PDA

View Full Version : This is how magical fire should look like:



Crooked Man
2018-06-30, 05:35 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZEEuCHdWFA

I really like the idea of magical fire being invisible to the human eye, you only the person and things burning with no visible flames.

What you guys think?

Psyren
2018-07-01, 01:46 AM
By default, no for several reasons, but a feat/technique or other option to make one's magical/alchemical fire invisible would be fine imo.

Mechalich
2018-07-01, 01:52 AM
Provided the necessary conditions are present, meaning oxygen+carbon, a source of extreme heat will cause ignition to occur once various flashpoints are reached. So an invisible magical fire would trigger visible mundane secondary fire in short order, which kind of renders it a moot point.

hamishspence
2018-07-01, 01:53 AM
By default, no for several reasons, but a feat/technique or other option to make one's magical/alchemical fire invisible would be fine imo.

. So an invisible magical fire would trigger visible mundane secondary fire in short order, which kind of renders it a moot point.


The Invisible Spell feat from Cityscape does this. It even uses Fireball as the example - pointing out that while the fireball itself is invisible - the nonmagical fires ignited in flammable material by it, are visible.

Knaight
2018-07-01, 01:53 AM
You wouldn't want to do this in a system where it was deliberately made visible, but beyond that it seems like a totally viable option.

Psyren
2018-07-01, 02:20 AM
The Invisible Spell feat from Cityscape does this. It even uses Fireball as the example - pointing out that while the fireball itself is invisible - the nonmagical fires ignited in flammable material by it, are visible.

That would be one of the "feats/techniques" I was alluding to, yes.

Torack
2018-07-01, 03:33 AM
I like the idea, especially for a thief-mage class or something close to that. Otherwise, I like visualizing massive fire waves causing immense destruction.

Spore
2018-07-01, 03:08 PM
The point is, most 'fire' damage is actually heat or similar, not really fire. A D&D Fireball is an explosive blast wave that happens to do 'fire damage'.

hamishspence
2018-07-01, 03:20 PM
The thing about fireballs is that they don't act much like explosions, blasting people away from ground zero.

gkathellar
2018-07-01, 04:44 PM
The thing about fireballs is that they don't act much like explosions, blasting people away from ground zero.

Yeah, explosions are really, really complicated and difficult to model in a game system. It's far easier to assume that fireball is literally an expanding ball of fire that exists very briefly, after which the universe remembers that those flames do not actually exist and all of the heat disappears, leaving behind only what was scorched during its momentary existence.

Knaight
2018-07-01, 06:14 PM
Yeah, explosions are really, really complicated and difficult to model in a game system. It's far easier to assume that fireball is literally an expanding ball of fire that exists very briefly, after which the universe remembers that those flames do not actually exist and all of the heat disappears, leaving behind only what was scorched during its momentary existence.

Plenty of game systems model explosions both really easily, often more so than fire. They're also no more complicated than things that games model all the time, often quite easily.

frogglesmash
2018-07-01, 09:29 PM
The Invisible Spell feat from Cityscape does this. It even uses Fireball as the example - pointing out that while the fireball itself is invisible - the nonmagical fires ignited in flammable material by it, are visible.

The problem with that is you're using invisible spell, and that's a can of worms best left unopened.

Kami2awa
2018-07-05, 12:53 PM
I don't think it's too unbalancing to have magical fire invisible in strong sunlight. The flames in the video would still be visible in a dark dungeon, a shadowy alleyway, a candlelit tavern, or frankly most of the places where D&D characters are likely to be fighting :D

I've always like "unnatural" colours of fire for magical flame - green, purple, multicolour, pure white or really bright red - or even black. Yes, you can get those by burning appropriate metals, but it's not something you often see.