Blazing and Frozen

[Callos_DeTerran]

An interestin question came to me whle was looking through my Frostburn and Sandstorm. The Blazing Beserker and Frozen Berserker. I know that a barbarian can take both of them at the same time, but if he rages do both of them activate? Is it ossible to have the cold and fire subtype at the same time?

[Fax Celestis]

Apparently, yes.

[Halcyon_Dax]

Its a theme Ive used before when designing a weapon to interest my players. I think it was a flaming frost +1 longsword.

Think about the feeling of extreme heat and extreme cold... they are remarkably similar - for things most people consider complete opposites.

Sounds like one cool character actually.


Sounds like one hot character actually.

[Fax Celestis]

Its a theme Ive used before when designing a weapon to interest my players. I think it was a flaming frost +1 longsword.

Think about the feeling of extreme heat and extreme cold... they are remarkably similar - for things most people consider complete opposites.

Sounds like one cool character actually.


Sounds like one hot character actually.

So hot, it's cool. So cool, it's hot. Pop-TartsTM!

[Halcyon_Dax]

Zomg!









Poptarts as shuriken.











:smallcool:

[Fax Celestis]

Poptarts as shuriken.


Sounds like a win to me.

[X15lm204]

Hmmmm...
If they're toasted just right, I suppose you could get a nice splatter effect with the hot filling, and frozen poptarts are amazingly hard...just make sure they're enchanted with the returning property so you can eat them after the fight!:smallbiggrin:

[Twisted.Fate]

I'd say it would cancel itself out. You can't be a creature of the flame at the same time that you're a creature of the ice. Besides, it gives you an immunity to a particular energy type. As a DM, I'd make you choose one or the other at a given time. Getting two immunities to major energy types at once is way too good.

[Fax Celestis]

I'd say it would cancel itself out. You can't be a creature of the flame at the same time that you're a creature of the ice. Besides, it gives you an immunity to a particular energy type. As a DM, I'd make you choose one or the other at a given time. Getting two immunities to major energy types at once is way too good.

You want to qualify for both PrCs at the same time?

[Thomas]

Think about the feeling of extreme heat and extreme cold... they are remarkably similar - for things most people consider complete opposites.

They're still opposites.

The reason hot can feel cold or cold can feel hot is that the nerve endings can be activated by a strong enough stimulus of the wrong kind, so when you touch something that's cold enough, both your cold and hot (and probably pain and maybe some others) receptors are going off, sending signals to your brain, which you interpet as "Cold and hot! OW!"

(Well, this is assuming that my entry-level college physiology books contain less "lies for children" than most high school books do.)


Anyway, I don't see any problem with combining the two in D&D. When the rules allow it, go for it. It's magic.

[Mewtarthio]

Fire and Ice...
You come on like a flame, but then you turn a cold shoulder
Fire and Ice...
I wanna give you my love, but you just take a little piece of my heart...

*cough* sorry.

Anyway, how exactly did this weird combination come about? I have neither book, but they don't seem compatible. I mean, I guess you could technically qualify for both, but does that also work fluff-wise?

[Callos_DeTerran]

Fluff wise? All it says that your body becomes infused with cold/fire energy for both of them, respectfully. And mixing fire and cold energy isn't exactly uncommon (Energy Admixtured Fireball?) but I was wondering if it would be technically possible which I suppose it is. Gaining Immune to Fire and Cold at 1st level while raging seems pretty big.

[Mattarias, King.]

i'd say you gain immunity to water attacks and water breathing. nothing else. fire and ice make water.

[Aximili]

I'd give the barbarian both subtypes, and let him have his fun. I wouldn't, however, allow a frost/flaming weapon. You can't deal damage by both heat and cold at the same time. One of them delivers energy and the other takes energy away in the exact opposite way.

[Wehrkind]

Sure you can. Douse something in liquid O2 and set it on fire. It takes damage from being incredibly brittle and frozen from the liquid that is nearly -200 K, and then burns (granted a fairly cold burn) as the O2 combines with whatever it happens to be wearing.

I mean, let's face it, "cold damage" is sort of a silly notion, since it would have to be tremendously cold to really do serious damage. If we are talking that cold, a little combustion isn't going to make a difference, simply oxidize a little.

[Aximili]

Sure you can. Douse something in liquid O2 and set it on fire. It takes damage from being incredibly brittle and frozen from the liquid that is nearly -200 K, and then burns (granted a fairly cold burn) as the O2 combines with whatever it happens to be wearing.

