Is Grease flamable?


Rules Questions

Grand Lodge

After a brief review of the rulebooks and forums, there doesn't seem to be an "official" answer, so I'm just wondering, how many GMs in PFS allow the grease spell effects to be flammable? The deciding factor seems to be do you consider grease to be more akin to actual grease or more like oil? If the former, most greases are generally not flammable, while most oils are. IMO, grease is already a supremely effective spell without adding the potential for additional fire damage, but YMMV.
What say you?

Sovereign Court

There are no rules for what happens if you light said grease on fire, so no, I don't think I'd allow it. Perhaps if it was used for a humorous/lighthearted creative solution thing for a low level table it'd be cool, but for a combat probably not.

That being said, are there rules for how to handle lighting arbitrary things on fire?


I would argue the rules do not saying about it being flammable so it is not.

I agree it is avery flexible and powerfull level 1 spell.

My level 11 uses with great success still.

Sovereign Court

Actually, Bob, here's something kind of interesting out of Mythic Adventures.

Mythic Grease wrote:
Augmented: You can expend two uses of mythic power to make the grease flammable. It ignites from any fire at least the size of a candle flame. If a greased area is ignited, any creature in the area on your turn takes 1d3 points of fire damage and might catch on fire (Core Rulebook 444). If a greased creature is ignited, it takes 2d6 points of fire damage, and might catch on fire; add your tier to the save DC.

But yeah in light of this, I think it'd be a hard no for non-mythic grease being flammable (short of funny creative solution, I'd still be somewhat flexible).

As a side note, it does look like there are rules for lighting things on fire. Rejoicing!

Grand Lodge

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Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Pathfinder Accessories, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I've never allowed it to be flammable. It's just not that kind of grease.


I concur. In general, grease is already an extremely versatile and useful spell, especially for a 1st level spell. Permitting it to be flammable, IMO, would start to push it's usefulness (and damage potential since it lasts minutes per level) past those of most other spells in that class.

Grand Lodge

Acedio wrote:
Actually, Bob, here's...Mythic Grease

Excellent! That is the closest thing to an official rule I've seen. Never thought to look in Mythic for it.

It is interesting that so far, everyone seems to agree that it shouldn't be flammable. At the game table, sooo many players ask me about it, it would seem to be a relatively common occurrence.

Sovereign Court

I have seen PCs use the grease spell to help smother fires.


By RAW it is not flammable. This is probably a good thing as its still an excellent spell for my 11th level conjuration wizard.


I allow it to catch fire at my table. I personally feel it is a bit of a stretch that they'd be summoning a flourinated or silicon-based grease instead of a run-of-the-mill animal fat or crude oil. After all, if the party is willing to invest two spells to set someone on fire for a piddly 1d6 extra damage per round, I'm not going to begrudge them that chance.

Dark Archive

Mad Alchemist wrote:
I have seen PCs use the grease spell to help smother fires.

That's genius.

Silver Crusade

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acid4hastur wrote:
I allow it to catch fire at my table. I personally feel it is a bit of a stretch that they'd be summoning a flourinated or silicon-based grease instead of a run-of-the-mill animal fat or crude oil. After all, if the party is willing to invest two spells to set someone on fire for a piddly 1d6 extra damage per round, I'm not going to begrudge them that chance.

What you don't seem to understand by ignoring the rules is if your "personal" grease rule is in affect on a caster they have to make concentration checks if they do not "stop drop and roll." This falls under the continuous damage rule for concentration checks. (10 + 1d6 fire + Spell Level)

In earlier editions of DnD grease was flammable but they removed this in pathfinder. If you are running a home game making rules up on the fly (or use older rulesets) is fine but you need to run RAW for PFS.

Edit: The main reason I know this is my "-1" specializes in throwing alchemically enhanced fireballs (Adventurer's Armory, Alchemy Manual) which causes anyone who fails their save to catch fire.


I might let it go up in flames for a d6.

Its not like pathfinders don't set everything else on fire

The Exchange

Tamec wrote:
acid4hastur wrote:
I allow it to catch fire at my table. I personally feel it is a bit of a stretch that they'd be summoning a flourinated or silicon-based grease instead of a run-of-the-mill animal fat or crude oil. After all, if the party is willing to invest two spells to set someone on fire for a piddly 1d6 extra damage per round, I'm not going to begrudge them that chance.

