Fire elementals 100 or 200% Fire resistance

[marquisdean]

There's no such thing as 200% resistance in D&D.
water damage boca raton

 

[billd91]

Rebuke/control elementals comes close to those ideas.

Alternatively, allow elementals made from the wizard's specialty to qualify as legitimate targets for various enchantment spells such as dominate, charm person, hold person, etc.

 

[Empirate]

Iron Golems have "133% resistance to fire", in the OP's terms.

Fire Elementals aren't healed nor damaged by it (like humans are neither hurt nor healed by breathing normal air), but there are effects that draw on fire so primal it can even hurt fire elementals. Sanctified Ones of Kord, for example, can lend their fire spells divine essence that even creatures made of fire cannot hope to resist. Presumably, this is the stuff that, on the Elemental Plane of Fire, burns things, like normal fire does on the Prime Material.

 

[Li Shenron]

This is for 3.5 but it applies to any D&D...

Well these are 2 very different questions, depending on the context

If you want to know how it works in 3e, the rules are quite simple: immunity just means damage of the type doesn't reduce the HP, so it is "100% immunity" in your words.

As for D&D in general, a monster immune to a damage type and a monster that gets healed by something normally damaging regular creatures, are two different things, and you can have both in your fantasy world!

Generally speaking, immunity is more common because it is easier to play at the table. Not so much because a monster getting healed by fire is harder to fight (it's not really that harder, the PCs figure it out after the first fire spell that they should use something else to fight it), but because it may raise controversies such as "if this elemental causes fire damage AND gets healed by fire, can it heal itself by targetting itself with attacks?".

But IMHO monster which get healed if you attack them with the "wrong weapon" are a great addition to the game, such as many golems and oozes. I wouldn't make ALL elementals work like that (I'd keep the most basic elementals in the MM also the simplest ones) but I'd certainly like to see alternative elemental monsters which get healed by jumping into water, by absorbing stones etc.

I prefer if a fire mage can actually be MORE effective against a fire elemental. "Oh, you're MADE of fire? That stuff I manipulate all the time to cast my spells? Well hey, let me rip you in half and recharge some of my spell slots."

I'd leave that as an option to the players. There can be both a fire mage which is expert in creating fire and another which is expert in fighting it, and then others which are a mix of both. You know, pretty much like IRL where there are both pyromaniacs and firefighters

 

[Ahnehnois]

I don't know why fire should heal creatures of fire. Air elementals aren't healed by air are they?

 

[MarkB]

Alternatively, allow elementals made from the wizard's specialty to qualify as legitimate targets for various enchantment spells such as dominate, charm person, hold person, etc.

Or just make dedicated versions of those spells, and let the specialist wizards learn them.

 

[Li Shenron]

I don't know why fire should heal creatures of fire. Air elementals aren't healed by air are they?

Because it's a cool concept: a creature literally made of one single element, that grows by absorbing more of such element, or it heals first if it was wounded.

Someone may want all the elementals in their fantasy world to work like these, others may want some and others may want none, what wrong with this?

Fire elementals could absorb fire spells and natural fire, or other stuff suitable to work as "fuel".
Water elementals could absorb the water from a pool, from rain, or even slowly sap liquids from living beings.
Earth elementals could absorb stone, including weapons made of such, or mud or dirt.
Air elementals could indeed absorb the air around, but perhaps only very slowly, unless there is strong wind or you cast Gust of Wind on them.

I think the DM can also think on the fly about how a spell would affect such creatures, if it makes the encounter more interesting and encourage some creative use of spells. That's definitely a gamestyle that fans of balance wouldn't like, so it's not for everyone.

 

[MarkB]

The latest Wandering Monsters article on Salamanders has a little note that they can survive only for a few hours in temperatures below water's boiling point.

You could do something similar with fire elementals - they need to consume flammable materials almost constantly in order to maintain their internal temperature, but hitting them periodically with a magical fire effect will stave off that need, allowing them to last a few minutes or hours longer before seeking new combustibles to ignite.

 

[Grazzt]

I generally replace all immunity with numerical resistance, because its actually possible for a pyromancer in my game to burn a fire elemental. There is no such thing in my game as 100% immunity. Fire elementals have 'Immunity (Fire)', replaced with 'Resistance to Fire 100'.

Same here.

 

[Omegaxicor]

I like the idea of an Air Elemental getting Fast Healing when it is an environment with air (such as basically anywhere other than underwater) and Earth Elementals getting Fast Healing when they are in contact with Earth (Wood and Metal floors don't count), fighting Water Elementals when it's raining gives the same sort of effect and adds something to the battle.

I agree that having all elementals work this way might not be good for every group, just as a House Rule. Maybe having Fire Elementals work as described in the MM and having...Heat Elementals work as House Ruled would be good for other groups.

Some creatures that are immune could have 100% resistance and maybe there are ways to reduce that, and the elementals version, through feats/specialty Wizards but I don't think they will be useful enough to see many people taking them since all they have to do is avoid using the element...I can see some situations where they might be useful though, a Cold Mage with Uttercold metamagic and other such feats would prefer to beat the resistance if s/he can because she has other effects added to the spell (I know that half the damage wouldn't be affected by the elementals resistance so the spell would do 0 damage because half is dealt as Divine and half is healed as Cold)

EDIT: [MENTION=40176]MarkB[/MENTION] I really like the idea of Elementals needing energy from their Plane, or, failing that, energy from our Plane of a similar type. Fire Elementals have to start forest fires to survive on our Plane for a long time, when a Mage summons an elemental they give it some of their stored Fire Energy in exchange for it's service...