D&D General Air, Earth, and Water Damage

[bloodtide]

Would you also not use fire damage for a burning building or poison damage for hemlock? I don't like the idea of a magical tidal wave doing water damage but a real one doing bludgeoning. It needs to be incorporated into the full game or not at all.

Well that is how I do it. Mundane damage for natural things elemental damage for unnatural things.

 

[Corinnguard]

If air, earth and water had their own damage types, what would be an example of each one that didn't tread on one of the already pre-existing damage types?

 

[Minigiant]

Force in general seems like a catch-all/trump card category already. It seemed like something to assign something that you wanted creatures immune/resistant to magic weapons to still be vulnerable to. If 3e had made magic missiles 'defeats damage resistance as a magic arrow of +{some-level-dependent-formula}' and the Bigby's Hand spells the same but bludgeoning, I wouldn't have batted an eye

If Force was split between

• Magical Energy
• Magical Blunt force
• Spiritual energy

I'd be okay

HOT TAKE TANGENT ALERT:


Psychic damage should be split into Fear damage and Charm damage.

If Frightened and Charmed are different. Psychic is too encompassing.

If air, earth and water had their own damage types, what would be an example of each one that didn't tread on one of the already pre-existing damage types?

Force of Wind
Blast of Water
Rocks fall
Implosion

Wind damage is erosion if it isnt knockback.
Same with Water. There is no damage type (edit: damage type) from having all your skin scraped off

Earth is tricky because earth damage is different depending on type.

 

[Corinnguard]

There is no damage from having all your skin scraped off

Your nerves would beg to differ. To paraphrase one of the Ghostbusters: "There are billions upon billions of air molecules around me, and right now I feel every one of them."

D&D doesn't have any rules regarding what each kind of damage is and how they differ from one another. Instead, they just use examples of what they are. Lightning damage is a Blue Dragon's breath weapon or being shocked by a Tinker Gnome's invention. Bludgeoning damage is what you get from any blunt object that hits you or an object. Force damage is what you get from being hit by pure magic.

 

[Minigiant]

Your nerves would beg to differ. To paraphrase one of the Ghostbusters: "There are billions upon billions of air molecules around me, and right now I feel every one of them."

D&D doesn't have any rules regarding what each kind of damage is and how they differ from one another. Instead, they just use examples of what they are. Lightning damage is a Blue Dragon's breath weapon or being shocked by a Tinker Gnome's invention. Bludgeoning damage is what you get from any blunt object that hits you or an object. Force damage is what you get from being hit by pure magic.

I meant damage type.

There is no 6d6 erosion damage when the Cannon Turtle shoots you with 2 blasts of pressurized water.

 

[Remathilis]

I meant damage type.

There is no 6d6 erosion damage when the Cannon Turtle shoots you with 2 blasts of pressurized water.

Steam Breath (Recharge 5–6). Constitution Saving Throw: DC 19, each creature in a 60-foot Cone. Failure: 56 (16d6) Fire damage. Success: Half damage. Failure or Success: Being underwater doesn't grant Resistance to this Fire damage.

More to the point: water is essentially pressure (bludgeoning) plus heat (fire) or cold (cold). In it's neutral state, it doesn't harm. Take six bowls and put one in each: air, fire, water, earth, acid, poison. Stick your hand in each bowl. Fire, acid and poison is going to hurt. Air, Earth and Water only will hurt in certain circumstances (very cold/hot water, very dense packed earth).

The more this has gone on, the less convinced we need specific air, water and earth damage types and just more spells using the elements to do bludgeoning, slashing, cold, fire, or similar damage.

 

[Indagare Nogitsune]

Steam Breath (Recharge 5–6). Constitution Saving Throw: DC 19, each creature in a 60-foot Cone. Failure: 56 (16d6) Fire damage. Success: Half damage. Failure or Success: Being underwater doesn't grant Resistance to this Fire damage.

More to the point: water is essentially pressure (bludgeoning) plus heat (fire) or cold (cold). In it's neutral state, it doesn't harm. Take six bowls and put one in each: air, fire, water, earth, acid, poison. Stick your hand in each bowl. Fire, acid and poison is going to hurt. Air, Earth and Water only will hurt in certain circumstances (very cold/hot water, very dense packed earth).

The more this has gone on, the less convinced we need specific air, water and earth damage types and just more spells using the elements to do bludgeoning, slashing, cold, fire, or similar damage.

My main argument for is that all the elemental planes (at least in 3/.5) had their own elemental energies and it therefore would make sense for it to exist. The physical/energy difference could be something akin to how light is both a particle and wave, but we're talking magic so things get weird.

 

[Tonguez]

Orbril, my Gnome Professor of Applied Alchemy once wrote on the Nature of Force thus:
The Nature of Force is the source of motion and stability, interacting across all domains of Spacetime, flowing inwards and outwards across all directions. It is force that gives form and persistence to energies of the material planes, giving rise to structure, motion and balance across the multiverse. Where forces converge, tension and potential emerge, to be shaped, directed and released by artifice of will.

All magic thus requires a manipulation of Force, for in its interactions raw elemental energies gain form and purpose.

• Through Shaped Force, invisible tensions are woven into shields and barriers, walls, floating discs and platforms, invulnerable orbs and enduring constructs.
• Directed Force governs the motion, manipulation and propulsion of objects and entities, and also the paths and portals by which energy moves through the dimensions of reality.
• When Force is Released suddenly it is the liberation of stored tension and potential. These are the arts of kinetic blasts, shockwaves, collision and scattering, gravity wells, disintegration and annihilation.

 

[Mecheon]

If air, earth and water had their own damage types, what would be an example of each one that didn't tread on one of the already pre-existing damage types?

I'd honestly consider water more of an addon effect. Give effect Wet/Sinking to the target that increases lightning vulnerability

Water's the rough one though where you'd also have steam/scalding stuff under it and folks would agree that'd be fire damage

 

[Minigiant]

Steam Breath (Recharge 5–6). Constitution Saving Throw: DC 19, each creature in a 60-foot Cone. Failure: 56 (16d6) Fire damage. Success: Half damage. Failure or Success: Being underwater doesn't grant Resistance to this Fire damage.

Incorrect move for cannon turtles.

Blastoise?

Blastoise Use Hydro Pump