Question on magic interacting with the environment.

[Swaoeaeieu]

A few days ago one of my players fell off the boat during a seamonster attack (a chuull).
While underwater she decided to make the monster suffer by using Shocking Grasp.

Now usually mixing electricity and salt water isn't a great idea for safety reasons. but how should this have gone by the rules?

[Uncle Pine]

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/wilderness.htm#underwaterCombat
Nothing particular about mixing electricity and salt water, only a paragraph about fire. There may be other interactions detailed in Stormwrack, but nothing like what you're looking for iirc.

[Pleh]

I think this falls under DM prerogative. Physics says everyone in a short burst radius (including caster) gets the jolt. Magic says screw physics, manipulate reality to suit you.

Since I want my players having to be smart with magic (as they usually don't have to), my table would favor the more realistic interpretation (unless the caster had some justification otherwise, like being an aquatic creature that understands underwater magic that is tailored to compensate for saline media).

EDIT: another point, I hope you remembered that Shocking Grasp requires verbal and somatic components (unless metamagic), which are tricky underwater.

[Swaoeaeieu]

I think this falls under DM prerogative. Physics says everyone in a short burst radius (including caster) gets the jolt. Magic says screw physics, manipulate reality to suit you.

Since I want my players having to be smart with magic (as they usually don't have to), my table would favor the more realistic interpretation (unless the caster had some justification otherwise, like being an aquatic creature that understands underwater magic that is tailored to compensate for saline media).

EDIT: another point, I hope you remembered that Shocking Grasp requires verbal and somatic components (unless metamagic), which are tricky underwater.

Well i am the DM, wich is why im asking :P
The sorceres is an Aventi, so she has no trouble with being underwater. I went with the reasoning that shocking grasp is a touch after wich you pump the electricity into the enemy, not the environment. So no one was hurt except the monster.
But i was just wondering what the rest of the playground thought.

[Pleh]

Well i am the DM, wich is why im asking :P
The sorceres is an Aventi, so she has no trouble with being underwater. I went with the reasoning that shocking grasp is a touch after wich you pump the electricity into the enemy, not the environment. So no one was hurt except the monster.
But i was just wondering what the rest of the playground thought.

When doctors use a defibrillator to resuscitate a patient in cardiac arrest, they yell, "clear!" because anyone touching the patient's body when it experiences the shock will likewise experience the electrical discharge.

Being submersed in a saline solution would likely still transmit the shock even if the shock were initially transmitted exclusively to the target, since the monster's skin would conduct the electric charge sufficiently to disperse it through the water.

However, this raises the question of if the spell is generating a natural electric force which obeys the laws of physics after the moment of its generation or if it is a magical electricity that always produces the same effect in any environment.

Is the spell creating its own little micro reality for a moment to do only exactly what it is supposed to do, or does magic still have to share its little play space with natural laws?

[Zanos]

Don't think too hard about how magically created electricity works. You will realize it makes very little sense if you try to intersect it with the physics of real electricity.

[Pleh]

Don't think too hard about how magically created electricity works. You will realize it makes very little sense if you try to intersect it with the physics of real electricity.

By that logic, also try not to think too hard about how magic works. You will realize it makes very little sense even when you don't try to intersect it with reality.

Or you could have fun applying just exactly the amount of thought into it that makes it fun and laugh off the rest.

[Zanos]

By that logic, also try not to think too hard about how magic works. You will realize it makes very little sense even when you don't try to intersect it with reality.

Or you could have fun applying just exactly the amount of thought into it that makes it fun and laugh off the rest.
Or you could save some time by not worrying about it all. Magic and physics don't really get along. Thermodynamics and mass/energy conservation are basically jokes. Electrical resistance, current, and voltage obviously don't work as expected, so assuming saltwater is a good conductor is pretty baseless considering magic electricity has no issue just shooting through the air with no loss until it apruptly stops with other spells. Also, using electricity on airborne targets still damages them despite having no circuit to complete.

If you want a RAW answer, the spell does what it says it does, with the touched target taking damage and nothing else. If you want to try to incorporate real world physics you might as well draw an answer out of a hat.

[Particle_Man]

If you want to dip into an older well, the 1st ed. AD&D DMG has things to say about magic underwater. You can take or leave it as you see fit. Here is what I gleaned, FWIW:

Lightning Bolt changes to become effectively an electrical fireball in area of effect (so a ball instead of a line, and the ball can be centred away from you). Fireball (and a lot of other other fire spells) won't work at all.

Shocking Grasp is unaffected.

[Pleh]

Or you could save some time by not worrying about it all. Magic and physics don't really get along. Thermodynamics and mass/energy conservation are basically jokes. Electrical resistance, current, and voltage obviously don't work as expected, so assuming saltwater is a good conductor is pretty baseless considering magic electricity has no issue just shooting through the air with no loss until it apruptly stops with other spells. Also, using electricity on airborne targets still damages them despite having no circuit to complete.

