Earth Elementals as heavy ordnance?

[The Pun-isher]

Hello, anyone reading this. I'll get straight to my question-I've got no idea how to open a thread.

Ahem.

In my Pathfinder group, our party, consisting of a Cleric, Paladin and Summoner at the time, all level 9, was in a medium sized fishing boat, being pursued by two warships. Because our Wizard wasn't at the session, we were short on any effective ways to kill our pursuers, evil cultists we had been harassed by in the past. My character, the Paladin, had an idea; he would fly the Summoner over the cult ships, and the Summoner would create a large Earth elemental over each ship, which would drop and crush the ships.

We came under too heavy an attack to destroy the second ship, but the first was crushed effectively. My question regards the logical extrapolation of this sort of attack.

Would a high-level Wizard and Summoner team be able to summon an Elder Earth Elemental at high altitude, allow it to drop for several seconds, teleport it several thousand feet back in the air, and repeat until it has reached terminal velocity, and then drop it on a target?

Essentially, I want to know whether there are any rules being broken by this. The whole tactic would revolve around velocity being retained between teleportations. Would it?

Additionally, although this goes somewhat beyond the scope of Pathfinder, how much force would an Elder Earth Elemental impact the ground with at terminal velocity, and what sort of effect would this have upon something beneath or in a 250' radius of the impact?

Thanks for reading/answering.

[Golph]

All i can contribute besides inadvertently bumping this thread is that you wouldnt need to teleport it more than once to reach a huge velocity.

Teleport wrote:

This spell instantly transports you to a designated destination, which may be as distant as 100 miles per caster level.

So if you wanted to drop it 900 miles you could, though i think this would require the wizard to be up there with it, in which case he'd want feather fall.

[Azten]

You have to summon creatures on a surface that supports them.

[kestral287]

To answer the second question first: terminal velocity changes depending on what is falling. It would take a great deal more information on the Earth Elemental than what we have. Size and shape are the big two, with the latter keying into its flight profile (humans, for example, have different terminal velocities if they're falling feat-first or belly-first).

To answer the first question: Velocity is totally irrelevant to Pathfinder fall damage; only distance matters. If the Huge Elemental falls 150' or more, he does 12D6 (and takes 15D6). You would have to make a ranged touch attack with an increment of 20', which means this is also relatively unlikely to hit. The ship may or may not get a DC15 Reflex save to halve the damage.

So, the only rule being broken is this being actually effective, because by RAW... it really isn't. On average rolls, assuming everything hits and no saves, against a Warship's Hardness 10 and 1200 HP... you'd need to drop 38 of these Huge Elementals.

[Claxon]

The answer is, this doesn't work.

A) You must summon creatures on a surface that supports them. Meaning an earth elemental must be summoned on something solid.
B) There are rules for falling objects, which is essentially what you're trying to do. Except they don't do nearly the kind of damage you want.

Quote:

Falling Objects

Table: Damage from Falling Objects Object Size Damage
Small 2d6
Medium 3d6
Large 4d6
Huge 6d6
Gargantuan 8d6
Colossal 10d6

Just as characters take damage when they fall more than 10 feet, so too do they take damage when they are hit by falling objects.

Objects that fall upon characters deal damage based on their size and the distance they have fallen. Table: Damage from Falling Objects determines the amount of damage dealt by an object based on its size. Note that this assumes that the object is made of dense, heavy material, such as stone. Objects made of lighter materials might deal as little as half the listed damage, subject to GM discretion. For example, a Huge boulder that hits a character deals 6d6 points of damage, whereas a Huge wooden wagon might deal only 3d6 damage. In addition, if an object falls less than 30 feet, it deals half the listed damage. If an object falls more than 150 feet, it deals double the listed damage. Note that a falling object takes the same amount of damage as it deals.