What you don't seem to understand by ignoring the rules is if your "personal" grease rule is in affect on a caster they have to make concentration checks if they do not "stop drop and roll." This falls under the continuous damage rule for concentration checks. (10 + 1d6 fire + Spell Level)

In earlier editions of DnD grease was flammable but they removed this in pathfinder. If you are running a home game making rules up on the fly (or use older rulesets) is fine but you need to run RAW for PFS.

Edit: The main reason I know this is my "-1" specializes in throwing alchemically enhanced fireballs (Adventurer's Armory, Alchemy Manual) which causes anyone who fails their save to catch fire.

as he does not have even one star, I would guess he wondered in to the PFS section and thinks he's over on the Rule Board...

but this is just a guess on my part, on little or no knowledge (as most of my post are).

:-)


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I have to admit that when I saw the topic, I thought it was asking about geese for a few seconds...

Shadow Lodge

Well, the material component for grease is butter. A quick google search doesn't seem to reveal if butter is flammable until I find This video which is actually probably margarine so I might be inclined to allow the grease spell to enflame, but I certainly wouldn't allow the fire to persist the entire duration of the grease.

Sovereign Court

I don't know, since there's an augmented flammable version of grease in a rule book that requires use of mythic power, this seems to strongly suggest that Grease is not flammable by itself.

Silver Crusade

I could have sworn this was discussed on the forums a long time ago (2-3 years) and everyone agreed that it's not flammable. Apparently, the reason it comes up is that it was flammable in 3.5.

Sovereign Court

Searching through the forums resulted in a lot of topics debating it, but it seems the most popular opinion is that it is not flammable.

James Jacobs seems to agree that flammable grease is a little outside the scope of a first level spell.

Grand Lodge

Fromper wrote:
I could have sworn this was discussed on the forums a long time ago (2-3 years) and everyone agreed that it's not flammable. Apparently, the reason it comes up is that it was flammable in 3.5.

It wasn't. 3.5 had a separate 2nd level spell for a flammable version of grease.

Edit: Misremembered the spell level of Incendiary Slime.

Liberty's Edge

Grease has, in fact, never been flammable in any edition of D&D.

Silver Crusade

The only instance where a grease spell is flammable, is IMO Dragonage Origins. If you want it to burn, thown a couple bottles of oil on top of it.

Dark Archive

The reason ppl thing grease can burn is always a result of players or GMs trying to cheese into doing more damage.
From the things Grease can do, it is clearly that it's more like slime goo rather than oil grease.
IF you have ever been in a kitchen, you would know oil grease is not sillpery, in fact they are quite sticky

Scarab Sages

The mythic version does have a flammable option...so the normal version wouldn't.

It would be usable in at least one adventure though...

Dark Archive

Even back in the old editions when most of assumed it was flammable, the way our group ran it was that lighting it on fire destroyed the grease itself as it burned, so you didn't get the normal grease effects and duration. You were trading a decent duration spell for one round of fire damage and then a lot of really awful smoke for the duration. Sometimes that kind of smoke was exactly what the party was after, so that was fine.

Sczarni

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TriOmegaZero wrote:
I've never allowed it to be flammable. It's just not that kind of grease.

It's not actually "grease" so much as it is Lube.


There has been either an FAQ or writer post that said Grease is not flammable. The main reason being that it would be too powerful for a 1st level spell.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I believe you can throw oil on people and set them ablaze, or target and cover areas with oil and fire that.
Not sure right away if there are rules for oiled areas as difficult terrain or something similar.
I would let an adequate oiled area count as difficult terrain though.

Grand Lodge

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On the internet, everything is flamable.

Grand Lodge

I find it interesting that soo many are saying things like,
"By RAW it is not flammable"

"In earlier editions of DnD grease was flammable but they removed this in pathfinder"

"Grease has, in fact, never been flammable in any edition of D&D"

Until Mythic Adventures there was no rule, anywhere, that I could locate to confirm grease is/not flammable. To say there was a firm answer and therefore, no ambiguity (read: table variation) would be wrong. Of course, with the addition of a mythic version of grease being flammable, it would seen the original intention was that it not be flammable. However, as that is an additional/optional rulebook, mostly not approved for PFS, and certainly not part of the core assumption, it is reasonable to expect many GMs are unaware and therefore will continue to allow the standard version of the spell to be flammable.

