Large earth elemental

[HeavyG]

I don't have my MM in front of me but maybe they're not intelligent enough to use such tactics.

Especially since most of them would not be used to that weird "non-earth" substance.

IMO, an elemental that has spent a long time away from the plane of earth would be likely to develop such a tactic, but not one that has just been summoned.

 

[Jack Simth]

Well, it is true they don't reach Int 10 until they hit elder.... at least, by SRD.

 

[Philip]

I don't have my MM in front of me but maybe they're not intelligent enough to use such tactics.

I would think that an earth elemental would 'naturally' try to expose as little as possible of himself to the 'hated air'.

If you have the choice between fighting on land, or fighting semi-submerged in water, you would avoid the water by nature, right? If you are intelligent, you might recognize a given situation where it is more advantageous to fight submerged.

Non-intelligent creatures tend to stick to what is most familiar, and in the earth elemental's case this is attacking from the cover of his natural element.

 

[Infiniti2000]

If you have the choice between fighting on land, or fighting semi-submerged in water, you would avoid the water by nature, right? If you are intelligent, you might recognize a given situation where it is more advantageous to fight submerged.

I understand your reasoning, but this analogy is faulty in that the elemental is not actually hampered in air and yet it is hampered in the ground, while we would be hampered in water and not in the air. So, it's actually to everyone's benefit to be fighting outside the ground or water. (Not considering things like freedom of movement, of course.) To make it just as easy for the elemental to fight underground, not only would you have to give it tremorsense, but you'd have to give it a special kind of tremorsense that also works like blindsight, but only through earth.

That may be what you are looking for, of course, but it significantly improves the power (and therefore raises the CR) of earth elementals.