Life Bubble And Acid / Contact Poison

[Practisite]

Hello.

In our current game session, the party is protected by the Life Bubble spell. There is non-magical acid on the floor of the room we're in, up to a foot deep. There is a debate on whether the acid would touch the players, who are covered by an inch of breathable atmosphere.

Pros to the "shouldn't damage us":
- Acid is an environmental hazard that isn't breathable atmosphere.
- Life Bubble protects against pressure while underwater, implying that the liquid doesn't touch the user.
- The fact that movement can still be constrained is easily chalked up to the outside of the bubble being impeded.

Pros to the "doesn't protect us":
- The spell description would say if that were the case. That's an awfully big thing not to explicitly mention in the spell.
- If your entire body is covered by air, your feet aren't touching the ground, so how are you walking?
- It is explicable that liquid can breach the barrier and be breathable, like Airy Water. Though one would hope the spell would state that.

This does, naturally, also lend itself to liquid contact poisons and the like. Any thoughts or outright rulings?

[Practisite]

Anybody got something here? We're likely to revisit this scenario.

[Cattleman]

Quote:

You surround the touched creatures with a constant and moveable 1-inch shell of tolerable living conditions. This shell enables the subjects to breathe freely, even underwater or in a vacuum, as well as making them immune to harmful gases and vapors, including inhaled diseases and poisons and spells like cloudkill and stinking cloud. In addition, the shell protects subjects from extremes of temperature (per endure elements) as well as extremes of pressure.

It looks like it's a spell is trying to give you protection from the elements. Almost anything environmental is supposed to be blocked and turned into "Tolerable living conditions." I would include acid among those.

NOTE: Nothing but the first line supports this rules wise. Endure Elements is only for temperature.

Endure Elements wrote:

Endure elements doesn’t provide any protection from fire or cold damage, nor does it protect against other environmental hazards such as smoke, lack of air, and so forth.

RAW -> Tough call. It tries to spell out what this does, which is add breathable air, count as Endure Elements, and also protect from pressure hazards; this does not include an acid pit. However, it does add hazardous gasses to the list, which is interesting because hazardous gasses are really just airated liquid yeah? So it protects you from liquids as long as they're not too viscous. That seems to imply that it does protect you from acid.

RAI -> Not sure. Tolerable Living Conditions with a bubble of air around you suggests that it may protect from it. For example, a planet of poisonous gasses would be safe with this spell on. Seems odd that going from Liquid to Gas is the difference; given that Gas is essentially lightweight liquid.

Advice:
I'd probably just allow it. Try not to add too much logic here or punish the players for having a spell that they learned specifically for things like this.

[Scrapper]

It kinda seems like a Featherfall spell, in this case they are surrounded by a hostile environment, walking through acid as you sated only up to a foot likely wont cause the spell to activate, but if some one fell down and was submerged, it would. The acid is a liquid, not a gas so it's not a breathing condition to trigger, nor is it a vacuum lacking breathable atmosphere. There lacks enough volume for a bubble to form in effect. Allowing it to be effective in this case would likely give reason to expect it to be effective in cases like cave ins and avalanches, which should technicly do crushing damage.

[Claxon]

The main purpose it prevent you from dying from the natural environment, most specifically from not being able to breathe.

I would say no, it doesn't protect you from Acid damage. That's the job of Resist Energy.

[Perfect Tommy]

Reading it, I would say no.

Would you argue it would protect against fireball, lightning?
Would the air bubble protect against arrows?

I think the spell gives what it says. No more.