by generating intense heat from within their bodies."

Okay, right now that category has only one monster: the remorhaz, one of the oldest monsters that's original to D&D (having first appeared in 1976, in an article in Dragon #5 by Erol Otus). But that'll change when Masters and Minions Horde Book 3: Rage of the Remorhaz arrives at GenCon SoCal in December! In the meantime, you can check out the previews in d20 Filtered #2 or Eyeball Kicks.

takyris said:
but the walls of my castle will be turning into slush, the icy surface of the lake isn't going to support my weight once that ice starts cracking, and a giant wash of heat in the wrong direction could conceivably cause an avalanche.

I had a ton of fun with this kind of thing in the Remorhaz Championship round of the Masters and Minions tournament at GenCon Indy: the Ice Queen, a colossal CR 16 critter that lays the eggs that become remorhaz, had buried herself under a layer of ice, beneath an ancient palace that had been carried away by a glacier. When she started blazing with heat, the ice layer turned into superheated steam, damaging the heroes and concealing her from missile fire; as the melee commenced, her heat started dissolving the glacier, causing the treasure room of the ancient palace to crack open and spill coins and magic items all over the place, which melted the moment they contacted the Ice Queen's hide -- as did the heroes' +5 weapons, of course!

Best of all, though, was when she swallowed the druid's Tyrannosaurus companion whole. Moments like that make DMing worthwhile!