Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Edymnion 02-06-04, 10:20 PM	Sounds like a stupid question, but I find it rather interesting. An air elemental, a creature made up of the purest essense of the air, is a solid being that can be touched and hurt with normal weapons. A fire elemental, living flame, is also solid. Fire elemental I can see being more solid than the Air though. Cracked glowing magma body, wreathed in flames. But an air elemental? It weighs next to nothing, yet is apparently completely solid with well defined boundries, even if it is described as being a whispy cloud. Did I just miss something? (if you're wondering where this came from, I'm looking into turning my familiar into a small air elemental via the Elemental Familiar (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/sb/sb20030504x) spell, and had to stop and think to see if I'd still be able to hold the familiar, have it pick things up, etc. Apparently it can, which is a little strange when you think about it.
ieattrollsforbreakfast 02-07-04, 04:34 AM	I met this problem a while back. There was an air elemental trapped and locked in a cage in a dungeon. My players thought it should be able to just slip through the bars, but according to the entry they cant. Its a puzzler....I think that the elementals arent actually made up of the element itself in the strictest sense. If they were, they wouldnt be able to think. So perhaps the very magic that animates them, holds their bodies together. For example, if the air of an air elemental wasnt held together by some magical force, then in a storm or strong wind it would be spread across miles and would have a hard time reforming. So perhaps this force is strong enough to make them act solid?
R.M.G.C.L.F. 02-07-04, 12:26 PM	Well, consider a hurricane. The hurricane is made of air with small amounts of water diffused into it, yet if you hurled something at it (like a cannonball) it would just bounce off the inner walls because the wind is moving so fast, it acts like a solid surface. This prinicple is the same thing that makes any mater solid. If you think about it, most of an atom is just empty space, but the electrons move so fast they act as a solid field. Perhaps air elementals have some kind of "circulation" by which the air rapidly courses through their body creating a force, redistributing energies and gases, and if the circulation stops, they die (thus explaining why they couldn't become gaseous at will).
Luminous Crayon 02-07-04, 01:08 PM	Yes, perhaps something like a cell membrane on a large scale, just made of wind or compressed air.