Help me burn hell

[samuraijaques]

Hey guys,

I'm playing in decent into avernus in october and I got it into my head that I wanted to play a pyromancer. I want to scare the **** out of some fiends that think they can't take fire damage and eventually try and burn hell to the ground. literally fight fire with fire. Problem is, elemental adept isn't great and everything in hell has immunity to fire so at best I'd be hitting for half damage. My current plan is Tiefling Evoker with flames of phlegthos and elemental adept. I really want to go evoker for sculpt spell and the advantages inherent to just being a wizard but I'm open to multiclassing.

Two thoughts I had:
-I could see about changing the damage type of a bunch of fire spells to radiant or something and calling it divine fire or some such ala sacred flame.
-or I could see if the dm will let me upgrade elemental adept to just straight up ignore fire immunity and resistance.

Would either of these two rules changes dramatically unbalance the game?

How can I make this character work?

EDIT: misread elemental adept, thought it turned immunity into resistance. oops

[moonfly7]

I'd ask the DM if you could use the lore wizard to sub damage types of the spells.
If not, I personally already allow the elemental adept rule you suggested.
Some thoughts though:
Pack a butt ton of alchemists fire

See if you can multiclass into artificer, play artillerist and always summon the flame thrower turret

The spell elemental bane can deal fire damage and renders resistance, and only resistance, futile for the duration.

Buy holy water, it "burns" enemies

Use prestidigitation combined with oil flasks for fun

Ask the DM if he'll let you make your own spell for a ton of gold and research, and make a spell that nulls resists and immunities(DM would obviously have to approve)

Take high charisma and convince the demons your fire can hurt them.

[stoutstien]

Grave clerics can give a target vulnerability to any damage source as a CD.

[JackPhoenix]

Grave clerics can give a target vulnerability to any damage source as a CD.

Which doesn't actually help. 0 damage (immunity) x 2 (vulnerability) is still 0. Only resistance and vulnerability negate each other, immunity is separate.

[stoutstien]

Which doesn't actually help. 0 damage (immunity) x 2 (vulnerability) is still 0. Only resistance and vulnerability negate each other, immunity is separate.

Is it? I figured this is one of those specific beats general rules.
Well looks like you have to polymorph them into something not immune to fire or refluff a spell like any of the acid ones to be 'burning' away a foe

[Xihirli]

You could focus Radiant damage, that’s basically “fire +” damage.

EDIT: Of course, you couldn’t do the evoked build. You could go Light Cleric or Divine Soul Sorcerer, though.

[Cavir]

Piercing Evocation from CM will turn 10 of the damage to untyped. "energy resistance and immunity do not apply"

[NNescio]

You could focus Radiant damage, that’s basically “fire +” damage.

EDIT: Of course, you couldn’t do the evoked build. You could go Light Cleric or Divine Soul Sorcerer, though.

Eh, Evokers get radiant damage too, especially if XGtE is on the table.

[RickAllison]

Look at Plane Shift: Kaladesh! There is a sorcerer subclass there that, at a high enough level, can treat immunity to fire as resistance. So you can burn hell.

[Xihirli]

Eh, Evokers get radiant damage too, especially if XGtE is on the table.

Not until seventh level, though that is a good choice for an evoker.

[RickAllison]

Here is the Sorcerer Origin:


Sorcerous Origin: Pyromancer
Your innate magic manifests in fire. You are your fire, and your fire is you.

Heart of Fire
At 1st level, whenever you start casting a spell of 1st level or higher that deals fire damage, fiery magic erupts from you. This eruption causes creatures of your choice that you can see within 10 feet of you to take fire damage equal to half your sorcerer level (minimum of 1).

Fire in the Veins
At 6th level, you gain resistance to fire damage. In addition, spells you cast ignore resistance to fire damage.

Pyromancer’s Fury
Starting at 14th level, when you are hit by a melee attack, you can use your reaction to deal fire damage to the attacker. The damage equals your sorcerer level, and ignores resistance to fire damage.

Fiery Soul
At 18th level, you gain immunity to fire damage. In addition, any spell or effect you create ignores resistance to fire damage and treats immunity to fire damage as resistance to fire damage.

