does lava kill your equipment?

[newguydude1]

fire immune creature jumps into lava and swims across it. fire immunity is a racial thing not an energy immunity spell thing. does your equipment die along with it?

same thing vs meteor swarm. a creature gets a face full of meteor swarm but its immune to fire. is its equipment damaged instead?

[Dr paradox]

Lava kills everything. I would say any mundane gear gets destroyed if a creature is wearing it while submerged in lava. Important caveat: MUNDANE gear, not nonmagical gear. I think it's reasonable to declare that equipment made by fire giants, salamanders, Azer, Efreet, and other creatures linked to elemental fire have uniquely fireproof equipment. That might even be a benefit of getting gear made by one of those groups, or looting and resizing fire giant half-plate.

Meteor swarm feels like a different matter, if only because you're not being actually SUBMERGED in molten rock and you at least get a saving throw to represent reasonable efforts to avoid fire and being burned.

[sreservoir]

In the absence of other protection, sure, lava deals 2d6 per round, 20d6 if submerged. Possibly halved and reduced by hardness if you think it's a fire attack.

Meteor swarm deals damage only to creatures. The equipment is probably not a creature.

[SirNibbles]

When you’re subjected to an unusual or magical attack, you make a saving throw (or save) to avoid or reduce the effect.

Unless the descriptive text for an effect specifies otherwise, all items carried or worn by a creature are assumed to survive a magical attack. If a creature rolls a natural 1 on its saving throw against the effect, however, an exposed item is harmed if the attack can harm objects. Refer to the following table. Determine which four objects carried or worn by the creature are most likely to be affected and roll randomly among them. The randomly determined item must make a saving throw against the attack form and, if the save fails, take whatever damage the attack deals. If an item isn’t carried or worn, and isn’t magical, it doesn’t get a saving throw. It simply takes the appropriate damage.

Rules Compendium, page 112


Since there is no saving throw for lava, is the damage automatic or can there not be any damage because you didn't roll a 1 on your saving throw? I'd say it's better to not damage items if you don't need to. Keeping track of item HP/losing magical items in addition to being badly wounded doesn't sound like fun.




Whenever an object takes damage, subtract its hardness from that damage. Only damage in excess of its hardness is deducted from the object’s hit points. Electricity and fire attacks deal half damage to most objects.

Each +1 of enhancement bonus adds 2 to the hardness of armor, a weapon, or a shield, and 10 to the item’s hit points.


Rules Compendium, page 106



If your items automatically take damage, most items would instantly be destroyed if you were to fall in lava.

__

Meteor Swarm is easier to judge because it actually allows a save.

[Fouredged Sword]

Let's address the meteor swarm question first because it's cut and dried in the rules. First we look at the spell itself.

You get 4 touch attacks that deal 2d6 bludgeoning damage and then 6d6 fire damage in an area. The area damage only allows for a save if the attack roll misses or if it's not aimed at the person within the area.

So you fire meteor swarm at someone beefy who's immune to fire damage naturally like a fire dragon. It has crap touch AC so you hit with all four attacks.

Well, it's equipment is fine. You only damage something's equipment if they roll a 1 on a save. No save was rolled, so no damage is done to equipment.

But maybe you roll a 1 on one of the attacks and miss? Well, now the dragon has to roll a save and if it rolls a one the one piece of it's equipment is effected by the spell as normal and rolls a second save. The fact that this is fire damage and most objects are not flammable means that the damage is halved to 6d6/2 (av 10.5). This damage is further reduced by the object's hardness.

So damage is likely to be minimal to metal objects, though cloth and other flammable things can easily be destroyed, though a red dragon is unlikely to carry such.

The second issue is lava. Touching lava deals 2d6 fire damage. Submersion in lava deals 20d6 fire damage.

Let's clarify what separates this from the meteor spell. The "You damage equipment only if the target rolls a 1 on saves" effect is specific to magic effects from spells with saves. Lava is none of those things. Lava damages equipment. Being submerged in lava damages equipment REALLY fast. It deals 20d6/2-hardness damage, so average 45-hardness. This means that it can melt through a half inch of adamantium per round.

But only if the adamantium is submerged. If you throw an adamantium bucket into lava the bucket will melt. If you pour lava into an adamantium bucket it won't melt.

