How hot/cold do damaging spells get?

[eyebreaker7]

Just what temperature are damaging fire and cold spells? Endure elements says:

"A creature protected by endure elements suffers no harm from being in a hot or cold environment. It can exist comfortably in conditions between -50 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit without having to make Fortitude saves). The creature’s equipment is likewise protected.
Endure elements doesn’t provide any protection from fire or cold damage, nor does it protect against other environmental hazards such as smoke, lack of air, and so forth."

Do the damaging spells go beyond those temperatures? Just curious. I'd like to make a new, or altered, spell with my character that is a Chosen of Mystra. She likes it when you create new spells and items.
It would be like combining endure elements and energy resistance or prot. from energy. With those 3 different spells being level 1,2 &3 I would guess the new spell would be 4th? Sound fair? The spell would only give it's protection/resistance if the damage was beyond the temp of those of an endure elements spell. Does that make sense?
Is there somewhere that tells you spell temperatures? I could go off of that.
Or maybe there's even already a spell like this out there and I just don't know where?

[Endarire]

Endure elements is mostly a flavor ability. Damaging spells normally either deal a buncha damage in a short span due to extreme temperatures (fireball) or over time due to extreme temperatures (ice storm). It's kinda like putting your bare hand in a hot oven versus touching the side of the hot oven.

[Saintheart]

Endure Elements has more relevance for adventures where environmental hazards are actually called into play (Frostburn, Sandstorm.) There, there are rule subsets that cover what happens as the temperature drops or increases to certain levels, and these are covered mostly by temperature ranges. For those purposes, Endure Elements provides nearly-complete protection, absent magically-pushed hot or cold temperatures.

[Thurbane]

https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=23788414&postcount=18


According to Dragon #123: 1250-1950°C (2280-3540°F).

"Fire For Effect" by Richard W. Emerich. Honestly, if you have access to it (I bought the old Dragon archive on CD, and have the original issue somewhere), the best written and most comprehensive article I've ever seen on magical fire and real world physics.

Admittedly, the crunch is related to AD&D 1E, but still well worth a read.

[Fizban]

Frostburn gives an amount of ice than can be melted by a certain amount of fire damage. This can be used to find the heat energy of that amount of damage. However, since most damage is effectively instant, even from ongoing effects, you cannot directly compare this to a list of fire sources to find a reasonable temperature.

Energy Resistance makes Endure Elements moot- EE used to actually be a 5 point resistance spell. Ambient temperature, the thing that Endure Elements protects against, only does 1d6 per round. If you have resist 10 from a Resist Energy spell, you take nothing. There is a sudden weird jump at 211 degrees though, when the Sandstorm table suddenly decides that you must be in a Fire Dominant area, literally channeling the Plane of Fire and dealing 3d10 per round. Frostburn doesn't give anything lower than -50 degrees, and there is normally no "cold dominant" trait that deals tons of damage per round, so Resist Energy (cold) will protect you against anything that's not Cania.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Just what temperature are damaging fire and cold spells? Endure elements says:

"A creature protected by endure elements suffers no harm from being in a hot or cold environment. It can exist comfortably in conditions between -50 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit without having to make Fortitude saves). The creature’s equipment is likewise protected.
Endure elements doesn’t provide any protection from fire or cold damage, nor does it protect against other environmental hazards such as smoke, lack of air, and so forth."

Do the damaging spells go beyond those temperatures? Just curious.

It's the difference between walking around on a hot day and jumping into a fire. A hot day is 30 degrees centigrade, maybe 50 in Death Valley on a hot summer's day. Igniting paper alone is around 400 degrees centigrade, a decent campfire clocks in around a 1000 and a blacksmiths forge goes up a few hundred degrees further. Weaponized magical fire in a high fantasy world should be at least as hot as non magical regular fire. If these attack spells wouldn't be any hotter than warm weather there would be little point in using them, you'd be better off waving a torch around, because a torch is several hundreds of degrees hotter than a warm day if you stick your face in it.

[Biggus]

Fireball says it "can melt metals with low melting points, such as lead, gold, copper, silver, and bronze". The highest of those is copper at 1084C (1984F), so it's at least that hot.