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Message: <blockquote data-quote="eamon" data-source="post: 5306601" data-attributes="member: 51942">Ah, but the risk it that what will happen in practice here, is that the DM will screw it up if he tries to explain it.  After all, generally a fire-elemental will not be the first thing that's poisoned and that when he describes the poisoning of the hobgoblin he'll use an explanation that just doesn't work with a fire-elemental.  He'll use the obvious, natural explanation, because "poison" is not a meaningless phrase but a real word with meaning in the real world.  And then when the same poison is used on the fire elemental, he has a choice: be inconsistent, retconn, or break the rules.And precisely because it's not that easy to get this kind of consistency right, help from the game would be appreciated.  Perhaps there is a consistent explanation, but it's non-trivial and easy to mess up; as such the game should provide it - or conclude it's nonsense and thus doesn't work.And exactly as in the poison immunity case, if the DM tries to explain this away in the wrong fashion, he's likely to dig his own grave.  Stretchy hands that are big enough to grapple with a swarm - even potentially with one that's several size categories larger - and to thus immobilize it (even though swarms can move through small holes) - those sound like hand you can do other useful things with.  And in any case, it does not sound like the obvious, natural state of affairs - an interesting fluff, but not the expected fluff.If you need weird or otherwise complex and tricky fluff to explain game mechanics, the game rules should include that fluff to avoid inconsistencies.  Anything else is just a DM trap.If you come up with explanations like "stretchy hands" often enough, players will get the hint an utterly ignore fluff since they correctly surmise that the fluff is not what matters.</blockquote>

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