Damage Type
Last time Sorcerer tried to apply fire directly to the problem, I defended the guy. “A limited spell selection can be a good thing,” I said. I still think that’s true in an increase-your-creativity kind of way. However, as Druid is no doubt about the yell at the top of her lungs, some situations really call for a water spell. I found myself in one of those situations not so long ago.
So no shit there we were, tunneling through solid rock a good sixty feet beneath the dragon’s lair. We were making good progress until we got close. Once we came within 15 ft. of breaking through we had to take it in short bursts, casting silence and then digging like madmen so as not to alert our mark. We were thieves you see, and there are few prizes better than a dragon’s hoard.
Call us overly ambitious — foolish even — but we had spotted an opportunity. This dragon had served as our employer for some time, sending us out for a bit of knife work as the need arose. We knew that it kept a schedule, leaving its lair each day regular as clockwork to patrol its territory. Sure we were only 6th level mooks matching wits against an adult red, but we were being careful. We’d put my imp familiar on lookout duty. He’d be able to spot the resident flying blast furnace from a mile away in the unlikely event that he made a premature return. Even better, I had voice of the chain master online as an extra line of defense. In other words, we had a rock solid early warning system down in our tunnels. We could turn around and skedaddle if things got hairy, and there was no way that hulking brute could follow us through our rinky-dink escape route.
Unfortunately, we didn’t count on the dragon keeping an alarm spell on his hoard. We broke into the chamber, the dragon banked hard, and we had mere moments to scoop loot. If you guys have ever seen Supermarket Sweep, it was like that, just with more magic items and pant-loading terror.
We’d gotten ourselves into a full on Bilbo burgling Smaug situation, and every round meant more money in the bank. That’s when I made my critical error.
“Slow him down!” I ordered my imp.
“You got it, Boss!” he replied.
We took the money and we ran, and even then it was a close thing. There was a near-lethal amount of fire damage as Big Red blew his nose down our tunnel. We managed to escape without any casualties (accept of course my imp), and we made off with a pretty penny despite the setbacks. It was a modest success, even if we didn’t come away with the haul of the century.
“Sorry, Boss!” said my perky little familiar when I re-summoned him from death. “I did my best, but he didn’t even slow down!”
“Well hey, thanks for making the effort. You’re a trooper, little buddy! What did you do anyway?”
And that’s when he handed me the empty strand that once held a fully charged necklace of fireballs. He’d thrown every single one at the dragon. The red dragon. The immune-from-fire red dragon. We’d managed to pocket a respectable number of magic items during the heist, but I’d have traded any three of them to get that necklace back.
So what about the rest of you guys? Have you ever followed in my imp’s footsteps and seen your one big trick blanked by a bad situation? Let’s hear it in the comments!
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Is it just me, or has their been an art upgrade? Sorcerer and druid look a look more detailed now.
As for my story…
I myself am afraid of getting caught of guard, so when we were going to do a few sessions of 5-shot at high level, I decide to make a jack of ALL trades bard. I gave him at least a +10 in all but one skill, I gave him the ability to fight the a fighter, heal like a cleric and fireball like a wizard. He eventually got wish so that he could cast almost every spell in the game. I gave him a few magic items to cover any gaps, then I used resilient to get proficiency in constitution saves, and I increased his wisdom so that he could resist those saves.
The only things that he didn’t have was high intelligence saves. And, naturally, we were fighting mind flayers. Creatures who, for those unaware, could stun people (make them unable to do anything) if I failed my intelligence save.
TPK ensued.
Laurel has, I believe, been making efforts in that direction. There will never be elbows though. Noodly arms forever!
Hey now. You can’t be everything all the time. Where was the rest of the party on that one?
One was a fighter that spent most of the TPK fight dancing (the final boss was a wizard mind flayer), and the other was a wizard who, while good at resisting the mind flayer’s psychic attacks, didn’t have the hit points to survive on his own. He was the last to fall, and had he gotten off one more spell (or had we read the rules for mind blast properly), he would have won.
