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What are you doing now? or what would you do if some PC wanted to put out a fire with Create Water? What Mechanics would you use?
When this happened during an AP, I let the create water spell be more effective than tossing dirt or joining the bucket brigade. But without spending actual resources, it wasn't the cure-all that casting something like Quench would be.
Once a wooden building is on fire, chances of it burning to the ground are strong. The citizens of [redacted] can organize bucket brigades that can contain the fire, but they can do little to save the buildings [redacted] targets directly with [something hot]. Saving a building from burning down requires PC intervention in the form of magic. Quench is the most efficient way of stopping a fire. Gust of wind can extinguish a fire if applied within a round of the [bad thing]. Pyrotechnics can convert a fire to harmless smoke and light if cast on a burning building within 4 rounds of the fire starting - each 4 rounds (or fraction thereof) the fire continues to burn requires an additional pyrotechnics spell. Cone of cold or sleet storm can extinguish any fire, provided the spell’s area of effect can encompass the entire building. Additional spells and effects might work, subject to GM approval.
where did the notes on Pyrotechics come from? it sounded like you were quoting something.
Everything in the spoiler (minus a few words I redacted) was straight out of the AP. It was OGL (3.5), so the create water cantrip didn't exist back then, and some of the spells may have worked differently.
In the same spirit, another, more recent AP deals with the same situation, and by then the PCs are much lower level:
Fight Fires: A PC can fight a fire in an adjacent square
by beating the fire with a cloak or tapestry (such as the
tapestries that hang on the walls of the room) by making
a DC 12 combat maneuver check. Using magic to fight the
fire (such as by casting create water or enlisting the aid of
an unseen servant) grants a +4 bonus on this check. With a
successful check, the fire in that square is extinguished, but
the square can still catch on fire as normal in a later round.
As a rule of thumb, I'd say that the larger and more intense the fire, the higher it's CMD should be, and the stronger the spell the higher a modifier it should give.
Of course, many spells have their effect against fire included in their description, which greatly simplify things, like for exemple Hydrolic Torrent:
"Hydraulic torrent extinguishes any normal fires it encounters along its path. Magical fires are unaffected."
I'm a firefighter IRL, and I know RL isn't always a good measure of how to do things in game, but 100 gpm isn't really all that much for fire. If it's a small room and contents fire you'd be fine, but if you had a large room with a lot of stuff, or a whole building, you'd never put it out.
Agreed.
Likewise, if you had something 5' x 5' on fire (a sizeable bonfire or a queen sized bed that is fully involved would be roughly this size), then 2 milk jugs full of water isn't really going to do much to it.
Sean Mahoney