Does it actually make sense?
I mean there are fire-intolerant plants that tend to be highly flammable and get destroyed completely by fire. But Many big ass trees are fire tolerant or have some degree of fire resistance.
Without apparent weak spots or vital organs that humans have, I'm pretty sure that treants can take a Fireball to the face better than any human can.
Sure, we use wood for fuel, but that is also because it takes such a long ass time to burn.
Anyway, enough of my rant. Do you guys have any gripes for D&D monsters.
Big trees can burn. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Senator_(tree)
There's a drought on and its leaves are dry.
JC999 wrote:
MightyZehir wrote:
FFSAA wrote:
Try applying your creativity to coming up with explanations for why they are vulnerable rather than why that "makes no sense."
iserith wrote:
MightyZehir wrote:
FFSAA wrote:
I'd switch it for vulnerability to electrcity. Trees may be hit or miss on the whole burning bit, but most of them explode real nice when struck by lightning.
MightyZehir wrote:
OrwellianHaggis wrote:
I think this pretty much sums up the vulnerabilities and resistances of wood. (And witches.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrzMhU_4m-g
rampant wrote:
Do we really have a thread asking why trees are vulnerable to fire?
Ramzour wrote:
Ramzour wrote:
Guys, GUYS! Don't worry, I've got this. Just get a wizard to fabricate a rock to pure anti-matter then cast Otiluke's Resilient Sphere around it then throw it at anything and cancel the Sphere. Nothing will survive when in contact with it.
Can we move on with our lives now?
Ramzour wrote:
Why are white dragons vulnerable to fire? Magic, probably. Treants are not trees, they may have a more mystical reason for their vulnerability.
I think the argument "well, some types of trees are resistant to fire" is missing the point. This is a fantasy game playing up a trope of elemental weaknesses. Fire Elementals are resistant to fire and vulnerable to cold. That sort of thing. Trees are usually flammable, so therefore Treants have Fire vulnerability...which has nothing to do with specific trees in Australia. Don't complicate it.
Ramzour wrote:
Wood gets dried out for a while before you want to use it for fuel. Try burning a wet log fresh cut.
MightyZehir wrote:
Trying to make a comparison between humans and trees about who can take a fireball to the face better, or whether flesh ignites better than wood is illogical. Even with fire vulnerability, a treant is hurt by a fire less than a human is.
A treant has more than ten times the hitpoints of a typical human.
I think that what you need to think about is how wood handles different damage compared to flesh. Compared to flesh, wood handles fire a bit better, but it handles being hit with a sword, or snake venom, or cold much better.
Ramzour wrote:
Also, remember that hit points - more of which are lost with fire attacks - are not made of wood. So the damage can be described in any way you like that sorts out your kinks about this issue.
MightyZehir wrote:
Captain_Kobold wrote:
MightyZehir wrote:
iserith wrote:
I think it's largely player expectation. You see a tree monster, what's the first thing you think? Kill it with fire! It doesn't have to make sense, if we've already accepted the existence of tree monsters, is it too much to accept that they burn more easily than normal trees?
Should treant's be vulnerable to insect based damage?
I think we have enough treants on fire for now... Let's move on to the topic of why leopard seals are not in the Monster Manual. 
Devils-Advocate wrote:
Ramzour wrote:
Why are Water Pokemon weak to Grass Pokemon?
It's an abstraction, that's all.
Yunru wrote:
Because devs don't thik things through that hard.
You are correct that living trees are really hard to burn. Anyone with decent camping experience knows how hard it is to burn wood that hasn't been dead long enough to dry.
But devs didn't think like that, There thought was probably "Wooden things are known for burning so give it vulnerability to fire.
Ramzour wrote:
animeus wrote:
Ramzour wrote:
TehSchwann wrote:
Why? Seems to me the longer something like that gets left alone the more important it is to fix.
Saying it's always been like that is just sloppy and wrong-headed.
Yes, bad real world logic that is still very common. In case you hadn't noticed, people are illogical more often than not. The fire>plant>water>fire cycle of weaknesses is pretty well ingrained into the pop culture idea of elemental magic. Feel free to change it of you like, but if the question is "why are treants vulnerable to fire in the RAW?" The answer is "because most gamers will expect them to be."
Well Treants were based on Ents...
“Hobbits? Mmm... never heard of a Hobbit before. Sounds like Orc mischief to me! They come with fire, they come with axes! Gnawing, biting, breaking, hacking, burning! Destroyers and usurpers! Curse them!”