Rest in peace, Jack the Trader! (Yes, that was the name of my character)
So many people forget the “Ignites flammable objects that aren’t being worn or carried” line in countless spells. They tend to die when they set the building they’re in on fire.
We lost a lot of a good inns that way.
One session. Five inns destroyed due to an idiot with fireballs and gems of fire elemental summoning.
It wasn’t the flaming-ness so much as the direct damage from the spell, but we did once collapse a building on ourselves using Fireball on a stealth mission. It was a rickety old shed. Probably didn’t help that the full-plated Barbarian also leaned on the wall. Fortunately, we only took like 8 damage, and this was a part of our genius stealth plan to create a bunch of noise, flee back into the secret tunnels, and then use them to sneak into another part of the area while all the guards ran towards the noise, so it kind of worked out. (For the record, the ONLY time one of our stealth plans has ever worked was the time that we built the plan around the assumption that we would be noticed.)
My party once collapsed a building on ourselves during a stealth mission with Fireball, though that was the damage-dealing part of the spell and not the ignite-stuff part. Plus, the building was old and poorly maintained, and the full-plated Barbarian leaned on it. Fortunately, our stealth plan was built on the assumption that we would make a lot of noise there and then while all of the enemies in the area came running towards our position, we would use a secret tunnel to sneak under them and seize our objective. If you’d ever met our party, you would not be surprised that our only successful stealth plan ever has been the one built on the assumption that we would draw a lot of attention to ourselves.
Huh. When I posted this the first time, it looked like it didn’t go through, so I re-typed it and posted it again. Whoops. Sorry!
Our SPAM detection is more aggressive than I’d like. If that seems to happen, it means that I haven’t gotten around to manually clicking “approve” on your comment. It’s not my favorite system, but it’s a boatload better than the flood of “let me optimize your website” comments that come through when we turn it off.
Methinks you can sympathize with the plight of the Heroes in this one: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/michigan-j-fighter
In fairness to Sorcerer, I believe that one method of wildfire control is in fact to create a fire break by using a more controlled burn to make sure all the fuel in an area is consumed.
Anyway, one time my party was fighting this big nasty Drow battlemage type guy. I was playing a paladin, I was armed with a Drow Bane sword (guess what it did), and a crap ton of save boosting and anti-magic equipment. The entire battle plan hinged on me holding his attention and eating any hostile stuff he threw at me, while the rest of the party just chucked damage at him from range. Two thirds of his HP are gone, and its looking like we might make it through with no casualties, when, of course, I flub my save against, of all things, a flesh to stone spell.
Now, our backup warrior managed to retrieve the sword and stay alive long enough to finish this guy off, but to get the sword out of my stony grip, he had to smash my favorite arm off!
We at least managed to kill the guy, but man was I ticked. I was built pretty much specifically to resist magic like that, and he managed to get what was pretty much his nastiest spell through all my saves and resists and reflects.
You know how we were talking in the last comic about players knowing more than you?
“I mean… erm… Yes of course. But you would have to move faster than the edge of the wildfire, and create a fire break all the way around it. I don’t think you’ve got that kind of spell power. Now would you please just rush into the conflagration and rescue the maguffin?”
Looking at this line of thought and the 5e Sorcerer spell list, I have come up with a few options of applying more fire to help this situation.
Wall of Fire might solve the problem all on its own, with a dab of the Control Flames cantrip, depending on the size of the area on fire.
Alternatively Investiture of Flame allows you to make 15 feet long, 5 feet wide streams of fire as an action for 10 minutes. As long as the fire isn’t spreading more than 15 feet per 6 seconds, you should be able to cut it off.
At the very least Investiture of Flame grants immunity to fire damage so Sorcerer could save a creature from the forest fire.
So I guess the answer is “Yes, but not as much as many other better options could.”
