D&D 5E Lava and magic items

[plisnithus8]

Yes, but as that video that was posted above shows, people would catch on fire before they even reach the lava!

I can't find a general 5e rule that states getting near lava causes damage so that would only be a local rule.

The DMG p. 249 states:

• 10d10...wading through a lava stream
• 18d10 Being submerged in lava...

PotA states:

• p. 108 Lava. A creature takes 6d10 fire damage when it enters lava for the first time on a turn or when it ends its turn there.
• p. 104 The obsidian columns transform into pillars of magma that radiate intense heat and light, making the air shimmer. A creature that moves within 10 feet of one or more magma pillars for the first time on a turn or ends its turn there takes 2d 10 fire damage.

So obviously the rules are kind of wonky here, possibility contradictory. Wading through rock means you are denser than rock. Being submerged would take tremendous force exerted upon a creature less dense than the lava. Or D&D lava ignores science (or the creators didn't realize the density issue). The magma pillars do do damage just being near them, but they are magical so are different. Scientists use the term magma for molten rock that is underground and lava for molten rock that breaks through the Earth's surface; I don't see that 5e makes a distinction.

 

[Hriston]

Yes, but as that video that was posted above shows, people would catch on fire before they even reach the lava!

The video is about falling into a volcano where, depending on the shape of the crater, radiant heat can super-heat the air, but in the adventure it's just a lava-filled chasm with presumably some way for the heat to escape. There's no danger, for example, of the adventurers being asphyxiated by poisonous gas.

 

[pukunui]

Unfortunately I think a lot of it has to do with the designers not knowing how lava works!

I do find it odd that falling into lava does not cause you to catch on fire like being engulfed by a fire elemental does.

 

[James Gasik]

Unfortunately I think a lot of it has to do with the designers not knowing how lava works!

I do find it odd that falling into lava does not cause you to catch on fire like being engulfed by a fire elemental does.

That's just a D&Dism. While we like to think physical laws apply to D&D worlds as they do in ours, that's simply not true. Allowances have to be made for game mechanics and arbitrary units of time like "combat rounds" in all cases.

You could just as easily ask why you can walk through a flaming sphere on your turn and not take damage. Or how the fire elemental deals 1d10 damage to a creature touching it, but it's attack does 2d6. Or why it's attack lights things on fire, but it doesn't light anything within 5' on fire wherever it goes.

Or heck, how can a 7th level Rogue can dodge lightning or take no damage from a fireball when they are at ground zero.

If one attempts to make everything that happens to a character have real-world effects, things get messy fast. After all, hit points already make absolutely zero sense when a guy can be punted off a 1200 foot cliff, land during the same turn, shrug off the 20d6 (70) damage, and stand up from prone as part of his movement during his turn and keep on trucking, lol.

D&D is not a realistic game. Characters can do impossible things routinely. Physical laws do not always apply to them. It can often be best to try and not make too much sense out of a game that's not intended to simulate real life in any way.

 

[Hriston]

I wouldn't assume the characters literally land on molten lava. I would take note that what the adventure calls "the lava" is the area at the bottom of the chasm and that the only effect on a creature in that area (other than the effects that prevail in the chasm generally) is that it takes 10d10 fire damage per turn. The "lava" isn't even called out as difficult terrain. The inflicted damage may represent burning up to the point of incineration, or it may be a lesser effect, but to find out which, the damage needs to be applied to the creature's hit points at which point the fiction can be filled in to agree with the outcome: alive or dead.

 

[pukunui]

@Hriston: The lava is described as being 20 feet deep, and there are creatures swimming in it. I’m pretty certain the designers’ intent was that it was liquidy lava.

 

[Hriston]

@Hriston: The lava is described as being 20 feet deep, and there are creatures swimming in it. I’m pretty certain the designers’ intent was that it was liquidy lava.

As opposed to cooled and solidified lava? Yes, I agree. It's obviously very hot and in liquid form. Nevertheless, creatures that aren't native to the Plane of Magma would not be able to swim in it. It's too dense. They could probably stand and walk on it, however, as long as their feet didn't combust too quickly.

 

[pukunui]

As opposed to cooled and solidified lava? Yes, I agree. It's obviously very hot and in liquid form. Nevertheless, creatures that aren't native to the Plane of Magma would not be able to swim in it. It's too dense. They could probably stand and walk on it, however, as long as their feet didn't combust too quickly.

This is clearly fantasy lava that is not too dense. Note that the adventure text consistently refers to falling (or even plunging) into the lava.

If the designers had intended for this to be realistic lava that obeyed Earth’s physics, then surely they would have said onto the lava.

I really don’t think this conversation is going anywhere fruitful at this point. My next session is tomorrow night. We will most likely finish this dungeon floor and move on to the next one, and it will all be lava under the bridge. Thanks everyone for your contributions!

