Heat Exhaustion and Fire Resistance

[uriel222]

So I'm running Serpent's Skull, and one of my players is playing a Chelaxian Tiefling travelling to Sargava for a new life. They go inland in the jungle, the heat sets in, and...

What do I do about the Tiefling's Fire Resistance? Does it apply to the non-lethal damage caused by high temperatures (thus preventing heat exhaustion)? Or is it just for actual fire damage?

Thanks

[Rathendar]

uriel222 wrote:

So I'm running Serpent's Skull, and one of my players is playing a Chelaxian Tiefling travelling to Sargava for a new life. They go inland in the jungle, the heat sets in, and...

What do I do about the Tiefling's Fire Resistance? Does it apply to the non-lethal damage caused by high temperatures (thus preventing heat exhaustion)? Or is it just for actual fire damage?

Thanks

3.5 sandstorm has actual rules for how FR interacted with heat exhaustion. (note i say 3.5 not PF)

IMO you should consider the PC to be under the effects of endure/resist fire naturally for applying 'heat penalties' and subtract it from any non-lethal damage you still choose to apply. A red dragon lounging by a volcano really won't sweat much.

[Ice Titan]

I would only hit him with fatigue/exhaustion if he takes 6 or more nonlethal damage from heat exposure. Whatever's enough to bypass his fire resistance. And, of course, if he's near a volcano or lava his 5 fire resist soaks a majority of the 1d6 fire damage a minute.

To be fair, nonlethal = exhausted/fatigued has no correlation with fire at all, but we're throwing him a bone.

He'd still take nonlethal damage. Dragons don't take nonlethal damage from being in hot environments because they take 1d4 nonlethal an hour and have DR5/magic. The DR soaks their damage from hot environments. To be fair, the Fire subtype also kind of supports that fire immunity = hot environment protection, so that's another way to look at that.

Also just now I noticed that apparently I take 1d4 nonlethal every 10 minutes when I walk around outside in the summer here in Arizona. I have never died to heat damage, so either I have a fantastic Fort save, a lot of HP, or these rules are kind of bunk.

Maybe I took Endurance.

[Eric Clingenpeel]

How I've decided to handle it in my Legacy of Fire game is every 5 points of FR, the heat is one step less. Now, I'm not sure how the jungles of Serpents skull work, but for the desert:

FR 5
90-109 drops to below 90
110-139 drops to above 90
140+ drops to 110

FR 10
90-109 drops to below 90
110-139 drops to below 90
140+ drops to 90-109

FR 15
90+ counts as below 90

[Mortagon]

I've just assumed that creatures with fire resistance is immune to nonlethal damage from heat and only takes lethal damage if it bypasses their resistance. It's not like it's really hard to alleviate the penalties from heat anyway, a simple create water spell will do as will finding shade, not to hard in a jungle.

[Echo Vining]

Here's how I see it. Hot areas deal 1d6 nonlethal damage every hour, or every 10 minutes if it's really hot. Fire resistance 5 is enough to negate 5 points of damage every single round. I don't think you're completely unaffected by heat for 599 rounds and then take 1d6 damage all at once. I think it's an abstraction to say that you've basically been very slowly taking damage over this period of time. I say FR 5 is enough to ignore hot environments.

[HaraldKlak]

uriel222 wrote:

So I'm running Serpent's Skull, and one of my players is playing a Chelaxian Tiefling travelling to Sargava for a new life. They go inland in the jungle, the heat sets in, and...

What do I do about the Tiefling's Fire Resistance? Does it apply to the non-lethal damage caused by high temperatures (thus preventing heat exhaustion)? Or is it just for actual fire damage?

Thanks

I would generally say that it does not apply. RAW wise there is a distinction between endure elements that protect you from enviromental dangers, and resist energy that allows you to ignore damage from energy-based attacks.

In some cases (such as a dragon) it might make sense to rule that it ignores the enviromental effects of the enviroment it inhabites. But as a general rule, I don't think there is a direct connection between fire resistance and enduring heat. The fact that the tiefling got some devil/demon in her allowing he to laugh at minor flames, does not necessarily mean that she has got so vastly a different anathomy as the ignore dehydration and other effects of being in a very varm enviroment.

[KaeYoss]

In my book, people who can stick their hands into fire without getting burned will laugh at mere climate (unless you're in the plane of fire or something).

[Shifty]

KaeYoss wrote:

In my book, people who can stick their hands into fire without getting burned will laugh at mere climate (unless you're in the plane of fire or something).

+1.

It's beyond belief that a race that can withstand non-magical fire with little risk of injusry would be overcome on account of a nice afternoon in Florida. It might be hot, but its not quite Hell... (well, almost)

[uriel222]

I guess it's analogous then to a fire fighter wearing bunker gear. You're protected from the fire itself, but eventually the heat will wear you down. It's too bad this isn't spelled out in the RAW anywhere.

Thanks for your advice (though the tiefling isn't going to like it...)

[Ughbash]

The 3.5 book Sandstorm had a lot of rules for hot climates.

Quote:

Resistance to Fire

A character with a spell or effect granting resistance to
fire applies this resistance to both lethal and nonlethal
damage from hot temperatures. For example, a creature
with resistance to fire 5 subtracts 5 from the 1d6 points of
lethal damage dealt per 10 minutes by extreme heat (and
therefore might take 1 point of heat damage, if a 6 is rolled)
and 5 from the 1d4 points of nonlethal damage dealt. In
this example, since the creature ends up not taking any
nonlethal damage from the heat, it need not worry about
heatstroke or heat exhaustion.