Spells dealing cold damage. effects?

[Greenfield]

They use lasers, at specific frequency, to super-cool certain materials down to a billionth of a degree of absolute zero. I think they're using it to counter/cancel the Brownian motion. So in that sense, there can be a "radiant cold" in the real world. (Think of the "noise cancelling headphones" that use black sound to dampen outside noise.)

But vacuum wouldn't do it. That removes the possibility of thermal conduction as a way to cool. Think more of a meta-physics (rather than physics) field that dampens the molecular/atomic movement that represents thermal energy.

 

[Stormonu]

What's funny is D&D cold acts like a negative fire, in that creatures "radiate" it rather than them absorbing nearby heat sources. Trying to define D&D spells by the laws of physics is oratory suicide.

For example, try to explain the invisibility spell via physics - and why an individual can A) still apparently see themselves and their own equipment and B) see at all (since most physics explanations deal with 'bending light' - if that were so, it'd be like quake, where all you can see is the individual's eyes).

 

[Dozen]

What now? This seems like basically an assertion backed by a completely nonspecific justification. I don't think you've established anything here.

The spell effects are certainly not within our natural laws. A few example: shape change can drastically increase or decrease your mass. Disintegrate destroys matter or energy. Teleportation effects move the target instantly, faster than light. Those ones are just off the top of my head, and though you can come up with an argument that counters each (e.g. "Teleport actually moves you at light speed"), it's harder to come up with an argument that doesn't also contradict the wording of the spell ("Instant" yo).

I have my own explanations for each of those spells. I'll readily admit they are very forced, and some of them awfully convenient to support my theory there. More on this later.

You seem to be mixing up how you think magic in D&D works with how it works by the RAW. If you want to say that it works in accordance with real physics in your game, that's fine, but I don't think that's backed up in the rules..

...

As far as I know, nowhere does the game give you a round or two of life post-decapitation. Your whole argument seems to rest on real world stuff, rather than on in-game stuff, so I think it's pretty shaky.

You're right, it isn't. It was more that I had do come up with something at one point, and this was the first idea I came across that worked, however shakily.

The kind of players I play with - the kind I like to play with - tend to rip the game system apart for fun. That's not a problem for me the way most DMs think of it. I do the same thing, and I enjoy a good challenge. It's not perfect though, as every once in a while you meet an idea that is completely legit within game rules but cannot be countered.

At that point, the one who wins is the one who does the trick first. It takes away the soul of the game and everyone would eventually go home for the day in disappointment. Figuring out a system that can't be broken was only one of the many necessities to keep my players interested and the campaigns intact.

I try to keep the game as realistic as the abstract system allows it for the same reason. You can't 'cheat' in the real world - this is more me playing it safe than anything else. I grudgingly accept there are infinite possible explanations, a fraction of which are balanced, and I shouldn't have phrased my explanations in a way that suggested it was the only right way to do it.
But alas, while possible, I don't have the time, nor the smarts to invent and test a whole new set of basic rules. Thus I picked the best alternative readily available.

I recommend the same should you ever run a campaign like I do. It's a lot more easier than coming up with a system from scratch. And (to my pleasant surprise) realism reduces the power gap between magic users and fighter types! Especially ranged fighters, the poor things.

Originally I changed gravity to simply fill in another hole. You have to admit, D&D's rules for gravity, collision, and by extension, ranged weapons, are silly.
Pathfinder's guidelines(I formally thank Paizo for using the word 'guidelines' as opposed to 'rules', because referring to them as such would give me a seizure), present a rare exception in that they are even worse, requiring an object to be as large or larger than a halfling to hurt you when it falls on you. Never mind that size has jacksh*t to do with weight or mass. Even weirder, they do know it, as right after the table they point out heavier objects should deal more damage! Except when they are small. Logic? Also, damage is dealt differently if the object is dropped as part of a trap. Somehow. (though I admit the creation of a singularity each time a trap is made would explain the horrendous price tags on the damn things.)

Then a player pointed out archer builds would kick ass under my new ruleset. And indeed they do! A realistic take on gravity and collision immensely increases their damage output - they are still miles behind a magic user focused on direct damage, but they can keep up with them! And I never had to nerf anyone! That was fantastic to realize.

 

[Greenfield]

A good game has three elements: Playability, Credibility, and Realism.

And that is the order of importance. A game that isn't playable won't be played.

Believability tops Realism because :

A) Real physics are hard to emulate in a game setting. Lots of math, probably more than any rule book could contain or any player would ever be able to handle
B) Real physics stop being believable when you enter some situations.

I mean, hey, realism is great, when you can afford it. Most of the time though, you can't.

Classic examples: You're in an X-Wing fighter in a stable orbit 30 degrees behind an Imperial courier ship. "Believable" says you fire your thrusters and accelerate towards your target. "Reality" says that if you do that you push yourself into a higher orbit, and fall farther behind the courier. To close the gap you should reduce your orbital velocity by applying retros and slowing down, riding the lower orbit for a bit, then firing main engines to regain the original orbit.

There's always a big problem when magic enters the game setting. Call it The Force, Psychic Phenomenon, Super Powers, "Spending blood points", or whatever you like. As soon as you introduce any aspect of play that enables PCs to do things that physics can't explain, "Reality" doesn't just take a back seat, it leaves the bus entirely.

How does your typical super-hero pick up and throw a car or truck? There is essentially no place within reach that can handle the strain without tearing away.

How does your wizard get electricity to arc anyplace except to the nearest grounded object? How does he generate the billions of volts needed to get it to arc more than a few feet? How does he (or she for that matter) manage to be at one end of that arc without frying?

Consider all the implications of spells like Reduce Person or Shrink Item. You are causing mass to simply disappear, a situation that can't occur under the laws of physics. If it was dissipating as energy the yield would be bigger than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

Believable is great, and it's nice to pretend that it's somehow akin to physics, but like the game itself, all you're doing is pretending.

