Peace between Fire Elementals?

[LurkAway]

On the new horizons thread, someone asked why fire elementals aren't impervious to fire in 4E -- which I'd agree with, you don't fight pure fire with pure fire because you're just adding to the fire.

Conversely, however, if fire elementals are invulnerable to fire, then they can't hurt each other.

Which is interesting... If a fire elemental is in conflict with another fire elemental, they can't hit each other. They can't user water guns. The aggressor would have to resort to 'cold war' tactics like using proxies (earth, wind and water elemental mercenaries) and mental tricks (lure your enemy into a water trap).

However, I'm not sure how condusive the elemental planes are to these kinds of covert warfare. Also, I've never heard of fire elementals using these strategies against each other.

Therefore, I believe that I have found a near-utopia of pseudo-peace -- in the land of the fire elementals.

 

[Jhaelen]

Hehe, that's a funny thought

I think the solution for this conundrum is that damage shouldn't be exclusively typed. I.e. every attack should have an untyped component in addition to fire damage, thus allowing fire elementals to hurt each other.

 

[steeldragons]

What happens when 2 flames touch each other?

Right. 1 larger flame. Can you tell where one flame begins and the other ends? No.

So "fighting" among fire elementals really only involves having to "hit" each other....once fire touches other fire, there really is no way to distinguish one from the other. Damage [type] is irrelevant as (for game purposes) one could say the larger of the flames "consumes/subsumes" the smaller...increasing their own size/power/hp/etc...

So....yes, fire elementals are very "peaceful" with each other...at least the ones of moderately similar size/ability, not wishing to be sucked into some other, larger, fire...OR...maybe they DO wish to join with other fires and increase both of their power/size in the joining...either way, "warm fuzzies" all around on the Plane of Fire. [heh heh. "warm"..."plane of fire"...heh.]

The "King of the Fire Elementals" is a mountainous, impossibly large pillar/pile of fire that all other fire elementals give a wide girth or risk being swept up into the King's flames and losing their "selves" forever.

--SD

 

[LurkAway]

The "King of the Fire Elementals" is a mountainous, impossibly large pillar/pile of fire that all other fire elementals give a wide girth or risk being swept up into the King's flames and losing their "selves" forever.

Then there would be a Darwinian contest of size between fire elementals. Predator elementals would go around absorbing the smaller elementals, in order to increase in size. Some would justify this as preemptive self-defense (the bigger I am, the less likely I am to be absorbed by other fire elementals) or aggressive ambitions. A group of extremist predator elementals might even sacrifice themselves to merge into one megaelemental in order to challenge another megaelemental (like the King of Fire Elementals). This evolutionary pressure would probably convert thousands of smaller and medium elementals into a handful of megaelementals.

Perhaps there is a counterbalance: when a fire elemental grows too large, it becomes slow and senseless and eventually dissolves into the plane itself (or splits into smaller elementals), and only a few, like the King of Fire Elementals, have the willpower to hold their giant forms.