D&D 5E 5E underwater thoughts

[tglassy]

It would also create a giant air bubble as it turned all the water in the area to Oxygen and Hydrogen.


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[Yaarel]

No, I never said it did, but it would flash boil anything nearby.

Probably, it would only burn whatever was inside the gas bubble. Then form a pillar, a cylinder, of hot water as the bubbles rise upward.

 

[tglassy]

Yep! Quick burn, no lingering effects. Sounds like a fireball. A Firewall would stay there, basically creating a wall of boiling water as the bubbles rise to the surface, but a fireball is one and done. Just like on land.


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[Yaarel]

The problem with Fireball is, the ‘streak’ that ‘flashes from your pointing finger’, like a blowtorch, would never reach beyond the range of Touch.

 

[tglassy]

Only if you think of it in a physical sense. That 'streak' contains all the power of the blast in one point. It would reach further than a touch, because it has plenty of magical fuel to take it there. It would be no different from doing it in the air. It has no fuel when you throw it through the air. It's igniting the air because it's hot enough, in itself, to do so. In the water, same thing. Only, this time, it would likely manifest itself as a streak of heated water, or bubbles. Once it reaches the appointed spot, it explodes with the remaining energy, engulfing the area in superheated water that is flash boiled, and as you said, basically makes a gass bubble of superheated air.

A blow torch is only range of touch because it's creating it's own little area of oxygen. The magical fire doesn't need oxygen. It's magical fire.


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[Yaarel]

If I think of it as physics, then fire has the range of Touch.

If I think of it as magic, then it is nonfunctional, because the archetypes of elemental fire and elemental water are precisely opposites that cancel each other out.

 

[tglassy]

Then what is a Steam Mephit?


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[tglassy]

They may be opposites, but they don't cancel each other out. If you magically create water and dump it on a magically created fire, it doesn't just negate and disappear into nothing, it creates steam.


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[Yaarel]

The ‘steam’ element is an example how design goes wrong if it tries to hard to fill in symmetric grids.

In Classical Elements, Water is ‘cold and wet’, Fire is ‘hot and dry’. The ‘hot and wet’ steam is, by definition, elemental Air.

 

[Yaarel]

Plus, I think it is simply more interesting if fire spells dont work normally underwater. It makes the environment feel more different.

Fire only working at touch range.

Piercing weapons being the only viable weapons.

Swimming in any direction.

Dim lighting.

Distant sound.

All these things are features, not bugs.