Originally, I was just interested in how prevalent it was either way, but in light of the Mythic version, I think the question is mostly moot.

Silver Crusade

Exocrat wrote:
On the internet, everything is flamable.

In cyberspace, everyone can hear you scream. And ignore you.


I actually had this question come up twice, in two separate games over the weekend... In both I ruled it is not flammable. It's surprising how many folks think it should be.


acid4hastur wrote:
I allow it to catch fire at my table. I personally feel it is a bit of a stretch that they'd be summoning a flourinated or silicon-based grease instead of a run-of-the-mill animal fat or crude oil. ...

As I recall, even oil based grease is actually fairly difficult to light on fire. Not really sure about that though. I may do some experimenting this weekend.

Grand Lodge RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

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Joe Lai wrote:
The reason ppl thing grease can burn is always a result of players or GMs trying to cheese into doing more damage.

Really? I thought maybe it was because most people are neither chemists nor chefs and are therefore making assumptions based on having heard of things like "grease fires" and "oil lamps" and drawing reasonable conclusions based on their incomplete knowledge.

But no, you're probably right that it's always a result of people trying to cheese into more damage. That's a much more believable reason than "honest mistake".

/sarcasm

How about you just stick to discussing the topic instead of trying to demonize those who didn't know the answer?

Grand Lodge

Plus, this is Golarion and not the real world, so that chemistry/physics may not apply. Who knows, perhaps the spell conjures an area of frictionless planespace, and you know, butter just happens to be the focus for the spell.

Scarab Sages

acid4hastur wrote:
I allow it to catch fire at my table. I personally feel it is a bit of a stretch that they'd be summoning a flourinated or silicon-based grease instead of a run-of-the-mill animal fat or crude oil. After all, if the party is willing to invest two spells to set someone on fire for a piddly 1d6 extra damage per round, I'm not going to begrudge them that chance.

animal or plant fat is technically flammable - i.e. burns - but it is not the flash of fire people are thinking to do damage - if such fat is converted to a fine mist - especially heated (see frozen turkey deep fried), it is quite flash flammable - but put a match to most animal/plant fats and good luck on having it catch on fire - you'd be lucky with a blow torch.

I could also ask, does Grease work the same in really cold weather, and my guess is most would say of course - so its something super slippery it heat or cold, or even underwater.

Grand Lodge

Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Once the GM starts allowing spells to have effects that aren't detailed in their spell descriptions, the spells become more powerful. When spells become more powerful, spellcasters become more powerful. Disproportionally powerful spellcasters is something that people already spend too much time and energy complaining about on these boards.

-Skeld

Dark Archive

acid4hastur wrote:
I allow it to catch fire at my table. I personally feel it is a bit of a stretch that they'd be summoning a flourinated or silicon-based grease instead of a run-of-the-mill animal fat or crude oil. After all, if the party is willing to invest two spells to set someone on fire for a piddly 1d6 extra damage per round, I'm not going to begrudge them that chance.

Just make it some kind of chlorinated grease (not my fault the spell's creator was a wizard who wanted to be an alchemist!). ;)


It's not flammable.

Also this one.

And if you check the Beginner's Box, it makes it clear that the grease spell wasn't meant to be flammable.


I formed the opinion that Grease is less a spell that creates grease and more a spell that magically makes things slippery.


Mage's Lubrication.


The old spell component before butter was pork fat, many players picture bacon grease or fryer oil catching fire on the stove and run with it.


Dhjika wrote:
acid4hastur wrote:
I allow it to catch fire at my table. I personally feel it is a bit of a stretch that they'd be summoning a flourinated or silicon-based grease instead of a run-of-the-mill animal fat or crude oil. After all, if the party is willing to invest two spells to set someone on fire for a piddly 1d6 extra damage per round, I'm not going to begrudge them that chance.
animal or plant fat is technically flammable - i.e. burns - but it is not the flash of fire people are thinking to do damage - if such fat is converted to a fine mist - especially heated (see frozen turkey deep fried), it is quite flash flammable - but put a match to most animal/plant fats and good luck on having it catch on fire - you'd be lucky with a blow torch.

Interesting, I didn't know that. I will have to put that into consideration. Thanks!

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