D&D 5E Can a fireball melt ice?

[77IM]

"Can a fireball melt ice?"
Yes, it can, but it might not.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The 5E rulebooks can't seem to make it clear when they're game jargon vs. natural language, and sometimes they are apparently both at the same time.

Though specific terms like 'hit points' are inevitably jargon, the impression I get is that 5e is written in natural language, throughout, even when that natural language has been peppered (and salted, perhaps assaulted) with instances of jargon. So, certainly both at the same time, quite a lot.

But I think the intent was natural language in structure, throughout, to get away from the RAW zeitgeist of 3.5 and rules-manual writing style of 4e.

 

[Gardens & Goblins]

I'll allow it

 

[Maxperson]

Like the thread topic says.

Here is the text of the fireball spell that seems relevant (SRD, pp 142-43):

A bright streak flashes from your pointing finger to a point you choose within range and then blossoms with a low roar into an explosion of flame. Each creature . . . takes . . . fire damage . . . The fire . . . ignites flammable objects in the area that aren’t being worn or carried.​

If the text describing the ignition of flammable objects that are neither worn nor carried is exhaustive of the effect of the spell upon things other than creatures, that would seem to imply that the spell can't melt ice. (Which is very obviously not a flammable material.)

Are you wearing the ice?

 

[Umbran]

What if the ice is being carried by someone? Or if the ice pendant is being worn (and it may not be necessary to melt much of that for the ice "stone" to fall out of its setting)?

You know there's already a bunch of issues with this, right? Like, why hasn't this pendant melted from being in close proximity to a warm body? Because a mostly water-based creature walking around with a body temperature freezing or below makes less sense than not melting a pendant, so "Frost giant" or not, it's warm-blooded.

Or, it isn't warm blooded, but we accept hat there's stuff in play with the world that doesn't match our expectations based on real-world precedents, and that means the fireball won't behave like normal fire all the time either.

Let's be practical for a moment - the whole issue has nothing to do with whether fire would damage particular objects. The problem is that a third-level spell should not cause double-jeopardy: causing hit point damage *and* destroying valuable, functional items. The spell is intended to wear down only one resource: hit points, and to have it do more would make it notably more powerful than intended.

The question is far less, "Can a fireball melt ice?" and far more, "Should the fireball spell be allowed to destroy items an enemy is using?"

 

[pemerton]

You know there's already a bunch of issues with this, right? Like, why hasn't this pendant melted from being in close proximity to a warm body? Because a mostly water-based creature walking around with a body temperature freezing or below makes less sense than not melting a pendant, so "Frost giant" or not, it's warm-blooded.

Or, it isn't warm blooded, but we accept hat there's stuff in play with the world that doesn't match our expectations based on real-world precedents, and that means the fireball won't behave like normal fire all the time either.

You raise a good point about whether or not frost giants are warm-blooded. I don't have strong intuitions on that.

Let's be practical for a moment - the whole issue has nothing to do with whether fire would damage particular objects. The problem is that a third-level spell should not cause double-jeopardy: causing hit point damage *and* destroying valuable, functional items. The spell is intended to wear down only one resource: hit points, and to have it do more would make it notably more powerful than intended.

The question is far less, "Can a fireball melt ice?" and far more, "Should the fireball spell be allowed to destroy items an enemy is using?"

If you frame the question this way - which is a fine way to frame it - then I think the issue becomes less about whether or not fireball can affect objects and more about the in-fiction meaning of saving throws and hit point loss.

For instance, on a Gygaxian treatment of hp and saves (AD&D DMG pp 61, 80-82) if a character is still alive then the hp loss was exertion and perhaps nicks and scratches - through skill and/or luck the character was able to avoid the bulk of the threatened harm. This also implies that the character's gear will be at worst slightly singed, but not burned to a crisp.

On p 61 Gygax also notes that for many non-character creatures/monsters, hp are predominantly physical. This is especially plausible for creatures like dinosaurs, giant slugs, purple worms etc. In the case of a PC or NPC who fails his/her save and nevertheless survives a 30 or 40 hp fireball, it is plausible to envisage him/her falling flat and avoiding the bulk of the damage, or taking last-moment shelter behind some protection (per Gygax's DMG pp 80-81, "Imagine that the figure, at the last moment, of course, manages to drop beneath the licking flames, or finds a crevice in which to shield his or her body"). But in the case of a giant slug or triceratops, that is harder to imagine.

