When does Fire Shield burn you?

[Corwyn]

And what happens when a monk attacks with his unarmed strike??
Does he inflict normal damage or normal damage and fire/cold damage??

And again the same question with any other class that attacks with a normal melee weapon??

 

[KarinsDad]

And what happens when a monk attacks with his unarmed strike??
Does he inflict normal damage or normal damage and fire/cold damage??

Fire Shield as written does not inflict damage when the caster of it attacks, only when he is attacked.

However, I would house rule that the caster actually does inflict fire/cold damage if he does an unarmed strike or a grapple or a bull rush that forces the opponent out of his space (as opposed to one where the opponent side steps) or whenever he does a successful unarmed attack of any kind.

I do not think I would allow him to attack with a melee weapon and have the Fire Shield extend up it and damage an opponent since that could make an already magical weapon extremely potent.

And again the same question with any other class that attacks with a normal melee weapon??

Not quite sure what you are asking.

If anyone attacks a Wizard with a melee weapon and hits him, the opponent gets damaged by the spell.

 

[Artoomis]

"This spell wreathes the character in flame and causes damage to each creature who attacks the character in melee.

Any creature striking the character with its body or handheld weapons deals normal damage, but at the same time the attacker takes 1d6 points of damage +1 point per caster level..."

Don't over-analyze. This means the attacker gets hurt if:

1. He hits and caused damage.
2. He otherwise directly touches the character - a touch spell or grapple, for instance.

A miss is a miss is a miss. That's the way D&D works. It would be a different system if we always had to worry about whether a miss actually bounced off a shield or something.

 

[radferth]

I remember fire shield going from inflicting 2x damage inflicted on you to 1x damage inflicted on you to the current version. In the high level 2nd ed. campaign in which I played, all us magic took fire shield for the cold protection, as there were not as many defensive options then.

Having grown up on the old editions, I run fire shield as only inflicting damage on a sucessful melee attack my your opponent. It is my guess that that is how the 3rd ed. authors meant it, but who can say for sure. As much fun as academic discussions like these are, remember that the only correct answer to the question "How does X spell work?" is "However your DM says it works."

 

[Vanye]

Twice the damage you dealt to the caster that was protected.

Both of you were correct, actually. You are correct for 1st Ed, but for 2nd Ed, it was toned down to an equal amount of damage.

3rd has kind of nerfed it, IMO. 8-13 pts of damage at 7th level, without protecting you from damage at all? For a 4th level spell? Kind of lame...