What should gold fire do?

[Fero]

I am playing a warmage in a 3.5 game who worships a catfolk nature diety of whose portfolio includes balance and gold. My DM is allowing me to create some custom spells. I like the idea of summoning golden flames but have no idea what gold flames should do. I would appreciate any ideas for what gold flames should do, to distinguish them from normal flames. Thank you

[Razade]

If they're linked to your god either more damage against undead/demons/devils/unholy stuff or healing. Or both.

[Melayl]

i like the idea of healing as well. Also purifying/tempering/strengthening/improving.

[Maat Mons]

Traditionally, gold has been associated with the sun. Partly because the sun appears yellow. And partly because, in ancient times, the wealth of kingdoms was heavily tied to agriculture.

One possibility would be to make the flames deal extra damage to anything vulnerable to sunlight. Maybe creatures in the area could be treated as if exposed to sudden bright light for the purposes of Light Blindness. Ongoing flames could even suppress Darkness effect in the area.

In keeping with the balance part of the portfolio, the spells could have extra effect against non-neutral creatures. Maybe no effect against true neutral creatures, and double effect against creatures with no neutral alignment component. Or the flames could burn away extremes of emotion, dispelling and suppressing Morale and Fear effects.

[Greywander]

Some ideas:

• The fire actually does radiant damage (or whatever the 3.5e equivalent is; same as a paladin smite).
• Light cast by the flame counts as sunlight.
• The flame can both heal and harm, allowing you to heal allies while damaging enemies.
• The flames burn indefinitely, and only magic can put them out (like a Continual Flame).
• Light from the flames causes treasure or secrets to sparkle, as if the light were reflecting off of gold.

It's hard to offer advice without knowing more about this cat deity. Gold is associated with the sun, yes, but also with immortality (hence the healing and continual flame suggestions), and I think to knowledge as well (though light is often associated with knowledge, so this might be an association by proxy by the association between gold and the sun).

[Dimers]

Particles of gold "ash" come off the burnt creature and outline its form like a faerie fire or glitterdust effect.

[Fero]

These are great ideas! Thank you. The cat diety is a god of natural balance tasked with maintaining material scarcity (including gold) in the world. The diety's portfolio also includes deserts, the fall of civilizations, rebirth, as well as losing and finding treasures. The gold aspect is particularly important to my character.

[Jervis]

I am playing a warmage in a 3.5 game who worships a catfolk nature diety of whose portfolio includes balance and gold. My DM is allowing me to create some custom spells. I like the idea of summoning golden flames but have no idea what gold flames should do. I would appreciate any ideas for what gold flames should do, to distinguish them from normal flames. Thank you

If touch of golden ice is to be believed, most likely ability damage. Probably strength.

[Breccia]

The cat diety is a god of natural balance tasked with maintaining material scarcity (including gold) in the world.

So you meant gold the material, not gold the color? Um...gold's really heavy. Bolts of gold fire could also do bludgeoning damage and have a chance to knock back/down. Or, if you're surrounding yourself, raise your AC.

Or, and this is way more video-gamey than D&D, hitting people with gold fire could take some of their gold and transfer it to you. Probably not as useful because in D&D you usually end up looting the losers anyhow, but it could add flavor.

[Eldan]

Nature, balance, death and rebirth... that's all Sun. I'd definitely tie this to the sun in some way.

[Vaern]

The cat diety is a god of natural balance tasked with maintaining material scarcity (including gold) in the world.

Gold fire is especially harmful to objects. Rather than dividing damage by half and then subtracting hardness like normal fire, your golden fire deals full damage against objects and will ignore the target's hardness if it is less than your caster level. Objects destroyed in this way are consumed by the golden fire and can not be repaired or recovered.

[Aeson]

Considering that the deity granting the spell is some kind of god of balance, you might see if your DM will go for a conditional 'opposing' damage component against things that "aren't in balance" or which "aren't part of this world's balance" - e.g. positive energy damage against Evil outsiders and negative energy damage against Good outsiders - as it's sort of thematically trying to 'balance out' the target.

