A sensible DM would stop player characters even attempting to swim in heavy armour unless there were dire circumstances. A player ignoring these warnings should find their character drowning in a few rounds without some underwater breathing spell. Even leather armour would greatly impede swimming, not to mention shoes, weaponry, gold coins, and that iron pot that weighs 10lbs that you've been carrying around for a camp fire.
On the other hand, players dealing with the elements and environment sensibly should be rewarded with XP. Maybe this isn't as exciting as fighting moray eels in your plate mail, but it's probably more realistic.
ad1. Check 3e dungeon master guide i believe around page 216 (at least in Polish version) You have clear tables with base prices for any magic item.
As for people advocating for more realism, Why don't you just play 3.5e or Pathfinder instead of trying to break 5e? It's really that simple.
Ok, fair enough for 3e, but they were not there in 1e or 2e and no clue on 4e.
Only 3rd and 4th editions had detailed magic item pricing guides, as they were the only two editions that were built with the idea that there's a robust magic item economy.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
A sensible DM would stop player characters even attempting to swim in heavy armour unless there were dire circumstances. A player ignoring these warnings should find their character drowning in a few rounds without some underwater breathing spell. Even leather armour would greatly impede swimming, not to mention shoes, weaponry, gold coins, and that iron pot that weighs 10lbs that you've been carrying around for a camp fire.
On the other hand, players dealing with the elements and environment sensibly should be rewarded with XP. Maybe this isn't as exciting as fighting moray eels in your plate mail, but it's probably more realistic.
D&D isn't and never has been an attempt to provide a realistic game. There are other RPGs available that do realism better.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
[EDIT: This was supposed to be in reference to Kaboom's "Min STR +2" house rule at the top of the page... not sure why it didn't post the quote.]
And, in point of fact, the only Heavy-Armor person likely to be harmed by this rule is the dwarven cleric. Everyone else who wears Heavy Armor is already going the "STR route", and probably didn't stop at 15 STR, so probably no impact from the rule.
On the other hand... pretty much *everyone* else in the party will now drown, because if they *DIDN'T* go STR, then they probably have an 8 or 9 STR, and even Leather is going to prevent them swimming....
I suppose if I really wanted to go for realism it might make sense, but I feel the game has enough mechanics for dealing with water that I don't feel a need to add further restrictions on heavy armor in water to bog things down.
Wear heavy armor, go into water, and you're a dead weight. There is no possibility for anyone to swim with it (if you want any realistic stuff in your campaign). Remove it for your own sake when in a boat, live to fight another day.
Wear heavy armor, go into water, and you're a dead weight. There is no possibility for anyone to swim with it (if you want any realistic stuff in your campaign). Remove it for your own sake when in a boat, live to fight another day.
First, please read the whole thread before replying, it's not that long and it's nice to see if anyone's actually maybe made the same argument already and what the responses might be.
Second, as I've already said in this thread, D&D is not and never will be a realistic game and trying to invoke realism is silly. I mean, if you want to go down that route, magic isn't realistic, non-human characters aren't realistic, invoking realism is not a good argument. You need something better.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The bigger issue is really being able to effectively use weapons in armor that covers the whole body. Most armor is not built to deal with water resistance whatsoever. There's a reason that most large undersea predators in the last 10 million years don't have limbs. It kills the creature's speed, and doesn't improve deadliness. Exceptions being creatures without articulations, like giant squid and octopi.
The bigger issue is really being able to effectively use weapons in armor that covers the whole body. Most armor is not built to deal with water resistance whatsoever. There's a reason that most large undersea predators in the last 10 million years don't have limbs. It kills the creature's speed, and doesn't improve deadliness. Exceptions being creatures without articulations, like giant squid and octopi.
5E does have some penalties for weapons when underwater. Nothing super complex, but IMO like with armor, these are generally good enough bare bones penalties that don't bog things down by getting too specific as a baseline, and more realistic games can add more to it.
Underwater Combat
When adventurers pursue sahuagin back to their undersea homes, fight off sharks in an ancient shipwreck, or find themselves in a flooded dungeon room, they must fight in a challenging environment. Underwater the following rules apply.
When making a melee weapon attack, a creature that doesn't have a swimming speed (either natural or granted by magic) has disadvantage on the attack roll unless the weapon is a dagger, javelin, shortsword, spear, or trident.
A ranged weapon attack automatically misses a target beyond the weapon's normal range. Even against a target within normal range, the attack roll has disadvantage unless the weapon is a crossbow, a net, or a weapon that is thrown like a javelin (including a spear, trident, or dart).
Creatures and objects that are fully immersed in water have resistance to fire damage.
