Acid Fog Adjudication


Rules Questions

The Exchange

1 person marked this as FAQ candidate.

What is the mechanic for how the acid affects the ITEMS worn by characters caught in the ACID FOG spell area of affect? It seems very tedious (and un-fun) to account for every, single item the PC(s) carries.

Liberty's Edge

Rithralas wrote:
What is the mechanic for how the acid affects the ITEMS worn by characters caught in the ACID FOG spell area of affect? It seems very tedious (and un-fun) to account for every, single item the PC(s) carries.

Area of effect spells only effect a single item carried by any given person and then only if that person rolls a natural 1 on the saving throw.


Consult ZE TABLEH!

Dark Archive

Quote:

Acid Fog

School conjuration (creation) [acid]; Level sorcerer/wizard 6

Casting Time 1 standard action

Components V, S, M (powdered peas and an animal hoof)

Range medium (100 ft. + 10 ft./level)

Effect fog spreads in 20-ft. radius, 20 ft. high

Duration 1 round/level

Saving Throw none; Spell Resistance no

Acid fog creates a billowing mass of misty vapors like the solid fog spell. In addition to slowing down creatures and obscuring sight, this spell's vapors are highly acidic. Each round on your turn, starting when you cast the spell, the fog deals 2d6 points of acid damage to each creature and object within it.

Acid fog does not allow saving throws, so the "roll a 1, have items effected" does not really count here. Also, the wording on the spell seems to indicate that it does effect all their items.

Personally, I have always read "objects" here as "unattended objects", but that might just be a carry over.

Silver Crusade

The unattended/attended object thing is usually used only for saves or attacks.

Acid Fog does seem to damage all items. As a 6th level spell that seems appropriately powerful.

As far as tracking every item I would just roll the damage and leave that to the PC or DM. Also items in containers would not suffer until the container was broken.

As DM I would just randomly have monsters come out of the fog with broken swords or armor or other equipment. There is no need to track everything.

It could get interesting if you cast it on a bridge or similar structure. Enemy crosses the bridge slowly due to the fog and at some point the bridge fails.


karkon wrote:
It could get interesting if you cast it on a bridge or similar structure. Enemy crosses the bridge slowly due to the fog and at some point the bridge fails.

Stone bridge would have hardness 8. If you rolled max damage every round (12) that deals 4 damage to the bridge. A level 20 caster would end up dealing, at most, 80 damage to the bridge. If the bridge is over 5 inches thick, then it wouldn't break.

Scrolls, spellbooks, potion bottles, all would probably be destroyed on the first round. Pretty brutal.


Actually, it'd do no damage to the bridge.

In PF, you half the damage before applying hardness. 12 / 2 = 6. Hardness is 8.

In 3.5, there was this rule:

Energy Attacks wrote:


Acid and sonic attacks deal damage to most objects just as they do to creatures; roll damage and apply it normally after a successful hit. Electricity and fire attacks deal half damage to most objects; divide the damage dealt by 2 before applying the hardness. Cold attacks deal one-quarter damage to most objects; divide the damage dealt by 4 before applying the hardness.

Dark Archive

Grick wrote:
karkon wrote:
It could get interesting if you cast it on a bridge or similar structure. Enemy crosses the bridge slowly due to the fog and at some point the bridge fails.

Stone bridge would have hardness 8. If you rolled max damage every round (12) that deals 4 damage to the bridge. A level 20 caster would end up dealing, at most, 80 damage to the bridge. If the bridge is over 5 inches thick, then it wouldn't break.

Scrolls, spellbooks, potion bottles, all would probably be destroyed on the first round. Pretty brutal.

Acid fog would fall under this rule:

Quote:
Energy Attacks: Energy attacks deal half damage to most objects. Divide the damage by 2 before applying the object's hardness. Some energy types might be particularly effective against certain objects, subject to GM discretion. For example, fire might do full damage against parchment, cloth, and other objects that burn easily. Sonic might do full damage against glass and crystal objects.

If the GM decided that this acid was good vs stone, it would eat through faster, but normally it would do 1/2 damage.

Silver Crusade

Let me have my dream, man!

Stupid hardness.

Wait I got it. This bridge is a abomination created for an evil army. It is actually a bridge made of living material and moves with the army to help them get over rivers and other gaps.

The Exchange

This question came up because the PC's triggered a trap, got hit for 2d6 acid damage, and then quickly left the area. The rules are so unclear on how to adjudicate the item damage however, so the CR7 trap seemed extremely weak to simply allow the PC's to not worry about any of their equipment and walk out of a high level trap with only 2d6 damage.

Silver Crusade

Rithralas wrote:
This question came up because the PC's triggered a trap, got hit for 2d6 acid damage, and then quickly left the area. The rules are so unclear on how to adjudicate the item damage however, so the CR7 trap seemed extremely weak to simply allow the PC's to not worry about any of their equipment and walk out of a high level trap with only 2d6 damage.

Traps usually allow saves. If a character rolls a 1 on a save then one item can be damaged. There is a chart you can roll on.

The Exchange

Actually: Unless the descriptive text for the spell specifies otherwise part of acid fog would negate the natural 1 rule and seems to damage all items (poor spellbooks!)

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