Elemental Immunities


Rules Questions


Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

Am I missing something somewhere, or do elementals now need to breathe, eat, and sleep?


It looks like you're right, all I see is this:

Quote:

Elemental Immunities (Ex)

Elementals are immune to the following effects, unless the effect specifies that it works against elemental creatures:

Bleed, critical hits, paralysis, poison, sleep effects, and stunning.
Flanking—elementals are unflankable.
Format: Immunities elemental immunities.

Though, I'd personally house-rule the heck out of that in a heartbeat.


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Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
pithica42 wrote:
Though, I'd personally house-rule the heck out of that in a heartbeat.

Same, although I was rather hoping that I had missed something.

I mostly play SFS, and RAW you can't summon a water elemental underwater ... because it would drown.


Doesn't it have the aquatic template, too, though? I thought that one includes water breathing.

Oh, well this is just stupid. They don't have Aquatic or Aqueous, they gain the water subtype, but that does not include water breathing it seems...WTF?

Quote:

Water

This subtype is usually applied to outsiders with a connection to the Plane of Water.

Traits: Swim speed, gains Athletics as a master or good skill.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Elementals might include things like salamanders, so it makes sense for them to not default to that trope. That should only be true of true elementals.


The problem (and I agree it's a problem; I actually already made a Homebrew thread dedicated to addressing some of the issues with them) is easy to fix:

Air Elementals gain Aerial
Water Elementals gain Aqueous
Earth Elementals gain Cthonic
Fire Elementals gain Fiery
Ignore the CR requirements for these (they are under Simple Template Grafts). You have to modify various elements of the stat blocks, but it simultaneously solves multiple problems, like how water elementals do less damage underwater, as their natural attacks are blunt, as well as others, like how they're, RAW, extraplanar even on their home plane. And, yes, the fact that they'll drown underwater.

Problems this won't fix:
All elementals will still starve; whether or not this is a problem is up to you (you can have your earth elementals need to eat rocks, for example - the starvation rules do not mandate any particular food or drink the creature needs to consume).
Earth Elementals will suffocate in their home environment, because Cthonic does not let the creature "breathe" dirt or vacuum. Fire Elementals have a similar problem, depending on whether or not you interpret the Plane of Fire to provide oxygen and other chemicals to "feed" fires, or whether it's "pure fire", and hence your Fire Elementals should expect to be able to burn indefinitely in vacuum. Air and water elementals are fine with air, and the latter can breathe water, so they'll both survive their own home planes no problem.
Water elementals can't handle the parts of their plane that are hot or cold - they don't have a climb speed for interacting with ice or a fly speed for interacting with fog/steam/etc. Earth elementals *may* have a similar problem, depending on how you interpret lava or quicksand, as they have no swim speed. Air and Fire have their own share of these concerns, depending how you interpret your elemental planes, but it's easy to declare that Ice, Vapor, Lava, and so on elementals are distinct types, and the 4 in the rulebook are from very specific sub-locales, to overcome any such concerns.
All elementals rely on vision to some extent - even Earth Elementals mostly will only have Blindsense, even with Cthonic - which is varying levels of stupid, depending on type.
Other situations that "seem" to fit elementals poorly, such as how water elementals *don't* mind being doused in salt, but *do* mind being doused with very caustic acid, even though both chemicals will interact with pure water similarly.


If I remember right, Outsiders in Pathfinder needed to breathe, but don't need to eat or sleep (they can choose to do those). So elementals being outsiders won't starve. And yes elemental immunities in Starfinder doesn't remove the need to breathe, but the pathfinder one does.

Also in pathfinder, creatures like Salamanders and Efreet, don't have the elemental traits ability, though they're still extraplanar and fire outsiders.

Seems like the easiest solution to me is to follow pathfinder cues when the starfinder ones are lacking, since the cosmology and many of the creatures should be the same.

Some other things: Alien archive describes earth glide (part of the earth elemental graft), which functions through all forms of earth, stone and dirt (sand should be included) and expressly allows travel through lava if the creature is protected from fire.

I believe steam and fog fall under the Air elemental's purview, and not having an innate speed does not mean a creature can't use that motion. Having an innate speed removes the requirement for checks in non-dangerous conditions.

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