Fireballing dead bodies

[ThirdWizard]

Again, this is a combat oriented mentality.

If you're looking for an "Amen, brother, preach on!" I don't think you're going to get it.

If you see no problem with one character having 13k gp in gear and another having 67k gp in gear, that's great. But other people do like to run somewhat difficult combats in their game, even if only occasionally. I'm sure noone in your game actually cares if they have magical armor - or apparently armor at all - but for the rest of us, this stuff is kind of important to keep from falling a few levels behind the rest of the party when things get rough.

 

[Nadaka]

It's time for another "What the...!?" from the 3.5 Main FAQ!

From p31:
Hardness applies to acid and sonic attacks. These attacks deal normal damage both to creatures and to objects, and thus would deal normal damage to an animated object (less the effect of the hardness). You would subtract 5 points for hardness from whatever damage a Melf's acid arrow spell deals to the animated table in your example.

From p41:
Acid, sonic, and force attacks ignore hardness. Hardness applies to cold, electricity, and fire attacks.

... What the...!?

-Hyp.

hmm, looks like they changed that from 3.0... from page 136 of the 3.0 PHB hardness on objects applies vs all damage.

I found it: in the 3.5 PHB on page 165 it mentions that acid and sonic damage are applied as to creatures. However it does not really mention hardness. It is a bit vague.

In d20 modern, by a literal interperetation of the wording, Acid and Sonic Damage are affected by hardness. Slightly less vague.

 

[Hypersmurf]

hmm, looks like they changed that from 3.0... from page 136 of the 3.0 PHB hardness on objects applies vs all damage.

The way they've worded it in the 3.5 PHB leaves room for argument.

Energy Attacks: Acid and sonic attacks deal damage to most objects just as they do to creatures; roll damage and apply it normally after a successful hit. Electricity and fire attacks deal half damage to most objects; divide the damage dealt by 2 before applying the hardness. Cold attacks deal one-quarter damage to most objects; divide the damage dealt by 4 before applying the hardness.

Some read "roll damage and apply it normally" to mean "normally for damage to an object" - as in, subtract hardness from damage, and subtract the remaining damage from hit points.

Some point to the absence of a mention of hardness in the sentence (where it appears in the sentences concerning electricity, fire, and cold) as evidence that hardness doesn't apply; others note that 'before applying the hardness' has no place in the sentence either way, since no mathematical operation is performed before hardness is applied, and thus it's not important to specify when to apply it - you do it just like you would for any other attack.

And then there's the "just as they do to creatures" argument, where it's pointed out that a sonic or acid attack against a creature does not require you to apply hardness, and therefore dealing damage "just as they do to creatures" means hardness doesn't apply.

... you can see how different people writing FAQ answers might read it differently

-Hyp.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Again, this is a combat oriented mentality. You can train other people to earn money, for example,

At the high, high rate of your profession check in gold per week. Ouch.

or take up a job that gives you basic items and work your way back. Heck, by a high level you should have earned a lot of favors from people. Some of them will want to help you get back up on your feet. If your group keeps a cache of spare items and gear, that could help. If you're chaotic, you can always go raid some smaller guys and take their items and gear.

This is the sort of stuff I mean by "the DM lets the guy get his stuff back". I can easily imagine campaigns where a break in the action is just not going to happen, and all these solutions become non-solutions. In those cases, the character should basically pack up and leave... if the DM lets him.

What I'm arguing against is that there seems to be this overriding mentality that the player DESERVES a full restitution from the DM simply because another player dropped the ball, and that it is now entirely the DM's job to take care of this, seamlessly, and without the slightest inconvenience to any of the players. IMC, that is not the DM's job. A player error implies work on the part of the players to fix it.

No, the DM's job is to make a fun game for all.

I believe that it can and should be RPed, and furthermore that if nothing changes in overall wealth levels or difficulty, it encourages the wizard to keep fireballing his teammates' gear.

PS: Saev, you keep bringing up examples of combat as if straightforward combat were the only option worth considering. Perhaps it is in your campaign. Have fun with it. Personally, I see it as an opportunity for the party to start relying on their wits to survive in the world, rather than relying on their extensive spreadsheet analysis and min-maxing. Again, before you post yet another time yelling at me about combat balance, I am not talking about a campaign which is nothing but fight after fight. Hopefully you will understand, since this is the second or third time I've had to post this.

I heard you talking, and it sounded like "Look at me, look at me, I'm a TRUE roleplayer".

At high level in D&D, problems are not so straightforward that they require 50ft of rope and a rock to solve.

If they are, you're not really playing high-level D&D. You're playing low-level D&D with high-level combats.

At high level, it's EXPECTED that the party will have magical counters to all sorts of things. It's expected that the party can waltz between planes. It's expected that they can see into the future. It's expected that a pit or chasm is simply not an issue to them. It's expected that they're a lot more powerful than an equivalent non-magical peasant.

This isn't number crunching. It's about what a decent high-level challenge is, whether that's a combat challenge or a non-combat challenge.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

What I'm arguing against is that there seems to be this overriding mentality that the player DESERVES a full restitution from the DM simply because another player dropped the ball, and that it is now entirely the DM's job to take care of this, seamlessly, and without the slightest inconvenience to any of the players. IMC, that is not the DM's job. A player error implies work on the part of the players to fix it.

And if someone were taking that position, then maybe, just maybe, your strawman argument would be relevant. The fact you keep bringing up "combat oriented mentality" only shows you have not thought through the issue.