Actually, the Pyrotechnics spell also, somewhat ironically, straight up extinguishes fires as well, at least in 3.5. Unfortunately, the spell doesn’t seem to have made it into 5e core, but its quite amusing to think that Sorcerer could put out the fire by making it explode repeatedly.
Druid: “Explain to me how exactly blowing up my forest is ‘amusing?'”
Or, to quote Captain Price, “You wanna put out an oil fire, Sir, you set off a bigger explosion right next to it. Sucks away the oxygen. Snuffs the flame.”
…Not sure how well that works in a forest fire, but heh, it’s worth a shot, right? Right?
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/39/a0/74/39a074ec4840396b6dcf8650acca711e.jpg
Playing an Eberron campaign, our wizard got addicted to the spell Disintegrate. Any threat we encountered, “DISINTEGRATE!” Any obstacle, “DISINTEGRATE!” We eventually reached an abandoned temple and found a pair of great doors that refused to budge. No traps, no keyholes, just a pair of big stone doors that didn’t so much as groan when we pushed or pulled on them.
So, our wizard uses his go-to. By this point, we’d been burned by our GM in various ways, so the rest of the team got into ambush positions. The wizard, though, was feeling cocky and stood right in front of the door when he fired.
He failed his reflex save and was struck by a massive tube of water that spewed from the hole he put in the doors, knocking him fifty feet from where he’d been standing and breaking a few bones along with his pride. Our cleric initiated emergency healing and we spent the next few hours waiting for the flooded temple to finish draining.
When we complained to the GM, he gave a simple explanation: The doors weren’t opening because the water pressure refused to let them budge.
Lol. There is a reason that the seltzer bottle is a classic tool of slapstick. That mess is funny every time.
for this I play a Shadowdancer, no surprises thanks to incorporeal companion.
at least no surprises behind doors…
It was pretty surprising when BBEG beat my „hide in plain site“ „take10“ Stealth DC of 35 with a Perception „take 10“ of 36 when the rest of the party was 2 rounds away. By the time the got to the fight I was blinded and paralysed.
oof. Sometimes you have a bad day at the office. I’ve seen it happen with invisibility detection too. Things go sidewise sometimes, even for specialists.
I like the obscure Lore Mastery 5e subclass from Unearthed Arcana for exactly this reason, but I also hate it for exactly this reason.
It allows wizards of that subclass to change the damage type of their spells (within limits), but it means that a cold-damage Fireball still lights shit up.
Looks like that spell can deliver a little…frostburn.
csiMiami.gif
I mean, yeah, but same with radiant, necrotic, acid, and force…
Nope, not me. I am a proud crazy prepared paranoid. Are we playing a gangsters game set in the twenties? Maybe can’t get a cold iron weapon but i can still plan in case the exalted fair folk invade Brookling. If we are entering a dungeon i look for all the entries and exits, and just in case i try to always have a dimension door or gate spell at hand, just in case i need to survive and so remember the noble sacrifice of my companions who give their life so i can live.
Batman wizard?
More like survival paranoid. Here, in my country, the “Properly Paranoid” talent gives you a boost to the survival, manipulation, sleight of hand and like ten other skills. It could be a little OP, but believe me it’s really necessary for survival.
Do you mean Germany or a fictional world?
WHat?!! Neither. I am not even from Europe O_O
What is was saying, was that in my country you need to be prepared to unexpected twists and turn of events, i use that in the rpgs, so i am prepared to everything that the DM can throw at the party and me. I works booth ways, keep the players on their toes for the next surprise and keeps the DM sharp. I just try to use the tools i have at hand to get the job done.
Huh. Given your name and habit of capitalizing nouns I just kind of assumed. Mea culpa.
