Desiccation Damage, and not needing water?

[SangoProduction]

The weapon ability that does desiccation (dehydration) damage is in....the magic item compendium? It's a lower amount of damage, because it's supposed to be nearly impossible to overcome the damage.
Problem is, doesn't desiccation work by draining water? What if you don't need water? Perhaps from a very basic and cheap item like Ring of Sustenance? (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Ring_of_Sustenance) OK, that doesn't specifically provide water protection, but the Elan (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/psionicRaces.htm#elans) does specifically say "needs no water", as does Vow of Poverty at level 5 (http://gaming.corellonshand.com/feats/VowOfPoverty.html), and so do most other forms of sustenance, to my knowledge, including the Ioun Stone.

Is the damage ignored, because the entire basis for the damage is not needed? Or, is it that it doesn't make one bit of difference? In the case of the Ring of Sustenance, due to it saying it provides the sustenance, rather than simply not needing it, would it act a bit like a focused form of Regeneration, and that damage be non-lethal instead?

[Troacctid]

Not needing to drink isn't the same as not having any water in your body. Desiccation damage is physically harmful for reasons other than dehydration.

[Grooke]

If you take the description of the Desiccate spell, it already states "Creatures of the Earth subtype, creatures without physical bodies or that otherwise don't contain water, and constructs of non-perishable matter are unaffected by the spell" and I think that is all that should be immune. Vow of Poverty providing enough for your body to sustain itself doesn't mean that there is no water in your body, and that it could cope with the extreme stress of that water being rapidly dried up.

[SangoProduction]

Not needing to drink isn't the same as not having any water in your body. Desiccation damage is physically harmful for reasons other than dehydration.

True. I didn't mean to say that sustenance == no water. I meant that "water isn't needed". Yes, depending on how the desiccation works, like if it's physically ripping the water out, then that's true physical damage which wouldn't require the creature to require it's water, though that's slightly unrelated to the lack of water itself. Perhaps losing the water would cause a body to violently shrink, causing damage? But, the other dangers of desiccation comes from your cells not having the water to perform necessary tasks, which isn't an issue if water isn't needed.

Or perhaps it would still be? Would a sustained person be able to heal naturally without drinking, or would they need to replenish their water supplies to counter act the the desiccation damage?

Of course. This could just be simply over thinking a very simple issue of "it's magic." But I suddenly thought of it and wanted other opinions.

[SangoProduction]

If you take the description of the Desiccate spell, it already states "Creatures of the Earth subtype, creatures without physical bodies or that otherwise don't contain water, and constructs of non-perishable matter are unaffected by the spell" and I think that is all that should be immune. Vow of Poverty providing enough for your body to sustain itself doesn't mean that there is no water in your body, and that it could cope with the extreme stress of that water being rapidly dried up.

I agree. Not needing water was likely not intended to provide any immunities except to environmental dangers of not having drinks on hand. Perhaps the sustenance isn't actually akin to no longer requiring it, but instead is like getting a slow drip-feed of the substance? This explanation would mean that they are still vulnerable to suddenly lacking the substances, but still allow them to not need water, no?

[Troacctid]

I agree. Not needing water was likely not intended to provide any immunities except to environmental dangers of not having drinks on hand. Perhaps the sustenance isn't actually akin to no longer requiring it, but instead is like getting a slow drip-feed of the substance? This explanation would mean that they are still vulnerable to suddenly lacking the substances, but still allow them to not need water, no?

That's closer to how I imagine it.

[Ephemeral_Being]

True. I didn't mean to say that sustenance == no water. I meant that "water isn't needed". Yes, depending on how the desiccation works, like if it's physically ripping the water out, then that's true physical damage which wouldn't require the creature to require it's water, though that's slightly unrelated to the lack of water itself. Perhaps losing the water would cause a body to violently shrink, causing damage? But, the other dangers of desiccation comes from your cells not having the water to perform necessary tasks, which isn't an issue if water isn't needed.

Or perhaps it would still be? Would a sustained person be able to heal naturally without drinking, or would they need to replenish their water supplies to counter act the the desiccation damage?

Of course. This could just be simply over thinking a very simple issue of "it's magic." But I suddenly thought of it and wanted other opinions.

You want a scientific answer to your question? There, I can help you.

Hypothetically, you have a person who can survive without food or water. There are three potential ways this happens.

The body is generating these elements spontaneously, or absorbing them from the area around him
The body no longer has any need for these nutrients
The body is recycling these elements; there is no waste material created

The first explanation (which is how I would explain a Vow of Poverty character) is that through the use of magic which the character's body is naturally infused with, the character draws elements from the earth to sustain him. This would be fairly straightforward. There's water everywhere. There's carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen. All of the essential elements that you'd need to create amino acids or neurotransmitters, or whatever else you need to sustain a person. Assuming you maintained some sort of physical contact with the ground (or pulled them from the atmosphere, which would give you access to the water but potentially not some of the other elements that you would need), then you could live forever without needing to eat or drink. How this happens, that's a bit more nebulous. It's going to require magic to explain. And depending ON how you get it, and how rapid the process is, would change if you took dessication damage. If your body can just leech more energy from the earth or air around you, then you would be immune. If it's a gradual process that simply sustains the character (but isn't enough to replace the water being drained), then they would take dessication damage. My personal preference (were I DMing) is to say that a VoP character is in the second group and receives only a gradual influx of nutrients.

The second would rely on magic to sustain the body. These would be Undead, and Constructs. Skeletons, for example, may actually be strengthened by dessication damage (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1941695/). Zombies/Necropolitans would likely not take damage (see: Mummies), and Ghosts would be entirely immune. Certain kinds of Golems would likely also be immune to Dessication damage. Admantine, Iron, Mithril. The metal ones. Where it gets dicier is Stone/Clay. Clay, when dehydrated, tends to crack. Stone could crack, but it's much less likely to do so. Were I DMing, I would rule that the Clay Golems take damage, as do Flesh and Brain. Undead would be on a case-by-case basis, but generally they would not take dessication damage.

The more fun answer (and the one I would assume applies to Elans) is that they are recycling the elements within their body. The reason that your body generates waste is two-fold. One, certain elements need to be removed from the body because they are toxic. Chemicals like Urea, for example, fall under this category. The other reason is that they are rendered useless due to a lack of energy or they've been stripped of everything useful. Energy flows like a river. The chemicals that are excreted by the body have either been sapped of energy by the digestive process, and the waste products filtered out by the blood stream. Or they were chemically redundant, useless for biological processes, and therefor just taking up space. To make these chemicals useful again would require some sort of influx of energy. Now, how that works... again comes down to magic (or, Psionics in the case of Elans). The energy has to come from somewhere. And, actually, we've got an explanation for where the energy comes from. Explained in those exact terms.

Your character’s mind is an infinite metaphorical plane, where all things are possible. It may be that all characters have within them the potential for harnessing the energy of the mind, but only those who succeed in tapping into that potential can become psionic characters.
There's apparently energy contained in the mind. Using that energy, an Elan can cause the "waste" materials in his body to reform into useful components and sustain himself that way. Now, we can draw meaning from this (1pp = 1 day's sustenance, meaning approximately 2,000 kcal) or we can consider this an abstraction. But either way, it's an explanation. And an Elan would absolutely take dessication damage.

[SangoProduction]

I find that well more than satisfactory. Thanks for the responses everyone.

[rrwoods]

Fwiw, some creatures explicitly have resistance to desiccation. The marrulurk (possibly all marruspawn? I'm afb right now) is a notable example.