Aqueous Orb plus Burning Disarm / Heat Metal

[wertyou2]

I have a player who's recently begun utilizing a spell combo of entrapping an enemy in an aqueous orb one round, casting burning disarm on any weapons they're holding the next round (or throw one of his own weapons in if the creature uses natural attacks), and boiling the enemy alive for 10d6 damage a round at level 5.

I've been trying to think through the logistics of this, seeing as the latter two spells state they boil the water "around" the weapon. Realistically speaking, if you dip scalding hot metal into water it creates steam, and then cools down. Counterargument is that there's a magical force keeping it warm, so heat laws won't really apply.

Another problem is the question of how far around the weapon the water boils. If it's just the immediate area there shouldn't be any damage, but even if it's a 5x5x5 foot cube, that's a whole medium sized creature.

My gut is telling me to just say it doesn't work for balance reasons, but I want to give the player some reward for coming up with what I think is a really creative use of spells. Any suggestions?

[StabbittyDoom]

Ever boil a pot of water? Measure how long that takes sometime. Now imagine boiling a 10ft diameter sphere of water with the same size of flame. That's how long heat metal would take to boil that water. The steam around the weapon itself is a VERY small portion of the water, too small to reasonably affect the orb within the time limits of the orb's duration. You could get rid of 100 gallons of water and the orb would still have literally thousands left (about 3800, to be more exact).

EDIT: Honestly, this is one situation where I wouldn't give a reward. Heat metal is expressly supposed to get *weaker* in water, and he's deliberately putting them in water. He's hamstringing himself.

[Shiroi]

Yeah, this is an attempt to abuse something that isn't really abusable. If he wants to use the sphere to really kill with any efficiency, he should try a force cage around them and walk away.

[cavernshark]

wertyou2 wrote:

My gut is telling me to just say it doesn't work for balance reasons, but I want to give the player some reward for coming up with what I think is a really creative use of spells. Any suggestions?

That's the right call. It's the same reason a shocking grasp to the sphere doesn't do damage to all targets inside. If you really want to reward the creativity, I'd just change the 2d6 nonlethal drowning damage to some mix of non-lethal heat or fire damage.

Or you could tell your player to use Summon Monster II and drop a water elemental inside to vortex. That actually has rules supporting it.

[Shiroi]

Actually, now that I think about it... let him research a higher level spell where 10d6 fire damage to targets in an area like that is reasonable. His reward is a custom spell at a spell slot which is balanced and makes sense. He can do it this one time, for fun, and his character has no idea how he managed to do it and spends the next several levels trying to recreate it until he can actually cast your homebrew spell "Boiling Orb".

[Finlanderboy]

It automatically quenches any nonmagical fires and functions as dispel magic against magical fires as long as those fires are size Large or less.

I would rule the burning disarm is dispelled.

I would not allow a player to make up rules to do stupid extra damage.

[Gauss]

While burning disarm and heat metal state they "boil surrounding water" there is no statement as to how much water they are boiling.

I would not allow this combination to qualify as being immersed in boiling water. I might allow it to qualify as contact (1d6 damage).