[Bohandas]

Chlorine trifluoride maybe

[Nhorianscum]

A pyro18/zeal2 can burn pretty much anything to dead instantly but before this we unfortunately need to play by the rules and use maximized thunder damage to kill immune things. It's still dumbstronk even vs fire immune things. (This is coming from a guy who has used this combo three times with a DM who loves fire resist/immunity)

As far as vulnerability vs immunity inflicting vuln with grave or hallow will (to my knowledge) force immunity down to resist. So Pryo 6 deals full and pyro 18 deals 2x.

[NNescio]

Chlorine trifluoride maybe

Ah yes, the chemical that burns even normally-incombustible stuff like sand, concrete, asbestos, water, carbon dioxide, and friggin' oxygen itself.

[RickAllison]

A pyro18/zeal2 can burn pretty much anything to dead instantly but before this we unfortunately need to play by the rules and use maximized thunder damage to kill immune things. It's still dumbstronk even vs fire immune things. (This is coming from a guy who has used this combo three times with a DM who loves fire resist/immunity)

As far as vulnerability vs immunity inflicting vuln with grave or hallow will (to my knowledge) force immunity down to resist. So Pryo 6 deals full and pyro 18 deals 2x.

Immunity doesn't interact with vulnerability as well (and neither does resistance, technically). So inflicting vulnerability will still do nothing for most situations. The exception, naturally, being a Pyro 18, where that downgrading immunity to resistance now lets you deal normal damage. 5e doesn't have a sliding scale of the different damage things, they are isolated.

[Nhorianscum]

Immunity doesn't interact with vulnerability as well (and neither does resistance, technically). So inflicting vulnerability will still do nothing for most situations. The exception, naturally, being a Pyro 18, where that downgrading immunity to resistance now lets you deal normal damage. 5e doesn't have a sliding scale of the different damage things, they are isolated.

Oddly the RAI is that it is a sliding scale.

I'd normally ignore RAI but this is one of those places where the game is not-workable RAW.

Sliding scale is also the most common ruling I've seen. 2nd most common being specific > general it takes double. 3rd most common was I saw a DM look at the interaction, blink slowly, call the session, and go get a beer to ponder his life choices.

I somehow doubt the DM allowing UA in "hell road warriors" is the sort of fun-nazi that see's a player roll pyro, and then goes "I rule that you are useless".

It's still a conversation to have with the GM (because everything is in 5e fsr ffs) but we can assume the DM is willing to work with the concept.

[Kane0]

UA School of Invention Wizard.
Combustible lemons.

[RickAllison]

Oddly the RAI is that it is a sliding scale.

I'd normally ignore RAI but this is one of those places where the game is not-workable RAW.

Sliding scale is also the most common ruling I've seen. 2nd most common being specific > general it takes double. 3rd most common was I saw a DM look at the interaction, blink slowly, call the session, and go get a beer to ponder his life choices.

It absolutely is not RAI. We have Sage Advice for the RAI:


Angus Surber: With the Grave Domain in Xanathar's Guide to Everything, does the "Path to the Grave" feature only apply vulnerability, but keep immunity and resistance intact? It doesn't say that it removes resistances/immunity, but in the Unearthed Arcana it did. Intended?

JC: Path to the Grave intentionally doesn't remove immunity or resistance.

Westley Braswell: So how would that work? Would the creature have vulnerability, or immunity?

JC: If a creature is immune to a damage type, giving them vulnerability or resistance to it doesn't do anything. If a creature somehow has resistance and vulnerability to the same damage type, follow the rule in the Player's Handbook (p. 197).

Dissecting this a bit now. First of all, we have the easy answer when it comes to immunity. It doesn't care. A non-Zariel devil given vulnerability to fire still takes no damage. Now the interaction with vulnerability and resistance is covered by the PHB in a surprisingly clear way.


Resistance and then vulnerability are applied after
ali other modifiers to damage.