So if the hobgoblins are riding a triceratops in a timber-and-wicker howdah, and the whole thing is caught in a powerful fireball, then I think there is some plausibility to the suggestion that the howdah catches alight, even though it is worn/carried by the triceratops. The likelihood could be increased, presumably, by throwing oil or a similar flammable substance onto the howdah first. (Whereas for those hobgoblins who survive (if any), we can infer that they were able to take some sort of shelter or evasive action which also protected their gear from serious damage or ignition.)

I tend to think that this sort of interface between mechanics and fiction is one of the main things that distinguishes RPG resolution from boardgame resolution.

 

[Umbran]

You raise a good point about whether or not frost giants are warm-blooded. I don't have strong intuitions on that.

Do you own a freezer? Does it contain meat? Does that meat bend much, or at all? Have you ever tried to flex a joint on a frozen chicken leg? That's what happens when a critter that isn't warm blooded spends significant time in conditions below freezing. It is an ugly bag of mostly water, and will freeze hard as a rock.

How many frozen statues are good at swinging battleaxes?

That is, again, unless we move over into magical or otherwise quite alien biology - but then once again we are admitting things don't work the way they do in our world, and that opens the door to other non-intuitive behavior.

If you frame the question this way - which is a fine way to frame it - then I think the issue becomes less about whether or not fireball can affect objects and more about the in-fiction meaning of saving throws and hit point loss.

I think that the game-consideration does have impact on the fiction, yes. This is why a given set of rules will be better at supporting some genres of fiction than others, because they more naturally support different narratives.

One way is to go the way of the in-fiction meaning of saving throws and hit points... except that in the 5e fireball case, the saving throw is irrelevant. If you are wearing it or using it, the fireball won't ignite it whether you make the save or not. And, using a reading that many would consider common sense, it won't melt it either - the fireball does not *destroy* stuff you are wearing.

If you move this to the in-fiction meaning of saving throws and hit point loss, you can also still eave yourself in the space of not being able to come up with a narration that fits the observed results and intuition all the time. Saving throws and hit points are *abstract* and thus don't always lead comfortably to concrete narrations.

This is why some folks go instead to having it covered by the world metaphysic - rather than try to find a narration of the savign throw and hit point loss that fits *real world* physics, we note that magic is a little wonky, and sometimes doesn't follow the real world version of things. You lose some hit points, without subsidiary effects and move on.

Which is to say, "PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!" If you think too hard about it, you *will* find holes, whateve ryour take on HP and saving throws.

 

[Satyrn]

The question is far less, "Can a fireball melt ice?" and far more, "Should the fireball spell be allowed to destroy items an enemy is using?"

And that really is the question the OP is asking in this thread - and seemingly a dozen others

My answer as a DM is: sure, if that's the caster's goal. For example, if the caster chose fireball specifically to melt that Ice Knife, or frozen pendant, then I'd figure out some ruling to have that happen.

But so far, every time I've seen fireball cast, it's been with the intention to hurt people, and so I've never needed to bother thinking about what they're wearing or holding.

 

[pemerton]

Do you own a freezer? Does it contain meat? Does that meat bend much, or at all? Have you ever tried to flex a joint on a frozen chicken leg? That's what happens when a critter that isn't warm blooded spends significant time in conditions below freezing. It is an ugly bag of mostly water, and will freeze hard as a rock.

My freezer is meat-free, but I'm familiar with the phenomenon.

But frost giants are immune to cold. Is this because their blood is warm, or is it independent of their bloodedness. At least some depictions of frost giants (and even moreso the 4e frost titans) give the impression that they are somewhat ice-tacular all the way down.

unless we move over into magical or otherwise quite alien biology - but then once again we are admitting things don't work the way they do in our world, and that opens the door to other non-intuitive behavior.

Sure, but frost giants aren't canonically described as being fleshy mammals, are they?

Whereas the product of a fireball is canonically described as flame, of the same sort as a dragon's breath, which canonically is fire all the way down.

in the 5e fireball case, the saving throw is irrelevant. If you are wearing it or using it, the fireball won't ignite it whether you make the save or not.

