Dust explosion
- Thread starter Soultpp
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Novels aren't rules I agree, but they are a guideline of things that happen in these worlds we play in. In most cases, novels are included as canon unless a rule book specifically counters it by saying 'X can't happen'. It was mostly used in this case as an example of the fact that these things CAN happen in these fantasy worlds, not as a rules reference. It's not all about the rules after all, its about the play and the story. I just wanted help translating my idea into the game mechanics. Though a friendly debate isn't bad on top of that.
As far as drowning, yes that is one situation in which suffocation would be relevant, but so is being trapped in a cave in or locked in a sealed trunk or something of the like. My point was just that the rules do exist to be used in situations where they would apply.
I don't think that your volcano is an apt example in this case. You're talking about thousands or millions of gallons of water falling into a super hot pool of lava all at once. Just 'pouring water into a volcano' can't replicate that if you can't also replicate the sheer quantity of water flowing into it all at once. If you CAN manage that amount of water, why not have the explosion? Its still what would be considered 'unique circumstances.'
I took the price from a comparable trap in the DMG. I don't think there's any particular logic behind it. (Besides, if it's just a trap you're going to place in a dungeon your PCs are exploring, you can ignore the price.)
Adding the secondary bull rush would be fine. One of the beauties of 3e is that it can handle just about anything - it's just a question of how much effort you want to put in on the detail work.
Yeah, the effort/details work is the reason I started this thread. Fleshing out the mechanics into something that would be effective in the right tactical situation. In this case, the dust bomb trap would likely be an improvised door trap, when you know the monsters are coming that way.
There are a number of examples of people throwing flour into fires on YouTube, no need to risk your own safety for that (silly requirement for a game), but they're just chucking a handful (or plateful) of flour. In my case, being that this is setup to hurt by someone who is knowledgeable about traps, it wouldn't just be random play like that. For one thing, having any kind of pressurization on the flour container would allow for faster dispersal as compared to just chucking flour by hand. Again, YouTube has 'how to' vids on Flour bombs using balloons, which would be a minor version of what I'm thinking of. You always have to consider the skill level of the person doing it in comparison to the real life example as well after all.
I am a player in this game. I have minor DM aspirations but can't get past the hurdle of map making.
Celebrim
Legend
Ok, just to make sure, I went and looked, and they all look a lot like I expected them to look - very small flashes of low temperature fire with no observable pressure wave and no damage effects beyond a foot or two from where the flour intersected the flame. Most of them were less dangerous than your average 1" mortar shell you can buy in any southern state around the 4th of July, and in several cases I saw people actually caught in the flash but not getting burned. Essentially, they made not thermobaric bombs, but very small flame throwers that would do damage quite similar to a D&D torch - maybe 1d3 fire damage with a chance of igniting the target - if you were exposed to them. This is hardly surprising, as fundamentally what they are doing is exactly what a fire breather does only they propel the inflammable substance and atomize it using their mouth.
The only actual themobaric bombs I found on youtube made with flour used very much as I expected, a black powder bomb (or in one case, tannerite) as a dispersal agent, and even with 10lbs of flour only produced shock waves with damaging effects over about a 5'-10 radius. None of these involved more than a couple dice of damage in D&D terms, and carrying 10lbs of flour and a blackpowder grenade to produce those effects would probably be less effective than carrying a blackpowder grenade and a cutlass.
And in no case did I see anyone enhancing an explosion with flour beyond what they could have achieved with just more weight of regular explosives. If you have a 11lb bomb and access to blackpowder, you'd be better off with 10lbs of blackpowder and 1lb of pottery than 1lb of blackpowder and 10lbs of flour.
Sure, but skill or no skill, I doubt a player could explain the technique his skilled PC was using to produce this effect.
Then really, there is absolutely nothing we can tell you that is of any use to you at all. As there are no official rules on this matter, any thing we tell you is house rules that have no bearing on what your DM rules, nor should they. In fact, merely in asking us instead of your DM, you are basically being - I'm sure quite innocently - a jerk. If you were to ever try to say to your DM, "Someone on EnWorld said you should do it this way...", based on this thread, I hope your DM straightens you up in a hurry. I have a lot of opinions about how a table should be run and I'm fully willing to share them with fellow DMs and try to convince them to see the sense in what I'm saying, but I for one never argue with my DMs over anything, and I sure don't want to encourage that behavior in anyone else.
