damage question

[Zhepna]

Hi,

I play 3.5 and I have Ring of Energy Immunity Cold. My dm says it protect me from weather up to -70. If a cold spell is cast on me, I take no cold damage but physical damage from the shock of the spell hitting me.

He refers to this text:

Cold Immunity

A creature with cold immunity never takes cold damage but takes 50% physical damage.It has vulnerability to fire, which means it takes half again as much (+50%) damage as normal from fire, regardless of whether a saving throw is allowed, or if the save is a success or failure.

He says that since it's the ring that give me that ability, I don't suffer from the fire drawback.

Is it the way it works? We are both new to the 3.5 system and I want to make sure everything is applied the right way.

Thanks for the information and have a nice day.

[Darth Ultron]

Cold immunity only protects from cold damage.

Not sure where you get that 50% physical damage from...it is not in the 3.5 SRD.

But that would only count for things like a hail stone....but most things separate impact damage from cold damage anyway.

There is no ''physical shock of a spell'' hitting anyone in the rules.

[Inevitability]

If you are wearing a ring that gives you immunity to cold, anything that would deal cold damage deals no damage to you. The quote given by your DM is almost literally the rules text, except for the 'but takes 50% physical damage' bit.

You are right in that you're not vulnerable to fire because you put on a magic ring, though.

[Fizban]

Apparently the DMG itself is wrong: it's entirely possible to be immune to cold (or another energy type) without being vulnerable to another. Srd.org and even the DMG itself however, list Cold Immunity and Fire Immunity in the special abilities glossary, with built in mandatory vulnerabilities.

The Monster Manual (which is the primary source for monster abilities) does not do this: it properly lists the Cold Subtype and Fire Subtype, which always confer the immunity/vulnerability pair, with no mention of the "Cold Immunity" or "Fire Immunity" from the DMG. The Rules Compendium clarifies, that Energy Immunity makes a creature immune to damage from an energy type, and creatures with fire or cold immunity are typically vulnerable to the other, but it is not an absolute. Monsters are quite easy to figure out, since the stat block will always tell you straight up what their immunities and vulnerabilities are and that's all you need to know.

A Ring of Energy Immunity, as mentioned in the previous thread, is an Epic magic item- the item confers no vulnerabilities.

A Ring of the Icy Soul (Frostburn version) confers the Cold Subtype, which includes vulnerability to fire.

What we have here is the DM just making stuff up and putting abilities out of the glossary on an item (which is fine), but quoting text (probably from a website or a bad translation) which is wrong. Unless the DM decided their version of energy immunity isn't actually energy immunity and invented the half damage clause themselves.

[noob]

It is a ring given by the gm.
If he wanted it to have an inbuilt conversion of frost damage in physical damage then he is free to do that.
And since the game is hosted by the gm if he wants frost to always have a physical portion he is free to do that.

[Inevitability]

It is a ring given by the gm.
If he wanted it to have an inbuilt conversion of frost damage in physical damage then he is free to do that.
And since the game is hosted by the gm if he wants frost to always have a physical portion he is free to do that.

That argument would be valid if we were talking about a custom magic item, but we're not: a 'Ring of Energy Immunity (Cold)' is a listed item that already has set traits. Unless the original poster tells us the GM made something that just happened to have the same name, there's no reason to assume it's homebrewed.

[noob]

It is very likely the gm does not knows the epic handbook and just made a ring that was a better variant of the ring of energy resistance: cold with immunity in the name instead of resistance(which seems a easy to find idea)
If he does know the epic handbook and that this ring comes from here then the player can sell this ring for the absurd value indicated and get a ring of major energy resistance cold(since before epic it is equivalent to halving) and buy the +6 items for all his stats and still have tons of leftover money.
And yes there will be one epic person to buy this ring: it is better than a ring of resistance once you fight creatures that deals enough cold damage.

[Avigor]

By RAW, a proper Ring of Energy Immunity Cold should render you immune to Cold damage, only causing you to take damage if the source of the cold also includes some other form of damage, such as an icy burst sword's slashing damage or the ice storm spell's bludgeoning damage.

Per Frostburn (and possibly DMG, I'm afb atm), immunity (or even resistance) to cold damage automatically protects against extremes of temperature, but not necessarily the other way around.

If he's saying the ring doesn't give total protection, then it isn't a proper RoEIC, and the situation is one of the following: it is some sort of cursed partial immunity ring, it is something that is intended to only protect against environmental cold not cold attacks and so therefore isn't intended to protect against cone of cold or similar and the DM is being generous giving you partial immunity, or the DM is being a **** about not wanting you to actually have proper cold immunity despite you supposedly having the cold immunity item.

I'm not sure if I'd either talk to him about it first, or attempt some sort of more advanced identification magic IC first to confirm what is going on, but yeah something has got to be up.

EDIT/Addendum: Forgot the possibility that he could just not understand how energy immunity is supposed to work...

[Mordaedil]

I think if you aren't playing an epic level campaign, a vulnerability to fire makes sense for the ring to have.

[Crake]

I think if you aren't playing an epic level campaign, a vulnerability to fire makes sense for the ring to have.

But then why bother with the ring, just cast one of the mantle spells from a scroll and get the fire/cold subtype permanently on yourself from a scroll or something, without wasting a ring slot?

[Mordaedil]

Cause you can use the spell on a different element? I mean, I reckon there's better uses of a ring slot, but being constantly immune to an element could be pretty game changing in the right campaign.

[Inevitability]

Cause you can use the spell on a different element? I mean, I reckon there's better uses of a ring slot, but being constantly immune to an element could be pretty game changing in the right campaign.

The player made a post before this one where they stated this particular campaign was very unlikely to see lots of cold creatures.

[Mordaedil]

The player made a post before this one where they stated this particular campaign was very unlikely to see lots of cold creatures.
Was that the same one where the opinion was that he should sell the ring?

Not always so easy to remember all the discussions on this forum.

[Inevitability]

Was that the same one where the opinion was that he should sell the ring?

Not always so easy to remember all the discussions on this forum.

It was indeed.