 

[Oofta]

That's just a D&Dism. While we like to think physical laws apply to D&D worlds as they do in ours, that's simply not true. Allowances have to be made for game mechanics and arbitrary units of time like "combat rounds" in all cases.

You could just as easily ask why you can walk through a flaming sphere on your turn and not take damage. Or how the fire elemental deals 1d10 damage to a creature touching it, but it's attack does 2d6. Or why it's attack lights things on fire, but it doesn't light anything within 5' on fire wherever it goes.

Ever pass your finger through a candle flame? It's fire but the exposure time is low enough that it doesn't matter. Meanwhile getting hot wax splashed on you can cause burns.

Or heck, how can a 7th level Rogue can dodge lightning or take no damage from a fireball when they are at ground zero.

They don't occupy the entire space and they all have Batman's cape of invulnerability?

If one attempts to make everything that happens to a character have real-world effects, things get messy fast. After all, hit points already make absolutely zero sense when a guy can be punted off a 1200 foot cliff, land during the same turn, shrug off the 20d6 (70) damage, and stand up from prone as part of his movement during his turn and keep on trucking, lol.

I disagree with falling damage (it's capped way too low), but regular people have fallen from incredible heights and survived.

D&D is not a realistic game. Characters can do impossible things routinely. Physical laws do not always apply to them. It can often be best to try and not make too much sense out of a game that's not intended to simulate real life in any way.

Of course the game vastly oversimplifies just about everything. That doesn't mean it can't resemble the real world. That includes lava that is hot enough to damage but that you can walk on and would never sink more than an inch or two into.

This is clearly fantasy lava that is not too dense. Note that the adventure text consistently refers to falling (or even plunging) into the lava.

If the designers had intended for this to be realistic lava that obeyed Earth’s physics, then surely they would have said onto the lava.

I really don’t think this conversation is going anywhere fruitful at this point. My next session is tomorrow night. We will most likely finish this dungeon floor and move on to the next one, and it will all be lava under the bridge. Thanks everyone for your contributions!

I don't have a problem with creatures swimming in lava that is far too viscous for real world creatures to swim in. We have land sharks bulettes that have an incredibly high burrow speed, anything swimming in lava is just burrowing and the lava tunnel collapses behind them.

 

[Hriston]

This is clearly fantasy lava that is not too dense. Note that the adventure text consistently refers to falling (or even plunging) into the lava.

If the designers had intended for this to be realistic lava that obeyed Earth’s physics, then surely they would have said onto the lava.

Yup. That’s why I said up-thread that I would consider “the lava” in the adventure text to simply refer to the area at the bottom of the chasm. That’s what the characters fall into. I think you’re right that the writers seem to have been imagining fantastical lava with a water-like consistency, but then they also must have been imagining it as much cooler than the roughly 1,500 to 2,200 degrees F lava that erupts from the interior of a planet like ours. Even boiling water at 212 degrees F is likely to kill a person dropped into a pool 20' deep by 30' across if they can't manage to get themselves out within the few seconds it would take for their muscles to begin to cook or have someone pull them out. The burns would probably kill them eventually anyway. Whereas the writers have assigned a 10d10 damage expression which according to the Damage Severity and Level table on DMG p. 249 is a dangerous rather than deadly amount of damage for a 13th-level character which they're likely to survive as long as they can get out within a round. Also on p. 249, as cited above by @plisnithus8, the Improvising Damage table gives the example "wading through a lava stream" for 10d10 damage, while "Being submerged in lava" is given as an example of 18d10 damage, a deadly amount of damage at 13th level. Deadly in this case still doesn't mean it necessarily kills the character unless they're already wounded.

So there seems to be a discrepancy between the situation implied by the adventure saying the characters plunge "into" the lava and the damage they take when they do. One way to try to resolve this discrepancy is to increase the damage. By using the maximum damage, you essentially increased the damage expression to the 18d10 deadly damage that the DMG gives for submersion in lava, but as you saw, this still wasn't enough to kill the characters, which is why I said if that's the fiction you wanted, just skip the hit points and kill them. Another way is to recognize that the adventure writers meant the damage to be merely dangerous rather than deadly and to adjust the fiction around the situation accordingly. This is consistent with the lack of a saving throw or any way to detect the trap, and there are lots of possibilities here. One is that, even if you're imagining fantastical lava that the characters could sink into, it needn't be uniformly water-like in its consistency. Firmer, cooler patches and floating chunks could exist, and a damage result that doesn't incapacitate a character could represent the luck of landing on one. When exposed to air, lava forms a thin crust which might be enough for the adventurers to run across if they're lucky. Regardless of the details, I think it's up to the group to come up with an explanation for why or how the characters escaped with their lives.

I really don’t think this conversation is going anywhere fruitful at this point. My next session is tomorrow night. We will most likely finish this dungeon floor and move on to the next one, and it will all be lava under the bridge. Thanks everyone for your contributions!

I hope the session goes well. The conversation provoked some interesting thought on my end, so thanks!