D&D 5E Lava and magic items
- Thread starter pukunui
- Start date
Sorcerers Apprentice
Hero
If everyone is telling you that you're doing it wrong, it's worth to take a step back and evaluate if you are in fact doing it wrong.
Vaalingrade
Legend
IF you weren't prepared for the possibility that people would disagree with the reply you wanted to hear, why ask the question?
aco175
Legend
This is where salamander babies come from.
plisnithus8
Adventurer
IRL there are different kinds of lava or ways to encounter lava. Lava coming to the surface through a vent (as seen in videos of people playing with, even stepping on it) can be much less dangerous than lava inside a deep volcano where the heat has increased the surrounding temperature thousands of degrees (the heat and gases would likely kill a person before they touched the lava itself).
pukunui
Legend
I accept the advice not to change my ruling retroactively. I disagree with the idea that taking away magic items is badwrongfun. (I can see how it might be in some cases, but I dispute that it is always so.)
I never actually asked whether or not it was a good idea. I was asking more for advice on how to do it.
Indeed. However, as I have stated on numerous occasions in this thread already, in this specific case, the PCs fell into the center of a lake of lava. The description indicates that the lava brightly illuminates the surrounding area, so there can't be a hard crust on top of it. There are also creatures swimming in it, so again ... no hard crust. The lava is described as being 20 feet deep. The trap teleports PCs 30 feet into the air directly above the center of the widest part of the lake. Halaster has also made it so all magical flight fails to function in the zone directly above the lava. It's meant to be a death trap. But because I didn't want to be that mean, I just had the lava deal max damage instead of saying, "Sorry, your PC is dead. Make a new one."
Ever since 5e came out, people have been complaining on these boards about how it's too easy. I agree. The default setting for 5e is easy mode. I don't appreciate being dogpiled on for making my game more challenging, especially since I know my players enjoy it that way.
People have also been complaining since day 1 about how there's nothing to spend your money on in 5e. If you lose your equipment because it burned up and have to buy new equipment ... hey, guess what? You finally have something to spend your money on! Yay! But no. You can't take away your players' precious magic items. That's just too mean.
Zubatcarteira
Now you're infected by the Musical Doodle
I think it's usually better to not damage equipment, most AoE effects in the game don't do it (except maybe Meteor Swarm, weirdly enough). Most items are very squishy as well, even resilient large ones are at 27 HP, you could break giant armor by punching it for a minute (and don't even get into targetting worn equipment, that's pain as well).
James Gasik
We don't talk about Pun-Pun
Again, as I said in my first post. Is it fun? I can honestly say I have never, not once, seen a player, let along a group of them, happy to have their stuff taken away from them.
Like say you're a Wizard. Realistically, you can't go on an adventure near anything on fire because your spellbook and all the money you've spent adding to it would go up in smoke. What's your means of preventing this? Not going on the adventure? How is that fun?
Extradimensional space? Oops, the DM thinks that might get destroyed by fire too! Getting it made out of metal plates bound together by metal rings? Nope, you fall in lava, it melts.*
*Just going to warn anyone now, if you want to post about how this "balances" Wizards, I won't be responding. There are so many better ways to balance a class than say that your ability to even cast spells is subject to the DM's whims.
What's the upshot here? Oh and about those mountains of gold coins, where were they being kept, because if any are on your person, we all know how easily gold melts!
When your justification is "it's their fault for going on this adventure in the first place", I see a problem. What are they supposed to do? See the adventure you have prepared and go "nah, I think I'll go home and play some CoD instead"?
But hey, maybe your group thinks this sort of thing is funny, and their whole reason to adventure is to see how messed up they can get, and their ideal rewards are Bags of Beans or Decks of Many Things. It takes all kinds.
But if that's really the case, then you shouldn't need to ask online if it's ok to nuke their items after the fact- you should know what your players enjoy.
I remember back in 2e, I went on this three-adventure series set in Krynn (In Search of Dragons I believe was the first part). We started at level 1. Towards the end of the second module (or during the third), we're in this fortress, and there was something like a Mordenkainen's Disjunction trap. Lost most of our magic items, at a level where most things need a magic weapon to touch.
By end game, we basically had the same gear, but different (my Footman's Dragonlance was replaced by a Horsemen's Lance, my full plate +1 was now full plate +2), which really made me wonder exactly what the point of the whole exercise was. But I can tell you that none of the players were happy about it, because it was so random and unnecessary- "hey guys, you've done well to get this far, and reaped rewards for it...oh hey, let's just get rid of those to make way for new rewards because we wouldn't want you to have an extra +1 longsword or anything!".
Like say you're a Wizard. Realistically, you can't go on an adventure near anything on fire because your spellbook and all the money you've spent adding to it would go up in smoke. What's your means of preventing this? Not going on the adventure? How is that fun?
Extradimensional space? Oops, the DM thinks that might get destroyed by fire too! Getting it made out of metal plates bound together by metal rings? Nope, you fall in lava, it melts.*
*Just going to warn anyone now, if you want to post about how this "balances" Wizards, I won't be responding. There are so many better ways to balance a class than say that your ability to even cast spells is subject to the DM's whims.
What's the upshot here? Oh and about those mountains of gold coins, where were they being kept, because if any are on your person, we all know how easily gold melts!
When your justification is "it's their fault for going on this adventure in the first place", I see a problem. What are they supposed to do? See the adventure you have prepared and go "nah, I think I'll go home and play some CoD instead"?
But hey, maybe your group thinks this sort of thing is funny, and their whole reason to adventure is to see how messed up they can get, and their ideal rewards are Bags of Beans or Decks of Many Things. It takes all kinds.
But if that's really the case, then you shouldn't need to ask online if it's ok to nuke their items after the fact- you should know what your players enjoy.
I remember back in 2e, I went on this three-adventure series set in Krynn (In Search of Dragons I believe was the first part). We started at level 1. Towards the end of the second module (or during the third), we're in this fortress, and there was something like a Mordenkainen's Disjunction trap. Lost most of our magic items, at a level where most things need a magic weapon to touch.
By end game, we basically had the same gear, but different (my Footman's Dragonlance was replaced by a Horsemen's Lance, my full plate +1 was now full plate +2), which really made me wonder exactly what the point of the whole exercise was. But I can tell you that none of the players were happy about it, because it was so random and unnecessary- "hey guys, you've done well to get this far, and reaped rewards for it...oh hey, let's just get rid of those to make way for new rewards because we wouldn't want you to have an extra +1 longsword or anything!".
Vaalingrade
Legend
"Don't" is still a how.
It isn't fair... to the characters. But games have rules in part to keep things fair for the players.
End result - the players should not be surprised by the chance that their items might get destroyed. If nothing else in their experience has done this, though, then maybe they ought to be given a head's up on the possibility before it is inflicted.
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