What deals fire damage is not the O2 combining with whatever, it's the energy that's released from this combination. This energy is transfered to the victim's molecules as cinetic energy. Which is represented as damage to the victim.

In your example, the fire would simply make the liquid O2 freeze you less. So the damage would actually decrease, instead of increasing.

The only way to deal both cold a fire damage at the same time is if the area of contact is larger. Than certain areas would freeze and others would heat up. But that's not what happens in a sword slash.

[Wehrkind]

Get a better physics book.
Cold hurts living matter because it:
1: Freezes the water in the cells, stopping most processes and bursting the cell walls in some cases.
2: Makes material extremely brittle, and prone to shattering and cracking.
3: Taking the cells out of their range of temperatures required for the chemical reactions to take place.


Heat does damage to living matter by:
1: Boiling off the water in cells, and thus drying them out and robbing them of an essential ingredient.
2: Combining 02 with whatever they are made out of (this is called "combustion") and thus changing the state and composition of chemicals important to cell processes.
3: Taking the cells out of their range of temperatures required for the chemical reactions to take place.

Those are not mutally exclusive, just awkward to acheive at the same time. Imagine the sword slice takes someone's flesh down to -182.95 C. The flesh becomes brittle and prone to shattering from the KE of the sword. Cellular activity stops, killing the affected cells. If it is then heated to 3000C, the sudden expansion is going to cause great amounts of tearing at the shear plane of temperature change. The sudden heat causes some cells to combust, and boils off the fluids in others. The increased temperature causes more shock and death to cells as their temperature goes way out of their operational temperature yet again.

That's how it causes damage in both a cold and hot fashion.

Edit: Side note, the liquid O2 freezes you LONG before the combustion warms you back up. It is pretty much instant on contact. -182.95 C is so much lower than water's freezing point it transfers heat away at an astounding rate. Even metal becomes brittle with just a moment of exposure.

Edit2: Just realized I was writing "K" when I meant "C" O2 liquifies at 90K, -182.95C. No particular reason I was using the boiling point of O2 to say how cold the sword makes things though.

[AtomicKitKat]

Yay, more catgirls for the harem. ^^

So with regards to the OP's question, the general concensus is "yes"? I spotted it a while back when I read through both books, and it struck me as a decent way to make a Woodling nigh invincible(to most low level attacks, at least).

[Viscount Einstrauss]

They're barbarians. They get so mad, they break the space/time continuum, and even the wizards have to question their beliefs.

[Halcyon_Dax]

Frozen Thermonuclear Ragesplosion!

[Aximili]

Get a better physics book.
Cold hurts living matter because it:
1: Freezes the water in the cells, stopping most processes and bursting the cell walls in some cases.
2: Makes material extremely brittle, and prone to shattering and cracking.
3: Taking the cells out of their range of temperatures required for the chemical reactions to take place.


Heat does damage to living matter by:
1: Boiling off the water in cells, and thus drying them out and robbing them of an essential ingredient.
2: Combining 02 with whatever they are made out of (this is called "combustion") and thus changing the state and composition of chemicals important to cell processes.
3: Taking the cells out of their range of temperatures required for the chemical reactions to take place.

1:Can you freeze and boil the water from a cell at the same time?
3:Can you take a cell out of it's required range of temperature both upwards and downwards at the same time?

Number 2 is the only one I can agree on working simultaneously.


Those are not mutally exclusive, just awkward to acheive at the same time. Imagine the sword slice takes someone's flesh down to -182.95 C. The flesh becomes brittle and prone to shattering from the KE of the sword. Cellular activity stops, killing the affected cells. If it is then heated to 3000C, the sudden expansion is going to cause great amounts of tearing at the shear plane of temperature change. The sudden heat causes some cells to combust, and boils off the fluids in others. The increased temperature causes more shock and death to cells as their temperature goes way out of their operational temperature yet again.

That's how it causes damage in both a cold and hot fashion.

"If it is then heated to 3000C..."
That's the problem. It's not "then heated", it's heated at the same time. The sword you're suggesting has to be simultaneously hot and cold.
Lowering the temperature to 5K and than increasing it to 5000K would deal an astounding (does this word even exist?) amount of damage. Of course it would! But this sword doesn't freeze and then heat, it freezes and heats at the same time. Now how would that go?


Edit: Side note, the liquid O2 freezes you LONG before the combustion warms you back up. It is pretty much instant on contact. -182.95 C is so much lower than water's freezing point it transfers heat away at an astounding rate. Even metal becomes brittle with just a moment of exposure.

