Topic: Elemental attacks and undead

[Zut]

You can damage bones with heat. It takes a lot. But when you cremate a body, it is reduced to ash.

I made a little research with Google about burnt bones. Here's my findings.

Technically, after cremation, there are bones remains (the bigger ones are not ashes). They are crushed to little particles.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cremation (Burning and ashes collection)
and
http://www.officer.com/article/10250502/burning-evidence

Interestingly, up to around 900°C, the bones are more fragile, but at higher temperatures, they harden. (!)
See: http://www.iiconservation.org/node/1129

For a differential study about temperatures, see:
http://anthropology.ucsd.edu/Faculty_Profiles/margaret/Foster%20etal.1984.pdf

Is there something in the fire spells about temperature (I don't have my books with me now)?

[Marc R]

They pulverize the fragments to dust as shards of bone a few inches long might be a bit disconcerting when "scattering the ashes". Mostly parts of the highly dense bone ends are what survives burning, where bones are super thick and dense, generally where two bones meet in a process. Those don't come out intact, it's more like the surface of the ball of the hip joint survives as some large flakes that resemble sea shells.

Roughly 80% of the "Dry" mass of the bones burns away in cremation, much more if you measure by wet mass when the bones contain marrow, fat, blood and fluids.

If you had a pile of dry bones, you could quite easily use them as fuel in a campfire, they will burn at such temperatures. So the knobby ends will resist burning, and thus not the best method to "dispose" of a body, but quite sufficient to remove most of the structure of the skeleton.

Especially true since per RAW they don't regenerate fire damage.

A Skeleton reduced to a couple pounds of fire resistant chips, from which it cannot regenerate, is effectively dead.

[dutch206]

Please note that there are exceptions to the rule.  For example, I can't see a fireball doing anything to a Firephantom, except making him laugh.

[Kristen Mork]

Having the occasional undead that's immune to fire can be hilarious.  Party encounters a nasty vampire.  No problem, they think, we have a brute of a barbarian.  Round 1, the vampire breaks off a piece of door jamb and puts it through the barbarian's leg (despite a hefty parry).  This cues a hasty retreat from the farmhouse.  Once outside, the mage nukes the house with multiple fireballs (a high-level spell store of a spell-combination from one of the RM2 books).  The firehouse is almost entirely disintegrated by the blast.  Then, the vampire calmly strides out of the conflagration (sans most clothing).  It's fun to watch a high-level party turn tail.  (They then did their research, found the vampire's weaknesses, and returned for revenge.)

[Cory Magel]

I guess it depends on the situation... but...

Lets take Skeletons and Fireballs.  Something that is, essentially purely bone, but does not have an inherent resistance to elements.  The Fireball is not just normal old fire that the caster creates in that space.  It is a split second window (in ball form) to the elemental plane of fire - fire in it's purest, hottest form (or the power was gathered from such a source magically then 'thrown').  It therefore can burn exposed bone, which does damage.  The criticals themselves may not have much if any impact other than 'burning'.  For example, if a critical blinded and did nerve damage in addition to per round burning, only the per round burning would apply.

Something like that...

[markc]

 I can see cases for yes elemental attacks can and cannot affect undead and IMHO it just depends on how the GM rules it (elemental attacks, damage, undead resistance, etc) in his game world.


MDC

[Arioch]

Setting "realism" aside for a minute, as markc says it really depends on what the GM want for his campaign.
By making undeads immune to certain attacks you obviously make them stronger. That might be good if you want to give a dark tone to your setting, or underline the importance of priests and paladins, or make your players think outside the box.
Otherwise, it might be better just to leave them as they are.

[bpowell]

I like the thuinking outside the box idea.  Many times players have been around RPGs for years and even seeing a Vampire is old hat.  "Yawn, stake him and move on."  When the stake the Vamp and it smiles at them and they get that Oh No look....man that is fun.

[markc]

I like the thuinking outside the box idea.  Many times players have been around RPGs for years and even seeing a Vampire is old hat.  "Yawn, stake him and move on."  When the stake the Vamp and it smiles at them and they get that Oh No look....man that is fun.

I agree. 
MDC