Ice Archon

[Majoru Oakheart]

I have absolutely no problem with a fire elemental being harmed by strong enough fire. But for some reason, I'm having trouble picturing an ice archon being harmed by strong enough cold.

Help me out here! Someone give me a good mental image of an ice archon being defeated by an overwhelmingly powerful cold attack.

Best examples I could use are the fact that there are animals who live in the ocean which is cold enough to kill humans, but they can still die to cold temperatures.

Polar Bears and the like can survive arctic temperatures, but if it gets cold enough they still die.

We're just talking about larger scale. Water turns to ice at 0 degrees Celsius but there are much, much colder temperatures.

 

[Tuft]

I have absolutely no problem with a fire elemental being harmed by strong enough fire. But for some reason, I'm having trouble picturing an ice archon being harmed by strong enough cold.

Help me out here! Someone give me a good mental image of an ice archon being defeated by an overwhelmingly powerful cold attack.

You made it too cold for his midichlorians to support him?

 

[Talislan]

simplest principle I can think of is to compare it to drowning combined with any thermic/endothermic type theory. The Ice Archons ability to be 'burned' by cold is just shifted in comparison to say a Human. I don't know the science so don't shoot me but freeze burns in the same way fire burns, it just pulls energy(heat) in a different direction. (very simplisticly)

The drowning principle is even simpler, as someone stated, humans are x% water but water can still harm us (particularly in submersion). We breath a very specific cocktail of chemicals to survive as well. messing with that 'cocktail' invariably results in damaging effects on the body. So 'submerging' an Ice Archon in the wrong 'type' or 'cocktail' of cold energy would probably have a similar effect.

That's how it works in my imagination anyway, I'll let someone else handle the appropriate science.

T.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

I have absolutely no problem with a fire elemental being harmed by strong enough fire. But for some reason, I'm having trouble picturing an ice archon being harmed by strong enough cold.

Help me out here! Someone give me a good mental image of an ice archon being defeated by an overwhelmingly powerful cold attack.

Yes, I'm afraid that my research (mostly this paper if you have academic access: http://www.springerlink.com/content/w7v48370q52x1504/fulltext.pdf) reveals that ice gets stronger in tension, compression and in terms of fracture toughness, as temperature decreases. If anything, a powerful cold attack should heal the archon!

 

[Derren]

Best examples I could use are the fact that there are animals who live in the ocean which is cold enough to kill humans, but they can still die to cold temperatures.

Polar Bears and the like can survive arctic temperatures, but if it gets cold enough they still die.

We're just talking about larger scale. Water turns to ice at 0 degrees Celsius but there are much, much colder temperatures.

The problem is that Ice Archons are no flesh and blood creatures, but creatures made out of living ice (to use the same fluff as for fire archons). So you can't really compare those two.

The drowning principle is even simpler, as someone stated, humans are x% water but water can still harm us (particularly in submersion). We breath a very specific cocktail of chemicals to survive as well. messing with that 'cocktail' invariably results in damaging effects on the body. So 'submerging' an Ice Archon in the wrong 'type' or 'cocktail' of cold energy would probably have a similar effect.

In the case of drowning its not the water which kills the human but the lack of oxygen. You can replace the water with any other liquid or even earth and other air tight stuff and teh human will still drown/suffocate the same way. Contact with water alone does not harm a human in any way as far as I know.

That means I have no problem with an Ice Archon being impaled by a spear made out of ice, but I have a problem with an Ice Archon being damaged just because the temperature is too low.

 

[tomtill]

Yes, I'm afraid that my research ...reveals that ice gets stronger in tension, compression and in terms of fracture toughness, as temperature decreases. If anything, a powerful cold attack should heal the archon!

Not exactly. A certain amount of fluidity is essential to life as we know it. For us, if our lipid membranes are not able to move because of low temperatures, the proteins embedded within them stop functioning. We have evolved mechanisms to delay that as long as possible, but it happens. So, if you need pseudoscience to help suspend disbelief of a ice elemental based creature, one could always argue cold attacks, which apparently slow as well as cause damage, also slow the higher energy state of the archon needed to maintain efficient ice elemental metabolism (whatever that is) and thus, it too, is damaged and slowed. You just need a higher threshold of cold to do it.

 

[The_Fan]

I don't care about reality, as long as I can picture it in a dramatic way I'm fine with it.

Hrm...

Let's say the archon is advancing towards a white dragon, weapon in hand, ready to strike, and the beast breathes a blast of swirling, blue-white vapors, with a gale-force wind...its movements slow against the wind. Ice forms on it...it tries to press forward, but the ice cracks...and the cracks go all the way through. As its legs give out it falls to the ground like the T-1000 and shatters.

 

[Wolfspider]

I don't care about reality, as long as I can picture it in a dramatic way I'm fine with it.

Hrm...

Let's say the archon is advancing towards a white dragon, weapon in hand, ready to strike, and the beast breathes a blast of swirling, blue-white vapors, with a gale-force wind...its movements slow against the wind. Ice forms on it...it tries to press forward, but the ice cracks...and the cracks go all the way through. As its legs give out it falls to the ground like the T-1000 and shatters.

Why would that happen to the ice archon? It's made out of living, magical ice imbued with life. How does the embodiment of cold freeze?

Why wouldn't the ice archon instead come striding through the vapors and sleet relentlessly, like the Terminator, with a look of worry crossing the dragon's face for the first time in centuries....

 

[FourthBear]

If we're taking the scientific approach, water ice forms at 273 Kelvin. This is a long, long way from absolute zero. There are many mechanical systems that work just fine at this temperature that would cease functioning at liquid nitrogen temperatures (77 Kelvin). If we're going to treat the Ice Archon as some kind of quasi-biological entity, then it is perfectly sensible to treat it as more complex than a bunch of watery ice with no sub-systems or complexity.

If we take the fantasy route, it's even easier to explain, because magical explanations are completely up to us. All you have to say is that there are different levels of magical cold and that Archons can't withstand cold from a greater magical source of power. There's no fundamental reason that an Ice Archon *should* be able to withstand the icy breath of the greatest epic white dragon to ever walk the earth. Any assumptions that somehow Ice Archons would be healed or unharmed by a greater attack of cold are just that: assumptions without basis outside of a systematic explanation of magical cold. If D&D decides that there are levels of magical cold and magical cold resistance, what are you going to do? Produce real world examples of ice magic that show that only absolute cold immunity for ice creatures makes sense?

 

[FourthBear]

Why would that happen to the ice archon? It's made out of living, magical ice imbued with life. How does the embodiment of cold freeze?

Why wouldn't the ice archon instead come striding through the vapors and sleet relentlessly, like the Terminator, with a look of worry crossing the dragon's face for the first time in centuries....

Who says the Ice Archon is the "embodiment of cold". It could be *an* embodiment of cold, and nowhere near the top of the heap. It could also be a magical creature that happens to be made of magical ice and using magical cold effects. Couldn't the Spirit of Winter be the true embodiment of cold? How's about the various gods of ice? Or perhaps Cold is a fundamental force that needs no embodiment.

You could justify an Ice Archon as utterly immune to cold. You could justify an Ice Archon as not utterly immune to cold. It appears 4e is going with the latter. Wouldn't it be cool if the Ice Archon swaggered up to the dragon, confident in its cold resistance, only to be cracked and destroyed by the dragon's freezing breath, a much more potent source of cold than its own? Or a fire elemental having cringe back from the King of Fire's blazing rages, which are too much for even *its* firey nature? If you slap immunities around too much, I think you lose just as much potential fun.