Horrid Wilting

[Voadam]

It helps a little, but not enough to make up for FIVE levels. It also has some disadvantages, such as not affecting non-living creatures.

A d6/level Horrid Wilting might make a good 5th or 6th level spell.

It is also a necromancy spell so you have that whole opposed school thing going on. Not many necromancy spells cause direct damage. Vampiric touch also does as a touch spell against one foe, but not that many others. At least in the core books.

 

[Voadam]

Here's my 2cents:

I don't think it would work. I'm not convinced that they are living. Even with the text scion posted on the first page For the intent argument, I suspect that they meant living as acting thinking, not in the game term living.
Actually there is no game term living, so that leaves it up to interpretation. I would group living: aberration, animal, dragon, fey, giant, humonoid, magical beast, monstous humanoid, ooze, outsider, plant, vermin. Not living: Construct, Elemental, Undead. Water elementals being the exception worth noting. It's hard to believe with spells that have targer living creature it's not defined, I must be missing it while I fall asleep and write this.

The last argument is a bit of childish semantics, but they specify how it is different from other living creatures, but don't specify that it is a living creatures or suseptable to spells which affect living creatures. Not really a good argument, if someone can find a game clarification of living creatures, I wouldn't try to defend this last point.

Read that again. They are different from other living creatures. Not from living creatures. If they are not living creatures then you cannot say they are different in these ways from "OTHER" living creatures. And thinking is definitely not a requirement for living, think oozes and normal or non-sentient monstrous plants. Even acting is not necessary, think of a stationary plant.

 

[Voadam]

While maybe not the most logical of things, I'd have a Horrid Wilting do damage to a Fire Elemental. My reasoning for this would be that not allowing a Horrid Wilting to do damage would be mostly equivalent to saying that the Fire Subtype is enough to prevent damage from a HW. Clearly this is not the case, and thus a Fire Elemental can be affected.

Not if you are ruling that HW does not work because it is an elemental of fire without moisture in its body to be evaporated. Fire giants and dragons with the fire subtype are different matters because they have moisture in their bodies and can therefore be affected under the reasoning proposed above for excluding fire elementals.

You would have to make a leap that the fire subtype removes all moisture from your body as opposed to the elemental type definitions as applied to fire elementals.

 

[Staffan]

It is also a necromancy spell so you have that whole opposed school thing going on. Not many necromancy spells cause direct damage. Vampiric touch also does as a touch spell against one foe, but not that many others. At least in the core books.

I can buy that argument. Though that means that there ought to be an 8th level evocation spell that did something like 1d10/level or 2d6/level damage.

 

[werk]

You can reasonably say that moisture isn't a general game term and has no rule effect other than describing the spell effect.

However you can also reasonably argue that since it is in the spell description it is a game term that limits the effects of the spell and that can exist side by side with the spell's limitation to living creatures.

I found some text that suggests that living creatures is a defined term which includes elementals.

SRD: Many spells affect "living creatures," which means all creatures other than constructs and undead.

Target of HW is:

SRD: Targets: Living creatures, no two of which can be more than 60 ft. apart.

 

[Voadam]

I found some text that suggests that living creatures is a defined term which includes elementals.

SRD: Many spells affect "living creatures," which means all creatures other than constructs and undead.

Target of HW is:

SRD: Targets: Living creatures, no two of which can be more than 60 ft. apart.

Did you mean to quote Gogamog who argues that elementals are not living creatures?

Or perhaps my response arguing that they are?

 

[Voadam]

I can buy that argument. Though that means that there ought to be an 8th level evocation spell that did something like 1d10/level or 2d6/level damage.

That was just a side note, I think the actual spell to compare it to is delayed blast fireball which is only one level difference and also a multi target direct damage spell.

Delayed Blast Fireball
Evocation [Fire]
Level: Sor/Wiz 7
Duration: 5 rounds or less; see text
This spell functions like fireball, except that it is more powerful and can detonate up to 5 rounds after the spell is cast. The burst of flame deals 1d6 points of fire damage per caster level (maximum 20d6).
The glowing bead created by delayed blast fireball can detonate immediately if you desire, or you can choose to delay the burst for as many as 5 rounds. You select the amount of delay upon completing the spell, and that time cannot change once it has been set unless someone touches the bead (see below). If you choose a delay, the glowing bead sits at its destination until it detonates. A creature can pick up and hurl the bead as a thrown weapon (range increment 10 feet). If a creature handles and moves the bead within 1 round of its detonation, there is a 25% chance that the bead detonates while being handled.

