Warmaster Horus
Explorer
It's a fantasy game. As a DM I would extend fire resistance/immunity to smoke just so I don't have greater devils choking on smoke in their lakes of sulfur and fire.
D&D 5E Does fire resistance protect you from smoke inhalation?
- Thread starter fil512
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GlassJaw
Hero
For fire and heat I would use fire resistance.
For smoke I would use the Suffocating rules on pg. 183 of the PHB assuming a player is trying to hold their breath.
Tougher call if a PC breathes in the smoke...but yeah, I would probably allow fire resistance to apply. Maybe poison resistance too depending on the nature of the smoke. Overall I would probably treat smoke inhalation as a weaker Cloudkill.
For smoke I would use the Suffocating rules on pg. 183 of the PHB assuming a player is trying to hold their breath.
Tougher call if a PC breathes in the smoke...but yeah, I would probably allow fire resistance to apply. Maybe poison resistance too depending on the nature of the smoke. Overall I would probably treat smoke inhalation as a weaker Cloudkill.
Celebrim
Legend
In D&D, the traditional/historical answer to this question is 'No'. Fire resistance might protect you from a fireball or the blast of a dragon, but it wouldn't in and of itself give you the ability to live indefinitely in a burning building, in a volcano, or on the elemental plane of fire. For that, you needed more powerful magic like the aforementioned Necklace of Adaptation.
Likewise, cold resistance doesn't in and of itself give you the ability to breathe water and lightning resistance doesn't in and of itself give you the ability to fly.
Now, if you don't like this answer, it's your game - do what makes sense to you.
As for what I'd do, I've been playing for 34 or 35 years now, and so I'm set in my ways and would follow the traditions I've been using for that whole time. Fire resistance doesn't give you the ability to breathe fire or its paraelemental by products. I might allow it to give you an advantage (of some sort, 'advantage' in 5e terms) on saving throws with respect to smoke inhalation, but you'd still need to find clean air/oxygen eventually unless you had some sort of planar adaptation or source of clean air.
Likewise, cold resistance doesn't in and of itself give you the ability to breathe water and lightning resistance doesn't in and of itself give you the ability to fly.
Now, if you don't like this answer, it's your game - do what makes sense to you.
As for what I'd do, I've been playing for 34 or 35 years now, and so I'm set in my ways and would follow the traditions I've been using for that whole time. Fire resistance doesn't give you the ability to breathe fire or its paraelemental by products. I might allow it to give you an advantage (of some sort, 'advantage' in 5e terms) on saving throws with respect to smoke inhalation, but you'd still need to find clean air/oxygen eventually unless you had some sort of planar adaptation or source of clean air.
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Celebrim
Legend
The logical conclusion is that the creature is an elemental, and therefore doesn't need to breathe. Either that, or the creature does have literal immunity to poison and smoke is treated as poison for the purposes of the game, or it is literally immune to everything that provokes a fortitude save.
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Nah, the logical conclusion is:
The game holds many many abstractions. Hit points. Saving throws. And resistance.
If it lives near lots of fire, it can handle smoke.
Can you cite where that is in the DMG or PHB? I can't find it in the rules.
(This is rhetorical; it isn't there. You're house-ruling.)
The game holds many many abstractions. Hit points. Saving throws. And resistance.
If it lives near lots of fire, it can handle smoke.
Can you cite where that is in the DMG or PHB? I can't find it in the rules.
(This is rhetorical; it isn't there. You're house-ruling.)
Celebrim
Legend
That may seem reasonable to you, but my point is that over D&D's history it's had various explicit logical conclusions in the rules that are quite different than the one you've struck on. None of the things I mentioned as possible solutions are abstractions. They are things that at one point in time or the other, have been explicitly true.
The comment was rhetorical as well, and you are taking it out of context; I bet you won't actually find 'Fortitude' saves in the 5e rules either.
But for the record, as long as we are feeling rules lawyery, 'smoke' itself doesn't so far as I know have official 5e rules. Still, a Fire Elemental does have immunity to both fire and poison damage, and does have condition immunity to the poisoned and exhausted conditions, so I dare suggest that the designers thoughts on this might not be so far off my thinking. I would suggest that even in 5e a fire elemental is immune to smoke independently of its immunity to fire, for all the same reasons it is immune to cloudkill. Since that is true, your original 'logic' that the implications of A + B necessarily implied C doesn't hold up either.
Likewise, if a fire elemental needed to breathe (it doesn't), and was only immune to fire but not to poison, the poisoned condition, and a variety of other condition immunities common to being an elemental, we could not say from the rules that it was immune to smoke for all the same reasons it would not then be immune to cloudkill.
Sorcerers Apprentice
Hero
The suffocation rules really seem like the best way to handle severe smoke inhalation in 5E. For smaller amounts of smoke I'd just give some flavour descriptions of burning lungs and coughing.
Brandegoris
First Post
Unless an effect Specifically states that it cases Smoke Inhalation as well as Fire damage I don't mess with that. I would say that if you have fire resistance and they have the protection it works against all aspects of a fire.
Just for simplicity sake. I mean It is very situational though depending on the source of the fire
A fireball? Of Course it protects, but if they have to spend 10 rounds in a Burning building then Perhaps Suffocation rules are in order?
Just for simplicity sake. I mean It is very situational though depending on the source of the fire
A fireball? Of Course it protects, but if they have to spend 10 rounds in a Burning building then Perhaps Suffocation rules are in order?
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