I was surprised that the book actually had a clear rule for this in place. Not only do we have a clear telling that they are considered separately, we are actually given an order of operations. This is good news for Pyros/Elemental Adepts, as they can still take advantage of vulnerability without someone being able to say that the resistance was cancelled out, because the book explicitly says you can have both resistance and vulnerability. Side note, this also means that if you have an odd amount of damage, you would lose a point of it. You'd apply resistance first, it rounds down because that is the default for 5e, and then that rounded-down value would be doubled for vulnerability.

So the RAI is not that it is a sliding scale. The game has quite-workable RAW that doesn't need you to deeply consider the RAI. As for rulings I've seen, the one that's most common is doing it like RAW, second is canceling resistance and vulnerability while keeping immunity, and third would be downgrading. No GM I've worked with has had it work straight with vulnerability, and no one has had an existential crisis due to it.

EDIT: Not that a DM can't override the rules, especially when it makes the game more fun because theoretically they know their table better than some people on the Internet or at WotC. It just bugs me when people treat a mildly gray area as an excuse to assume RAI without bothering to either read the book or check the Sage Advice.

[NNescio]

Oddly the RAI is that it is a sliding scale.

What RAI? JC rules consistently according to the RAW in this regard, that resistance/vulnerability and immunities work differently, and nothing lets you pierce immunity unless you have something that explicitly lets you do so.

The RAW is simple. Resistance is resistance. Vulnerability is vulnerability. Immunity is immunity. Each of these effects are specific and don't (technically) cancel out each other. Nor do they stack with themselves (i.e. no 4x vulnerability ala Pokemon). See PHB-p.197.

As for case where a creature has both resistance and vulnerability to the damage type, PHB-p.197 also provides (implicitly) the order of resolution. Resistance is applied first, then vulnerability, so the damage is first halved (rounding down), then doubled. Effectively this means damage is reduced by one for odd damage values but is the same otherwise.

If immunity is also present then it is resolved before resistance/vulnerability ("Resistance and then vulnerability are applied after all other modifiers to damage". Also see the SAC where an example is also given). Not that it matters, because anything multiplied is zero is still zero no matter the order of operations or rounding.



I'd normally ignore RAI but this is one of those places where the game is not-workable RAW.

Not workable how? RAW is clear. RAW works.



Sliding scale is also the most common ruling I've seen. 2nd most common being specific > general it takes double. 3rd most common was I saw a DM look at the interaction, blink slowly, call the session, and go get a beer to ponder his life choices.

...What?

Just follow RAW, or houserule slightly to simplify resistance/vulnerability like advantage/disadvantage canceling instead of needing to consider odd/even values.

Specific vs. General doesn't even come into play because there is zero rules conflict.

It is only an issue when DMs start throwing poorly-worded houserules left and right (e.g. "downgrade immunity to resistance if there is an effect that ignores resistance for the same damage type", "(one instance of) vulnerability negates (one instance of) resistance) and have it bite them in the rear later on when players start combining houserules with (stacking) interactions from other sources the DM hasn't considered for when making the houserule.

[Nhorianscum]

Uh huh. The RAW, RAI and, core concept is "rulings not rules". All other text is supplementary to this.

Another core concept is "This is a game, for fun".

So by that if a player is investing into an idea ye olde GM goes "yeah, you have put in time and effort and talked with me about this. Man, no selling you would be a real **** move and damage type is functionally fluff and we're encouraged to re-fluff both in the SRD and in the Pyromancer UA."

"Also this is an over the top campain of road warrior in hell"

Thus we have fulfilled the requirements of 5e's RAW/RAI where the game is "mother may I" and can reach the stage of "rulings"
I cannot stress enough that we are discussing a home game with UA where the campain is Fury Road 2: Electric Boogaloo.

I mostly play along with the idea that 5e is a structured game rather than "I shot you. No you didn't" with arbitrary dice. Mario cart with satan is not that time. We're in the space where 5e's lazy as hell attitude is awsome.

It's worth noting that the module in question also encourages this sort of thing.

Edit: This is not an attempt to convince folks to accept my personal understanding/ruling nor is it an attempt to justify jack all. Just giving a point of view. There is a reason my actual advise was separate from my understanding/ruling in the post that sparked (pun intended) this silly little dogpile.

[samuraijaques]

Thanks for all the replies. Obviously not going to respond to all of them but there are some trends.