 

[Dozen]

A good game has three elements: Playability, Credibility, and Realism.

And that is the order of importance. A game that isn't playable won't be played.

Believability tops Realism because :

A) Real physics are hard to emulate in a game setting. Lots of math, probably more than any rule book could contain or any player would ever be able to handle
B) Real physics stop being believable when you enter some situations.

I mean, hey, realism is great, when you can afford it. Most of the time though, you can't.

...

There's always a big problem when magic enters the game setting. Call it The Force, Psychic Phenomenon, Super Powers, "Spending blood points", or whatever you like. As soon as you introduce any aspect of play that enables PCs to do things that physics can't explain, "Reality" doesn't just take a back seat, it leaves the bus entirely.

You may pat yourself in the back for your quips all you want. In the end, apparently reality doesn't care what you have to say to prove my games don't work, as my games still work. Despite players who constantly try to break them, they work. That's not just speculation, it's stone cold fact. They work fine. They are fun. You can do it, I prove it every time I sit down at the table. You're free to do so. If you won't do it, admit it to yourself before you bother me.

 

[Starfox]

The consensual illusion is what makes role-playing games work. Each table accepts certain conventions or illusions, that falls within everyone's comfort zones. This might pertain to physics, personal behavior, chemistry, racism (is it ok to kill orcs?), economics, ethics, gender roles, magic versus psionics and an almost unlimited number of other factors. It is a part of the social contract at each game table.

That doesn't stop us from making fun of our own assumptions at times, but we should be careful about poking fun at others'.

 

[Dozen]

The consensual illusion is what makes role-playing games work. Each table accepts certain conventions or illusions, that falls within everyone's comfort zones. This might pertain to physics, personal behavior, chemistry, racism (is it ok to kill orcs?), economics, ethics, gender roles, magic versus psionics and an almost unlimited number of other factors. It is a part of the social contract at each game table.

That doesn't stop us from making fun of our own assumptions at times, but we should be careful about poking fun at others'.

Yes! Thank you! I wish I was coherent enough to explain it so clearly myself.

 

[WhatGravitas]

What's funny is D&D cold acts like a negative fire, in that creatures "radiate" it rather than them absorbing nearby heat sources. Trying to define D&D spells by the laws of physics is oratory suicide.

It vaguely works if you don't adhere (literally) to it "radiating", just assume the magic drains the heat away rapidly and dumps it somewhere in another dimension (probably the same place where all the fire spells are coming from).

A cone of cold rapidly sucks heat from the entire cone in front of you, rushing towards you and your heat dump portal (sort of like a little, palm-sized black hole for heat), a polar ray causes a ray of pure energy to spring from the target towards you and so on.

It's a neat visual effect (the air literally starts to condense in the cone) and so on and is slightly less silly than "radiating cold", which is more based on the effect of getting close to a freezer. Of course, it still doesn't make too much sense, but it sits better with me than "cold energy". After all, you can drain life force as well.

 

[Greenfield]

You may pat yourself in the back for your quips all you want. In the end, apparently reality doesn't care what you have to say to prove my games don't work, as my games still work. Despite players who constantly try to break them, they work. That's not just speculation, it's stone cold fact. They work fine. They are fun. You can do it, I prove it every time I sit down at the table. You're free to do so. If you won't do it, admit it to yourself before you bother me.

Not to be argumentative, but how do you handle falling damage? Do you calculate real world falling speed? Do you take air density into account? (Meaning, atmospheric pressure at the current altitude, modified by humidity) Do you have some formula for converting mass times velocity-squared into hit points? Do you account for the hardness of the surface they're hitting?

To resurrect the Hamster cannon, do you worry about Conservation of Momentum when a moving projectile changes size and mass? (Someone under Enlarge Person fires an arrow, the arrow returns to normal size when it leaves the bow, and thus decreases in mass by a factor of 8.) Do you take planetary spin into account (approx 1000 mph surface rotational velocity). That would have to multiply as well. So would the 62,500 mph of the planet's orbit around the sun.

Do Lightning Bolt spells burn the hand of the caster? Real world lightning strikes are hotter than the surface of the sun, you know. Does the spell start fires?

Where does the energy for a Lightning Bolt come from? Where do the material components go? If you want to say that the spell power comes from the destruction of the components, you still have an immense amount of energy left unaccounted for. Simply freeing the Electrons from the matter would leave a horrendous positive charge on the caster, from the remaining Protons, and the Neutron burst released would give everyone in the area a fatal dose of radiation poisoning.

How do you account for the sudden appearance of matter when spells like Create Food and Drink are cast? Violates the laws of Conservation of Matter and Energy, you know.

Where does the energy for spells like Continual Flame come from? (It's effectively an unlimited amount of energy,since the effect lasts forever.) Where does the energy go when sunlight hits a Darkness spell?

How does Teleport work? Is velocity maintained? Do you take planetary spin into account? Where does the energy come from/go to when the starting point and destination are at different altitudes? Different latitudes? (The caster's velocity is higher near the equator than it is as they move away. See Coriolis Force as applied to course plotting in air travel, if you need a reference.)

I suspect that what you strive for is "Realism", not "Reality". That is, something that suits your gut level feeling of how physics ought to work, without any real consideration for how it does work.

So, to be clear, I'm not saying that your game doesn't work. I'm just suggesting that you're picking and choosing what part of "physics" you want to allow/require/apply, and then using it to justify the results you feel you should have. In short, you're using "Credibility", rather than reality. It's just a question of what's credible to you.

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

Do I have to break out the hamster cannon?

Oh... yes please, I think you do. I'd love to here a theory dubbed "The Hamster Cannon".