Can an undead creature be effected by a fireball?


Rules Questions


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Tonight we encountered a wraith. The wizard wanted to cast a fireball. I say the wraith is immune to it being incorporeal but the wizard says that since the fire is magical in nature, it should damage the wraith. I say the spell creates the fire but otherwise fire wouldn't have any effect. Can anyone clarify this for us? Thanks in advance.


Yes it can


You are wrong. Incorporeal creatures take half damage from spells that deal damage including fireball.


Quote:
Incorporeal (Ex) An incorporeal creature has no physical body. It can be harmed only by other incorporeal creatures, magic weapons or creatures that strike as magic weapons, and spells, spell-like abilities, or supernatural abilities. It is immune to all nonmagical attack forms. Even when hit by spells or magic weapons, it takes only half damage from a corporeal source.

Spells do affect incorporeal beings, but damaging spells only do half damage.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Thanks everyone, appreciate the quick responses!


Dennis P. wrote:
Can an undead creature be effected by a fireball?

No, an undead creature can be effected by Create Undead. An undead creature can, however, be affected by Fireball, as the previous posts clarify. :p


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Beldhyr wrote:
Dennis P. wrote:
Can an undead creature be effected by a fireball?
No, an undead creature can be effected by Create Undead. An undead creature can, however, be affected by Fireball, as the previous posts clarify. :p

My first thought was, wow, this guy comes for advice and all you can do is mock his spelling?

And my second thought was that I'd TOTALLY do the same thing. :)


Hey, he got two advices for the price of one.
And correcting such errors even mildly mocking is good. I know that when I make an error I would prefer to have it pointed to me so I can learn to do better.


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And knowing is half the battle.

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Ashenfall wrote:
And knowing is half the battle.


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Dennis P. wrote:
Tonight we encountered a wraith. The wizard wanted to cast a fireball. I say the wraith is immune to it being incorporeal but the wizard says that since the fire is magical in nature, it should damage the wraith. I say the spell creates the fire but otherwise fire wouldn't have any effect. Can anyone clarify this for us? Thanks in advance.

If I had been in your game I would have probably then gone after SR, as in "If the spell creates fire, then creatures with SR shouldn't get SR on my fireball."

If you continued to say that they got that too, you could darn well bet I would be going on an grabbing a spell resistance item to set myself on fire cause created fire doesn't harm me if I don't break my SR..

Though normally, I don't use my powers for evil that much. Only when something really really irks me.

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