Airless Enviroments?

[Guinea Anubis]

What are some different ways PCs could servive in an airless enviroment?

[Assassinfox]

Find a spell/magic item to eliminate the need for breathing?

[Bryn]

Breathing from a bottle of air would do it. If they have any form of construct - homunculus, golem, Warforged if in Eberron - and it's a short trip, they could all hide in a bag of holding or portable hole and have the construct carry them for the journey. Decanter of Endless Water combined with the ability to breath underwater would also work.

[hewhosaysfish]

necklace of adaptation?

[Inyssius Tor]

Deep breath, from Stormwrack. Actually, this seems like the only possible place it would be really useful...

[OzymandiasVolt]

If it's airless then they're facing the additional dangers of 0 atm pressure.
If there's no gas to be compressed by gravity then there's no pressure at all, and that will cause serious damage. That is why people can't survive in a vacuum with just an oxy tank.

[Assassinfox]

If it's airless then they're facing the additional dangers of 0 atm pressure.
If there's no gas to be compressed by gravity then there's no pressure at all, and that will cause serious damage. That is why people can't survive in a vacuum with just an oxy tank.

Planescape flatout said "To hell with physics!" when describing the Quasielemental Plane of Vacuum. Basically, there's no pressure problems, just a lack of breathable air.

[Variable Arcana]

Technically... airless doesn't mean hard vacuum. A room that's filled with water is airless. As is one that's filled with helium gas. They'll both kill you -- though in remarkably different ways.

[NullAshton]

Heh. The one filled with helium gas would be amusing. They could still talk.... just couldn't breathe.

[Variable Arcana]

You could still breathe -- and you wouldn't even feel out of breath. (Feeling out of breath happens when you can't get *rid* of the carbon dioxide in your bloodstream -- silly, backwards way to to design such an important control system, but that's biology for you...)

The only thing you'd notice before you passed out and died would be that you were all talking in surprisingly high-pitched voices.

[Yuki Akuma]

If it's airless then they're facing the additional dangers of 0 atm pressure.
If there's no gas to be compressed by gravity then there's no pressure at all, and that will cause serious damage. That is why people can't survive in a vacuum with just an oxy tank.

No. No it isn't. Humans don't suffer from rapid decompression just by being out in a vacuum for five minutes. The main dangers of the largest and most famous vacuum (that is, space) is the extreme cold and the radiation exposure.

Vacuums can cause you to suffer from the bends, though, which is... painful.

[Assassinfox]

Find a spell/magic item to eliminate the need for breathing?

Actually, I've been looking for a magic item that would do that. Are there any, or do I have to get creative?

They're pretty much required for most of the Inner Planes.

[Innis Cabal]

all inner planes save the quasi-plane of vacuum, and at times the plane of earth have air to breath, the plane of water even has air bubbles and the like

[Variable Arcana]

Actually, I've been looking for a magic item that would do that. Are there any, or do I have to get creative?

They're pretty much required for most of the Inner Planes.

See posts 3 and 4.

[Assassinfox]

Necklace of Adaptation... D'oh! >_<

[Jayabalard]

You could still breathe -- and you wouldn't even feel out of breath. (Feeling out of breath happens when you can't get *rid* of the carbon dioxide in your bloodstream -- silly, backwards way to to design such an important control system, but that's biology for you...)

The only thing you'd notice before you passed out and died would be that you were all talking in surprisingly high-pitched voices.I'm pretty sure that your blood doesn't get rid of CO2 unless there's something to replace it (like O2 or CO). I don't think your blood would pick up the helium, so you wouldn't be getting rid of the CO2 and should start feeling out of breath.


No. No it isn't. Humans don't suffer from rapid decompression just by being out in a vacuum for five minutes. The main dangers of the largest and most famous vacuum (that is, space) is the extreme cold and the radiation exposure.

Vacuums can cause you to suffer from the bends, though, which is... painful.An interesting claim; have anything to back it up? All sources that I've ever seen disagree; This, for example (http://www.sff.net/people/Geoffrey.Landis/vacuum.html) estimates that you'd survive about 90 seconds and stay conscious for about 10. Above 50k feet the "time of useful consciousness" is 9 to 12 seconds according to the FAA.

"time of useful consciousness" = how long after a decompression incident pilots will be awake and be sufficiently aware to take active measures to save their lives.

Vacuum is not cold by the way; it's neither cold nor hot. Temperature isn't meaningful without matter, which vacuum isn't. Objects in a vacuum that are in direct sunlight can pick up far more heat than they do here on earth in an atmosphere (for example: the surface of the moon in direct sunlight is about 335K, or 250 F)

[Truwar]

What are some different ways PCs could servive in an airless enviroment?


Play an Air Genasi?

[Collin152]

Fil up your bag of holding with air and breathe from it. Or, Portibal hole + 2 Bottles of Air

[Ninja Chocobo]

Polymorph Any Object. Lots of it.

[Fizban]

Necklace of Adaptation, 9,000gp. Protects against vaccum, gases, and any other lack of air by wrapping you in your own personal shell of clean air.

Iron Body, and the lesser known cousin, Stone Body, could do it. But those are high level personal range spells.

Constructs, elementals, and undead do not breathe, so assuming you have no penalties from the lack of pressure, any method of changing to said types will work.

In sum, Necklace of Adaptation is the most effective way.

[Inyssius Tor]

Well, a fire elemental would actually die pretty quickly from lack of oxygen, but any other elemental would probably do all right. (Assuming that the air elemental can hold together on its own, rather than just diffusing in an airless environment...)

*catgirl dies*

[Zincorium]

I'm pretty sure that your blood doesn't get rid of CO2 unless there's something to replace it (like O2 or CO). I don't think your blood would pick up the helium, so you wouldn't be getting rid of the CO2 and should start feeling out of breath.


Carbon Monoxide is ugly this way, your lungs pick it up in preference to regular oxygen and don't realize their mistake, so until you black out from lack of oxygen in your bloodstream you don't realize anything is wrong. I don't know about helium, however.



Vacuum is not cold by the way; it's neither cold nor hot. Temperature isn't meaningful without matter, which vacuum isn't. Objects in a vacuum that are in direct sunlight can pick up far more heat than they do here on earth in an atmosphere (for example: the surface of the moon in direct sunlight is about 335K, or 250 F)

Alright, to be purely scientific, cold is a lack of heat. Without an additional source of heat, such as direct sunlight, radiant heat is not held against the skin. Humans radiate a lot of heat, which we need to do in an environment with warm, humid air. This works against us in vacuum, where we need every calorie of heat to remain at functioning temperatures.

More importantly, in the lack of pressure that characterizes a vacuum, liquids tend to boil very rapidly into gases, which absorbs energy from the surrounding tissue. Any fluids which are open to vacuum (saliva) or only separated by a thin layer of tissue (blood in many areas) will have a very strong tendency to do so. Given how fragile your nasal passages and lung membranes are, and how many pores you have, you're going to have more than a few leaks.

And solar radiation will light you up very badly rather than keep you warm at the distance we orbit the sun, one side having the skin vaporize and boil while the other settles down closer to absolute zero as it tries to remove heat that would normally be excess. There's a reason astronaut's suits have a lot of thermal shielding.