freezing 5 ft cube is way too powerful.
Consider the spells ice growth and ray of frost as a touch stones. You've doing roughly what casting a cantrip twice can do with the gaze. IT's not something that does much to the environment. Don't try to justify any of this with real world physics. Fantasy magic and physics don't mesh at all.
It shouldn't do anything to the environment at all. It is a instant of 'coldness' that causes damage and then it is gone.
Equating 'an environment does 1d6 damage' to '1d6 damage creates that environment' is wrong.
Lava does 2d6 damage, but a fireball, even a 10 dice one, certainly doesn't turn stone into lava.
Lava does 2d6 damage, but a fireball, even a 10 dice one, certainly doesn't turn stone into lava.
It actually says fireball melts metal (such as a copper. which has a melting point of 1984 F) So I imagine if you shot a fireball at rock it would melt it into lava.
It actually says fireball melts metal (such as a copper. which has a melting point of 1984 F) So I imagine if you shot a fireball at rock it would melt it into lava.
Lava does 2d6 damage, but a fireball, even a 10 dice one, certainly doesn't turn stone into lava.
No. Not really. Honestly, the rules are all over the place with how it should be applied.
If you had enough heat to melt copper if should probably outright kill anyone in the area. Melting isn't an instantaneous process.
The rules say certain metals can melt. It best not to extrapolate. And really in this case, to ignore it because it doesn't make sense with the rest of the rules.
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I would say that a thin sheet of ice would form over the top layer of whatever water you're casting it at that begins to melt at it's normal rate thereafter.
Max 1 inch thickness, not large enough to stand on and it CERTAINLY wouldn't be a 5 ft cube. To do that with an instantaneous effect, that's well out of the bounds of RAW but I'd require something does at least 100 points of cold damage bare minimum.
Consider how many HP of damage you'd need to destroy a 5' cube of anything. Your frost giant would need the patience to watch paint dry, literally, to freeze that much water with a 1d6 damage gaze.
It actually says fireball melts metal (such as a copper. which has a melting point of 1984 F) So I imagine if you shot a fireball at rock it would melt it into lava.
Lava does 2d6 damage, but a fireball, even a 10 dice one, certainly doesn't turn stone into lava.If you had enough heat to melt copper if should probably outright kill anyone in the area. Melting isn't an instantaneous process.
The HP rules aren't really meant to be realistic to begin with. In real life falling into lava would pretty much vaporize you instantly, whereas in PF a high level fighter will only lose about 1/3 of his HP per round from such an event.
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I'd certainly allow it to interesting flavourful effects. Things like creating ice cubes, little ice statues, keeping somebody cool on hot days, etc.
As for significant environmental effects, as a GM I'd allow it sometimes. Freezing water at 1 degree Celsius is a lot easier than freezing boiling water. Firming up some thin ice would be interesting. I would NOT come up with some rigid hard guidelines, just loose interpretations that would allow this to be somewhat useful but NOT dominate the game.
I'd also probably allow a feat chain (gated by level) that allowed greater effects.
Something very similar to this is present in the Winter Witch Prestige class. It has a 2nd level ability (so, available to a 7th level character) Freeze and Thaw. I could see that being the 3rd or 4th feat along a feat chain.