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You are correct. The YouTube videos are all showing a very very mild example of this type of situation. A game is not usually so mild, being in a 'fantasy' setting tends to make even the mildest thing fantastic. Also, these are mostly nubs in their backyard playing around, not pyrotechnical engineers. There are a LOT of precedent supporting instances for a dust explosion being a viable trap. The wikipedia page for dust explosion lists a bunch involving various things like grain dust and the like. The one that particularly stands out for me is the Formosa Fun Coast Explosion in 2015 which was outdoors. It didn't involve flour specifically, but it was in an outdoor location and there were over 500 injured or killed.
Again I wasn't thinking that it would be a super strong blast, I honestly don't think it would even match a min level fireball in damage for being an improvised trap. (Then again IEDs can be nasty deadly)
I would never expect the level of blast as would happen when something like a grain silo was involved, gods no! But there is no reason why, in a fantastic setting, a person who had the forethought to play around with something like this couldn't set up a minor version at a doorway. Heck I could even agree to eliminating the shock wave, just a flash fire in monters' faces when the trap is sprung.
Okay, I can clearly see that you've completely misinterpreted my intent here. I would never, EVER consider going to any DM and saying, 'This is how its done because these random guys (no offense intended) on an RPG forum said so'. You're right, that is very jerky behavior and I would not do it. What I intended is to get an idea of what the suggested mechanics would look like, before presenting the idea to the DM with something like, 'To save you some trouble, I asked some guys on a good RPG forum who might be more experienced than us what they would think, this is what they suggested. What do you think?' Never to say that these are actual RAW or anything like that, just a suggestion of how it could be handled and balanced that's all. I am the primary bookkeeper (all the character are, by default, made on my computer first because its portable and our location for game night often changes) for our group apart from DM only information, I'm only trying to get suggestions to make his job a little easier.
Greenfield
Adventurer
Grain silos and sugar mills are at a very real risk for dust explosions.
When they go up the explosion will blow the structure, but that takes a lot of fuel in a lot of air. When you come right down to it there just isn't that much energy in a 5 lb sack of flour, no matter how suddenly you burn it.
I've heard of people dropping a handful of well dried corn starch down a chimney. The flash back burned their hand, in in the living room they found a fan-shaped scorch pattern across the floor.
The key to that was well dried fuel, a ready ignition source, and enough time in falling to distribute the fuel into the air. But when all is said and done, the effect was more startling than damaging.
So you need a very large volume, or you get a relatively cold-burn. Fireball is hot enough to flash-melt gold. Corn starch wasn't hot enough to light a carpet on fire.
Remember that lamp oil isn't gasoline. Flamable, but not really at risk of exploding.
The flashy side show trick of breathing fire always looks spectacular. A performer takes a small sip of liquor, something distilled like brandy or whiskey. They then spit/spray it out of their mouth, and through a fire source like a small torch.
In game terms the result would be a 5 foot cone of fire doing maybe a D4. As in, enough to cause a lot of pain, but not enough to flat-out kill someone.
It does damage like a serious sunburn, and not much more. Some blistering at the worst. Again, just so much energy in a table spool of alcohol.
Oddly, the performer is t risk themselves, and often burns their own mouth when doing this. (I used to perform, juggling, stage magic, fire eating etc.) There is a thin chance, if the performer really screws up, that they can kill themselves: You blow out, hard, while you're spraying the alcohol. If you mess up and cough or choke, you can inhale reflexively. That "bad sunburn", taken to the inside of the lungs, can be fatal.
I guess where I'm going with all of this is that it's really hard, using the materials available at a medieval technology level, to make man-portable dust explosion of any force worth doing.
As someone else pointed out, of course, the game world isn't a strictly realistic reflection of a medieval technology. It's a fantasy world, very cinematic, with a lot of "larger than life" inherent in it. That' what makes it fun.
When they go up the explosion will blow the structure, but that takes a lot of fuel in a lot of air. When you come right down to it there just isn't that much energy in a 5 lb sack of flour, no matter how suddenly you burn it.
I've heard of people dropping a handful of well dried corn starch down a chimney. The flash back burned their hand, in in the living room they found a fan-shaped scorch pattern across the floor.