I tend to prefer that style of play myself. Being an all-powerful wizard is fun, but it always seems less exciting than figuring out how to use that wheelbarrow to maximum effect:
http://princessbride.wikia.com/wiki/Wheelbarrow
No problem, it’s just that the comment surprise me. I was not prepared, i never see it coming, it was the blind spot in my careful weaved schemes 🙂
That is a really critical failure in the party resources.
Specializing in fire is a bad idea. Tons of things are immune/resistant to fire.
Naw it’s fine. Just take the Elemental Adept feat and ignore fire resistance.
Fire immunity would still be an issue, but no more an issue than creatures being immune to charm effects is an issue for Enchanters and so on.
(Which is to say, if you specialize in just about anything actually useful you will assuredly run across foes that are immune to it from time to time. But that’s what you have the rest of the party around for.)
^ This right here.
Sometimes you’ve got to put away your anti-tank sniper rifle and pull out your dinky little sidearm. It’s not what you do best, but it is appropriate to the situation.
I refer to my sorcerer’s crossbow as “the crossbow of shame” for just this reason. Needless to say it hasn’t been used since one of our earliest sessions, even when it’s mechanically the better choice than whatever spells I have left.
I think you missed his point, being that you should specialize in something not actually useful.
Well I’ve had a nasty boss person, without any crazy auto-save legendary actions as far as I’m aware, resist Hold Person on the initial casting twice in three rounds.
We’ll have to wait and see how “Fire Lady” copes with my last ditch plan of casting Wall of Water and our party abusing every trick we can think of to keep pushing or pulling her into it and dousing her flames so we can actually harm her.
Otherwise we’re probably going to die.
Hmmm. The old phrase is “save or die”, but it appears I have found myself in a situation that is “cheese or die”. =P
If “Fire Lady” is “Fire Elemental Lady,” I think you’ve got something. Those things don’t like water ever a little bit.
It does mean I can lightning bolt some undead for radiant and set their redead corpses on fire….
~wrong area
I was GMing a 3.5 oneshot for a level 1, 7 person group. One player was an explosive specialist, using a set of houserules that the normal GM for the group had approved. I hadn’t read these rules very carefully.
They try to get into the dungeon, and wind up fighting to get through the door. Explosives guy moves around the dungeon, and declares that he’s throwing a bomb at “that one”. Everyone looks at the map. “Are you sure you want to-” He interrupts me. “Too late, I rolled”. “But there’s a wall there!” Indeed, there was a wall between him and the monster. A wall he was adjacent to. “So?” “Your bombs do splash damage right? You’re going to have to take it.”
That was when they mentioned that if he ever took fire damage, he had to roll vs having all carried bombs explode. He was carrying 10 1d6 damage firebombs. He got a one. First casualty of the game: explodinated. And that’s why you don’t carry explosives and use them stupidly.
The following is the rest of the story, which is amusing although unrelated to the topic at hand. See, the blast also hit the ranger’s dog. After rolling and because of splash reduction, the dog survived at negative hp, 1 away from dead. The ranger cries in anguish, and prepares to run to his puppy next turn, when the bard steps in. “I’ll help!” he cries “Heal check!”. I ask, “But how? You’re all the way over there.” With a completely straight face, he says “Ranged acupuncture” and rolls a 1.
So the dog dies. The ranger screams “You bastard! You killed my dog!” and then crits the bard, oneshotting him. The fighter, who liked the bard, steps in and starts swinging. The rest of the party takes sides, and there’s a huge stand off, until the one guy holding back the tide of orcs from inside the dungeon dies.
The TPK that followed was unspeakably amusing to behold. It was the first encounter of the game, rated at a CR 1/2.
If you play with fire etc. etc….
Similarly, if you play with PVP etc. etc…. That is a straight up hilarious TPK right there. Were they more cooperative with the replacement party?
Thankfully, I didn’t have to deal with a replacement party. The session was supposed to be a between campaign oneshot for two parties while the usual GMs got their acts together. It was unanimously voted that I should never GM again, and I still struggle to get past my reputation as a player killer with those guys.