Thought of this thread in replying to another thread on magic on other planes. What ideas are folks floating, so to speak, for wearing heavy armor on say the elemental plane of water? Or does a plane whose very existence is predicated on being saturated in a liquid medium mean that some sort of equilibrium is reached, or are the heavily armored just in some sort of stasis, or slow float to the "center" of the plane?
Thought of this thread in replying to another thread on magic on other planes. What ideas are folks floating, so to speak, for wearing heavy armor on say the elemental plane of armor? Or does a plane whose very existence is predicated on being saturated in a liquid medium mean that some sort of equilibrium is reached, or are the heavily armored just in some sort of stasis, or slow float to the "center" of the plane?
Gravity in the elemental plane of water is subjective. It's whatever way you think it is. So if you would normally sink, you will sink in whatever way you presently think is "down." And if you start thinking of another direction as "down," you'll start sinking in that way instead.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The trick is what type of heat - if it’s indirect environmental heat then yes as few clothes as you can manage and as much water and salt as you can manage (sweat is salt water and you need to replace the lost salt to function since the nerve system runs on salt too. In direct heat (sunlight for example) you want layers - an outer thick dark loose layer to block the heat and inner light loose layers to wide evaporative cooling. When I was working in the New Mexico desert I was more comfortable and needed less water in a t shirt and denim jacket than the folks with me in skimpy clothing.
of course wearing heavy armor with padding under it is still not the way to go if you can help it. That said a tabard over the armor probably did help to keep the metal cool by shielding it from the direct sun.
Very true 😁 if your on the plane of fire you definitely have bigger things to fry/worry about than whether your armor is experiencing a heat metal effect. 😳 resist fire isn’t going to help, you need immunity and nothing else. Just for survival.
Thought of this thread in replying to another thread on magic on other planes. What ideas are folks floating, so to speak, for wearing heavy armor on say the elemental plane of armor? Or does a plane whose very existence is predicated on being saturated in a liquid medium mean that some sort of equilibrium is reached, or are the heavily armored just in some sort of stasis, or slow float to the "center" of the plane?
Gravity in the elemental plane of water is subjective. It's whatever way you think it is. So if you would normally sink, you will sink in whatever way you presently think is "down." And if you start thinking of another direction as "down," you'll start sinking in that way instead.
Is that actually from somewhere? I just started reading the Planescape stuff in spots. I sort of like it, making the elemental substance of the plane a sort of "psychic medium" where up and down are sort of up to you, as would be the case on the Plane of Air too I suppose. Which leads to
So would metal armor mean that a person is always under the subject of a Heat Metal-like effect on the Elemental Plane of Fire?
The plane itself is on fire. Whether you're wearing metal armor or not doesn't make a difference.
I don't even know whether "on fire" is right so much as "is fire" so being in the elmental plane of fire would be akin to standing inside a sun.
Though this makes a challenge, if I think of the elemental plane of air, fire, and water, these are still things an object can inarguably move through (though two of them have saturation and inflammation issues, so to speak). But the elmental plane of earth would basically be a plane of solid mass (with allowances for geologic metamorphosis of course) aside from where burrowing denizens leave passages and compartments.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I don't even know whether "on fire" is right so much as "is fire" so being in the elmental plane of fire would be akin to standing inside a sun.
Though this makes a challenge, if I think of the elemental plane of air, fire, and water, these are still things an object can inarguably move through (though two of them have saturation and inflammation issues, so to speak). But the elmental plane of earth would basically be a plane of solid mass (with allowances for geologic metamorphosis of course) aside from where burrowing denizens leave passages and compartments.
Nope, the Elemental Plane of Fire is depicted as being on fire rather than is fire: it's got solid surfaces, an atmosphere, and there are places that there's more fire and places where there's no fire. It's been pointed out in a few places that the Elemental Plane of Fire resembles the traditional fire & brimstone hell more than the Nine Hells do.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Thought of this thread in replying to another thread on magic on other planes. What ideas are folks floating, so to speak, for wearing heavy armor on say the elemental plane of armor? Or does a plane whose very existence is predicated on being saturated in a liquid medium mean that some sort of equilibrium is reached, or are the heavily armored just in some sort of stasis, or slow float to the "center" of the plane?
Gravity in the elemental plane of water is subjective. It's whatever way you think it is. So if you would normally sink, you will sink in whatever way you presently think is "down." And if you start thinking of another direction as "down," you'll start sinking in that way instead.
Is that actually from somewhere? I just started reading the Planescape stuff in spots. I sort of like it, making the elemental substance of the plane a sort of "psychic medium" where up and down are sort of up to you, as would be the case on the Plane of Air too I suppose.