The key to that was well dried fuel, a ready ignition source, and enough time in falling to distribute the fuel into the air. But when all is said and done, the effect was more startling than damaging.
So you need a very large volume, or you get a relatively cold-burn. Fireball is hot enough to flash-melt gold. Corn starch wasn't hot enough to light a carpet on fire.
Remember that lamp oil isn't gasoline. Flamable, but not really at risk of exploding.
The flashy side show trick of breathing fire always looks spectacular. A performer takes a small sip of liquor, something distilled like brandy or whiskey. They then spit/spray it out of their mouth, and through a fire source like a small torch.
In game terms the result would be a 5 foot cone of fire doing maybe a D4. As in, enough to cause a lot of pain, but not enough to flat-out kill someone.
It does damage like a serious sunburn, and not much more. Some blistering at the worst. Again, just so much energy in a table spool of alcohol.
Oddly, the performer is t risk themselves, and often burns their own mouth when doing this. (I used to perform, juggling, stage magic, fire eating etc.) There is a thin chance, if the performer really screws up, that they can kill themselves: You blow out, hard, while you're spraying the alcohol. If you mess up and cough or choke, you can inhale reflexively. That "bad sunburn", taken to the inside of the lungs, can be fatal.
I guess where I'm going with all of this is that it's really hard, using the materials available at a medieval technology level, to make man-portable dust explosion of any force worth doing.
As someone else pointed out, of course, the game world isn't a strictly realistic reflection of a medieval technology. It's a fantasy world, very cinematic, with a lot of "larger than life" inherent in it. That' what makes it fun.
Celebrim
Legend
So lets talk about that one. The organizers of that event blew 6000lbs of dyed corn starch into the air using compressed air canisters and large fans to keep it suspended in the air, eventually creating a dense ball of suspended powder 6 stories tall over an area the size of a football field. Additionally, the ground by this point was described as being ankle deep in corn starch. Eventually, a spark in the electrical equipment on stage (or possibly someone lighting a cigarette) ignited the powder cloud, which blew yet more dust into the air to fed the explosion. Nineteen people died and hundreds were injured. If you want to walk around with three tons of cornstarch and conjure air elementals to churn it in to something explosive, then sure, I'll arrange for an impressive fireball with true sustained concussion waves. But pulling off that trick is not in the slightest easy or convenient.
I don't know what a game is. I'm not the game's DM. Only the DM can determine the tropes of a particular game. Mine tend to be heavily informed by realism. Other DMs will, quite rightly, rule completely differently to maintain the sort of themes and standards they prefer for their own version of fantasy. Their version of fantasy might not even be your version of fantasy.
Yes, and that's why I'm no longer helping you. That's exactly what I was afraid you were going to do when it suddenly dawned on me that you were talking like a player and not a DM.
Of course you are right with all of it and I'm not really arguing that, this would be way milder than something like a grain silo explosion. I can envision something a little more but in the end it could be that my vision really is not practical. Then again, that was part of why I came, to get an idea of if it would be doable. I may have to limit my suggested damage to no more than, say, 1d6 because while I think it can potentially be larger, I feel that I am biased on the subject.
I was never suggesting it as something I was attempting. I would never expect to pull off anything nearly that scope because, yes, it was a situation that was ideal for the blast to grow to something so huge. It was merely an example of how dangerous dust explosions could be in ideal circumstances.
While it is true that every game is as different as every DM, regardless of how realistic you want something, there is only so far you can go with most systems, hence where the imagination and suspension of disbelief come into play.
I am not sure I understand your logic here. What, exactly, do you think I am doing? Trying to control the DM, or dictate to him how the game should be or something?
Greenfield
Adventurer
What do I think you're doing?
I think you are the player I warned you about in my initial post: The enterprising player attempting to create Fireball effects via mundane means (i.e. without expending spells).
Magic is a sharply limited resource in D&D, of any edition, as it is in Pathfinder and just about any other system. There's a reason for that.
Unlimited access to magic or spell-like effects, particularly combat-effective spell effects, unbalances the game.
One big objection I've had to gunpowder researchers, which players love to ignore, is that their character doesn't start off knowing that there's a thing called "gunpowder" to research. Similarly, why would your character, or any PC for that matter, start to think that a bag of flour could explode?
