Acid and Earth - should they break up?

[Particle_Man]

I noticed that there is a loose association with Acid and Earth in Pathfinder (Earth domain clerics get Acid Dart, Stone Oracles can get acid resistance, earth school elementalist wizards get acid cloud, the Oread race gets acid resistance). But this is not always the case (deep earth sorcerers and geokineticists have no association with acid, AFAICT, and earth elementals are not particularly associated with acid).

Now I can see the Pathfinder urge for symmetry (4 cardinal elements, 4 energy types to go with them) but maybe that symmetry is not necessary. I mean going the other way I don't think there is a Sonic elemental, nor a plane of Sound. And Pathfinder has an acid quasi-elemental, so it doesn't need to ground an energy type in Earth. And Earth is not, to my mind, associated with energy. More like solidity, really. Black dragons, that breath acid, are associated with water, not earth, for an example of another break between earth and acid.

What do you think? Should there be a strong (or weak) tie between acid and earth? Or is such a tie unnecessary?

[Elder_Basilisk]

They should probably break up as you suggest.

I think it's just lazy game design. "Fire ray is a balanced ability for fire domain; let's copy it for the other elemental domains. It'll save us the trouble of thinking something uniquely appropriate up in each case." (Fire ray isn't really a well balanced domain ability but that's a subject for another post).

[Psyren]

It's as good a place for acid as any. And just because a given element uses a given energy doesn't mean it's only ever found there - electricity is under both Air and Metal for instance.

[Sayt]

It's been a while since I did any chem in highschool, but IIRC, there are two major groups of corrosives, Acid and Alkal, and PF calls them both acid. Most alkali are salts or metal compounds, and there are an array of inorganic mineral acids.

[Geddy2112]

Second the chemistry aspect- most acids and bases come from mineral salts, and have been made that way since the old days of human history. Acid damage covers damage from extreme pH(high or low). Likewise, earth having resistance because it has salts and weaker acids/bases to cancel it out.

I don't see where you would have acid damage if it does not tie to earth.

[eldskald]

Air and electric energy type also have a kinda loose association too. For instance, blue dragons are associated with earth and deserts and breathe electricity. Also, air elementals have no resistance to electricity whatsoever. There are the lightning elementals who also come from the plane of air, but yeah... I think we link electricity to the element of air mostly because of weather. I mean, lightning comes from the clouds up in the sky, right? But what causes it something really complicated. When you stop to think about it, you realize clouds are made of water (not air!) and that the sea, the land, the atmosphere and the sun all play important roles on the cycle of weather. It is just unfair to associate weather to air, but what is air without weather? With no winds, tornados and stuff, it's close to nothing!


Likewise, earth having resistance because it has salts and weaker acids/bases to cancel it out.

But that's the bummer, earth elementals have no resistance to acid! Also, the quasi-elemental of acid the op talked about is not Paizo material, so yeah...

[Psyren]

I don't see where you would have acid damage if it does not tie to earth.

A lot of games throw it in water. The problem there of course is that cold definitely belongs in water, so now water has two key elements and earth has none.

[aimlessPolymath]

Personally, I've always wanted to see Acid and Water together, and Cold and Earth together.

From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frostbite):


the process of freezing causes ice crystals to form in tissue, which causes damage at the cellular level.
Crystal formation? Turning things to a more solid form? Sounds very Earth-like to me.

And, of course, destroying things by dissolving them feels very Water.

[eldskald]

Let's all be honest, it's no use argumenting over which type of damage goes where on the "four elements trope" using modern science knowledge. The whole trope came from not knowing what composed the world! Thinking it was composed of fire, earth, air and water made sense back in the day. Now that we know a lot more about the elements that compose the universe and where fire, earth, air and water stands on it, it's all complete nonsense to carry on with the trope.

[Gildedragon]

So personally: outside of fire and fire There can be justifications for a fair few of the pairrings.
Fire works with electric
Cold works for Air, as does Sonic
Acid works nicely for Water
Earth works great with Cold (in alchemy Earth is categorized as being Cold and Dry), the crystal formation element is a great fit, but electric also works (piezo electricity)

I personally would go:
Fire-Fire
Air-Sonic or Electric
Water-Acid
Earth-Cold or Force

[RedWarlock]

Let's all be honest, it's no use argumenting over which type of damage goes where on the "four elements trope" using modern science knowledge. The whole trope came from not knowing what composed the world! Thinking it was composed of fire, earth, air and water made sense back in the day. Now that we know a lot more about the elements that compose the universe and where fire, earth, air and water stands on it, it's all complete nonsense to carry on with the trope.

