druid spell quench

[its_all_ogre]

ok soon my players will be battling a red dragon in his lair, most of which is dominated by a 'home grown' pool of lava that the dragon likes to swim through.

then i noticed the quench spell. this says that it automatically stops any nonmagical fire in the area and has an AOE of 1 20 foot cube per level.

now given that lava is fire would this stop it being lava? this is likely to happen as the party know what they are up against.

[cupkeyk]

Uhm lava is not fire, its molten earth and is not actually combusting (rapidly oxidizing) as it is in a natural liquid form. You are looking for Otiluke's Freezing sphere which freezes a 10 radius area of liquid.

[goat]

Yeah, lava's hot, but it's not fire. I'd probably argue that it wouldn't work, as the description just says it would put out the fire, there's nothing about stopping it with water or temperature change.

[its_all_ogre]

umm yeah but real life aside lava does fire damage, not lava damage, hence the concern

[oriong]

Yes, but the spell does not say anything about damage types, it puts out an actual fire not simply anthing that inflicts fire damage. Lava inflicts fire damage, and may certainly start fires, but it is not a fire.

[Seatbelt]

Your players could at best use it to put out someone who is on fire because of the lava, it just doesnt make sense flavor wise for that spell to put out actual lava, like everyone else has said.

[cupkeyk]

Boiling water also deals fire damage, btw. Hohohohohoho

[daggaz]

If you wanted to be cool and somewhat realistic, you could make it so the quench spell caused a layer of crust to cool and form on top of the lava, which would last for a few rounds before remelting and could hold a certain amount of weight. You wouldn't even have to tell your players all of this, as how would they know? "You finish your spell, and a torrential downpour of water drenches the boiling lake of lava, causing an explosion of steam (might wanna save reflex or take some heat damage here). As the steam rolls away, you see the lava SEEMS to have hardened into a blackened crust, tho ominous red cracks glow through here and there. The dragon is nowhere to be seen. What do you do?"