Assuming you roll average damage each time, work out the current/voltage of each D6 of shocking grasp (Not counting bonuses like from a certain sorcerer bloodline). You may assume that the average person has about 8-10 HP. Show your work.
I'll put my answers up soon for comparison.
I don't really know anything about electricity, but I know how to use google. 100-200 mili amps kill a human. The average of a d6 is 3.5. So it'd take 3d6 to kill a human. So 150 mili amps divided by 3 = 50 mili amps per d6.
I don't really know anything about electricity, but I know how to use google. 100-200 mili amps kill a human. The average of a d6 is 3.5. So it'd take 3d6 to kill a human. So 150 mili amps divided by 3 = 50 mili amps per d6.
But at the same time, with that 1d6, you could consistently roll ones, and still end up killing the person.
So that would be like hitting someone with a 50 mili amp shock from the jolt cantrip (it was a paizo blog thing- same as ray of frost) for a minute straight.
I suppose this goes back to the problem that a gang of 8-10 cats could knock out that same commoner in 1 round with their nonlethal scratch attacks (and entirely murder him with simple scratches to the bum a rounds after that when the nonlethal damage builds up).
Lets just assume that anything that does lethal damage has lethal amps. I mean people get hit with lightning all the time and some survive (and hell, there is a video of one old man getting back up immediately after getting his), so it is not hard to write off as them making their reflex save and having hit points left over. Or realistically, the fact that the person didn't lose all their hit points and die was because the electricity didn't take a bad path and mess something important up (like the heart)
If you assume that electricity damage is constant another useful data point is that lightning bolt melts copper. Now it is unclear exactly how much copper lightning bolt can melt but lets assume a lighting bolt spell can melt a copper piece as a low bound (we will later assume minimum caster level 5d6 damage which corresponds to the mightiest shocking grasp)
Melting point of copper is 1084 C (assume no overheating required)
Heat Capacity of copper is 0.39 J/g C (assume constant)
Copper pieces are pre-1984 US pennies and therefore weigh 3.11 g (because I say so)
Lets assume it's a room temperature (23 C) and a level 5 wizard casts a lightning bolt (or shocking grasp) on a copper piece.
Temperature raises from 23 C to 1084 C, delT=1061 C
Total energy (0.39 J/g C)*(3.11 g)*(1061 C)= 1287 J
So that is the total energy required to melt a copper piece.
Current is a rate so we need to know how long it takes for this current to heat up and melt the coin. Lets take a high estimate here and say that the lighting bolt lasts for a whole second. That would mean the power output of the spell is 1287 watts.
P=IV so we are almost there but still do not know how much is current and how much is voltage.
Going with Castilonium's numbers lets assume it take 0.2 A to kill a commoner full health to death is 20 points of damage therefore current per damage point is 0.01 A. Back to the lighting bolt a standard lv. 5 lighting bolt has 1287 watts and deals 17.5 damage. So the lighting bolt is 0.175 A (enough to knock a person unconscious but not enough to kill them outright).
So that leads us to the conclusion that a standard lighting bolt has 0.175 A at whopping 7354 V. Now diving by 17.5 damage we get
Current and Voltage per point of electricity damage
0.01 A
420 V
This must scale linearly with damage to keep the total power the same, we are clearly in a current limited regime, in terms of lethality.
So back to the OP, by my back of the envelope hand wavy calculations each d6 of electricity damage packs 420-2520 V with a limiting current of 0.01-0.06 A.
Cheers!