Grappling elementals and countersong

[Harlot]

Hi
I am the DM.
Last night we had a discussion regarding elementals and grappling. The group encountered a Mimic and a fire elemental was summoned.
I can't see anything in the monster entry saying a fire elemental can't be grappled. It does bludgeoning damage and its not incorporal.
And what about air elementals?

Another discussion:
The bard has countersong. He wants to know if he can cast it as a reaction, that is; if some creature uses a song as attack, can the bard use countersong immediately or does he have to wait his turn, thus risking being unable to do so because he is himself affected by the hostile spell? (Sleep for instance )
What do you say?

[bekeleven]

In the rules as written, air elementals are dudes that are really light. You're free to give air elementals some properties of incorporeality (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm#incorporeality), but it would up their challenge ratings to do so.

Fire elementals deal damage equal to their unarmed attack whenever struck with natural/unarmed attacks. I forget the exact rules cite on whether grapple checks count, but cmon, they do.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Elementals grapple as normal, no matter their element. And by RAW grappling a fire elemental doesn't do any fire damage either, unless you hit it with a natural weapon or unarmed strike while grappling.

You can't normally cast Countersong as a reaction - it's a standard action. If you want to use it that way you need to ready an action to use countersong or get a Charm of Countersong (MIC, 400gp) that lets you use it 1/day as an immediate action.
It doesn't work against Sleep in any case because Sleep is neither sonic nor language-dependent.

[Harlot]

Thanks for accurate and fast replies☺
The reason I mentioned sleep is because they ran into a bunch of petals using sleep songs on them and as they might meet those again, that part is important.