Merciful Spell
Your damaging spells subdue rather than kill.
Benefit: You can alter spells that inflict damage to inflict nonlethal damage instead. Spells that inflict damage of a particular type (such as fire) inflict nonlethal damage of that same type.
Level Increase: None (a merciful spell does not use up a higher-level spell slot than the spell’s actual level.)
Okay, so this spell will turn your fire damage from, say, a Flaming Sphere into non-lethal fire damage. What about the fires that the sphere starts? Is that converted to non-lethal too?
Could an enterprising mage set fire to an entire town using merciful fire spells, burning away all of the buildings but not killing a single commoner?
One interpretation would be that you cannot deal nonlethal damage to objects and thus cannot start a fire at all with nonlethal fire damage.
But it totally depends on whether a player want to get on my bad side or not.
Remember that non-lethal damage causes lethal damage after an individual is knocked unconscious.
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Objects are immune to non-lethal damage, so you would need lethal damage to burn down buildings.
I think that a Merciful Flaming Sphere would still start normal (lethal) fires if it ignites flammable substances.
The alternate possibility as Winterschuh pointed out is that since its nonlethal damage doesn't affect objects, it doesn't ignite flammable substances.
One interpretation would be that you cannot deal nonlethal damage to objects and thus cannot start a fire at all with nonlethal fire damage.
That's my interpretation.
One interpretation would be that you cannot deal nonlethal damage to objects and thus cannot start a fire at all with nonlethal fire damage.That's my interpretation.
That's how I rule it in my home games.