So, If I were to throw a merciful metamagic fireball inside of a building, the damage type is both non-lethal and fire.
Fireball states that it sets combustibles aflame, melts certain metals, etc.
Now the question is, what happens when my merciful fireball is thrown into a building with a cluster of guards?
Does it knock out the guards and leave the building and the various furniture and papers untouched? Maybe just knocked around from the force of the blast?
Or does the fireball still blast out the walls, lighting fires, but leaves the guards unconscious, singed, but unkilled? (assuming I don't do too much nonlethal damage).
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/additionalRules.html#smashing-an-object
Immunities: Objects are immune to nonlethal damage and to critical hits. Even animated objects, which are otherwise considered creatures, have these immunities.
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Since it's magical fire, it doesn't have to follow the laws of physics or even logic. Strictly by the rules, it would only change the damage type from fire to nonlethal fire damage. It wouldn't change any other aspect of the spell, so, things that burn still burn. The only physics adhering nonlethal fire damage I know is from environmental effects- though it doesn't explicitly state so, resistance to fire should confer immunity to the damage caused by being in a hot environment. Since a volatile substance can burst into flames in a hot environment, by that line of thinking, a merciful fireball should still catch things on fire as well. That kind of nulls Frank's point, I think.
None the less, it doesn't make sense to me that it would burn anything but highly volatile items, and would fall back to the "its Maaaaagic" reasoning to justify whatever happens.