Ramzour wrote:
Why are treants vulnerable to fire?
Because of the burning properties of wood scout says 
http://members.scouts.org.uk/factsheets/FS315001.pdf
JC999 wrote:
You mean Tom Riddle.
#MyImmortalReference
So tell me, why do treants burn?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=yp_l5ntikaU#t=150
Why is there such resistance to people taking issue with certain things?
Two answers to this.
First, as Captain Kobold says, the question isn't "are Treants more vulnerable to fire than humans", it's "are Treants more vulnerable to fire than they are to other sorts of damage." I'm pretty sure that if you wanted to destroy a tree, fire would do the job *far* quicker than arrows. You can make a case for Lightning being a more sensible weakness, but often "lightnting" damage seems to be specifically "electrocution" (should Shocking Grasp really make trees explode?)
Secondly, this isn't "bad real world logic", it's symbolic or magical logic. We burn trees for fuel, therefore fire is symbolically opposed to trees, so magical tree beings are vulnerable to fire. This isn't an error that needs fixing, or a failure to think things through, it's magical reasoning in a magical world. Just like red dragons are immune to fire damage because they are generically fiery creatures - it doesn't make physiological sense, unless we're going to argue that dragons are made out of some kind of bizarre matter that has an enormous specific heat capacity.
I actually do think shocking grasp should make treants explode, a little bit. Then I force the grasper to save vs. wooden shrapnel.
I like modding monsters to make them more dynamic.
Thoughts_My_Aim wrote:
rampant wrote:
Thoughts_My_Aim wrote:
animeus wrote:
The trees here in SoCal have to question this thread. If they could talk I don't think they would want to be anywhere near fire. Drought or not. We get Forest fires every year. And the only thing flammable on humans are are hair. Good luck setting a person on fire who is hairless and naked ain't gonna happen.
The trope comes from Lord of the Rings. We should ask Tolkien why.
Treants have evolved to be afraid of fire because under the right circumstances it can be especially deadly to them. As such their tree nervous systems register more damge from fire than other injuries.
Also, mischevous gnomes hide gaily decorated flasks of alchemical fire inside them as part of their merry "Arson Day" festivities.
Well tolkien probably used it because fire is generally used as a symbol of humanity's power to conquer and ravage the naural world.
Fantasyfilmsman wrote:
rampant wrote:
Aye, mythological reasons work in DnD, especially for monsters.
I'm sticking with electricy though because It's fun to whatch players try to deal with the backlash.
Treants are based on D&D trees.
D&D trees are made of D&D wood.
In the world of D&D (as opposed to our real world), wood has fire vulnerability - as you will see in the DMG where it discusses damaging objects.
Thus: Treants (made of D&D wood) are vulnerable to fire.
autolycus wrote:
I think this is possibly the dumbest thread in existence and that's saying something for this forum.
Because the rules say so, not because there's some law of physics at work. Also, hit points are obviously not physical damage.
Because they weigh the same as a duck?
0.52 seconds in (and 1:53):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw0jwrWqOKI
Clearly they light up light dry tinder.
JC999 wrote:
Mecheon wrote:
JC999 wrote:
If we assume that Treants are animated by the same force that they can animate trees with (assuming they can do this in 5e), then it is likely that this animating force alters the trees in some way in order to allow them to move in a bipedal fashion. This force may be negated in some way by fire damage. Perhaps extreme heat changes the proteins of the trees so they are no longer a good fit for the animating force, and if so, this may also occur in Treant bodies exposed to extreme heat.
A lot depends on whether you count a treant as a fey creature or a plant.
Also fire vulnerability has nothing to do with their ability to be set on fire. It doesn't cause ongoing damage, it's just a single burst of double damage. This represents the intense, and magical, fire (remember you can set off a fireball underwater and until 5e it was just as effective as on dry land) burning the material of the treant, and likely do them being a magical being themselves (and not a mundane tree) it causes more trauma than other types of attacks.
It doesn't mean they catch on fire any easier or harder than a goblin or a human, just that their bodies take more trauma from the damage. Also keep in mind that while the wood of a tree may be reluctant to burn the sap of a tree is very reactive to fire (if not just flammable but in the way it reacts to intense heat) and for a treant this is their bloodstream. Keep in mind that "fire damage" in D&D covers not just flame but also intense heat and the other side-effects of that such as destruction of oxygen, consumption of fuel sources, and in the case of fireballs sheer phsycial force. To simplify this rather than breaking it up into multiple damage types they just call it fire damage.