[LibraryOgre]

Bonus damage against people who are Lawful/Chaotic and Good/Evil? So, a LG person would take two bits of bonus damage, but a NG person would only take one?

[The Glyphstone]

If its a catfolk deity, you should get a large bonus to rolls when attempting to knock enemies or objects off ledges or cliffs.

[Greywander]

These are great ideas! Thank you. The cat diety is a god of natural balance tasked with maintaining material scarcity (including gold) in the world. The diety's portfolio also includes deserts, the fall of civilizations, rebirth, as well as losing and finding treasures. The gold aspect is particularly important to my character.

A desert is a wasteland devoid of useful resources, so that fits nicely with the scarcity aspect. Perhaps he turns fertile land into deserts if the locals get too prosperous. Likewise, those toiling away for scraps might earn his favor and see a literal or metaphorical oasis appear in their own deserts. It's about balance: those who work hard deserve to be given plenty, while those who hardly work deserve to have their wealth taken away. The losing and finding of treasure could also play into this.

Another thing I can see is this god bartering with humans to relieve them of scare materials in exchange for things that are actually useful to them. For example, a town suffering a drought might make an offering of gold to receive rain. This takes those materials out of circulation, allowing the god to redistribute them elsewhere, reducing the concentration in this one particular spot.

As for the fall of civilizations, an interesting thought occurred to me. Perhaps the temples to this deity become unnaturally weathered and ruined when a civilization has lost his favor and is slated to fall. Or, perhaps his temples are built to resemble ruins. Perhaps the looking after and preservation of ruins is sacred to this god, reminders of the past, both its greatness and its folly.

The cyclic nature of death and rebirth would, perhaps, be more suited to a moon deity, but the sun also fits. Solar cycles are much longer than lunar cycles, so a solar cycle is probably more fitting for the cycles of civilizations to rise and fall. If you wanted to make this a moon deity instead, then you could just emphasize silver instead of gold.

At first glance, this seems like a curious combination of domains for a deity, but when you put it all together it has a surprisingly cohesive theme. It's basically a benevolent "death" deity that takes wealth away from those whose time is up (individuals or entire civilizations), turning them into a wasteland. Some wealth may be withheld, or hidden to be recovered at a later time, while some is bestowed on those whom the deity deems worthy.

As for how this relates to golden fire, well, there's any number of ways you could go with this. I would avoid trying to do all of them, but maybe we can come up with a few different ideas, and maybe you can make more spells later on.

First, a simple AoE damage and heal. You choose whether a creature caught in the AoE takes damage or is healed. Pretty straightforward. Maybe the spell consumes gold to use, and the damage increases the more gold you spend.

We could also do a series of utility spells. These spells would all have similar theming: the spell consumes gold as a material component, and it conjures golden flames that do... something. One spell might create a flame whose light reveals hidden things, such as invisible creatures, illusions, secret doors, or hidden treasure. One spell might consume a corpse in flame, only for that creature to then be reincarnated (going with the rebirth aspect). One might be a damage spell that deals extra damage to objects and structures, reducing them to ruins.

[Aeson]

Bonus damage against people who are Lawful/Chaotic and Good/Evil? So, a LG person would take two bits of bonus damage, but a NG person would only take one?

I suppose you could do it that way, and as a more generally applicable effect it'd be more useful, but I wasn't really thinking it'd apply to things like people - you'd generally expect that realistic people are somewhere in the "middle" of the alignment chart, even if they're far enough out of the center to ping on Detect [Alignment] and similar spells - but rather to things like angels or devils, which tend to be treated as incarnations of the extremes of their alignment.

[Fero]

I am getting so many great ideas for gold flames and the religion generally. Thank you! I increasingly think that the exact effect of gold flames should very from spell to spell while respecting the themes and mechanics you are all suggesting.

I would love suggestions for any specific spells. I am currently looking to replace Chill Touch and Orb of Acid ( and possibly Fist of Stone and Hail of Stone).

As an aside, this conversation started with my DM began when we spontaneously agreed that my Floating Disk spells instead summoned a fat cat of golden force who could hold (and protect) a large volume of gold, but nothing else. Also, the cat is wobbly so sometimes gold spills into the ground, lost forever more.