Yes, but this is D&D, not the 'modern science' of the real world. Physics and chemistry aren't necessarily applicable, matter actually COULD be made of the 4 elements.

Edit: Adding my own preferences (though this goes outside the 3e/PF perspective, but it's similar)

I have 2 schemes I use, depending on what I'm talking about (and I REALLY go off on a tangent):

The first uses an 8-element system, adding 'ice' and 'plant' to the core elements, and then making 'light' and 'dark' sort-of-elements. I also have a variant class system, where an 'Evoker' class (somewhere in the region of a Warlock/Kineticist at-will w/ boosts) gets to select one energy type for their Energy Blast ability, which is all about damage. Each energy type has its own feat, one to start the class, with others taken as feats to add on different types. (This is separate from the elemental Conjurer class, that is more of a control caster, doing push/pull effects, walls, structures, etc.)


Fire/Flame domain - fire damage
Air/Storm domain - lightning/sonic/force damage
Earth domain - force/sonic damage
Water domain - none
Ice/Frost domain - cold damage
Plant domain - lightning damage (think shambling mound), plus perhaps poison/acid damage (both are 'physical' rather than 'energy' types, though, pertaining to DR in my system.)

And of course:

Light/Holy domain - radiant damage
Dark/Shadow domain - necrotic damage


The second, more modern (used in my urban fantasy material), 'energy' is the domain of fire entirely, the specific types are from mixing it with other elements. The magic is more 'Avatar'-inspired, with basic manipulation of the element (pyrokinesis/hydrokinesis/geokinesis/aerokinesis) as vulgar magic, while fine-control effects have secondary associations.

Fire - Simple form, pyrokinesis. Blending fire magic with other elements allows for more varied damage types.
Fire - Complex form mixes other elements:
Cold - Water+Fire (more accurately, 'remoting heat' from conjured water to make it into ice)
Electricity - Fire+Air (adding energy to a mass of air, then separating it into the positive and negative charge to make lightning)

Fire - Refined form, Shadow, illusion. (fine control of light & sound)



Water - Simple form, hydrokinesis.
Water - More complex is transmutation, as water is the element of change. Alter base properties of nonliving materials.
Water - Refined form is Growth, healing and biological transmutation.
Air - Simple form, aerokinesis.
Air - Complex form, telekinesis/force effects.
Air - Refined form, Song, psychic/mental effects.
Earth - Simple form, geokinesis. (though this tends towards blunt shaping, not so much 'making rocks fly' unless doing it fast enough to generate projectile force)
Earth - Complex form, adds duration to other magical effects, as earth magic endures.
Earth - Refined form, Craft, not just long-lasting magic, but permanent enchanting. Involves binding of spirits/elementals into objects to create permanent effects.

Acid isn't 'energy' as such. Doesn't really come up in the base system, though I could see it, using water magic to alter something into an acidic chemical.

[Gildedragon]

There's this great essay on mimir.net about elemental atomic theory

link here (https://mimir.net/essays/planarphysics.html) for anyone interested

[Kurald Galain]

Personally, I've always wanted to see Acid and Water together, and Cold and Earth together.

Fire => fire
Water => acid
Air => cold
Earth => bludgeoning
Aether => lightning

Ta dah :smallbiggrin:

[Psyren]

Personally, I've always wanted to see Acid and Water together, and Cold and Earth together.

From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frostbite):


Crystal formation? Turning things to a more solid form? Sounds very Earth-like to me.

And, of course, destroying things by dissolving them feels very Water.

Associating cold with earth is pretty difficult when magma and thermal energy exist, even in fantasy.


Fire => fire
Water => acid
Air => cold
Earth => bludgeoning
Aether => lightning

Ta dah :smallbiggrin:

I'm not sure Aether/Void/etc should have any element really.
If you're going to make Earth be physical, it should get all three types I'd say.

[Kurald Galain]

If you're going to make Earth be physical, it should get all three types I'd say.

Nah, I'm not a fan of multi-typed damage. It could be earth = bludgeon, wood = piercing, metal = slash. That way we cover all seven elements in Pathfinder.

This doesn't yet cover e.g. sonic or force damage, but frankly there are too many damage types anyway.

[DrMotives]

I'd be more tempted to associate earth with sonic. Not that earthquake waves are exactly sonic, but at least they're both strong vibrations. And video game logic with "earth damage" effects is usually either a quake, or just throwing clods of dirt & rock and calling it an elemental attack. While I'm not familiar with PF very much, most of the D&D dragons with sonic breath weapons are earth types: Pyroclastic dragon & sapphire are both earth type, and while emerald is an air dragon, it also lives in extinct volcanoes, which sounds more like earth than air.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Aside from the acids and bases from minerals thing ground often includes plant life, and plants are associated with poisons and acids. It's a little farfetched, I admit it, but this is where I figured the link came from.


