Animate Liquids To Animate Lava/Magma?

[Quantum]

So my players have the ability to animate liquids and they were in a fight near running lava and he wanted to use his ability to animate the lava.

So would you allow this? Is magma a liquid?

For the time being I ruled no, it is not liquid and he couldn't do it for the expediency of the game, but I told him I'd do some research on the matter.

 

[MatthewJHanson]

Lava is a liquid, but I'm not sure that means that you should let your player animate it, since it also incredibly dangerous and probably overpowered if you care about such things.

It might help to know what system you are playing.

 

[Quantum]

Lava is a liquid, but I'm not sure that means that you should let your player animate it, since it also incredibly dangerous and probably overpowered if you care about such things.

It might help to know what system you are playing.

DC Heroes 3rd.

 

[Nightson]

So my players have the ability to animate liquids and they were in a fight near running lava and he wanted to use his ability to animate the lava.

So would you allow this? Is magma a liquid?

For the time being I ruled no, it is not liquid and he couldn't do it for the expediency of the game, but I told him I'd do some research on the matter.

Solid-Liquid-Gas

Now, every substance has a point where it turns into a liquid and a point where it turns into a gas.

So yes, if it moves like a liquid, then it's a liquid.

 

[JustKim]

It is a liquid, but it becomes solid as it cools. On the surface, the only thing hot enough to keep magma a liquid is other liquid magma. No matter how hot it gets outside, the sun doesn't melt rock. Essentially lava moves through telescoping tubes where the outer layer cools and the magma filling is pushed forward. When you animate lava, you're going to take a chunk of it away from other lava, and increase its surface area by a lot (if it's amorphous) or by a whole heck of a lot (if it's humanoid). More surface area will make the lava cool faster, being split from the rest of the lava will make it cool faster, and making it move and shed its outer layer will make it cool faster as well. This is going to be pretty short-lived lava.

If you want to make animating lava work, you can use these facts as justification for the animated lava to only last 1 round, after which the animated shape solidifies. What it would really depend on is what the lava is made of, its viscosity, its temperature, etc. But who cares about stuff like that.

 

[blargney the second]

Technically, you could use that spell to animate glass.

 

[Nifft]

I always look at effects like that from a balance perspective, and then I justify the balanced interpretation with flavor text.

In this case, it sounds like you don't want lava to be a valid target for liquid animation. If so, you could:
- Say that magma cools into solid (but rather warm) rock, per JustKim.
- Say that magma is not composed of the Water element, but rather of the Fire and Earth elements.

You may want a good excuse to not allow blood animation, either, since that's probably even more ripe for abuse than lava.

Cheers, -- N

 

[dogoftheunderworld]

Aren't lava and blood both Plasmas, not liquids?

 

[Nifft]

Aren't lava and blood both Plasmas, not liquids?

"Plasma" can refer to a thing found in blood, but the state of matter called "plasma" means a gas so excited that it becomes ionized -- for example by being so hot that electrons get knocked off its component atoms, which is what happens in the sun.

Both blood and magma could be "suspensions", and the super-heated ash which killed Pompeii was a non-liquid suspension, but the same could be said of seawater, which probably ought to be a valid target for the animate liquid power. (Basically anything that isn't hand-waving is going to have a really tough time including sea water and excluding blood.)

Cheers, -- N

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Technically, you could use that spell to animate glass.

Glass is a fluid, not a liquid. A reeeeally slooooow fluid.