D&D 5E Charm, the evil spells

[Maxperson]

The spell burns a person, the spell burns clothes left on the on the floor. The spell however doesn't burn those same clothes if they're worn by the person burned by the spell. I'm sorry, I'm fine with magic being weird, but this is more inane rather than whimsical.

I think it's because they seem to be moving towards the removal of long term consequences for things. They seem to have decided that it's better for fire to behave nonsensically, than for a PC to lose a scroll or magic leather armor due to a fireball.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The problem is if the PCs can do this to monsters then the same thing can happen to them as well--and since there's no such thing as an item saving throw anymore, you either have to invent one or track the AC and hp of every object the PCs are carrying. Because they're not going to be OK with magic randomly destroying their gear when the spell description doesn't say it does.

It should be said that I'm not against the idea of item saving throws. I'm just not entirely sure how to go about inventing a system for such a thing.

Eh. Any fire that would be somehow survivable to person is not intense enough to seriously harm most gear except cosmetically. Armour, weapons, even books in sealed leather bags are way more fireproof than people. And if the character is burned to totally crisp, then it seems a tad petty to be upset that you didn't get to loot their leather armour. Also, I'd assume magic items to generally be more durable than mundane stuff.

But yeah, if someone just happens to be openly carrying a pile of dry paper in their hands and gets fireballed to death, those papers are probably not gonna be in super good condition!

 

[Fanaelialae]

The spell burns a person, the spell burns clothes left on the on the floor. The spell however doesn't burn those same clothes if they're worn by the person burned by the spell. I'm sorry, I'm fine with magic being weird, but this is more inane rather than whimsical.

I'd say it's because equipment being destroyed every time a fireball is thrown is a PITA. Even back in the day, most DMs I knew ignored the rule. When they didn't, it was tedium to resolve, IMO.

It's not like you can't house rule that attended items are damaged. However, I think it makes more sense for streamlining gameplay to not make it RAW.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I'd say it's because equipment being destroyed every time a fireball is thrown is a PITA. Even back in the day, most DMs I knew ignored the rule. When they didn't, it was tedium to resolve, IMO.

It's not like you can't house rule that attended items are damaged. However, I think it makes more sense for streamlining gameplay to not make it RAW.

I'm really not talking about items routinely being destroyed, merely applying some very basic verisimilitude. And yeah, my argument was that the rule is to streamline gameplay and perhaps should not be understood to be how magic fundamentally and metaphysically works.

 

[Remathilis]

I think it's because they seem to be moving towards the removal of long term consequences for things. They seem to have decided that it's better for fire to behave nonsensically, than for a PC to lose a scroll or magic leather armor due to a fireball.

Yup. Thank Gods.

As mentioned, it was very tiring to repair and replace your gear after nearly any fight. I get its part of that old school, screw-over-your-players style of D&D, but it quickly got to the point the least dangerous thing about fireball was the hit point damage.

I'll take the abstraction over spending thousands of gold for the 52nd time trying to replace yet another traveling spellbook...

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

The spell burns a person, the spell burns clothes left on the on the floor. The spell however doesn't burn those same clothes if they're worn by the person burned by the spell. I'm sorry, I'm fine with magic being weird, but this is more inane rather than whimsical.

Like all elements, fire is attracted by fire. Being hot and dry, it is also attracted before by air (hot and wet) and earth (cold and dry) and finally by water (cold and wet). When you cast elemental fire at a living target, being quintessential, the fire is first attracted to the fire part, and burns the body preferentially. In the absence of a body, targetting clothes left unattented on the floor, it will burn the clothes (first silk and leather, made from animal, thus still having a little quintessence, then plants (being mostly earth, they are consumed later). It would require a tremendous amount of fire to burn both the a living thing and still have the energy to burn the remaining elements. See, easy, peasy magical theory.

In truth, I agree with you that "unattended objects catch fire, not the rest" is mostly a way to protect PC's equipment.

 

[Baron Opal II]

I'm really not talking about items routinely being destroyed, merely applying some very basic verisimilitude. And yeah, my argument was that the rule is to streamline gameplay and perhaps should not be understood to be how magic fundamentally and metaphysically works.

I still have item saves, but only if the character drops to zero. That happens infrequently enough that it is dramatic without it being a logistical pain.

 

[Lanefan]

A particularly nasty DM in the dark days of 2nd edition ran fire and lightning spells with some collateral damage effects. In particular, fireball and lightning bolt tended to melt or damage mundane carried items on failed saves, and magical items required saving throws if their owner failed them. This had the dual effect of making sure enemies fireballed would have melted coins and unsellable gear (not to mention destroyed potions and scrolls) and to destroy PC spellbooks.

All of this didn't come from a "particularly nasty" DM, merely one who was going by the book.

Personally I think it should still work this way today.

Lightning bolt also had a nasty habit of magnetizing iron armor, which I'm now pretty sure isn't how it works but back then it was a good way to screw PCs out of armor.

That, however, is a new one on me.

Needless to say, if you had the slightest inkling you wanted to keep something in the room, you used magic missile and nothing else.

From a metagaming perspective, I'm kinda glad magic no longer targets your stuff or your treasure.

It doesn't "target" your stuff. It doesn't really "target" anything, it just affects whatever's in the a-of-e; and if that includes your stuff or your treasure, then so be it.

 

[Lanefan]

That depends on the fire.

Magic fire does not work like regular fire in all ways. You can't dispel a normal fire or put it out by punching a concentrating wizard in the face.

In 3e conjuration magic could summon some actual fire from an existing fire or the elemental plane of fire. It would not be subject to spell resistance or dispelling after the spell was completed because it was actual fire. 3e evocation magic could do magical fire effects too but they would be subject to SR and dispelling if they were ongoing (like a wall of fire).

I thought it was really cool in 4e that fireball spheres were grid cubes. It showed how magic tapped into mythos style non-euclidean geometry.

I thought that was one of the poorer things 4e did, in fact; but 4e wasn't all that big on anything that didn't snap to the grid. I much prefer 1e in this regard, where fireballs expanded to fill the required volume (the equivalent of about 33 10' cubes) no matter what and hence were very risky to cast in confined spaces.

If purple magical fire is summoned, expect it to possibly be a bit different in weird ways compared to a normal wildfire fire.

Indeed, but IME most conjured, summoned, or evoked fire looks just like the regular stuff.

 

[Lanefan]

Ironically, if you believe some old school blogs, the reason fireball is 3rd level and not higher is that it did expand uncontrollably and destroy all the treasure (remember those item saving throw tables in the 1e DMG?). Cone of Cold was invented as a fireball without this disadvantage, and when the treasure-destruction was removed in the transition to CRPGs (which the computer power of the 1980s wouldn't have been able to handle on top of the other stuff they were trying to keep track of), people got used to mages spamming fireball and influenced the idea of mages as glass-cannon artillery. The whole course of RPGs was affected by a single overpowered spell.

And by overeager programmers using underpowered computers for a game that's supposed to be played on paper round a table.