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I have a question about acid resistance and how, if at all, it can be applied to resist attacks that do no damage.
I have a character with acid resistance 5. He was attacked by a monster using a spittle attack:
Spittle (Ex) Each round as a free action, a gibbering mouther can emit a stream of acidic spittle at one target within 30 feet. On a successful attack, the target is blinded for 1d4 rounds unless he succeeds on a DC 18 Fortitude save. The save DC is Constitution-based.
What is causing the blindness? It specifically states the spittle is acidic but are we to assume there are other properties to the spittle that cause the blindness?
I was thinking it was similar to being shot in the eye with lemon juice. It causes no physical damage but the acid in the lemon would cause a lot of pain to your eye and prevent you from seeing until the acids were flushed out or diluted enough to clear one's vison.
If I have a character who can resist 5 points of physical acid damage, would such an attack still cause blindness? I am thinking the individual is immune to any property of acid that causes no physical damage.
Is this reading to much into the ability or does such a thought have sound reasoning to support such a theory? If it is then can we assume that any type of energy/elemental resistance make those individuals immune to lesser properties of those attacks?
Resistance to acid prevents you from taking damage from acid that is it. The individual attack may say that creatures that are resistant or immune to a specific energy type are not affected. If the attack does not state it you are still affected by it. This is like someone throwing sand in your eyes, it does no damage, but still blinds you.
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Mysterious Stranger, I understand what your are saying but according to your response then it should be possible to blind a sandman by throwing sand in his eyes.
I just thought there is a difference between damage resistance and elemental/energy resitance. I can see if you are hit by a weapon that can trip you, it doesn't mean that if you resisted the damage of the weapon that you are immune to the trip effects.
I was unsure of what was causing the blindness. If the description did not say it was acidic then I would not question it. The description does not tell much about the spittle other than being acidic. It does not say it is sticky, gooey, thick or anything that would have me believe that is anything but an acidic viscous liquid that can be spit out. It just seems odd that if you have had complete immunity to acid that it would still cause blindness to such an individual.
I agree that the attack does not say it can be resisted but I thought something was being implied by using the acid descriptor
Considering that attack only blinds you for 1d4 rounds it is obviously not acid. If someone throws acid in your eyes it would permanently blind you. Obviously the blindness is not coming from your eyes being eaten away by acid. The acidic is more of a description then indicating it is actual acid. What this describes is a large amount of phlegm that sticks to your eyes. On another monster it could be described as musky, putrid, or any number of other descriptions. The attack is also not doing any damage besides blinding you. If the attack actually did acid damage and then required a save vs blindness then you could make an argument that acid resistance or immunity should negate it. But if that was the case more than likely it would mention it in the text of the attack.
Yeah, it still blinds you. It was just a poor choice of words more than anything else.
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OK. Thanks for the input. I am just trying to get an understanding of how useful certain abilities are. Sometimes the language in the descriptions can get confusing and nothing is worse than wasting valuable game time trying to argue a point. Very few players or GMs have all the answers to every situation. Thanks for sharing your viewpoints.
OK. Thanks for the input. I am just trying to get an understanding of how useful certain abilities are. Sometimes the language in the descriptions can get confusing and nothing is worse than wasting valuable game time trying to argue a point. Very few players or GMs have all the answers to every situation. Thanks for sharing your viewpoints.
You would think it would prevent the effect, but no... :( Just damage.
Try and talk your GM into it though, home games can do whatever they like!