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I think we need a bit more guidance on tunneling.
Yesterday, my druid decided to turn into a medium Earth Elemental and burrow under a portcullis, making a nice little tunnel for the rest of the party to follow along.
Although we covered ourselves with a Fog Cloud, a Hill Giant was busily dropping stones on us from above, so we needed to know how long this would take.
Couldn't really find any help on this.
In fact, the MM seemed to suggest the Earth Elemental could only *glide* through earth rather than tunnel in it, which seemed very counter-intuitive to me.
In the end we opted for 4 rounds. I think an Earth Elemental should be pretty good at shoving earth around.
Digging has lost its importance in D&D since the days of 1st ed. The old DMG had some nice tables about mining, which took into consideration different races' affinity to it, and of course there was always the Dig spell, which has now passed into obscurity.
Proper mining, of course, isn't just a matter of digging a tunnel, and although there was some consideration given to this (and revisited in the later Dungeoneer's Survival Guide) I think it would be nice to have some simple excavation abilities and rates sorted out as part of the environment section of the rules (as an addendum somewhere), *beyond* digging yourself out of a cave in.
What do you think?
Richard
I think we need a bit more guidance on tunneling.
Yesterday, my druid decided to turn into a medium Earth Elemental and burrow under a portcullis, making a nice little tunnel for the rest of the party to follow along.
Although we covered ourselves with a Fog Cloud, a Hill Giant was busily dropping stones on us from above, so we needed to know how long this would take.
Couldn't really find any help on this.
In fact, the MM seemed to suggest the Earth Elemental could only *glide* through earth rather than tunnel in it, which seemed very counter-intuitive to me.
In the end we opted for 4 rounds. I think an Earth Elemental should be pretty good at shoving earth around.
Digging has lost its importance in D&D since the days of 1st ed. The old DMG had some nice tables about mining, which took into consideration different races' affinity to it, and of course there was always the Dig spell, which has now passed into obscurity.
Proper mining, of course, isn't just a matter of digging a tunnel, and although there was some consideration given to this (and revisited in the later Dungeoneer's Survival Guide) I think it would be nice to have some simple excavation abilities and rates sorted out as part of the environment section of the rules (as an addendum somewhere), *beyond* digging yourself out of a cave in.
What do you think?
Richard
To go line by line here, I will say that I both agree and disagree on the Earth Elemental bit of this post. I agree that an Earth Elemental would be awesome at raw dirt moving prowess. But I disagree that an Earth Elemental's normal form of movement would disturb the earth they pass through. As I see it, elemental locomotion through the Elemental's element wouldn't disturb the element which acts as a transitive location. This wouldn't really come up for any other Elemental than the Earth Elemental, as all other elements are fluid by nature.
As regards the rest of the post, I would LOVE to see these rules. They are long overdue, and would prove useful to GM's and players alike. What Evil Overlord doesn't want to dig his own dungeon? What security conscious Castelan wouldn't want a moat around his newly erected castle? (This actually came up in my Beloved Spouse's (Kobold chorus: "We love you!") game recently when our Deck of Many Things generated keep became more security aware. The archmage decided to use.. er... Shape Earth? One of those less-than-perfectly-suited spells to accomplish what should have been easily handled by Dig.
Help us Paizo-wan-Kenobi, you're our only hope.
Honestly, the way I run it, an elemental is a spirit of that element. It moves through its own element unimpeded as a spirit, its body formed by the element around it at the moment. A druid could easily move through the earth as an earth elemental, but creating a tunnel? Maybe more easily than he could as a druid, but probably no better than if the druid had turned into a giant mole.
In the absence of any better rules being written to date, I'd default to the 1st ed DMG if needed, and likewise I'd list the "Dig" spell as one of the "lost spells" but let it be something PCs could find or research if they really cared to.
FWIW, I regularly let players find spells and items from previous editions, and the youngest players are especially amused by finding these relics from "the times before."
Generally I would go with tunneling either requiring a burrow speed (since that actually creates tunnels in most cases), a spell (possibly stone shape for example), or hard labor.
The 3.5 splat book "Races of Dragon" had rules in it for excavations/mining.
Honestly, the way I run it, an elemental is a spirit of that element. It moves through its own element unimpeded as a spirit, its body formed by the element around it at the moment.
Great minds truly do think alike!
Nah. Air and water elementals have those abilities for two reasons. Because those are real, genuine natural phenomina, and because they need more things to contribute to the CR. Fire Elementals don't have those, nor do Earths. And frankly, Earth elementals are the most powerful of them all, when it comes to melee combat.Bear in mind, guys, that Air elementals can create whirlwinds and Water elementals whirlpools so Earth elementals ought to be able to create "whirl-earths" (IYSWIM).
Richard
Earth elementals should be able to create sink holes. These are natural phenomenon too, and totally fit with the concept of an earth elemental 'moving' earth out from underneath someone/something.
A quicksand whirlpool sounds like a good idea for an ooze paraelemental.
A quicksand whirlpool sounds like a good idea for an ooze paraelemental.
Or just a sandpit in the desert with a regular earth elemental.