What happens when a fireball spell hits an ice spell?
What happens when they both hit a body at exactly the same time on either side?
Occasionally when me and my mates play D&D our plans seem to get out of hand, which I expect is the norm. Only, a few times we've come to question the dynamics of magic, how we can usurp its rules, fuck with its physics and make something terrifying happen.
I suspect this happens sometimes, so as well as an answer to the prior questions, i was wondering if people could share stories of ludicrous "Portable hole + bag of holding" magical physics-fuckery that's been acheived by you or your party.
Also, pics of mages, warlocks, sorcerers and magic-wielding looneys.
>What happens when a fireball spell hits an ice spell? Presumably the energies cancel each other out but it would depend on the amounts of each >What happens when they both hit a body at exactly the same time on either side? The person dies
James Richardson
My DM let me acquire three loyal Shadows and agreed that the network of control effective acted as a hierarchal hive-mind in terms of how to control my undead.
It was not long until he decided my character was no longer welcome in any sovereign nation.
Well... I mean, yeah, but... Is it like how a hot glass explodes under hot water? Does the person just die of lack of HP or explode from lack of ribs still contained in the body?
>what happens when a fireball spell hits an ice spell? They pass through each other, as neither is a solid obstacle that would provide cover. >what happens when they both hit a body at exactly the same time on either side? They both take effect. Presumably that person will he frozen on one side and crispy on the other.
Occasionally your DM will need to make a ruling as to how spells interact with each other, but this is hardly ever necessary in most games. And if you force a ruling, don't expect it to go the same way twice, as the DM may well be sick of your shit and decide to prevent whatever stupid exploit you came up with.
Elijah Jackson
Not particularly an in game thing, but the backstory of a frequently used character of mine includes a) A portal accident. An exploration vessel of a magic academy gets into a magical storm where spells, mana and magical effects dart about etc etc. The mages on board try to open a portal to somewhere else to escape. Only, due to the "wild magic" stuff in the storm the portal gets uncontrollable fucks up everything around it, seems to become the center of the storm and swallows up half of the ship before collapsing. The catch: The magical storm disappears immediately after the portal collapses. The opening of the portal could have retroactively caused the magical storm by going through or opening into a plane where time behaves differently. The question is now whether the magical storm would have appeared without the portal being created. And if not, was the wild magic a result of the stable time-like toop? If the storm itself was the result of the time-loop this could mean that the portal misdirection and the time loop would not have happened without the storm which would not have happened without the portal misdirection creating a time loop. This makes it doubly looped. (storm - portal accident - storm and magic shit - time loop - magic shit) b) A raven feather to use with this. The character i play loses their parents in this accident. However the family carries an amulet with Raven Feathers of each other. These are supposed to let contractors of assassins know if the target dies. However, they can also be used to know that family members are still alive. There is also nothing in the rules about the blood magic of the raven feathers being plane limited. Thus the character knows that its parents are still alive, because of the raven feather. There is however nothing saying that if the connection of the blood magic fails the feather displays the target as dead. So it could also be that the connection failed and the feather displays dead people as alive.
I would say that something pseudosciencey happens, like hypothalamus explodes and the person dies crying and orgasming. Also, if they are asleep, they pee their pants and everyone makes fun of them.
Brayden Martin
Used for a different character that i didn't end up playing was the fact that being a druid discriminates unduly against dwarves who normally love metal, and metal itself which is also a part of nature, and a part of a lot of stones. If metal ore can be used as stone by druids, why shouldn't there be a particular alloy of metals that would still have the same strength for weight/volume of metals but still be usable by druids like ore is? Finding this would enable mountain dwarves to be both druids and still have their affinity for metal working be useful. The reason for the character going out questing is the desire to find such an alloy. The "one ounce cube of an unknown material" trinket is perfect for this.
A different character was a spirit guide oracle with the 'haunted' curse. a) Because of how vague the description of the curse is, this can be interpreted as the life spirits they chose to align themselves with as an oracle becoming active around them wherever they go. With the spirit guide archetype it is further possible to fluff the character to have control over these exact spirits (apart from the effects of the curse). All of this harmonizes very neatly into one spirit surrounded package. b) As most spirits and hauntings, even just the small trap making haunt thing that was making deathtraps in the dungeon had a cha and int score. This meant that the life/death spirit attuned spirit guide was allowed by the GM to actually communicate with the thing nonverbally and with the proper precautions. Thanks to the oracle having a high CHA score, and with the proper feats it was possible to pacify and even permanently convince the thing to be good. The party thus gained a tiny spirit ally, which while not particularly useful, was a nice change in the zoo of pacified/captured creatures that the oracle had amassed.
I think it may be argued that a fire spell and an ice spell of same level, aimed at each other, would just counter each other kind of how Haste counters Slow.
So if Wizard A throws a fireball at Wizard B's party while Wizard B throws an iceball at Wizard A's party, these spells don't actually collide so things go as usual. If one of the wizards decides to counterspell the other, the iceball hits the fireball and they cancel each other out (or not, if the counterspeller is worse at wizarding)
Ethan Sullivan
>kind of how Haste counters Slow. Haste and slow both alter the same value though: speed And it is not possible to have a speed gradient in one object It is however possible to have a temperature gradient in one object. And fire and ice don't only alter temperature. Fire causes burning damage, and ice causes freezing damage independent of the overall temperature of the target, just by contact.
Camden Phillips
You're thinking of some heretic science and magic ain't like that. Fire and ice are direct opposites like fast and slow are, conceptually.
