Last week, my party did a greedy lil' stint in a lava-filled cavern with enemies galore. A rather nasty demon and its priests who threw Fireballs) had knocked our HP's down considerably. When the beloved Paladin took a nssty hit, my Fighter/Rogue kobold pulled a Hail Mary and drank up a Polyjuice Potion with no idea what it was going to do.
Turns out, It turned me into a Platinum dragon. I killed three of the critters with a single ice breath, just as the demon rose out of the lava (he'd been hit with a Turn to Stone spell off a Rod of Wonder-- 99 out of 100). I was about to take my turn, which was to breath ice on the demon coming out of the ice and his friends. I was wondering how some of you would consider the damage on that... Would I trap the demon in glass? Would I cause a million shrapnel attacks from the suddenly forming rock?
No trapping. If you killed him, I would let you describe it anyway you wanted to including a million shrapnel. But if he lived, it was just normal effects.
Tough to say, because there’s a lot of homebrew going on. For example, polyjuice potions are from Harry Potter, not D&D. And there’s not A platinum dragon, there’s THE platinum dragon, bahamut. There’s only one, and he’s a god, at least by RAW, so there’s no stats for him, and you can’t turn into him. The closest thing we have to stats is an aspect of him, and his offensive breath weapon is radient damage not cold. And even if it were, breath weapons target only creatures, so by RAW, the lava would be unaffected.
But that, I have a sense, isn’t what you were looking for, and you all were obviously having a good time (which means you were playing perfectly correctly no matter what the rules might say), so instead of being a downer. Maybe the ice breath and lava would cancel each other out and make a giant steam cloud and solidify the lava, not doing damage to anyone, but the demon would be trapped in the newly formed stone. But, no one would be able to see him, because the steam cloud obscured visibility. Now the PCs have 1d3 rounds before he frees himself. Your potion just wore off. Do you get out of there while you have a chance or stay and fight?
Generally you should not expect any kind of feature, spell, ability, etc. to do anything it doesn't expressly say it does in combat. Particularly if you're just expecting the DM to independently ad-lib it on; they've got a lot on their mind during a typical combat encounter already. This isn't an absolute rule, some DM's do try to make combat more responsive to things like this (with varying results), but generally if you want something like that to happen, you'll want to toss a "can I try this" your DM's way before taking the action, with the understanding that they are free to nix anything outside the printed effect.
Plus, realistically, a pool/lake of lava is going to have a lot more heat than 6 seconds of supercooling can meaningfully affect. You'd maybe create a thin sheet of hardened rock on the surface that pretty much immediately cracks and melts again.
Plus, realistically, a pool/lake of lava is going to have a lot more heat than 6 seconds of supercooling can meaningfully affect. You'd maybe create a thin sheet of hardened rock on the surface that pretty much immediately cracks and melts again.
This is what I came here for. Thank you! My DM is likely to eave the damage at purely what the breath weapon does.
Generally you should not expect any kind of feature, spell, ability, etc. to do anything it doesn't expressly say it does in combat. Particularly if you're just expecting the DM to independently ad-lib it on; they've got a lot on their mind during a typical combat encounter already. This isn't an absolute rule, some DM's do try to make combat more responsive to things like this (with varying results), but generally if you want something like that to happen, you'll want to toss a "can I try this" your DM's way before taking the action, with the understanding that they are free to nix anything outside the printed effect.
Plus, realistically, a pool/lake of lava is going to have a lot more heat than 6 seconds of supercooling can meaningfully affect. You'd maybe create a thin sheet of hardened rock on the surface that pretty much immediately cracks and melts again.
More likely you'd create a steam explosion.
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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.
Last week, my party did a greedy lil' stint in a lava-filled cavern with enemies galore. A rather nasty demon and its priests who threw Fireballs) had knocked our HP's down considerably. When the beloved Paladin took a nssty hit, my Fighter/Rogue kobold pulled a Hail Mary and drank up a Polyjuice Potion with no idea what it was going to do.
Turns out, It turned me into a Platinum dragon. I killed three of the critters with a single ice breath, just as the demon rose out of the lava (he'd been hit with a Turn to Stone spell off a Rod of Wonder-- 99 out of 100). I was about to take my turn, which was to breath ice on the demon coming out of the ice and his friends. I was wondering how some of you would consider the damage on that... Would I trap the demon in glass? Would I cause a million shrapnel attacks from the suddenly forming rock?
How would you run that?
No trapping. If you killed him, I would let you describe it anyway you wanted to including a million shrapnel. But if he lived, it was just normal effects.
Tough to say, because there’s a lot of homebrew going on. For example, polyjuice potions are from Harry Potter, not D&D. And there’s not A platinum dragon, there’s THE platinum dragon, bahamut. There’s only one, and he’s a god, at least by RAW, so there’s no stats for him, and you can’t turn into him. The closest thing we have to stats is an aspect of him, and his offensive breath weapon is radient damage not cold. And even if it were, breath weapons target only creatures, so by RAW, the lava would be unaffected.
But that, I have a sense, isn’t what you were looking for, and you all were obviously having a good time (which means you were playing perfectly correctly no matter what the rules might say), so instead of being a downer.
Maybe the ice breath and lava would cancel each other out and make a giant steam cloud and solidify the lava, not doing damage to anyone, but the demon would be trapped in the newly formed stone. But, no one would be able to see him, because the steam cloud obscured visibility. Now the PCs have 1d3 rounds before he frees himself. Your potion just wore off. Do you get out of there while you have a chance or stay and fight?
Generally you should not expect any kind of feature, spell, ability, etc. to do anything it doesn't expressly say it does in combat. Particularly if you're just expecting the DM to independently ad-lib it on; they've got a lot on their mind during a typical combat encounter already. This isn't an absolute rule, some DM's do try to make combat more responsive to things like this (with varying results), but generally if you want something like that to happen, you'll want to toss a "can I try this" your DM's way before taking the action, with the understanding that they are free to nix anything outside the printed effect.
Plus, realistically, a pool/lake of lava is going to have a lot more heat than 6 seconds of supercooling can meaningfully affect. You'd maybe create a thin sheet of hardened rock on the surface that pretty much immediately cracks and melts again.
This is what I came here for. Thank you! My DM is likely to eave the damage at purely what the breath weapon does.
More likely you'd create a steam explosion.
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.
True