If you want a RAW answer, the spell does what it says it does, with the touched target taking damage and nothing else. If you want to try to incorporate real world physics you might as well draw an answer out of a hat.

If saving time is the goal, might as well sell your dice and books and forget wasting time on a forum talking about a dead game.

Spells in D&D are rather implied that they work as written on the tin when used in the expected, conventional manners. Caster spells underwater is not an expected, conventional environment for casting spells (or else they probably wouldn't have built the casting methods to necessitate clear and articulate verbal and somatic components). Sure, a few spells are specifically designed for assisting with aquatic environments and a few races may have a special variant casting tradition to assist in the translation of the techniques.

Is it easier not to bother with it? Of course it is. It's also easier to simply not play the game or ask the question to begin with.

But the OP was asking the question, so it rather implies that we're not simply disregarding the math as being too hard.

Just in the same way that some people prefer Roleplaying and others prefer Rollplaying, some people actually like playing with the metaphysical implications of magic.

The entire point is the pursuit of a fun, cooperative past-time. You would be flat wrong to suggest that this kind of discussion is never any fun at any table.

After all, some people like keeping track of ammunition and carrying capacity to exact detail. That is something I will probably never understand, but I'm not going to put down tables that do.

For my part, I feel like casters get too many nice things to begin with. I have no qualms making a spell backfire on them because they weren't thinking about the possible consequences of casting their spell in the environment they find themselves in.

It's not that hard to develop mechanical rules for on the fly. Just apply the Shocking Grasp damage to the target creature as well as every adjacent creature. Done. Simple. Can you argue this isn't the most accurate ruling? Of course you could. You could try to do some electromagnetic equations and try to do some estimations as to voltage and amperage. I don't know why you'd do that, but you could. Just the fact that something like this COULD theoretically happen allows us to guess a possible consequence and then roll some dice to see if it happened.

Casting a Fire type spell underwater requires a spellcaster check or the spell fizzles. You could just rule that electrical spells require a caster check or they damage the caster and other viable targets.

"Why go to the extra effort?" Well, I don't think it required all that much effort so far and it doesn't need any more effort. I feel like this makes the game more interesting than "your spell works in water exactly as it does in air." The player and DM were clever enough to consider that there might be inconvenient consequences for the character's actions. Let's reward it with some thought.

We don't need a physics textbook to do that. Just give it an eyeball estimate and roll the stupid dice already.

[Zanos]

False dichotomy. The books are written, all I've suggested is following them. That results in an agreed upon ruleset or one that is at least shared. On the fly rulings result in time spent discussing rules during gameplay, which detracts from actually playing the game. Rules shouldn't be written while playing.

If you want to make up your own rules while playing, why not just throw all your books out and just do that the entire time? See, I can create a ridiculously exaggerated caricature of your point of view that twists your actual intent as well.

I wouldn't make that ruling because magic is extremely formulaic in the D&D universe. And I'd also rather not punish someone for casting shocking grasp by having them electrocute themselves.

[Pleh]

The books are written. And they include a lot of language that supports, "Play it your own way. Here's some recommendations."

I'm fairly sure I've yet to play an actual game where rules were not written on the fly because the rules don't actually perfectly work for every scenario.

Sure, they can be followed blindly about 75% to 90% of the time (depending on how much thinking your table does outside the box), but it takes an exceptionally uncreative table to never come across a place where Rule 0 never needs to be applied here and there.

And yeah, I do oftentimes throw out the rules and give it my best guess. I find that people at my table are often dissatisfied with how RAW is telling them their game is going, so I modify it (usually in the player's favor).

If the described scenario happened at my table and no one said anything, I probably wouldn't think twice about it. You cast the spell, it takes effect, next player's turn.

If someone at the table mentioned how it forces them to question their suspense of disbelief, I'll adjust the ruling to make it feel more challenging to be a spell caster. After all, the player brought it up because they were having trouble believing the character (whether it was their own or not) was truly as powerful as they were being portrayed.

So instead of having a spell fizzle (which takes away power from the gamer), I throw on a spellcaster check or an unintended consequence (which demonstrates that the caster isn't in absolute control of their own abilities, just as mundanes don't always perfectly execute their maneuvers/skill checks).

It's not about punishing anyone. It's just maintaining a consistent narrative that the entire table can stay invested in.

Because Story >> Rules. The Rules say so.

Maintaining a consistent narrative is more important than maintaining consistent rules. The rules say so.

[Midnightninja]

Normally, I think I'd require a concentration check if verbal and/or somatic components are involved, but the character is Aventi, so I figure the aquatic subtype should eliminate any need for that.

[Shackel]

If the electricity doesn't zap the caster while they maintain it, and touching a target being hit doesn't cause you to get hit, there's no reason that it would suddenly realize physics exist underwater.

I agree with Zanos; trying to apply physics to 3.5 as a whole(commoner railgun) let alone defined magic is an exercise in futility and silliness because rarely do they actually follow these rules in their most rudimentary forms.