Ah well, at least it was funny.
you didn’t kill them, it was Suicide by Stupidity.
It’s like a Dwarf Fortress loyalty cascade, but somehow even more explosive.
oddly he right about more fire being helpful, you need to set a 2nd fire have it burn in the old fire, the 2 fires will burn them self out with no more fuel.
Druid lacks a complex understanding of modern firefighting technique.
or forest lifecycles in general. It is always weird that druids freak out about deforestation in plots when cycles of flood, fire, wind, ect wrecking whole regions at times, are part of nature. It can strip them far more devestatingly in mear hours then a couple of woodchoppers lacking tech above a axe could in generations.
Got to keep the cliche going tho I guess?
Good luck explaining to a professional firefighter that “it’s all just part of the natural cycle” when there’s a Zippo in your hand.
You say that like Sorcerer does.
Well someone needs to get started making the techniques.
A smart rabbit has 3 burrows.
Anyway, back in 3.5. I remember one of my gaming group friends was all about being a Warmage. Warmage Warmage Warmage, super fired up for it. So much, in fact, that he coupled that with Elemental Savant (Fire).
Tricky thing about Elemental Savant is that while it makes all your (chosen energy type) spells excellent, it also turns all your (any energy type) damage into (chosen energy type). I forget if this applies to positive and negative energy, should you happen to have those on your spell list, but…
Warmage is basically full of Orb spells. Orb of Fire, Orb of Acid, Orb of Cold, etc. This is so that the warmage can choose the right damage for the situation when facing different enemies, a real help when you’ve decided to use your spells to do (pff) damage. So now we have a warmage with Orb of Fire, Orb of Fire, Orb of Fire, Orb of Fire, and Orb of Fire. Also, no more Magic Missile, it’s Fire Missile now, so not only does it now provide a reflex save to its victim, it no longer flawlessly hits ethereal critters.
First devil we fought…the look on his face made me almost pity him, except our DM had warned him about such a downfall repeatedly during character creation. So actually, it was sort of vindicating for me (who was playing a paladin, I had a great time that fight). Don’t tell anyone, though.
Damn I need to play Bunnies and Burrows one day…
I bet that a more experienced player could make Warmage/Elemental Savant (Fire) into a workable character. You’ve just got to make damn sure to plug the holes in the build with scrolls and such.
I think the beauty of really specialised characters is the way they help you see the bigger picture.
By adding more heat to the forest fire, Sorceror could create a firestorm which could rage unchecked, maybe even threatening nearby towns, thus highlighting the importance of good forest management and ultimately netting Druid far more funding and resources than she’s previously had. Or wanted, but you know, omelette, eggs, you get the idea.
“Thog is elegant in Thog’s simplicity.”
Good thing Sorcerer is Cha-based. Dude’s going to need every bonus he can get to make that Diplomacy check.
Actually, you can stop the forest fire by adding more fire. The idea is: by burning the trees on the way the fire spreads, you deny fire the fuel to spread further. Of course, you need to know what you’re doing or you’ll just make danger bigger and closer, but this is possible, legit way of fighting fires. And in DnD you don’t need to know all tricks for it to work, you only need to roll very high.
Heh. The thought occurred to me at the time of writing. Two and a half years later the inevitable comment actually arrived. Firebreaks for days!
2,5 years. Oh my, I have a LONG read ahead of me.
I love the use of ‘So no shit, there we were…’ from time to time! The All Guardsmen Party is one of the many reasons I’ve come to love 40k~
I need to go through and read the all guardsman party one day. It’s been on the top of my “I’d like to read it but holy crap is that long” list for a while now.
Oh man, look up ‘Cloak and Dagger’ on youtube if you want to just listen to them being read by someone. Guy does a pretty good job, and has readings of several other great classics, like Old Man Henderson and Oogie the Honorary Dwarf.
It turns out that “I was blind” is not an acceptable excuse for fireballing half the party.