Associating cold with earth is pretty difficult when magma and thermal energy exist, even in fantasy.

Yeah, this. If you throw the whole system around, putting fluids in water, gasses in air and crystalline structures in earth then ice is earth. And then you might be able to say "things become solid when cold, so cold damage, even though metals and not rocks are the good temperature conductors that feel cold on a cold day. But as much as I like that (minus the earth is cold thing) personally most fantasy systems have steam and ice as water. And they probably should be, because it would be weird for an elemental(ist) to be able to heat their water only to lose control over it as it evaporates. (Could be fun, but again, major rewrite.)



Earth => bludgeoning

That would be the most real alternative, as far as I'm concerned. Might not work equally well with all spells. But it's pretty awesome in the ones where it does. Ray of acid? Boulder bullet! Bam!

[Togo]

It all depends on the cosmology you use, surely?

In the old mutli-shell great wheel cosmology from 1st ed AD&D, You had air fire earth and water as your elemental planes, where Air beat water, water beat earth, earth beat fire and fire beat air.

Then you got to the paraelemental planes:

Air+fire=heat/smoke
fire+earth=magma
earth+water=ooze/acid
water+air=Vapour

And the Quasi-elemental planes Ash, Dust, Salt, Vacuum, Lightning, Mineral, Radiance, and Steam

Air+Positive=Lighting
Air+Negative=Vacuum
Fire+Positive=Radiance
Fire+Negative=Ash
Earth+Positive=Mineral
Earth+Negative=Dust
Water+Positive=Steam
Water+Negative=Salt

There some attempts to realign various spells along the lines of these elements, such as the infamous mineral bolt, but it never really caught on. Cold and acid still don't really fit anywhere, poison and sonic aren't really elements and never really worked like them, and we still have various outerplaner entities being associated with, and having resistance or immunity to, particular elements for reasons that don't really stand up to scrutiny. Meanwhile, while positive energy heals you, there are plenty of forms of healing that don't involve positive energy (e.g. compare cure light to lesser vigour) And so on and so forth.

The point is that most AD&D settings don't assume a hermetic world, in which elements are symmetric and broadly equal and equivalent, partly because it's less interesting that way, and partly because different parts got written by different people. Thus Gods are both vastly powerful and easily killed by an adventuring party with levels in the high teens. The Abyss is both the chaotic evil corner of the moral universe, and a giant burrowing creature that got wedged in there somehow, which acts as a constant protean source of life, spawned endless tanari, and left the original chaotic evil outsiders sad remenants of their former glory. The outsiders of law and good tend towards wings and lightning for reasons that have more to do with the former rule of the elemental plane of Air over the Prime Material, than anything to do with law or good. The planes of mirrors, shadows, concordant opposition and the Far realms change in every supplement, alternate Primes are stuffed with Victorian magicians and spaceships, and the composition of Limbo owes more to the EndlessQuest adventure book series than anything that appeared in an actual game. Just don't ask where the heck the fey come from, or what's in the deep ethereal, or what element covers the fire produced by igniting philostogen, and everything will be fine.

[Kurald Galain]

Air+Positive=Lighting
Air+Negative=Vacuum
Fire+Positive=Radiance
Fire+Negative=Ash
Earth+Positive=Mineral
Earth+Negative=Dust
Water+Positive=Steam
Water+Negative=Salt
Based on that, sonic damage should fall under vacuum; cold under fire+negative; and acid under either water+neg or earth+neg.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Based on that, sonic damage should fall under vacuum; cold under fire

If you can convince your GM of those two, send the video.

[Kurald Galain]

you can convince your GM of those two

Fire PLUS NEG.

Also, if you create a vacuum, you'll get a loud sonic clap. Didn't you know that?

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Fire PLUS NEG.

Also, if you create a vacuum, you'll get a loud sonic clap. Didn't you know that?

But negative energy is more like "unholy" right, and less like "opposite day"? And sound needs a medium to travel through, that's one of it's defining physical features. I'm sure there are plenty of ways to make a sound using a vacuum, but there is no way for that sound to actually exist inside the vacuum itself. Sound can coexist with any possible demi-semi-quasi-element better than it can with its mortal enemy vacuum. If this was rock paper scissor vacuum would beat sound.

Unless it's a vacuum cleaner, those are pretty loud.