-avernus only goes to 13 so Pyro doesn't work.
-changing spells to radiant and focusing on that seems like a great idea
-making elemental adept ignore immunity also seems fine

Thanks for all the help. I'm playing this character in a side campaign right now so we'll see how well it works

[RickAllison]

Uh huh. The RAI and core concept is "rulings not rules".

That’s not RAI, RAI is Rules as Intended. There is a difference between suggesting useful houserules that would make the game more fun, and flat-out being wrong by saying it is the rules that they work the way you want.


Another core concept is "This is a game, for fun"

So by that if a player is investing into an idea ye olde GM goes "yeah, you have put in time and effort and talked with me about this. Man, no selling you would be a real **** move and damage type is functionally fluff and we're encouraged to re-fluff both in the SRD and in the Pyromancer UA."

Refluffing is not what you are talking about though. What you are talking about is altering a core (if seldom-invoked) rule to mesh with a character’s concept. Refluffing is changing the thematic representation of a set of mechanics without changing the mechanics themselves. Refluffing would be like taking the Storm Sorcerer and fluffing the lightning attacks as “Cold-Blooded Fire” a la Avatar: The Last airbender. Changing how immunities and vulnerabilities interact is a houserule. Not a bad one, but a houserule.


"Also this is an over the top campain of road warrior in hell"

Thus we have fulfilled the requirements of 5e's RAW/RAI where the game is "mother may I" and can reach a sane agreement with the DM. This generally takes the shape of the above scenarios rather than "no, you cannot play the fire guy who burns fire in twisted metal: hellraiser edition. That would be silly. Go drive the ice cream truck rocket mech instead."

“Mother may I” is demonstrably not how 5e is supposed to work, or D&D in general. The expectation is that there is a core set of rules that govern the world, such that both player and GM know what they are getting into. While it may not be an exact fit for every game, the default assumption is that you could take a build you are excited about and play it at any table.

When you change that core rule set, you talk it over with everyone first (or they go in expecting that rule change). “Mother may I” should only ever occur where the rule set is insufficient, or where player and GM agree that the rules are not conducive to the overall fun. It should be the exception rather than the rule. Even when DMs are creating entirely new adventures, with new monsters and obstacles and custom spells, they are still abiding by that core rule set. The players have faith that the DM plays by the rules just as the DM trusts the players to do the same.

“Mother may I” as a core mechanic belongs to the more narrative games, like FATE or Monsterhearts or such. In D&D and in other more mechanically driven games, the rules exist as a stable framework to build on. They shouldn’t be too rigid, but defaulting to putting the onus on the DM to change that framework to facilitate a concept is poor form, and it reflects poorly on you to push that so aggressively.

A better solution for OP would be to approach the GM with several options in hand. “I have this alternate concept of how to do this cool thing [holy fire, cold fire, etc], but I really like the original cool thing. Can we chat it over and see if we can work something out?” A DM shouldn’t be the bad guy for not changing how the world works to fit a character concept. Be open to it, sure, but that’s a big change that could be handled in other ways.

[Nhorianscum]

That’s not RAI, RAI is Rules as Intended. There is a difference between suggesting useful houserules that would make the game more fun, and flat-out being wrong by saying it is the rules that they work the way you want.



Refluffing is not what you are talking about though. What you are talking about is altering a core (if seldom-invoked) rule to mesh with a character’s concept. Refluffing is changing the thematic representation of a set of mechanics without changing the mechanics themselves. Refluffing would be like taking the Storm Sorcerer and fluffing the lightning attacks as “Cold-Blooded Fire” a la Avatar: The Last airbender. Changing how immunities and vulnerabilities interact is a houserule. Not a bad one, but a houserule.



“Mother may I” is demonstrably not how 5e is supposed to work, or D&D in general. The expectation is that there is a core set of rules that govern the world, such that both player and GM know what they are getting into. While it may not be an exact fit for every game, the default assumption is that you could take a build you are excited about and play it at any table.

