Ice Archon

[tomtill]

If my previous post was too long and didactic...

A monster composed primarily of liquid nitrogen could go around freezing things and causing cold damage (making bananas shatter, lol).

Something that made it significantly colder would cause it to freeze. Literally. Become solid.

And yes, 0 degrees K is theoretical. Everything in our universe has at least some energy. But in 2003, researchers at MIT achieved 0.0000000005 K), which is very very very close. (Wikipedia)

 

[FourthBear]

Is it even possible that matter has a temperature of 0K or is that just a theoretical temperature which can only be reached when there is no matter present?

Absolute zero is a state that has never been observed in matter. I do not believe it is physically possible for matter to truly be at absolute zero.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_zero

Had to edit this, as I made a boo-boo. I wasn't sure about the temperature of a vacuum, so I checked with my old physics textbook. Looks like you can have absolute zero with a perfect, isolated vacuum. I have to admit, I'm not really sure what that means, since I'm used to thinking of temperature in terms of ensemble particle behavior, but I'll assume that there's a good reason for defining absolute zero in a vacuum theoretically.

 

[Wolfspider]

What happens when we throw liquid nitrogen on ice?

I don't have a clue, but you get some liquid nitrogen, and I'll provide some ice cubes, and we can have a little experiment if you wish.

Whatever happens, I'm sure it will be cool.

 

[FourthBear]

I don't have a clue, but you get some liquid nitrogen, and I'll provide some ice cubes, and we can have a little experiment if you wish.

I've worked in a lot of labs with liquid nitrogen, so I have to admit that I have poured liquid nitrogen on water ice. I've seen a number of effects, including the water ice cracking and breaking up. It's not guaranteed that the stresses of the temperature changes will cause a break-up, though. Much of the time, the liquid nitrogen just boils away. It's actually a bit tricky to freeze something by just pouring liquid nitrogen on it, since the contact between the materials often isn't good, the nitrogen boils away quickly and the specific heat of liquid nitrogen isn't that high (so it can't really "suck out" that much heat from the other matter).

No one should go around spraying people with liquid nitrogen for fun, but I'm afraid it's not really like the movies. If you poured gallons of liquid nitrogen on somone, they wouldn't turn into a frozen statue that would break into a million pieces in mere moments. Of course, magical cold is under no such limitations.

 

[med stud]

If real world physics would be the basis of D&D creatures then a creature made out of ice would either be impossible or it would have sensitive parts that could be damaged by cold of enough intensity.

If magic is the basis then I can't see the point of applying real world logic at all. What matters here is how the designers of D&D and the individual DMs view the issue, that will set the magic natural laws that elemental creatures follow.

 

[HeinorNY]

If magic is the basis then I can't see the point of applying real world logic at all. What matters here is how the designers of D&D and the individual DMs view the issue, that will set the magic natural laws that elemental creatures follow.

And there is really no point in applying real world logic to the discussion. All we have to do is to read and understand what WotC has told us so far.
Fire archons are solid creatures, all we have to do is read the pshyology part of his article.
World & Monster also says elementals in 4e are not "burning flame" type elementals, they are like the efreeti who still has flesh and bones.

100% certain that also applies to other elementals, such as Ice Archon.

4E changed the fluff for series of reasons, one of them, IMO, is to simply justify the fact that elementals don't have immunities anymore. It helps understand how could a solid weapon hurt a flame-like creature. It removes their "immunity" to grapple (how do you grapple the cold?).
They are not swirling elemental energies anymore. They are creatures that have a solid bodies which intensively generates the elemental energy. They have weight. They can be physicaly hurt.
It solves a lot of gameplay problems, it simply makes the game better. WotC even gave us a "believable" justification for the change.

 

[Derren]

World & Monster also says elementals in 4e are not "burning flame" type elementals, they are like the efreeti who still has flesh and bones.

Except that the Ecology of the Fire Archon directly contradicts that by saying that they are made out of Living Fire, and while solid this is not Flesh and Bone but, you guess it, fire.

 

[Someone]

Thinking better, yeah, creatures made of cold being frozen... pfff... how could WotC ever allow that????
Don't you agree guys?

We're 75% water. Clearly, being immersed in water should not harm us a lot.

 

[HeinorNY]

Except that the Ecology of the Fire Archon directly contradicts that by saying that they are made out of Living Fire, and while solid this is not Flesh and Bone but, you guess it, fire.

And how does the article contradicts that?

Read again, W&M doesn't say elementals have flesh and bone. It says they are LIKE the efreeti, that is an elemental with a solid body. The Fire Archon article only reinforces that statement by saying: "fire archon has a solid form. Those brave enough to have touched a fire archon's body describe it as being like holding a boiling bag of writhing snakes"

Your whole argument seems to be based on the first sentence of that article, which is just fluffy description. When discussing the "physiology" of a creature, it's just better to read its, uhh.. physiological description....

 

[HeinorNY]

We're 75% water. Clearly, being immersed in water should not harm us a lot.

Sorry, I was trying to be sarcastic.