Ryan Richardson
>You're thinking of some heretic science and magic ain't like that. >heretic science
Nah magitech is lame. I like my magic to be explicitly conceptual and opposing technology on an underlying level.
Magic should also not be tied to a mental stat like Intelligence or Wisdom, it needs its own Magic stat. If you are a magician, you're probably severely crippled in most other areas and being good at casting spells is not the same as being an intellectual genius.
Gavin Hernandez
>and opposing technology on an underlying level. that's.... impossible Like... Even if it's just a fireball spell you can use it to heat water and generate steam to drive a machine. And it has to essentially use the same logic and laws your universe as a whole uses otherwise it would literally not be able to interact with it. Like for example, if you put a thermometer somewhere, or put the fireball into a jar, and closed it, if there were to be somehow an interaction in some cases but nothing detectible in others this internal inconsistency itself could be used to break the fundamental principles of both magic and the physical universe.
Benjamin Baker
You're not thinking like a mage. Of course magic breaks the fundamental principles of the physical universe, that's why it's magic.
No i mean if it breaks basic logic, the universe itself can be used to break magic as well. And at that point there is absolutely no telling what anything will do.
Brayden Fisher
This is why technology and magic don't mesh together. Either one of them stops working altogether, or boom.
Easton Long
It depends on the spell strength.
Nathaniel Price
Let's assume the fireball is made of lava at 1000 degrees Celsius, and the iceball is -1000C.
Ian Collins
-1000 C is not possible, absolute zero is like -260 and it cannot be reached in nature. Heat and cold aren't even opposite if you look at it through the lens of physics, it's all about how agitated the particles are. If they are still - you're at absolute zero. If they move, you aren't.
Julian Richardson
200 degrees celcius and -200, then. narrows it down :)
Thomas Garcia
200 C "lava" is just a hot rock. -200 C iceball is just a very cold icycle.
They bludgeon each other and depending on their launch speeds, either continue on some kind of a trajectory towards their original destination or fall down on the floor.
My money's on the 200C rock, it's likely denser than ice.
This is why you stick to abstract magic...
Cameron Wilson
hmmm, not rock, though, like not a big rocky core or a big ice-lump. Just magic energy of extreme heat and extreme cold.
What do you suppose would result? Steam explosion, maybe?
Parker Fisher
>-1000 C is not possible, absolute zero is like -260 and it cannot be reached in nature It's magic I ain't gotta explain shit.
Jace Jackson
They would collide elastically and hurt their respective casters, assuming they have identical speed.
Kayden Sanchez
Cold and hot are extremely subjective, abstract terms that only make sense from the human perspective. The idea that something below our average body temperature is "cold" and something above it is "hot", to varying degrees, is entirely a human perspective.
On atomic level it's all about how agitated all the little bits are, nothing else. Not a whole lot of difference between ice, which is a solid at about 0 C, and steel, which can be solid at much higher temperatures, just the material.
Isaac Jones
Uhh, in English, poindtexter?
Daniel Reed
"I have nothing to contribute, but I want to act like a twat over your usage of language."
Chase Jackson
EGGHEAD!
Carter Russell
the ice would melt, then evaporate, quickly dispersing large ammounts of steam.
The whole process takes less than a hundreth of a second to complete itself, therefore causing a rather large explosion.due to the quick dispersion of steam.
it is therefore not advisable to stand too close to an event such as that
Elijah Butler
>t. You are a phaggot.
There, I do believe that is in your native tongue.
Landon Morgan
Assuming equal strength I'd say it creates a huge steam explosion as all the ice is melted then rendered gasious.
Asuming unequal forces A. Much of the ice stays creating a nasty case of frostbite and scalds from what steam was created. B. The ice flash boils into steam, creating a concussive wave of over pressure that blasts anything in its area away in either a bull rush style knockback or happens so suddenly and so forcefully that it's more like an explosion that deals force damage = to 1/2 the diffrence between the ice and fire damage.
Xavier Mitchell
D&D is a game, not a physics simulation. Magic is, by definition, not scientific. You are an oxymoron.
Dylan Campbell
Why can't DMs decide to put some extra fun into their world? It's all about the story, so maybe their story is a weird mix of science fiction and fantasy
Landon Morris
no dude you don't understand. you're not playing the game the way the other guy thinks it should be played, therefore you are wrong.
Oliver Sanchez
If that is the case it's DM fiat so do whatever you feel like and OPs question is still moot because it will vary depending on DM mood and whatever is most dramatically apropriate at the moment. Don't know how you got that out of my post. Because it's not scientific, whatever happens varies by DM so the thread is pointless. I'm not saying don't do special things when magical effects interesct, I'm saying trying to make a system out of it with concrete cause and effect is an exercise in making the magical mundane.
How I would do it is something impossible, fire and ice magic intersect and you have flaming ice whose fire freezes the things it consumes instead of burning them. Of course D&D doesn't really support things like this.
Andrew Nelson
Depends on the spell. Fireballs are, chemically speaking, pure energy, whereas an ice spell is generally frozen water doing stuff, and if this is the case, the fireball heats the ice shot and melts it as it connects.
If it's hot energy vs cold "energy", either the hot energy disperses among the lack of hot energy or they fly past each other because energy can't be destroyed so they'd not even connect.
If it was "fire" ball (burning rock) vs ice ball, they collide like physics says.
As an aside though, in Spheres of Power, there's a spellcrafting section designed for fucking with magic.