When you change that core rule set, you talk it over with everyone first (or they go in expecting that rule change). “Mother may I” should only ever occur where the rule set is insufficient, or where player and GM agree that the rules are not conducive to the overall fun. It should be the exception rather than the rule. Even when DMs are creating entirely new adventures, with new monsters and obstacles and custom spells, they are still abiding by that core rule set. The players have faith that the DM plays by the rules just as the DM trusts the players to do the same.

“Mother may I” as a core mechanic belongs to the more narrative games, like FATE or Monsterhearts or such. In D&D and in other more mechanically driven games, the rules exist as a stable framework to build on. They shouldn’t be too rigid, but defaulting to putting the onus on the DM to change that framework to facilitate a concept is poor form, and it reflects poorly on you to push that so aggressively.

A better solution for OP would be to approach the GM with several options in hand. “I have this alternate concept of how to do this cool thing [holy fire, cold fire, etc], but I really like the original cool thing. Can we chat it over and see if we can work something out?” A DM shouldn’t be the bad guy for not changing how the world works to fit a character concept. Be open to it, sure, but that’s a big change that could be handled in other ways.

I will agree 100% with everything above if you can (without conjecture by strict RAW) answer the following from only the PHB and DMG.

What is the DC of driving a scrap truck in hell in a death race?

(Not moving goalposts here. It's not there. It is in the module next to "yeaaaaah, immunities are an issue, you figure it out")

If we need to rule the DC separately without the module we will likely come to separate but not definitively wrong DC's. Similarly we will rule the "oh God's these things are immune to everything" differently. It's assumed we will all discuss this with and accept the ruling of different DM's at different tables in a sporting manner.

TL:DR We can disagree, and the GM in question can disagree with all of us. That's why rulings > rules is the absolute law of this edition, and that's why we're playing it over a more heavily structured game.

[JackPhoenix]

I will agree 100% with everything above if you can (without conjecture by strict RAW) answer the following from only the PHB and DMG.

What is the DC of driving a scrap truck in hell in a death race?

(Not moving goalposts here. It's not there. It is in the module next to "yeaaaaah, immunities are an issue, you figure it out")

If we need to rule the DC separately without the module we will likely come to separate but not definitively wrong DC's. Similarly we will rule the "oh God's these things are immune to everything" differently. It's assumed we will all discuss this with and accept the ruling of different DM's at different tables in a sporting manner.

TL:DR We can disagree, and the GM in question can disagree with all of us. That's why rulings > rules is the absolute law of this edition, and that's why we're playing it over a more heavily structured game.

That's pretty bad comparison: you have to come up with your own ruling due to lack of official rules for your example. You don't have to do that for immunity/vulnerability interactions, as there are clear existing rules covering those.

Making a ruling for a situation not covered by the existing rules is not the same thing as creating a houserule to change rule that already exist.

[RickAllison]

That's pretty bad comparison: you have to come up with your own ruling due to lack of official rules for your example. You don't have to do that for immunity/vulnerability interactions, as there are clear existing rules covering those.

Making a ruling for a situation not covered by the existing rules is not the same thing as creating a houserule to change rule that already exist.

This. It's not a ruling disagreement from a lack of rules. We know how immunity works, you take no damage from the source, which vulnerability would modify to still take no damage. We know how resistance and vulnerability work, you apply resistance first and then vulnerability so they effectively cancel out (but would lose 1 damage if it was odd). Literally no one has said that a DM can't work with players to create a houserule, and in fact quite the opposite. The objections come from trying to pass off a houserule as a rule via claiming RAI. There is a significant difference between suggesting an alternate rule than claiming your preferred way of handling things is the baseline, which is what you are doing when you claim something to be RAI.

Also for the goalpost-moving example of driving a scrap truck in hell in a death race, we have some guidelines in the books, even if there are no rigid rules for it (because, unlike a case of a universal rule like resistances and vulnerability, it is something that will only pop in up very specific campaigns). We know from XGtE that it's a DC 20 check to take a tight corner at high speed, giving us a baseline for check difficulty. Trying to do so in a clumsy vehicle like a scrap truck probably merits disadvantage. Adjust the base DC up or down according to whether a particular aspect of the race is easier or harder (a hairpin turn while dodging falling rocks would raise it, avoiding lava spouts in a pockmarked field would be easier since the turns aren't as sharp, etc.).