D&D 5E Do DEAFENED creatures take THUNDER damage?

[camilaacolide]

I am going to DM a session in a couple hours and I just realized Shambling Mound is naturally DEAF; and there is a Bard in the party that loves casting Shatter. Is he going to have a harder time fighting it?

EDIT: My bad, it's not naturally DEAF, it's just immune to DEAFENED condition.
Anyway, I'd still like to know what you think about it!

 

[Patrick McGill]

No they aren't immune to thunder damage, just as deaf people in real life aren't immune to shock waves.

 

[Shiroiken]

Yes. The Silence spell specifically mentions those inside the area is immune to Thunder damage. Otherwise it would be part of the Deafened condition.

 

[Sacrosanct]

No, just as deaf people in real life aren't immune to shock waves.

This is how I would rule it too. Doesn't matter if I can hear the shockwave or not, it still can do damage. In fact, it's the shock wave that is more deadly for a grenade than the shrapnel. Gotta love Mythbusters

 

[camilaacolide]

Thanks a lot everybody!
Lucky Bard!
;-)

 

[DMCF]

If there is disorientation coupled with the effect then I would give advantage on the roll. Most RAW thunder damage doesn't have that.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I consider Thunder to be a specific type of "force" damage (magical concussive force), so being deafened does nothing to most sources of it. There might--and I hesitate even to say this--be situations where an ability that isn't explicitly negated (e.g. neither in its own description, "target must be able to hear," nor in the description of deafened) would be weakened (disadvantage to use/enemy advantage to resist) or even negated entirely, but such things would need to be very rare. I'm perfectly content with things that sound funny but have SOME kind of physical meaning, like "knock a gelatinous cube prone." On the other hand, if an enemy can, say, generate walls of vacuum or "pure void," I'd say they're likely protected from or even immune to most forms of Thunder damage.

 

[Chocolategravy]

In fact, it's the shock wave that is more deadly for a grenade than the shrapnel.

Uh... no, not even close.

 

[El Mahdi]

In fact, it's the shock wave that is more deadly for a grenade than the shrapnel. Gotta love Mythbusters

Uh... no, not even close.

Actually, you're both wrong - and both right.

It depends entirely upon the type of grenade being used.

A fragmentation grenade carries less explosives (therefore less overpressure - smaller shockwave) but its case is designed to come apart (fragment) and create a projectile hazard of relatively large and thick pieces of metal (or sometimes plastic).

Concussion grenades are designed with more explosives (three to five times more than a fragmentation grenade, for a significantly larger overpressure/shockwave), but have thinner cases creating a smaller volume of less dense fragmentation particles.

For example, a US Mk2 fragmentation grenade has 2oz. of high explosive.
A US Mk3 concussion grenade has 7oz. to 8oz. of high explosive.



Of course though, none of that has anything to do with thunder.



The Player's Handbook describes the Thunder damage type as "A concussive burst of sound..."

By the rules, Deafened is a Condition, not a Resistance or Immunity.

So, a Deafened creature still takes damage from Thunder.


In the real world, thunder damage (the concussive force generated by lightning) is described like this by Dr. Raymond M. Fish in the book Medical and Bioengineering Aspects of Electrical Injuries:

"A mechanical shock wave produced in association with the lightning can produce tympanic membrane perforation [eardrum] and internal organ contusion or perforation."

In other words, internal tissue damage. Even though a shambling mound may not have organs, it still has tissue that can be contused, otherwise it wouldn't take damage from bludgeoning weapons either.

One might say though that one cannot have lightning without thunder, and shambling mounds are immune to lightning. However, it's actually more than just flat immunity; shambling mounds are created by and healed by lightning. So, one could make the case that the concussive damage of a lightning strike is offset by the healing that takes place when a shambling mound is struck by lightning.

But thunder by itself? Yes, it would take damage.

So, as Patrick McGill said in the second post of the thread:

No they aren't immune to thunder damage, just as deaf people in real life aren't immune to shock waves.

He's absolutely right.

 

[Chocolategravy]

Actually, you're both wrong - and both right.

It depends entirely upon the type of grenade being used.

A fragmentation grenade carries less explosives (therefore less overpressure - smaller shockwave) but its case is designed to come apart (fragment) and create a projectile hazard of relatively large and thick pieces of metal (or sometimes plastic).

Concussion grenades are designed with more explosives (three to five times more than a fragmentation grenade, for a significantly larger overpressure/shockwave), but have thinner cases creating a smaller volume of less dense fragmentation particles.

Concussion grenades are significantly less deadly than a fragmentation for exactly the reason I said, shockwaves aren't as lethal as shrapnel. You just have to look at a gun to see that the projectile is far more deadly than the shockwave that propels it; air is pretty poor at conveying force. I suspect Sacrosanct is thinking of the episode where they fired a shotgun into a barrel of water and killed all the "fish" inside with the shockwave due to water being much better at conveying force than air.