Yeah, it's been the standard depiction of the Elemental Plane of Water since 2E. It's endless water in every direction, but with no defined up or down.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I don't even know whether "on fire" is right so much as "is fire" so being in the elmental plane of fire would be akin to standing inside a sun.
Though this makes a challenge, if I think of the elemental plane of air, fire, and water, these are still things an object can inarguably move through (though two of them have saturation and inflammation issues, so to speak). But the elmental plane of earth would basically be a plane of solid mass (with allowances for geologic metamorphosis of course) aside from where burrowing denizens leave passages and compartments.
Nope, the Elemental Plane of Fire is depicted as being on fire rather than is fire: it's got solid surfaces, an atmosphere, and there are places that there's more fire and places where there's no fire. It's been pointed out in a few places that the Elemental Plane of Fire resembles the traditional fire & brimstone hell more than the Nine Hells do.
That's kinda lame, so we have an Elemental Plane of Water and a Elemental Plane of Air, not sure what preposition adequately describes the substantiation of the Earth plane but lore precedent states it's not so much of but an Elemental Plane on Fire. I dunno. I kinda like how the lore has "contact" zones between the planes, so I could picture the edges having some rocks and saunas and maybe some flaming tornadoes, but the bulk of the plane should be consumed by the element it claims to embody. I mean I can see why the Hell stereotype has a pragmatic aspect to it for adventuring reasons, but at least in my head I can see how you can have the City of Brass and other structures introduced into the plane, but most of the plane is flame.
I think it has to do with fire being a chemical reaction rather than a substance. Since creatures like Salamanders and Fire Elementals can't fly by default, there needed to be ground. In previous editions of the game, you took fire damage simply from being on the plane unless you had magical protection. Five E does away with that and merely makes the plane a hot desert with vicious winds. Decidedly less impressive but I guess they had to tone it down since getting immunity to elemental damage is a lot harder in this edition than it was in 2nd or 3rd Edition so having everyone take 3d8 fire damage a round would make adventures on the plane virtually impossible. Of course, the Inner Planes have gone from having an entire sourcebook in Planescape to having a few paragraphs worth of blurb in the DMG.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
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A sensible DM would stop player characters even attempting to swim in heavy armour unless there were dire circumstances. A player ignoring these warnings should find their character drowning in a few rounds without some underwater breathing spell. Even leather armour would greatly impede swimming, not to mention shoes, weaponry, gold coins, and that iron pot that weighs 10lbs that you've been carrying around for a camp fire.
On the other hand, players dealing with the elements and environment sensibly should be rewarded with XP. Maybe this isn't as exciting as fighting moray eels in your plate mail, but it's probably more realistic.
Only 3rd and 4th editions had detailed magic item pricing guides, as they were the only two editions that were built with the idea that there's a robust magic item economy.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
D&D isn't and never has been an attempt to provide a realistic game. There are other RPGs available that do realism better.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Seems simple and clear to me. I like it.
[EDIT: This was supposed to be in reference to Kaboom's "Min STR +2" house rule at the top of the page... not sure why it didn't post the quote.]
And, in point of fact, the only Heavy-Armor person likely to be harmed by this rule is the dwarven cleric. Everyone else who wears Heavy Armor is already going the "STR route", and probably didn't stop at 15 STR, so probably no impact from the rule.
On the other hand... pretty much *everyone* else in the party will now drown, because if they *DIDN'T* go STR, then they probably have an 8 or 9 STR, and even Leather is going to prevent them swimming....
I suppose if I really wanted to go for realism it might make sense, but I feel the game has enough mechanics for dealing with water that I don't feel a need to add further restrictions on heavy armor in water to bog things down.
Wear heavy armor, go into water, and you're a dead weight. There is no possibility for anyone to swim with it (if you want any realistic stuff in your campaign). Remove it for your own sake when in a boat, live to fight another day.
First, please read the whole thread before replying, it's not that long and it's nice to see if anyone's actually maybe made the same argument already and what the responses might be.
Second, as I've already said in this thread, D&D is not and never will be a realistic game and trying to invoke realism is silly. I mean, if you want to go down that route, magic isn't realistic, non-human characters aren't realistic, invoking realism is not a good argument. You need something better.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The bigger issue is really being able to effectively use weapons in armor that covers the whole body. Most armor is not built to deal with water resistance whatsoever. There's a reason that most large undersea predators in the last 10 million years don't have limbs. It kills the creature's speed, and doesn't improve deadliness. Exceptions being creatures without articulations, like giant squid and octopi.
5E does have some penalties for weapons when underwater. Nothing super complex, but IMO like with armor, these are generally good enough bare bones penalties that don't bog things down by getting too specific as a baseline, and more realistic games can add more to it.
