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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6877116" data-attributes="member: 42582">The rules don't say that at all!The say that flammable objects that are neither worn nor carried ignite (SRD, p 123).And they say that "Characters can also damage objects with their weapons and spells. Objects are immune to poison and psychic damage, but otherwise they can be affected by physical and magical attacks much like creatures can." (SRD, p 87)And the say that "Red dragons breathe fire, and many spells conjure flames to deal fire damage." (SRD, p 97)Nothing there says, entails, implies or even suggests that a Burning Hands spell cannot ignite objects that are worn or carried. It says, without any ambiguity, that a scroll suspended from a thread directly in front of the wizard will ignite. And it says that a scroll which the NPC wizard holds can be damaged by the spell, much as the wizard can be. It also tells us that the sort of damage that Burning Hands does is the same as from a dragon's fiery breath - not to mention the spell description itself referring to "a thin sheet of flames" - which tends to suggest that the damage, if it occurs, will be due to being burned.There are things which are unanswered - for instance, is the "thin sheet of flames" which is also described as a "15-foot cone" basically a triangle (as the "thin sheet" suggests) or literally a cone (as the AoE description suggests). Page 103 (on areas of effect) does not really clarify this. But until that question is answered, we can't know whether the scroll at the wizard's feet is in the AoE or not.Another thing that is unanswered is what exactly happens in the fiction if the wizard succeeds at his/her DEX save - does s/he twist out of the way (and the hp loss represents exertion) or nevertheless burn, but less seriously, or . . . ? Depending on your view of hp loss, the same issue might arise on a failed save, especially if the wizard has many hp and the spell only knocks off a few of them.A further complication is that objects always fail DEX checks (SRD, p 87), and this rule - at least as stated - is not confined to objects that are neither worn nor carried.I don't think it's easy to decide what happens to the scroll the wizard is holding, because of all these factors - what is the AoE, is the scroll within it (if the wizard saves? if the wizard fails to save?), how many hp does the scroll have, etc? But the fact that the answer is not easy to determine, given the state of the rules, doesn't mean that the default is that nothing happens to the scroll. As I've said, the rules neither state, nor entail, nor imply, nor even suggest that to be so.EDIT: One thing that this shows - at least, I think it shows it - is that when the rules are all described in terms of in-fiction geography and physical processes, there is a heavy burden on the GM not to be unfair. (Alternatively, there is pressure to add rules like item saving throws and the like, which significantly increase GM overhead.)A quite different way to do it would be to have a success roll for Burning Hands, and on a moderate success the player gets to choose - your spell does full damage, but destroys one flammable item worn/carried by the target; or your spell does half damage. But D&D has tended to eschew such overtly metagame mechanics.</blockquote>

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