Bowl of Commanding Water Elementals

[Mike Miller]

So my party came up with the idea of using holy water to make a "Holy Water Elemental" and I found it very amusing. They were up against a bunch of undead and their elemental was basically worthless. What do people think about allowing said transformation? It isn't really all that powerful, right? Just allowing holy water damage on attacks instead of nothing? I find it kind of humorous.

[Psyren]

You mean incorporeal undead, right? Because against solid undead, a water elemental does damage normally (though DR/regen the undead have will apply as appropriate.)

For incorporeal undead though, holy water only damages them under very specific circumstances. Simply splashing it about, or giving it a slam attack, won't actually work by RAW.

If you're fine overlooking all of that then this should be okay.

[Mike Miller]

Yes, I meant incorporeal. Yea it would be a big handwave. I just didn't want to overlook something. I generally trust my group and it was a spur of the moment creation so I figured they weren't trying to pull a fast one. I just wanted to see if anyone could see problems that I didn't. Sounds good then, thanks

[Psyren]

How are they making it anyway? Bless Water only works on a pint per casting (which must be in a flask); that wouldn't even be a Small elemental, and it would take 10 rounds to do even that much. If they're starting with the water, you don't actually summon water elementals from existing water, they just come from the Plane of Water with their own.

You could remind them that this is what spells like Magic Fang are for, to let you enhance a summoned creature's natural attacks so that it can take on incorporeal foes like this.

[EndocrineBandit]

-shrugs- i see no qualms with it. My dm allowed me to pour ipecac in our wizards elemental compainion and force itself down a dragons throat. I think he allowed it for creativity and hilarity.. til we used thr time nauseated to turn a chaos flask into flux slime and murder the cr 14 with a party of lvl 5-7.

[RoboEmperor]

It's a summoning medium. An offer, tribute. A spell component. Being holy water or normal water doesn't make any difference. You still get a normal water elemental.

[Bullet06320]

slap on the celestial template on the elemental
rewarding players for creativity is always a good thing
but make them do a knowledge planes or knowledge religion check of dc 15-20 for it

[ExLibrisMortis]

Should be totally fine, but you'll have to brew up some abilities for it, because--as previous posters have explained--summoned water elementals and holy water don't really interact in any useful way.

That said, you could do something like the Orglash template (Unapproachable East), which modifies air elementals, most notably by adding a cone of cold attack. A water elemental equivalent that adds disrupt undead and/or cure critical wounds to summoned elementals would be quite nice.

[Thurbane]

Would it give a reversed version of the Necromental template? :tongue:

[ATHATH]

How are they making it anyway? Bless Water only works on a pint per casting (which must be in a flask); that wouldn't even be a Small elemental, and it would take 10 rounds to do even that much. If they're starting with the water, you don't actually summon water elementals from existing water, they just come from the Plane of Water with their own.

You could remind them that this is what spells like Magic Fang are for, to let you enhance a summoned creature's natural attacks so that it can take on incorporeal foes like this.
Maybe the elemental could concentrate the holy water portions of itself in its fists or something?

[Mike Miller]

Maybe the elemental could concentrate the holy water portions of itself in its fists or something?

That is exactly what one of the party members suggested. Kind of amusing, really

[rferries]

Holy Water Elemental
Your summoners have conjured you from a medium of holy water.

Prerequisites
Elemental, [Water] subtype, non-evil alignment.

Benefits
You gain the [Good] subtype. Your natural weapons and any weapons you wield gain the holy property (they are treated as magic and good-aligned weapons and deal an extra 2d6 points of damage to creatures of evil alignment)..

Whenever you make a successful grapple check against an evil outsider or undead creature, or whenever you damage such a creature with your vortex special attack (if any), the holy water making up your body burns the creature like acid. It takes 1d6 points of damage per two HD you possess.

Special
If you had a non-good alignment when you took this feat, your alignment becomes good on the moral (good vs. evil) axis.

Whenever an incorporeal undead passes through your space or vice versa, it takes 10d6 points of damage. This damage ignores the normal 50% chance for an incorporeal creature to ignore corporeal sources of damage.

[lbuttitta]

Maybe all its natural attacks would be enhanced as with the "holy" special ability (i.e. +1d6 holy damage on an attack, +1d10 on critical hit)?

[atemu1234]

Holy Water Elemental
Your summoners have conjured you from a medium of holy water.

Prerequisites
Elemental, [Water] subtype, non-evil alignment.

Benefits
You gain the [Good] subtype. Your natural weapons and any weapons you wield gain the holy property (they are treated as magic and good-aligned weapons and deal an extra 2d6 points of damage to creatures of evil alignment)..

Whenever you make a successful grapple check against an evil outsider or undead creature, or whenever you damage such a creature with your vortex special attack (if any), the holy water making up your body burns the creature like acid. It takes 1d6 points of damage per two HD you possess.

Special
If you had a non-good alignment when you took this feat, your alignment becomes good on the moral (good vs. evil) axis.

Whenever an incorporeal undead passes through your space or vice versa, it takes 10d6 points of damage. This damage ignores the normal 50% chance for an incorporeal creature to ignore corporeal sources of damage.

I feel like I could build a semifunctional monk swordsage build around this feat tbh.

[Deophaun]

Don't see anything wrong with it. I had a cleric with profession: chef once. He took some holy water, mixed in some chilies, tomatillos, various spices, and wound up with holy mole. Same principle.

[rferries]

I feel like I could build a semifunctional monk swordsage build around this feat tbh.

Yeah I added in those prereqs to prevent abuse, haha! There should be equivalents for other elementals - an air elementals of sacred incense, fire elementals of sacred fire, earth elementals from consecrated ground, etc.

[Fizban]

How are they making it anyway? Bless Water only works on a pint per casting (which must be in a flask); that wouldn't even be a Small elemental, and it would take 10 rounds to do even that much. If they're starting with the water, you don't actually summon water elementals from existing water, they just come from the Plane of Water with their own.
Which is how summon spells work, but the X of commanding elementals are clearly taking a fluffy angle on their "summoning."

You fill the Bowl with water, you get an elemental. The bowl is a 1' diameter half-sphere, which should take about 3.8 gallons to fill. No one actually carries that much holy water on them. But, considering how water elementals suck at land combat, letting it have some holy water damage from whatever they've got to pull their bacon off the fire seems perfectly fine to me. It's a cool item being used in an intuitive way, go for it.