Topic: Creating monsters of the PCs

[providence13]

Last game the group encountered a Water Elemental guarding the only passage to proceed through the dungeon. Our Monk had a ring of Boil Water (The rest of our party thought it was pretty useless as treasure.) to 18th lvl. Forgetting about how hard it would be to craft the item, consider the results.
In 3 rnds, the Monk was able to make 18 cubic feet (135 gal.) of water boil. The Elemental failed the RR and was loosing some of it's form through steam. Because of the opposing Elements, I gave the Elemental a slaying crit/round after it started to boil. In hindsight, it should have been a lesser crit based on the RR fail..

During this time, the creature was still attacking the party with a +90 Bolt (like a Golem). I let the creature do a secondary Heat crit in addition to the water bolt because of the boiling water. This resulted in one PC going down in one shot. 

Instead of the party whining about unfair or excessive damage, the Mystic rejoiced in the idea of boiling his Water Bolts in their wineskins before attacking with Water Bolts in the future.
He will find a way...

[yammahoper]

lol.  you did it to yourself.  those are the best kinds of DOH!!!

I don't think the slaying crit was to much.  After all, it still took three rounds to drop it.

Rather than damaging the PC's with heat, a cloud of steam could have hindered vision, allowing the elemental to gain flank/surprise/rear with its attacks, the party losing sight (and thus breaking the Heat Water attack, forcing a new attack roll with rr after reacquiring and rolling init).  Still, I think the extra heat crit was a good idea. 

When the player decides to boil his water flask, a manipulate liquid spell and spell mastery should be required to add the heat damage to the bolt.  For the elemental, it was a side effect.  To do so purposefully should be very hard.

Cool story though.