Well, that is being discussed in another thread!

If you move this to the in-fiction meaning of saving throws and hit point loss, you can also still eave yourself in the space of not being able to come up with a narration that fits the observed results and intuition all the time. Saving throws and hit points are *abstract* and thus don't always lead comfortably to concrete narrations.

This is why some folks go instead to having it covered by the world metaphysic - rather than try to find a narration of the savign throw and hit point loss that fits *real world* physics, we note that magic is a little wonky, and sometimes doesn't follow the real world version of things. You lose some hit points, without subsidiary effects and move on.

Which is to say, "PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!" If you think too hard about it, you *will* find holes, whatever your take on HP and saving throws.

For me, this is the crux. (That's not to say it is, or should be, the crux for everyone.) I think that avoiding wonky narration is a pretty high priority.

There are corner cases - for instance, someone chained to immovable rods "floating" in the plane of vacuum (no crevices to duck into, no possibility of dodging, etc) - but I have tended to find that they are few and far between.

And that really is the question the OP is asking in this thread - and seemingly a dozen others

This is not correct. I'm not that interested in whether or not fireball can be used to destroy an enemy's gear or equipment - that's more of a side-issue that is brought into play by what I am interested in. And that is the relationship between the mechanics and the fiction, which I think (again, others may not) is fundamental to the difference between a RPG and a boardgame (or CCG, videogame, etc).

This is something that I've been interested in, and posting about, for some time. (For instance, in this post from mid-2011 I observed that "a power with the fire keyword, that deals fire damage, can set fire to a tree. A power with the weapon keyword, that deals only untyped damage, cannot set fire to a tree. I think this is fairly obvious".)

I was surprised to see the contrary view being very strongly supported by some posters in recent threads, and hence am curious to see how far it extends. Although I was talking about 4e and those posters are talking about 5e, I don't see that the two games are noticeably different in this particular respect.

As far as the damaging of equipment is concerned, as I've already posted I favour Gygaxian hit points: as long as the character still has hit points left then s/he took only a nick or a scratch at worst, and hence whatever objects s/he is carrying or wearing will be no worse than lightly singed. But if someone has been burned to death by a fireball, then I think narrating that their clothes, or scrolls, or whatever are charred - and their ice pendants melted - is fair game.

 

[Umbran]

My freezer is meat-free, but I'm familiar with the phenomenon.

But frost giants are immune to cold. Is this because their blood is warm, or is it independent of their bloodedness. At least some depictions of frost giants (and even moreso the 4e frost titans) give the impression that they are somewhat ice-tacular all the way down.

Sure, but frost giants aren't canonically described as being fleshy mammals, are they?

The 5e MM says, "their flesh is as blue as glacial ice". So, the do have "flesh", whatever that means. But, that's fine, really. We can simply take this to note that there's something hinkey going on... and then we should be honest and look at the description of fireballs and realize there's something hinkey there too.

Whereas the product of a fireball is canonically described as flame, of the same sort as a dragon's breath, which canonically is fire all the way down.

They are *ALSO* canonically and explicitly described as not burning things that you are wearing, which is quite unlike fire.

Well, that is being discussed in another thread!

Yeah, as if these things were completely separate, which they aren't

For me, this is the crux. (That's not to say it is, or should be, the crux for everyone.) I think that avoiding wonky narration is a pretty high priority.

Here's a hint - you don't actually have to narrate *everything*. Narrate what must be narrated, because the players need the information in order to make choices, but beyond that, be choosy. Anything you narrate may be used as a basis for action by the player, so if they aren't *intended* to use it, you may not want to do so.

For example - let us say the pendant survives. If you narrate it so that it is completely coincidental, an accident of luck, the players may choose to try another fireball, because luck is not reliable. But, the pendant's survival against fireball *is* reliable. You've just misled the players.

This is not correct. I'm not that interested in whether or not fireball can be used to destroy an enemy's gear or equipment - that's more of a side-issue that is brought into play by what I am interested in.

Too bad. The fact that you aren't interested in it doesn't mean it isn't central to the question. The relationship between the mechanics and fiction is arbitrary, unless you are intending to reflect (even if only through a fun house mirror) the *intent* of the rules in the fiction.