Modern flour is much more finely ground than medieval flour. Corn starch flatly didn't exist. (Corn wasn't known in Europe before Colombus, since it came from the "New World".)
The coarser flour of the time (read as "in a medieval technology") would be much harder to use to fuel a dust explosion, since it was closer to sand than dust. It was also unbleached, and would be considered "whole wheat' (or just as likely "whole barley" or "whole rye") so it had bran mixed in. (Bran is the husk of the grain). Again, not a fine, carb-rich "dust".
So the only way your character could know there was anything to try and recreate would be if the DM already had such things in his game (hence the "re" part of "recreate".)
So rather than trying to break the game by arguing for "magic" effects achieved without magic, play the game as it stands.
Either that or make an Alchemy roll, with a target number somewhere in the 40s. (As in, by the time you could make it, you won't care about a 5D4 flash-bang that fails more often than it succeeds.)
I think you are the player I warned you about in my initial post: The enterprising player attempting to create Fireball effects via mundane means (i.e. without expending spells).
Magic is a sharply limited resource in D&D, of any edition, as it is in Pathfinder and just about any other system. There's a reason for that.
Unlimited access to magic or spell-like effects, particularly combat-effective spell effects, unbalances the game.
One big objection I've had to gunpowder researchers, which players love to ignore, is that their character doesn't start off knowing that there's a thing called "gunpowder" to research. Similarly, why would your character, or any PC for that matter, start to think that a bag of flour could explode?
Modern flour is much more finely ground than medieval flour. Corn starch flatly didn't exist. (Corn wasn't known in Europe before Colombus, since it came from the "New World".)
The coarser flour of the time (read as "in a medieval technology") would be much harder to use to fuel a dust explosion, since it was closer to sand than dust. It was also unbleached, and would be considered "whole wheat' (or just as likely "whole barley" or "whole rye") so it had bran mixed in. (Bran is the husk of the grain). Again, not a fine, carb-rich "dust".
So the only way your character could know there was anything to try and recreate would be if the DM already had such things in his game (hence the "re" part of "recreate".)
So rather than trying to break the game by arguing for "magic" effects achieved without magic, play the game as it stands.
Either that or make an Alchemy roll, with a target number somewhere in the 40s. (As in, by the time you could make it, you won't care about a 5D4 flash-bang that fails more often than it succeeds.)
No, you do not have me right. I am NOT trying to replace magic or even recreate fireball with mundane means. I even agreed that lowering the damage number was acceptable and for all the reasons given.
I agree with you, unlimited access to some forms of magic would be quite game breaking, like a high lvl wizard is.
How would a character in game know that such a thing as flour exploding was possible, or at least know to start experimenting with it? Simple, they worked at, or lived near, a grainery/flour mill where it happened on a large scale. It would be reasonable to assume that a large scale explosion like that could be paired down to a small focused burst.
Having seen signs of an explosion on a massive scale and after spending years (as part of their training in trapmaking) they could learn that they need a finer grind, which while maybe not common, is still possible.
Characters exist before the game starts, they don't start as babies. So they will have experienced many things that the DM hasn't thought of.
No one is trying to break the the game by arguing for "magic" effects achieved without magic. And I am trying to play the game as it stands. Traps exist, and I am trying to find ways to make that useful in a game setting. Furthermore I already agreed that it would never achieve the same level of power as magic could, furthermore this way is far more expensive than just learning to cast fireball would be. YES I am trying to find non-magical alternatives, but NOT because I'm trying to break anything but because I believe, in the context of a 'real world with magic' that there would be SOME people who would try to do that, even if the results cannot, could NEVER match what a wizard of even minor levels could achieve. This is the reason I came HERE, to keep it within appropriate power levels because I thought there would be people who would be helpful in making it work as a minor effect usable once in a while for a minor advantage at that time, which is something any clever character would look for, magical or not. Obviously this would be abandoned as soon as a reliable magical method came into hand as that would always be stronger and more efficient to use, not to mention that I envisioned it as something that was never going to be efficient past lvl2-3 tops. Beyond the cost there are several more drawbacks to this that would make it impractical vs a magical solution. First is the encumbrance of carrying around several pounds of flour without something like a bag of holding. Second is the time it would take to set it up, this is never something that could be done in the middle of combat as it would likely take several rounds, if not whole minutes, to set up. Third is that no matter how well it was set up, it would always have a failure chance when it actually was triggered.
I am NOT trying to make a 6k dmg per round barbarian here by abusing rules and effects that should never have been stack-able. I AM just trying to find creative things to do with a less common character concept.
First off, when did I EVER say I wanted something that strong? I may have agreed that what delericho posted to help me was similar to what I was looking for, but I also stated that I would likely have to reduce the damage. I also agreed later on that the damage probably shouldn't be more than maybe 1d6, which is half what alchemist's fire can do, though this situation is slightly more powerful only because it is a large area of effect, though far LESS powerful in that it happens once, then takes forever (in combat terms) to attempt to set up again, and even then it would likely only ever be doable at a doorway which further limits the practicality.
Secondly, why would something involving flour, a little fire, and and a bit of ingenuity require alchemy, and WHY would it ever be way more more difficult than than things far more practical and effective? I COULD have just had this trap dumping a vial or several of AF on the person triggering it, but I felt that the dust explosion was a little more interesting and creative. I thought creativity is what these games were supposed to be about?
Celebrim
Legend
Well.... although there is good evidence that explosive powder technology of some sort has existed in some D&D campaigns, what I was not able to find evidence of is that any medieval mill ever exploded. I can find no evidence of any dust explosion prior to industrial scale milling in the early 19th century. Moreover, I've not even found any evidence of medieval coal mine explosions, as shaft mining doesn't have been much of a thing in the medieval period. Most coal was strip or trench mined, and the pace of mining doesn't appear to have provided for a lot coal dust explosions. No easy to find documentary evidence of even a mine explosion surprised me.
While D&D technology levels are usually several centuries more advanced than a medieval setting, it's entirely possible that dust explosions aren't a well known thing in many D&D settings. The conditions to create dust explosions don't seem to have been created in the real world until modern times. Despite many attempts to create reliable incendiary devices in the ancient world, no group ever appears to have researched or attempted a 'flour bomb' - this includes groups like the Japanese that continued to use primitive weapons until relatively late periods. Ninjas used powder bombs as distractions, but no attempt was made to make incendiaries out of them. This strongly suggests to me that there is no easy way to make one, and at least in my game I'd consider dust explosive technology to be a rare and not well known technology that a low level character would be unlikely to be aware of.
Non-accidental dispersal of dust in a fashion suitable to make an explosive requires explosives. I've found absolutely no evidence otherwise. Otherwise, it takes too long for the dust to disperse into a sufficient volume of air for complete combustion to occur. Powder tubes, along the lines of blowguns or the like, produce not explosions but brief relatively low damage flame thrower effects, and you might as well have the shtick, "I'm a firebreather" as all that. I suggest d3 damage in a single 5' square. Mildly useful against swarms of fine creatures, I suppose.
No. Nothing that the DM hasn't thought of exists. Whatever the DM thinks exists, is what exists. If you want specific experiences in your background, they have to be approved by a DM. You can't just in the middle of play say, "My character survived a mill explosion as a kid, and so he is aware of the explosive power of flour.", any more than you can say, "My character has three older brothers, and one of them works as a guard at the castle." and expect the DM to validate this idea. Some DMs might. Some might think, "That's cool; let's run with it." But until the DM validates something in the setting, it doesn't exist.
Fundamentally, there is absolutely no purpose in asking about or arguing about any of this stuff with us. House rules conversations are a strictly DM to DM, peer to peer conversation. How you want to run your table is your affair.
To tell you the truth, a "Trap Maker" character concept is more suited to a video game than a typical PnP RPG. It's not that I can't think of a character usefully making traps, but setting a trap is more of a hours long affair than something you can use in typical D&D combat. Since PC's are almost always the active agents, the aggressors if you will, they rarely get a chance to prepare the ground for defensive action except perhaps when making camp for the night. And in general, you'll be far better off with caltrops, snares, and other simple traps than trying to talk your DM into complex dust explosions, which will probably provoke even the most tolerant DM to crushing your dreams with inflexible rulings. And even then, understand that, "I can make traps" is probably not your primary shtick.
But stop wasting your time here and talk this over with your DM.
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