Dropping an object on a creature requires a ranged touch attack. Such attacks generally have a range increment of 20 feet. If an object falls on a creature (instead of being thrown), that creature can make a DC 15 Reflex save to halve the damage if he is aware of the object. Falling objects that are part of a trap use the trap rules instead of these general guidelines.

So, without knowing what level you are, even if you summoned colossal earth elementals above the boats (which you can't do anyways) they would only deal 10d6 damage (unless more than 150ft up). An average of 35 damage, max 60. If more than 150 ft, then a max of 120 but average of 60.

Go look up how much hp boats have...did you look? In case you didn't, anything other than a rowboat has several hundred hp. You're going to have to carpet bomb the boats to sink them using this method.

A little thing I learned from Skull and Shackles Adventure Path is that ships are very hard to destroy. You end up boarding and killing those on board because trying to destroy the ship takes too damn long.

[kestral287]

Fair's fair Claxon, the rules you quoted do include double damage for a fall of more than 150'. So a Huge Earth Elemental (which you can do!) can deal up to 12D6.

So 38 of the best legal elementals.

This can actually be a somewhat effective tactic if you're using Shrink Object; get a bag of pebble-sized boulders, dump them over the boats, and use the command word to bring them back to full size. You still need 38 huge rocks... but that's actually feasible.

[Claxon]

A much more effective method would be to summon a bunch of water elementals and command them to swim underneath the ship and attack and destroy the rudder of each ship. It may take a couple rounds, but once the rudder is destroyed they can't turn. And then you tack a different course and outrun them.

@Kestral, I included the possibility of double damage in my post.

Also remember each attack would need to be made against touch AC, of course boats are weird and just have a base AC of 2, except it's modified by the pilot. You have a -7 penalty from range increments. Depending on the sailing skill of the pilot, it might be difficult to hit.

The pilot also gets to make a reflex save for the boat, and adds half his sailing skill to the base save of the ship. With only a DC 15 to reduce the damage to half, a +10 in profession sailor gives a 50% chance to reduce the damage by half.

[Doomed Hero]

Swan Boats make great artillery.

450 gp each. Break one at a distance of a half mile up.

Nothing like ramming a ship with another ship from the sky.

[Claxon]

Doomed Hero, half a mile up would actually be a terrible idea. You would almost certainly miss. And once you're above 150 ft it doesn't deal any more damage.

[The Pun-isher]

OK, I'm glad to know this won't work, rather than continuing to accidentally break the rules.

As for the case with destroying the boat, our GM decides things by what would make sense with what's actually happening for things like that. Dropping a 6000 pound piece of rock from 200 feet above a ship and dealing as much damage as the Paladin would from hitting it a few times makes a lot less sense than the elemental crushing the ship under it, so we went with that.

Ironically, this wasn't even the worst break of the rules involving falling Elementals. The cult we did it on did it back to us, but instead of dropping a single Earth Elemental on a ship they dropped several dozen Earth and Fire Elementals on most of the city we were in.
Because we don't go back and retcon stuff, I guess this one is going back into Pandora's Box.

Thanks for the help, everyone.

[Azten]

Magma Elementals, summoned on the ship itself, can vomit a pool of "weak" lava. I say weak because it's nearly as damaging as regular lava.

Once that lave burns through the deck, it'll fall deeper into the ship until it burns through it completely.

[Ascalaphus]

I think water elementals are the way to go here. We tend to think of them as weaker than earth elementals, but that's only really the case on land. In the water they're not penalized, and they could go from ship to ship to wreck them.

[mplindustries]

Yeah, if you can summon elder earth elementals, why not use an elder water elemental? If the boats were small, Vortex would probably swallow them all.

[Kazaan]

I saw the title and thought something entirely different... like telling an Earth Elemental to climb into a cannon and curl up into a ball. Launch them as a cannonball to deal immediate damage, then have them uncurl and run amok when they touch down.