 

[werk]

Did you mean to quote Gogamog who argues that elementals are not living creatures?

Or perhaps my response arguing that they are?

Just pointing out that moisture doesn't matter with regard to this spell.

 

[Arkhandus]

Hrmm...... Elementals are living creatures, but do not have the normal needs of a living creature, i.e. a fire elemental does not need to ingest any material or fluid to fuel its flames, so it doesn't really seem like it has any napalm-like fuel within that could be removed by Horrid Wilting. Also, the descriptions of elementals describe them as being composed of one of the basic elements, and their descriptions don't really imply that they're a mix of elements; a fire elemental is pure fire from the fabric of the Elemental Plane of Fire. Like a Flaming Sphere spell, it has a spongy sort of consistency and can thus be stricken by solid weapons, probably because it's some super-dense coalescence of flame. And it's D&D, not science class, there doesn't need to be any scientific explanation for how a fire elemental of pure flame could somehow be semi-solid, because scientifically, a living fire elemental couldn't exist anyway, so it'd be stupid to say it needs a scientific explanation for how it burns perpetually. Whatever elemental will creates elemental creatures from the fabric of the Inner Planes simply wills a chunk of the plane to tear away, and coalesce into a physical, somehow-living mass capable of staying alive and intact on most other planes.

And not everything in the rules is going to be explained clear-cut for every possible situation; if a spell like Horrid Wilting says it removes moisture to harm the creature, then it quite obviously does not work on creatures with no moisture, such as Fire Elementals. Just as a Vorpal sword does not work against all creatures, because not every living creature has a head, but the description of the Vorpal sword certainly doesn't contain a listing of every critter it won't affect, now does it? No, it's implied by its very description. Not every obscure possibility needs spelling out in full.

It seems pretty stupid to me anyway that a wizard who knows that his spell works by extracting moisture would somehow get the idea that it may affect creatures that appear to be made of pure flame, just because they're somehow alive. Even if fire elementals did somehow possess fragments of other elements in them (which their description seems to deny), the mage would need a pretty high Knowledge (The Planes) check to somehow know this obscure and horribly improbable possibility.

In play, I'd have asked them why they were casting Horrid Wilting against fire elementals, and tell them their mage wouldn't really expect that to work, so they should reconsider their action. I don't force players to accept a bad choice when it should have been obvious to their characters in-game that it would be a bad choice. I'd have let the player change how he spent his action once he learned from the DM that Horrid Wilting doesn't affect fire elementals, because it would already seem like common sense to the wizard in-character.

 

[Arkhandus]

That doesn't mean that it's all-encompassing, werk. The spell may try to affect all living creatures in the area, but what about living creatures in the area who are affected by Spell Immunity (Horrid Wilting)? Or living creatures in the area with Spell Resistance? Obviously the spell can try to affect everything in the area that's alive, but that most certainly does not mean it will affect everything in the area. Just like spells that have a Target of "one construct" or "constructs in a 20-foot sphere" for instance would not affect Golems, unless a golem's description says that spell works on them, because Golems are immune to most magic.

Just because the spell description mentions "all creatures of X type" in its Target line or something does not mean that it truly can affect every creature of that type. Some creatures will inadvertantly or purposely be naturally immune, regardless of whatever the spell's description says. The creature's description obviously takes precedence.

And a fire elemental's description says that it's an incarnation of elemental fire, and that it cannot enter water or other non-flammable liquids, because it's existence is defined by burning, so if it gets tossed into an ocean, for instance, it dies, because it is composed entirely of flames and cannot exist where it cannot burn. It does not seem to me that it would be subject to Horrid Wilting. The specifics of the spell's description say it works by removing moisture, and the fire elemental's description lead me to believe it has no moisture. A fire elemental does not need fuel to burn, it just burns on its own.