You are also going to run into the problem that people don't sink in lava. It has three times the density of water. Solid metal will sink, but anything like a person would float like styrofoam on a pond. You will not submerge unless pushed down.

[Ruethgar]

Prestidigitation makes gear immune to damage from lava for an hour, so pretty easy to avoid destruction of property by RAW. However most DMs would probably houserule that it doesn’t work.

[Telonius]

Killing a few catgirls, I know. But I'd personally rule that anything made of steel wouldn't be harmed. Stainless Steel's melting point is 1510C, which is over the upper range of lava temperature (1200 C). Mithral and Adamantine aren't real metals, but I'd assume that their melting points would be over that of steel, so they'd be fine too.

[Fouredged Sword]

Killing a few catgirls, I know. But I'd personally rule that anything made of steel wouldn't be harmed. Stainless Steel's melting point is 1510C, which is over the upper range of lava temperature (1200 C). Mithral and Adamantine aren't real metals, but I'd assume that their melting points would be over that of steel, so they'd be fine too.

Though just because something takes damage does not mean it melts. It could just be rendered useless in other ways. Perhaps a sword thrown into lava buckles and bends as the material turns to taffy. Perhaps it warps under heat expansion and doesn't return to a useful shape. There are lots of forms of "broken" short of melted.

[Bronk]

Since there is no saving throw for lava, is the damage automatic or can there not be any damage because you didn't roll a 1 on your saving throw? I'd say it's better to not damage items if you don't need to. Keeping track of item HP/losing magical items in addition to being badly wounded doesn't sound like fun.

If your items automatically take damage, most items would instantly be destroyed if you were to fall in lava.


I'd go with no, magic items would be fine on a fire immune creature swimming in lava, because of this line from the SRD section on magic items...


A magic item doesn’t need to make a saving throw unless it is unattended, it is specifically targeted by the effect, or its wielder rolls a natural 1 on his save.

The lava would count as not specifically targeting anything, it's just there, being hot.

[Alcore]

fire immune creature jumps into lava and swims across it. fire immunity is a racial thing not an energy immunity spell thing. does your equipment die along with it?

same thing vs meteor swarm. a creature gets a face full of meteor swarm but its immune to fire. is its equipment damaged instead?

According to 3.5 srd;


Shield Hardness and Hit Points
Each +1 of enhancement bonus adds 2 to a shield’s hardness and +10 to its hit points.

So if we cross reference caster level for non shields to determine what its "enhancement bonus" would theoretically be, and assuming that all magic items get it, we can determine if it can survive.

If it's hardness is high enough the damage might be minimal (in regards to original hp). Items made of burnable material can take bonus damage at DM discretion.


As for your section question;


If i was running a simulation game i would be tracking armor weapon HP with armor checking for sunder each time you lose hp and weapons each time you strike something made of a material of similar hardness. Bonus or penalty per point of difference.

Still a **** thing to do... and a lot of work...

[SirNibbles]

Though just because something takes damage does not mean it melts. It could just be rendered useless in other ways. Perhaps a sword thrown into lava buckles and bends as the material turns to taffy. Perhaps it warps under heat expansion and doesn't return to a useful shape. There are lots of forms of "broken" short of melted.

In D&D, the rule is as long as the item has any HP remaining it is fully functional. As soon as it hits 0 HP, it is completely destroyed. (Rules Compendium, page 106)

[SangoProduction]

Killing a few catgirls, I know. But I'd personally rule that anything made of steel wouldn't be harmed. Stainless Steel's melting point is 1510C, which is over the upper range of lava temperature (1200 C). Mithral and Adamantine aren't real metals, but I'd assume that their melting points would be over that of steel, so they'd be fine too.

There's a video about jet fuel not melting steel beams, done by a modern blacksmith.

He showed a perfectly good steel beam. Holds firm. Heated up with jet fuel (supposedly, I couldn't verify, nor did I care to).
Didn't melt. But he bent it with his finger.
So there was definite damage done there...you know...since it couldn't hold its structure against a tiny force.

That's the beautiful thing about a free marketplace of ideas. Anyone can challenge any idea. Some people may buy garbage, but eventually come across new information that solidly explains what they previously deemed unexplained.