In The Hobbit film, Smaug's breath weapon is shown to be strong enough to blast apart stone towers during the sacking of Dale and Erebor. However, in the opening cinematic of Baldur's Gate 3, we see the fire breath of red dragons having virtually no effect on the nautiloid, the bizarre flying ship used by mind flayers, as if it is pure flame with no concussive force.
My main question is: Does the fire breath weapon of red dragons in D&D and Pathfinder lack any physical force, functioning more like a very large flamethrower? For example, if a red dragon were to use its fire breath on a stone tower, castle, palace, modern military tank, battleship, or starship, would it have virtually no effect at all, since stone is non-flammable? Likewise, if I were wearing bunker gear, the personal protective equipment used by firefighters, would it make me immune to a red dragon's breath weapon, since it has no physical force and only deals fire damage?
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-An underworld dragon's breath seems to have some concussive force given it's more of an explosion than a cone
-Magma Dragona breath Magma and do bludgeoning damage in addition to fire.
-Empyreal Dragons breathe heavenly fire that doesn't do any damage to things without a soul.
-A diabolic Dragon's hellfire deals fire or spirit damage, and is fantastical enough that its effects on materials is entirely speculative.
As far as how effective modern technology would be against dragons, given that Dragons are still very much feared in the distant future of Starfinder, I would hazard a guess the answer is, "Not very."
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Remember if we are talking about fire breath, water expands rapidly when rapidly heated, so explosions may not be a result of concussive force from the breath, but water expanding rapidly under the rapid heating. The town in the hobbit was sitting on a lake if I recall correctly, so all of the would would have been constantly moist, and thus rapid heating would have expanded that water causing the explosions.
When a dragon uses its breath, say, a form of energy like fire, the moment it sucks air into itself, this air acts as an increase in the thrust that is generated by the dragon itself, it's like when you blow into a small paper box, it's almost like a shock wave, similar to a bomb, even if the explosion, (fire), may not reach you, the shock wave may reach you, like the displacement of the air, more or less. Dragons can use their internal muscles to create a similar effect, the good news is that this effect does not extend much beyond the dragon, (distance in terms of dragon of course...), some achieve such great control over their breaths that they make them "explosive" which ends up giving this effect similar to a "punch" for example.
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In The Hobbit film, Smaug's breath weapon is shown to be strong enough to blast apart stone towers during the sacking of Dale and Erebor. However, in the opening cinematic of Baldur's Gate 3, we see the fire breath of red dragons having virtually no effect on the nautiloid, the bizarre flying ship used by mind flayers, as if it is pure flame with no concussive force.
My main question is: Does the fire breath weapon of red dragons in D&D and Pathfinder lack any physical force, functioning more like a very large flamethrower? For example, if a red dragon were to use its fire breath on a stone tower, castle, palace, modern military tank, battleship, or starship, would it have virtually no effect at all, since stone is non-flammable? Likewise, if I were wearing bunker gear, the personal protective equipment used by firefighters, would it make me immune to a red dragon's breath weapon, since it has no physical force and only deals fire damage?
Firefighting equipment largely protects the wearer from the damaging effects of hot ambient air temperatures. Being exposed to direct open flame is still going to have an impact on the person. Doubly so if we assume (as I would) that dragon flame is hotter than a burning building. Which makes sense, imo, since most fire breath weapons do more damage than environmental fire, but YMMV.
If pressed, I'd say the breath weapon does exert a force (how else would the flame escape the dragon's mouth/ throat?), but not so great a force that a living creature won't be able to resist said force and maintain their footing.
As has been suggested above, most objects are not fully immune to fire damage. If dealt enough damage to destroy (not break) a wall, it'd go on through and hurt whatever was on the other side of it.
Iirc, object resistances and immunities aren't fully enumerated and are largely purview of the gm. So once again, YMMV.
Creative Director
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The rules are the place to look for answers. How a dragon's breath functions varies greatly between stories and properties—being a fictional creature who's reinvented each time a new storyteller spins a yarn, the qualities of their breath weapon and everything else change as the story's needs require.
To answer the specific question about force, no, Pathifnder dragon breath doesn't have a more complex physical force. They just inflict the damage and effects their individual rules portray, and the type of damage determines how it interacts with objects and such. I can't think of many or any Pathifnder breath weapons that inflict fire damage, cause concussive (aka bludgeonign) damage, or create enough force to topple buildings or knock people off their feet. That sort of additional stuff does make for dramatic imagery in fiction, but in a game, having a breath weapon do fire damage and bludgeoning damage and also have the effects of Shove and Trip and Force Open attempts makes them too complicated to run and too powerful to boot. And so when a dragon that breathes fire does so, the stuff in that breath weapon's area just takes fire damage and that's that.
And on top of that... be careful trying to use physics (or any sort of real-world science) to quantify and explain and understand magic. Those things can help to inspire magic effects, but the point of magic is to break rules and, well, be magical.
And on top of that... be careful trying to use physics (or any sort of real-world science) to quantify and explain and understand magic. Those things can help to inspire magic effects, but the point of magic is to break rules and, well, be magical.
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Thanks for the answers! Actually, I had a similar thought regarding Lightning Bolt. In Start of Darkness, a prequel book of the famous webcomic The Order of the Stick, Xykon kills a lizardfolk with a Lightning Bolt, which blasts the creature several meters back, killing him instantly. Since this webcomic follows D&D 3.5 rules very strictly (the most memorable example, in my opinion, is from this page where Vaarsuvius tries to scribe Power Word Blind into his spellbook. According to the laws of magic, it takes up seven whole pages, even though the spell is literally just one word. He still needs to leave the next six pages blank and cannot scribe another spell that day because the laws of magic somehow prevent anyone from scribing more than one spell per day. Facing this extremely illogical irrationality, he eventually has a mental breakdown and sobs. And he still has to pay 350 gp for the ink, despite only writing one word), I had always assumed that D&D and Pathfinder's Lightning Bolt could actually do that. Sigh. Perhaps I was mistaken.
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OotS follows 3.5 rules strictly...when it's funny, such as when such rigor is nonsensical as in the instance noted. Also, one could argue that there are diagrams, linguistic aids, and meditative symbology involved to prep that one word, and those are what use up all that page space. But that wouldn't be funny.
Generally OotS plays fast, loose, and dramatic with the rules, as with the lizardfolk corpse or the way most any melee goes down versus huge creatures. If a corpse had no further role to play, I might narrate it the same way in PF2. Bombastic = fun IMO. Which is why AFTER the dragon's breath's mechanical results I might add some boom to toss around what's determined to have been essentially destroyed. But those are flavor effects, not inherent qualities one would expect again.
BTW the Wiki for OotS uses "they" for Vaarsuvius since they're androgynous (as is their spouse). The mystery of their gender is a running gag going on over a decade.
And while it's obvious a cartoon makes poor grounding for rules, so do PF2's ancestors or we'll have rebounding lightning bolts with double saves, fireballs that expand to fill a set area no matter the shape (often leading to unexpected blowback on the party). Sometimes I reference past lore to tip the balance in choices of interpretation of current rules (i.e. Clay Golem curses!), but too many spells (et al) are "similar, but different enough" to use previous iterations as a foundation. Plus PF2 plays much cleaner, leaving room for GM adjudication rather than having a full page+ of how different spells interact with unusual environments like underwater or another for the Abyss, etc.
Which is all to say, there are no physics behind a dragon's breath, as in underlying it. But one could add physics after a dragon's breath, when it's inconsequential. Unless one's tables likes an OotS style, fast & loose.