It most certainly does.

[Mewtarthio]

The sword is magic. It can do whatever it wants. I imagine the guy who made it designed it to do cold damage an instant before heat damage. Also, "astounding" is indeed a word.

[Halcyon_Dax]

Wait... you are honestly arguing about wether a fictional magical sword could concievably cause heat and cold damage?

Lets step back a moment.

Okay, now lets argue about wether magic is really bad for people.

[Wehrkind]

The leading edge of the sword freezes, the back edge heats. This is magic, not nuclear physics. It is not unreasonable to say that it freezes a split second before it heats. The magic of the sword just does it. The same way that a cleric can make a wound close and heal just because his god says so.

as·tound·ing
–adjective capable of overwhelming with amazement; stunningly surprising.

"astounding." Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 23 Jan. 2007. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/astounding (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/astounding)>

No offense, but it seems that a lot of your books are lacking, if only in vocabulary.

[reorith]

...

Okay, now lets argue about wether magic is really bad for people.

magic is really bad. it causes diseases (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/contagion.htm), hallucinations (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/dancingLights.htm), and property damage (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/fireball.htm)just to name a few things

[Mewtarthio]

magic is really bad. it causes diseases (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/contagion.htm), hallucinations (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/dancingLights.htm), and property damage (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/fireball.htm)just to name a few things

That's not fair. What about all the good things (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/phantasmalKiller.htm)?

[Wehrkind]

Seriously, you can't claim that the possibility for abuse makes an inanimate object bad despite all the proper uses.

How many kittens with cervical cancer have been healed by druids? How many unwed mothers have had their unwanted fetuses teleported into the middle of the ocean? How many evil chimeras have had their orifices violated by spiked tentacles?

You have to consider all the good magic does before you condemn it so. Just because a few people use it to summon armies of the insane undead to destroy the world doesn't make it all bad.

[Hamster_Ninja]

How many unwed mothers have had their unwanted fetuses teleported into the middle of the ocean?

So thats how they get sea humans.
On topic, magic can be both good and bad. You can use it to both heal and inflict diseases and kill and bring back from the dead. Nearly anything you can do with it can be undone by similar magic (shatter, mend, etc.)

[Divides]

I'd give the barbarian both subtypes, and let him have his fun. I wouldn't, however, allow a frost/flaming weapon. You can't deal damage by both heat and cold at the same time. One of them delivers energy and the other takes energy away in the exact opposite way.

Uh... dude? It's D&D...

And if you actually look at the books enough, (it's heavilly implide that) cold, especially magical cold, is NOT the absense of heat in the D&D universe. (For example, there are creatures that are actually physically composed of cold energy. Not an amorphous cloud that happens to lack heat energy... PHYSICALLY COMPOSED OF COLD!)


If this was a RPG world that actually TRIED to use real world physics, it would be another matter, I agree. But, again, it's not... it's D&D.

[Matthew]

Hmmn, I see what you are saying, but "it's D&D" isn't really sufficient reason to do anything you like, regardless as to whether it breaks suspension of disbelief or not. By the RAW it appears to be possible, but that's no reason not to house rule it away if it interferes with the verisimilitude of the game.

[Thomas]

If you want to go down that road... there's never any reason not to houserule anything.

[Yuki Akuma]

There's nothing in any books that say you can't fuse cold and fire. And nothing that says you can't be immune to both at the same time.

I don't see the problem here. Why is everyone arguing?

[Charity]

*Runs into the catgirl nursery carrying a bucket of liquid Oxygen with his hat on fire*

BOOM


Happy now?

[Yuki Akuma]

*Runs into the catgirl nursery carrying a bucket of liquid Oxygen with his hat on fire*

BOOM


Happy now?

Oxygen isn't explosive. So no. :smalltongue:

[Matthew]

If you want to go down that road... there's never any reason not to houserule anything.

That's perfectly true (with the caveat 'if you want to and think it would make the game better') and not something I would have a problem with.

[Rigeld2]

Oxygen isn't explosive. So no. :smalltongue:
Oxygen isnt explosive by itself, but pure oxygen allows for very rapid combustion of other fuels.

[Aximili]

No offense, but it seems that a lot of your books are lacking, if only in vocabulary.
None taken, english is not my first language.
(It was directed at me, right?)