Mecheon wrote:
Marandahir wrote:
The Trent is vulnerable to fire because of magical thinking. D&D's magic works not based on physics but on expectation - and everything in a D&D setting is magic.
Treats burn because people expect wood to burn. They see it in their stores, their fireplaces, wildfires... and that has power. Belief, in fantasy, has power. It creates artifacts, grants long life to kings and legends, and burns treants.
TiaNadiezja wrote:
Because reasons.
It's funny because to the Ancient Chinese, FIRE doesn't beat WOOD, it beats METAL (melting it down), which in turn beats WOOD (because Slashing metal weapons/tools cuts logs).
WATER > FIRE > METAL > WOOD > EARTH > WATER, to them.
I might houserule Treants as being vulnerable to Slashing damage instead of Fire. >_>
animeus wrote:
You go camping with fireball boomsticks, Orethalion? I didn't realise that was thing!
(at least beyond the work of my controlled-burn forester colleagues).
Marandahir wrote:
Okay, so far, what I am getting, is they should be vulnerable to fire, lightning; and slashing, and resistant to cold; bludgeoning and piercing.
Brock_Landers wrote:
Orethalion wrote:
Brock_Landers wrote:
Except that cold is particularly problematic to plants: this is why Ice is super effective against Grass-type Pokémon.
Trees drop their leaves in winter because water is like the lifeblood of a plant: so much of the transportation within trees is done via water, and if it freezes, their cells shatter and burst. the leaves are too exposed, and if they tried to keep them through the winter, they'd end up causing terrible harm to the tree (scarring, and the tree would waste a ton of energy trying to recreate tissue that keeps dying over and over again). Conifers tend to be better adapted for cold because their needles (leaves) has much smaller surface areas per-leaf and thus don't have the room for the water to kill everything when it freezes (and aren't as exposed as a whole). Many plants die back in the winter, and resprout from root-stock or new seeds in the spring, because the cold is just too much for them! So resistance to cold makes little sense. The biggest trees do what they can to weather the storm, but the chief reason why trees age (in the sense of their cells getting old and dying and the replacements becoming degenerate; this is the same "aging" that causes mortality in humans once we get to a certain number of years) is due to the high levels of stress put on them by each and every winter.
So should we give Treants weakness to Cold as well? It's just as logical as Fire – if not more logical – by these arguments. "Fire-beats-Plants" has been grandfathered in, just like other stupid things like a Gorgon being a giant iron bull that breaths noxious gases, rather than one of the sisters of Medusa. It's there not because of logic and how reality SHOULD work, but rather because it's been there since Gary Gygax, who didn't know jack about forest sciences (I can't blame him either – he was a great innovator in miniatures games and roleplaying games and storytelling and world-building; he didn't need to study every little ecological detail of the real world). But that doesn't excuse the current design.
I think the best course of action this thread can take is to try to figure out the most logical, most effective alterations to be made about the Treant and other Plant-subtype monsters.
Marandahir wrote:
Marandahir wrote:
XunValDorl_of_HouseKilsek wrote:
Ramzour wrote:
Devils-Advocate wrote:
Brock_Landers wrote:
Ramzour wrote:
Brock_Landers wrote:
Ramzour wrote:
Not a terribly difficult assumption to make, considering in the basic rules, the Twig Blight, the Awakened Tree, and the Awakened Shub are also all vulnerable to fire – suggesting that all [Plant]-subtype monsters all have this weakness (with a few exceptions, the Shambling Mound and anything fungi-based being notable).
The difficult assumption is whether that's a JUSTIFIED weakness or if it's just playing by the elemental-rock-paper-scissors game without looking any deeper into the way stuff works.
I do have to say, this thread is having me hunger for some custom stuff
I just want a eucalyptus treant that explodes when set on fire and instead sets everything else on fire. It'd be lovely
You said it yourself, SOME trees resist fire. Assume treats are not of those types. They never evolved that way because they can just walk away if there is a fire. There is no reason you can't make a variant that isn't vulnerable but I would recommend including both varieties in your world if you want people to realize that all trees are not alike.
Veleria wrote:
All this thread has done is reinforce my viewpoint that D&D is not a simulation, and shouldn't be treated as such.