It is rather unimportant whether the PC is stripped down because he fell with the bodies of his enemies heaped around him and the Fireball destroyed evil hordes threatening to orverrun the party, or Milady tricked our hero at the masked ball into imbibing a enchanted sleep potion and he ends up tortured to death by the evil Sheriff of Nottingham. It is rather unimportant whether our hero needs a +3 Flaming Burst Sword to defeat the Half Water Elemental Troll augmented with Barbarian levels, or Winged Boots to evade the palace guards in order to court the Duke's daughter.

If you are a campaign within a country mile of vanilla D&D, the PC needs level appropriate equipment to participate usefully in level appropriate encounters, OR the DM and players need to be flexible and make adjustments. Do not be confused just because the easiest illustrative examples happen to be combat.

My point is that simplistically "toughing it out" or "roleplaying through adversity" may be bad advice for some PCs in some campaigns because it may make the game less fun for everyone at the table.

 

[RigaMortus2]

It is interesting that a character can be hit for hundreds of damage while alive and nothing will happen to their body, but as soon as they die one well placed fireball might destroy their corpse completely... This is one of those cases where I put my fingers in my ears and repeat lalalalala over and over.

I guess the RBDM will find great use for it, though.

A lot of people (me included) assume that hit points are equal to the amount of damage you can take. This is not entirely true. Hit points (as well as AC) is an abstract system. Hit points does represent damage taken, but it also incorporates near misses, grazes and glancing blows. If you are hit by a rapier for 6 "damage", you aren't necessarily hit. The 6 points you remove from HPs can represent the exertion you expend from trying to dodge the blow.

Another way to look at it is percentage-wise. A 200 hit point Fighter that gets hit for 100 damage is really taking the same amout of damage as an 8 hit point Cleric taking 4 damage.

 

[maggot]

If you are a campaign within a country mile of vanilla D&D, the PC needs level appropriate equipment to participate usefully in level appropriate encounters

I don't believe this is true. A character without level-appropriate equipment is at a disadvantage, but I wouldn't go so far as to say they cannot participate usefully. I've seen some measures saying equipment is about 20% of the CR of a creature. So is an 8th level character useless in a 10th level party. Hardly.

Also, there are plenty of options to get them up to the other players levels. Spells like Magic Vestment and Greater Magic Weapon can replace a lot of GP of treasure. And if the party acts anything like a team, spreading around magic items is an option.

And if the fireball-happy wizard compensates the item-loser in an appropriate way, the item-loser will get back to up to speed quickly and the fireball-happy wizard will learn a valuable lesson.

 

[moritheil]

It's not a strawman argument - S. has repeatedly said that the DM *must* hand out "gimmies," in his language. Go back and read his arguments.

I fail to see how repeatedly rewarding the group for doing something stupid makes the game more fun, but then, as I said, I don't play in your campaigns so I don't know how they work.

In your quote, you argue that the fighter PC did a good job and should not be punished. I don't disagree that he did a good job fighting to the last. The wizard, however, dropped the ball, or took a big risk that played out poorly.

I never argued that the PC "did not need" level appropriate equipment. My argument is that the PC does not deserve FREE level appropriate equipment. If you like to run campaigns with a semblance of logical continuity, all that "high level equipment" should come from somewhere. You absolutely must be careful to avoid giving the impression to players that you, the DM, will always bail their butts out when they do something stupid. (And by "they," I mean the players collectively.) Saying that the fighter didn't fireball, the wizard did, and the fighter shouldn't be affected adversely is like saying the team rogue botched disarming a fireball trap, but it shouldn't damage the fighter right next to him because he wasn't the one to make the roll. It doesn't work that way; the entire party can and should suffer when one guy messes up something important. Unless, of course, you run a highly cinematic game where the DM fudges things so that nobody is ever in serious danger of death except at dramatically appropriate moments. That, to my mind, is more of a Vampire or In Nomine flavor than a DnD game.

Is my angle on the situation clear now?

And if someone were taking that position, then maybe, just maybe, your strawman argument would be relevant. The fact you keep bringing up "combat oriented mentality" only shows you have not thought through the issue.

It is rather unimportant whether the PC is stripped down because he fell with the bodies of his enemies heaped around him and the Fireball destroyed evil hordes threatening to orverrun the party, or Milady tricked our hero at the masked ball into imbibing a enchanted sleep potion and he ends up tortured to death by the evil Sheriff of Nottingham. It is rather unimportant whether our hero needs a +3 Flaming Burst Sword to defeat the Half Water Elemental Troll augmented with Barbarian levels, or Winged Boots to evade the palace guards in order to court the Duke's daughter.

If you are a campaign within a country mile of vanilla D&D, the PC needs level appropriate equipment to participate usefully in level appropriate encounters, OR the DM and players need to be flexible and make adjustments. Do not be confused just because the easiest illustrative examples happen to be combat.

My point is that simplistically "toughing it out" or "roleplaying through adversity" may be bad advice for some PCs in some campaigns because it may make the game less fun for everyone at the table.

 

[moritheil]

And no, VoP doesn't fix it, because many of VoP's benefits can be 'missed'. ie - if you weren't already VoP when you got to a level that has a benefit, you don't get that levels benefit.

Oh really? Look at page 29 of BoED. Seems pretty clear cut to me that you do, except for bonus feats.

The level at which the character swears the vow is irrelevant; if he gives up all his possessions at 10th level he gains all the benefits of a 10th level ascetic character with the exception of bonus exalted feats.