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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LurkAway" data-source="post: 5760048" data-attributes="member: 6685059">OK, my reference point for magical fire from movies, books, videogames is usually apparently mundane fire summoned and hurled as bolts, arcs, and fireballs. They do burn on contact like regular fire, and set alight draperies, papers, etc. The protagonists manage to dodge/duck/jump away from the fire and you imagine/assume that they and their clothing would burn if they didn't evade it.You're referring to a more looser fiction of magical fire -- sorcerous energies which looks like fire but can be different colors and not necessarily be mundane fire.That's fine... if you want to flavor a fireball as arcs of green fire, I can imagine this allows for more leeway. That said, the flavor text of fireball and the burst area effect have always implied to me (and I think to a lot of people) a standard spherical explosion of as-we-know-it fire that probably would and should burn everything in its path but we simply gloss over that for fun, convenience and simplicity, and not for "realism" sake.If 4E had gone with a fiction-first approach, they could have easily thought of allowing wizards to a) hurl a proper fireball with chance of collateral damage AND/OR b) semi-directed arcs of fire with less collateral damage (and fluff the spell description accordingly). And a little blurb under an entry for 'fire' keyword they might have even thought of suggesting options to summon green fire with unique properties vs mundane fire with standard fire catching properties.So I can definitely meet you halfway on that, but none of the above still changes the fact for me that a) the default fluff doesn't particularly seem to try to nod to "realism" IMO b) there is no official ideas AFAIK anywhere for changing the default fluff c) a lot of DMs and players don't have endless font of creativity and inspiration to refluff as needed, d) Enworld is not an "official" source for better fluff and shouldn't be the "to go" place to slog through hundreds of pages of forum arguments looking for ways to rationalize/justify effects of mechanics in order to have nods to realsm in a pro-simulationist 4E game.</blockquote>

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