Fire Elemental question

[lukelightning]

(dons mage's robes and alchemist's hat):

The Esscense of the Elemental Spirite of Fyre is of such rare puritie and sovereignity that base waters wylle not harme it. Though the Nature of Fyre is to avoid water, it shall be knowne that upon contact with a bodie of water the Elemental Spiryt shall encounter no harme, nor will submersion serve to quench its fire. Onlie an Elemental of the Watery type can quench the spirite of the elemental fyre.

 

[JimAde]

Hey look! Prince Sharam is new to the boards.

Welcome!

 

[Prince Sharam]

By the raw nothing happens if you force a fire elemental into water. They are not diametrically opposed as far as I can tell, no rules support this.

The raw does say: but this in no way supports your position.

Unless a dm wishes to houserule fire elementals to be vulnerable to water then they are not. It is as simple as that.

Unless of course we want to fall back on the fire - water, earth - air that was posted above. Which would seem to mean that an earth elemental walking around surrounded by air should be taking some sort of damage as well... Oddly enough however that sort of thing seems to be outside of the raw.



Fire elementals do not need fuel or air. So again, what about water exactly is going to harm them directly?

Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, i said they're opposed, not that they'd always take out damage. By my opinion, water puts our fire. Silly huh? Well, when's the last time you've seen a gust or breeze hurt a rock or boulder? Unless it knocked it off a cliff, and fell, which is falling damage, then never.

Oh and going by the logic that anything opposed would take damage from the opposite, a paladin would start to take damage while on Limbo, or a barbarian would suffer on Acheron damagewise, while they don't/

You're basically allowing for either side to work in lieu of any hard evidence, so i stand by my position as you stand by yours.

 

[Prince Sharam]

Hey look! Prince Sharam is new to the boards.

Welcome!

Nope, account is, i'm not.

 

[atom crash]

Welcome to the boards, Prince Sharam.

Ooh, I love this line! So childish and overused. Yes, once you can gate us into a D&D world, then you're free to ridicule my opinion. This of course would be your only proof since no rules are set by any WOTC official source as to how this works... Then we can compare summoning Fire Elementals and pushing them into the water and so forth. Otherwise, shut up.

Please play nice.

The rules specifically state that fire elements have a vulnerability to cold.

Vulnerability to Energy

Some creatures have vulnerability to a certain kind of energy effect (typically either cold or fire). Such a creature takes half again as much (+50%) damage as normal from the effect, regardless of whether a saving throw is allowed, or if the save is a success or failure.

By the descriptive text, they also "cannot enter water or any other nonflammable liquid. A body of water is an impassible barrier unless the fire elemental can step or jump over it." But nothing is stated about taking any extra damage from water.

Regardless of what real-world physics tells us about the situation, the rules specify nothing. Keep in mind that the RAW often are counter-intuitive to real-world physics, so we shouldn't rely too much on them when evaluating the rules.

However, I'd be inclined to house rule that a fire elemental trapped in water is going to have a very bad day. If it were possible to trap a fire elemental in a watery grave.

 

[Prince Sharam]

Possible, as others have noted with bullrushing, i'd even venture that teleportation spells would work too.

 

[Nim]

Prove it.

I have shown the rules, you have been making things up as far as I can tell. So prove your point, useing the rules.

There's certainly evidence that Fire and Water are opposed elements, per the RAW. Witness the Fire and Water domains, each of which allows a cleric to rebuke/command creatures of the matching subtype and turn/destroy creatures of the opposing subtype.

There is, however, no effect specified for elementals as a result of that opposition.

Largely, this is because the core rules HAVE no rules for 'elemental' damage, only for energy types, and there's no clean correspondence between elements and energies. It's a bit messy, but that's a side issue.

Technically, fire elementals do not breathe, and are thus immune to drowning. (Though I'd say this is a corner case of the rules that the designers didn't consider)

Technically, a fire elemental would be immune even to the damage for exposure to very cold water, because elementals are immune to nonlethal damage.

Technically, fire elementals 'cannot enter water', but it's entirely unclear what that's supposed to mean. They're allowed to jump over water. They can also, presumably, fail their Jump check and land in it. Once they're in the water, the fire elemental would either stand on top of it (it's an 'impassible barrier') or have to tread water and remain in place, depending on exactly what 'impassible barrier' is supposed to mean in this case. If it stays on top of the water, it could step or jump back out, depending on the distance. If it has to tread water, Jumping is out, and it's almost certainly prohibited from moving THROUGH the water, so it would be immobilized.

I'm probably not alone in thinking that either outcome would be absurd.

 

[Prince Sharam]

I think it's best to just ask a WOTC official, which is more sensible than speculation, no matter how much these make sense.

 

[William_2]

From Prince Sharam “These are diametrically opposed, which is why they even get attack bonuses/penalties against the opposites”. I don’t think that is true at all of the elemental types; air, water, and earth have no such qualities.
The fire and cold types have that kind of relationship.
There isn’t any sort of matrix of cross-elemental interactions, really. Water elementals need to stay near their water. Fire elemental have cold vulnerability, and some curious comments about water, the topic here.

First of all, “A fire elemental cannot enter water or any other nonflammable liquid. A body of water is an impassible barrier unless the fire elemental can step or jump over it”, is pretty much self-contradictory. What happens if a fire elemental does indeed jump over some water, but fails and falls?! Does it land on top of the water because it is “impassable”, or do they fall in, the fate they feared when jumping in the first place, one might think?!
It does not actually make a great deal of sense. Can they NOT enter water, or are they afraid of it? If they can’t enter it, why would they avoid the surface of it?
If they are only deliberately avoiding it, then the question here is valid: what happens to them…and the rules are both silent and, to me, ill-considered.

 

[Tarangil]

Perhaps the amount of water would make a difference. Since they're pure fire in essence they would last longer submerged in the opposite element...For a short period of time.

Throw a Fire elemental in a Deep Swimming pool and trap it in there: It may take some damage (maybe 1d6/minute or something like that), but eventually the water will boil then dissappear as steam leaving a pissed off fire smellymental in an empty pool.

Somehow trap a Fire E in a lake or ocean: Well the damage time would apply perhaps it would die do to long exposure.

An alternative you could do if you don't want to deal damage, since you're using a mundane element as opposed to the pure form is reduce the armor class & damage of the Elemental in question so it would get a -2 to AC and damage while in the water, and the penalty would carry over out of water for the same duration that it was in. Maybe it's movement is reduced also... who knows.


What would happen if you nailed a Fire Elemental with a Tsunami or something??