[Charity]

Oxygen isn't explosive. So no. :smalltongue:


Sigh *Rounds up the ragtag remnants of the decimated catgirl populous. imprisons them in the local firework factory, drinks a bucket of nitroglycerin and does star jumps*

[Fatty Maroon]

Ok, sorry to go off topic, but I have seen it all over the board and just have to know. What are all of these references to catgirls, can someone please explain what the pun/instance that this is relating to.

[AtomicKitKat]

Ok, sorry to go off topic, but I have seen it all over the board and just have to know. What are all of these references to catgirls, can someone please explain what the pun/instance that this is relating to.

This (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32447) should help.

[Frosty Flake]

Isn't using energy-based magic supposed to be, like, invoking the pure undiluted essence of an entire dimensiional plane consisting of the magical hoobly-goobly of that energy type? I don't think that swords of cold-burst hurt you the same way normal or even abnormal cold conditions hurt you... I think it's more of an "OMG elemental matter from an alien plane of existance that boops around with my very cellular structure!" kinda thing... I always thought of it as a seperate substance. Like... old superhero comic books, before they started trying to use actual science to explain things.

The Barbarian is obviously so angry, he can channel the powers of two seperate elemental planes of existance and still have enough state of mind to chop off the baddies head. He is the true Rage-Mage and should be able to run naked and free in a feild of paradox and mindboops.

[ExHunterEmerald]

Put a fire and frost enhancement on one weapon...heh, you end up hitting them with steam?

[Fax Celestis]

The Barbarian is obviously so angry, he can channel the powers of two seperate elemental planes of existance and still have enough state of mind to chop off the baddies head. He is the true Rage-Mage and should be able to run naked and free in a feild of paradox and mindboops.

Good enough for me.

[Divides]

Hmmn, I see what you are saying, but "it's D&D" isn't really sufficient reason to do anything you like, regardless as to whether it breaks suspension of disbelief or not. By the RAW it appears to be possible, but that's no reason not to house rule it away if it interferes with the verisimilitude of the game.

Fair enough. My suspension of disbelief and interpretation of fantasy games has always been different (and weirder) than others. If the GM can't buy it (or is afraid the majority of his PCs won't be able to buy it), I can certainly see going against it ^_^.



If you want to go down that road... there's never any reason not to houserule anything.

Actually, there's exactly 1: If it ruins the fun for everyone involved, you shouldn't houserule it :-p.




Sigh *Rounds up the ragtag remnants of the decimated catgirl populous. imprisons them in the local firework factory, drinks a bucket of nitroglycerin and does star jumps*


*Disbelieves the illusion.*



Isn't using energy-based magic supposed to be, like, invoking the pure undiluted essence of an entire dimensiional plane consisting of the magical hoobly-goobly of that energy type? I don't think that swords of cold-burst hurt you the same way normal or even abnormal cold conditions hurt you... I think it's more of an "OMG elemental matter from an alien plane of existance that boops around with my very cellular structure!" kinda thing... I always thought of it as a seperate substance. Like... old superhero comic books, before they started trying to use actual science to explain things.


Um... if by old superhero comic books you mean even some of the ones being produced TODAY...

Yes, I am uber-geek, why you ask?



The Barbarian is obviously so angry, he can channel the powers of two seperate elemental planes of existance and still have enough state of mind to chop off the baddies head. He is the true Rage-Mage and should be able to run naked and free in a feild of paradox and mindboops.

Great, so what you're saying is: While the wizard is spending months trying to research new and bizzarre ways to break reality, the barbarian just charges in and does it (making the wizard look bad in the process)?

Looks like strength and con have once again proven themselves vastly superior to int...

[Fax Celestis]

Looks like strength and con have once again proven themselves vastly superior to int...

Er, what game are you playing?

[Divides]

Er, what game are you playing?

The one where I couldn't think of a better line to some up my comment?

Yeah, I know, it was lame... so sue me :-p.

[Callos_DeTerran]

Er, what game are you playing?

I think he's referring to the Hulk.

[Thomas]

Great, so what you're saying is: While the wizard is spending months trying to research new and bizzarre ways to break reality, the barbarian just charges in and does it (making the wizard look bad in the process)?

Yes, because the wizard is the only character with reality-breaking abilities (i.e. supernatural and spell-like abilities)...

[Viscount Einstrauss]

The barbarian can't do it safely from half the world away with little more then a proper setup of cheap spells.

[Aximili]

The barbarian can't do it safely from half the world away with little more then a proper setup of cheap spells.
But he is much more scary. :smallbiggrin: