EBERRON: Do elementals feel pain and can they be reasoned with?

[Emirikol]

Our group was recently up against some fire elementals and the questions came up, "Do elementals feel pain and can they be reasoned with?"

jh

 

[Mystery Man]

I think if you speak their language yeah, for instance air elementals speak auran. So if you knew auran you could, depending on whether or not it wishes to be reasoned with at the time.

 

[DanMcS]

Our group was recently up against some fire elementals and the questions came up, "Do elementals feel pain and can they be reasoned with?"

They have int, wis, and cha scores, so they aren't mindless automata. Their bodies probably don't have nerves, so they wouldn't feel pain the same as a living creature, but they are alive, so they presumably have some kind of pain/avoid damage sense and instinct combination. So yeah, they feel pain.

Can they be reasoned with? Their low int scores mean they're not very smart from a human point of view. That might reflect lack of reasoning capability, lack of knowledge and understanding of the normal human world, or some combination. They are by definition very alien to people, who are made up of all four elements and mythically have some sort of animating life force or soul.

They might be too alien to be reasoned with, really. The elder elementals, which have an int of 10, can probably be talked to, but they might not be interested in you at all.

 

[Greatwyrm]

I generally view anything that's immune to crits as not feeling pain. May not be RAW, just my view.

I'd say anything above animal intelligence (3 or more) can be reasoned with. Of course, what's reasonable to a 3 INT creature made out of living fire is probably open to interpretation.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

I would rule yes and yes, just to be a jerk. Shadowrun did this. Elementals got all mad if they ever got free.

A more "realistic" answer would be no and maybe.

 

[Tonguez]

I'd rule too alien to reason with but they do understand the concept of self-preservation and that can be used as a bargaining point

eg a Fire Elemental knows that fire needs to consume fuel and oxygen in order to survive, it also understands that water and/or sand etc can quench its flame (self-preservation)

A clever PC able to speak Ignum (iirc) then needs to work out how those notions can be used

a water elemental understands the concepts of stagnation, pollution and becoming a bog so might be persuaded to attack the pollution causing wizards tour which is pouring alchemical sludge into the local fishing pond...

 

[cmanos]

I think the stat in question is Wisdom, not Intelligence. While intelligence is described as "knowledge and reasoning", I think what you are looking for is "does a fire elemental know enough to realize a bucket of water is dangerous to it?". Personally, I don't think elementals would be above listening to a character if the character tried to communicate with it. Now, if it thought it was overpowered and was going to be extinguished, it just may decide, Hmm....

Do they feel pain? probably not in the same way as we feel pain as they have no nerves...

 

[Torm]

I agree with what seems to be the general thought so far - yes to reasoning, no to physical pain. My character in the last Eberron game we played was a Kalashtar who would free elementals whenever he legally could - he thought their enslavement was wrong, but at that point was still determined to work within the system to change things.

 

[Testament]

I'd rule too alien to reason with but they do understand the concept of self-preservation and that can be used as a bargaining point

eg a Fire Elemental knows that fire needs to consume fuel and oxygen in order to survive, it also understands that water and/or sand etc can quench its flame (self-preservation)

A clever PC able to speak Ignum (iirc) then needs to work out how those notions can be used

a water elemental understands the concepts of stagnation, pollution and becoming a bog so might be persuaded to attack the pollution causing wizards tour which is pouring alchemical sludge into the local fishing pond...

I'd run with this one. An Elemental would think of the world in terms of its element, and associated concepts.

A Fire Elemental's understanding of the world would be limited to concepts of related to fire. What burns well, what is hot, what kills fire, that sort of thing. Given the nature of fire, they'd also be constantly moving and in a hurry.

An Earth Elemental would have no sense of time a mortal could comprehend, being composed of rock and earth, and would see things as land or un-land, hard and not hard. They'd think in geological terms.*

A Water Elemental would understand depth, motion and vastness, but they'd probably be one of the most alien. Their idea of time would be bizarre to us, given the nature of water.

An Air Elemental would also understand travel, but would have no interest in anything that doesn't spend most of its time in the air. To them, it's there and then it's not, as they move on. While they're also theoretically ageless, their concept of time would be closer to our own, given that an Air Elemental never stops moving.

*Had a great time trying to talk to an awakened rock in a Living Greyhawk game last night. Very well written encounter, the rock simply could not understand time, even when we tried to put in terms of how many times the sun had set. Its response was "I became me, he came, he went, he returned and went again, then you came."