Underwater Combat
When adventurers pursue sahuagin back to their undersea homes, fight off sharks in an ancient shipwreck, or find themselves in a flooded dungeon room, they must fight in a challenging environment. Underwater the following rules apply.
When making a melee weapon attack, a creature that doesn't have a swimming speed (either natural or granted by magic) has disadvantage on the attack roll unless the weapon is a dagger, javelin, shortsword, spear, or trident.
A ranged weapon attack automatically misses a target beyond the weapon's normal range. Even against a target within normal range, the attack roll has disadvantage unless the weapon is a crossbow, a net, or a weapon that is thrown like a javelin (including a spear, trident, or dart).
Creatures and objects that are fully immersed in water have resistance to fire damage.
Thought of this thread in replying to another thread on magic on other planes. What ideas are folks floating, so to speak, for wearing heavy armor on say the elemental plane of water? Or does a plane whose very existence is predicated on being saturated in a liquid medium mean that some sort of equilibrium is reached, or are the heavily armored just in some sort of stasis, or slow float to the "center" of the plane?
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Gravity in the elemental plane of water is subjective. It's whatever way you think it is. So if you would normally sink, you will sink in whatever way you presently think is "down." And if you start thinking of another direction as "down," you'll start sinking in that way instead.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
So would metal armor mean that a person is always under the subject of a Heat Metal-like effect on the Elemental Plane of Fire?
The trick is what type of heat - if it’s indirect environmental heat then yes as few clothes as you can manage and as much water and salt as you can manage (sweat is salt water and you need to replace the lost salt to function since the nerve system runs on salt too. In direct heat (sunlight for example) you want layers - an outer thick dark loose layer to block the heat and inner light loose layers to wide evaporative cooling. When I was working in the New Mexico desert I was more comfortable and needed less water in a t shirt and denim jacket than the folks with me in skimpy clothing.
of course wearing heavy armor with padding under it is still not the way to go if you can help it. That said a tabard over the armor probably did help to keep the metal cool by shielding it from the direct sun.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
The plane itself is on fire. Whether you're wearing metal armor or not doesn't make a difference.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Very true 😁 if your on the plane of fire you definitely have bigger things to fry/worry about than whether your armor is experiencing a heat metal effect. 😳 resist fire isn’t going to help, you need immunity and nothing else. Just for survival.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Is that actually from somewhere? I just started reading the Planescape stuff in spots. I sort of like it, making the elemental substance of the plane a sort of "psychic medium" where up and down are sort of up to you, as would be the case on the Plane of Air too I suppose. Which leads to
I don't even know whether "on fire" is right so much as "is fire" so being in the elmental plane of fire would be akin to standing inside a sun.
Though this makes a challenge, if I think of the elemental plane of air, fire, and water, these are still things an object can inarguably move through (though two of them have saturation and inflammation issues, so to speak). But the elmental plane of earth would basically be a plane of solid mass (with allowances for geologic metamorphosis of course) aside from where burrowing denizens leave passages and compartments.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Nope, the Elemental Plane of Fire is depicted as being on fire rather than is fire: it's got solid surfaces, an atmosphere, and there are places that there's more fire and places where there's no fire. It's been pointed out in a few places that the Elemental Plane of Fire resembles the traditional fire & brimstone hell more than the Nine Hells do.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Yeah, it's been the standard depiction of the Elemental Plane of Water since 2E. It's endless water in every direction, but with no defined up or down.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
That's kinda lame, so we have an Elemental Plane of Water and a Elemental Plane of Air, not sure what preposition adequately describes the substantiation of the Earth plane but lore precedent states it's not so much of but an Elemental Plane on Fire. I dunno. I kinda like how the lore has "contact" zones between the planes, so I could picture the edges having some rocks and saunas and maybe some flaming tornadoes, but the bulk of the plane should be consumed by the element it claims to embody. I mean I can see why the Hell stereotype has a pragmatic aspect to it for adventuring reasons, but at least in my head I can see how you can have the City of Brass and other structures introduced into the plane, but most of the plane is flame.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I think it has to do with fire being a chemical reaction rather than a substance. Since creatures like Salamanders and Fire Elementals can't fly by default, there needed to be ground. In previous editions of the game, you took fire damage simply from being on the plane unless you had magical protection. Five E does away with that and merely makes the plane a hot desert with vicious winds. Decidedly less impressive but I guess they had to tone it down since getting immunity to elemental damage is a lot harder in this edition than it was in 2nd or 3rd Edition so having everyone take 3d8 fire damage a round would make adventures on the plane virtually impossible. Of course, the Inner Planes have gone from having an entire sourcebook in Planescape to having a few paragraphs worth of blurb in the DMG.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.