[Melvin the Mediocre]

First you don't have to summon the elemental in the air if you are going to teleport it anyway. Summon it on the ground, then dimension door or teleport it away.
Second, as a dm I would not use hit points, but break difficulty swapping out the elementals strength for some (arbitrarily) assigned bonus for speed. I think the deck of ship might be on par with a heavy door. Subsequent decks and the hull would have much reduced momentum, but the elemental could potentially be asked to start pounding on the next deck or hull once it has stopped cannon balling through.

[Claxon]

Nope!

Quote:

Conjuration

Each conjuration spell belongs to one of five subschools. Conjurations transport creatures from another plane of existence to your plane (calling); create objects or effects on the spot (creation); heal (healing); bring manifestations of objects, creatures, or forms of energy to you (summoning); or transport creatures or objects over great distances (teleportation). Creatures you conjure usually—but not always—obey your commands.

A creature or object brought into being or transported to your location by a conjuration spell cannot appear inside another creature or object, nor can it appear floating in an empty space. It must arrive in an open location on a surface capable of supporting it.

You can't teleport a creature into mid-air either.

[Roan]

At first I thought this thread was going to be about "Summon earth elemental, have it climb into catapult, launch at enemy castle."

With questions like "Since the earth elemental has earth glide would it take falling damage if it landed on earth or stone?" And "is an elemtal dumb enough to do this?"

OP, Your questions are good too ;)

[William-Scott Hathaway]

Claxon wrote:

Nope!

Quote:

Conjuration

Each conjuration spell belongs to one of five subschools. Conjurations transport creatures from another plane of existence to your plane (calling); create objects or effects on the spot (creation); heal (healing); bring manifestations of objects, creatures, or forms of energy to you (summoning); or transport creatures or objects over great distances (teleportation). Creatures you conjure usually—but not always—obey your commands.

A creature or object brought into being or transported to your location by a conjuration spell cannot appear inside another creature or object, nor can it appear floating in an empty space. It must arrive in an open location on a surface capable of supporting it.

You can't teleport a creature into mid-air either.

The line that you bolded only has to do with creatures or objects being summoned to your location from elsewhere. Teleport and Dimension Door move something from your current location to another location. Neither bring something into being or transport something to your location. It is possible to end up inside another target when using Dimension Door, and rules for that eventuality are stated in the spell description:

Quote:

If you arrive in a place that is already occupied by a solid body, you and each creature traveling with you take 1d6 points of damage and are shunted to a random open space on a suitable surface within 100 feet of the intended location.

If there is no free space within 100 feet, you and each creature traveling with you take an additional 2d6 points of damage and are shunted to a free space within 1,000 feet. If there is no free space within 1,000 feet, you and each creature travelling with you take an additional 4d6 points of damage and the spell simply fails.

Also, Dimension Door has two methods of picking a target location, visualization of target destination, or specifying a direction and distance you want to travel. You could very easily say that you want to travel 150 feet up and 50 feet to your right. Teleport requires visualization, but if you look up, you can see exactly where it is you want to go and can visualize it appropriately. I can't see why you'd be using Teleport with this tactic, but it is possible.

[Ross Byers]

Yeah. You can't summon critters in midair (unless they can fly), or summon spells would always be used to drop earth elementals or whales on people.

But if you're flying near the ships, why not summon water elementals (because fighting stuff in water is what they are for!) to wreck up the ships, or summon fire elementals on deck (fire and boats are not friends)?

[Decimus Drake]

Of the four kinds of elemental I think earth is the least useful in this situation. As others have suggested you could summon water elementals to attack the rudders, you could also use air elementals to attack the sails or fire elementals to burn the wood of the ship.

[Ascalaphus]

Most of the time earth elementals are the best, for going through walls and ground and attacking people from unexpected directions (and hitting really hard).

At sea, that's what water elementals are for.

[Cavall]

I would have not destroyed the ship myself. Burning the sails, or even better blowing wind into the opposing direction of the sails would have been my choices. Then you get a free boat. Free boats are the best kind of boats.

I should know I'm running skull and shackles.