Explosive Oils - Wheb this treant fails a saving throw against an attack dealing at least 40 points of Fire damage, it explodes. The treant is killed, and all creaturea within 40 feet must make a Dexterity save. On a failed save, the creatures take Piercing damage equal to the Fire damage suffered by the treant; on a successful save they take half damage.
It's a trope/symbolic relationship. D&D, and indeed, lots of fiction- but especially fantasy- is based on tropes/symbolic relationships and less on the actual physics.
Things that fly have wings. So stuff with wings- even if the wings are too small, improperly designed, or lack the strength to actually lift off the ground- allow things to fly. It's about symbolism, not physics.
Big weapons are for big strong guys, dual wielding is for slightly weaker and more agile guys, and ranged weapons are for weakest/most agile guys. Asassins in leather armor use daggers right alongside men in full plate with shields and swords and are just as effective. It's symbolic, not based on the actual physics of weapons combat.
Characters made of stone tend to be slow, determined, and bluntly honest. Characters made of air tend to be quick, flighty, and deceptive. In reality, a piece of granite or pumice has no actual personality traits. Neither does a gust of air. The traits are purely symbolic.
White and smooth is good. Black and spikey is bad. It has symbolism, though. Guy dressed in pure white, with rounded edges looks more god than guy in black spikey armor. Color and asthetic taste in armor knows no morality. It does know symbolism.
Forest fires have a large presence in the human mind. Firewood as well. Trees burn. Physics be darned. Trees are gonna burn, and they're gonna burn well.
Physics doesn't matter. Ever.
Mecheon wrote:
Brock_Landers wrote:
I'll take fire vulnerability over 3.5's silliness where it was impossible to burn down a tree without magic(mundane fire can't overcome wood's hardness 5 after it's halved since wood is an object).
EnglishLanguage wrote:
Orethalion wrote:
Alex_ wrote:
Brock_Landers wrote:
After all this discussion, I would tend to treat treants like humanoids, with no particular immunity or vulnerability. When you take the same concepts and apply it against humanoids, we tend not to get into specifics like blood freezing from cone of cold, or boiling from intense heat. And if standard skin is not vulnerable, then don't even mention thicker skin like a treant, giant, etc.
It's not just about concepts or tropes. It's about the physical laws of the D&D universe.
Wood is vulnerable to fire in D&D.
Treants are made of wood.
EnglishLanguage wrote:
autolycus wrote:
LupusRegalis wrote:
autolycus wrote:
You can certainly do whatever you want at your table. I'm just trying to address the topic/title of the thread.
Q: "Why are treants vulnerable to fire?"
A: Because in D&D wood is vulnerable to fire.
Simple as that.
Grazel wrote:
With some exceptions, this thread is rife with something I've been talking about of late: Otherwise creative people using their imaginations to come up with all sorts of reasons why something can't be, but failing utterly to use that same creativity to come up with reasons why something can be.
I challenge said posters to use their imaginations to come up with reasons why it makes sense for treants to be vulnerable to fire. Give it a try and see what you come up with.
Think about it this way folks maybe this will help. Your typical human is completely killed by both a fireball and a lightning bolt with absolutely no chance of survival. So humans are very vulnerable to those things.
If though you are dealing with a creature with a lot of mass where the hit points are predominantly real matter, a wood creature is going to suffer from fire attacks more than a rock creature or a dragon for instance.
There is also this idea of "catching fire". A human of higher level will dodge and try to avoid damage. A wood creature is more apt to catch fire from stray fire and so forth.
Orethalion wrote:
Emerikol. wrote:
Devils-Advocate wrote:
Huh... That's hilarious, during the playtests we were often on opposite sides of the hit point debates, but when you explain it like that, I think we actually narrate them the same way. I guess while we may differ philosophically, in actual play it looks the same... Anyway, sorry for that little side trek, I just found it rather amusing.
iserith wrote:
Just so I'm clear here, we're all perfectly fine with sentient ambulatory tree creatures with manipulatory limbs and speech organs. But saying they burn easily makes us say "Way fake!"?
Kind of an arbitrary place to draw the line, isn't it?
Lawolf wrote:
DemoMonkey wrote:
EnglishLanguage wrote:
Mecheon wrote:
Lawolf just keeps on warring away...
Mecha my position on hit points hasn't changed. It's still what I wrote on my blog. I put it on my new blog for safe keeping.
Emerikol. wrote:
thespaceinvader wrote: