Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 prestokeys Dec 21, 2014 8:46:44	Suppose your target is underwater (and you may or may not be as well).  I assume spells like Sleep, Charm Person, Hold Person, ... can affect the target, right?  And I'm guessing spells like Fireball should not be able to affect the target?  And perhaps Ray of Frost will have some effect, but not as much?  As a programmer, should I assign some sort of "percentage of effect" value for every spell based on some sort of guess (each spell having different percentage values), e.g. Fireball = 0% damage, Ray of Frost = 50% damage, Magic Missile = 90% damage, Sleep = 100% regular effect, etc... (these percentages may even depend on the depth that the target is in water)?  Or should we instead agree that all spells should work equally fine through water, or conversely, no spell can affect any target that is under water?
#2 iserith Dec 21, 2014 9:06:03	prestokeys wrote:
#3 prestokeys Dec 21, 2014 9:15:01	iserith wrote:
#4 iserith Dec 21, 2014 9:18:33	prestokeys wrote:
#5 Stormborn20 Dec 21, 2014 10:20:04	In real life, you can't cast spells through water at all.
(Reply to #5) OoftaMeg	Stormborn20 wrote:
#7 Novacat Dec 21, 2014 13:06:18	OoftaMeg wrote:
#8 Stormborn20 Dec 21, 2014 13:56:41	Novacat wrote:
#9 Cooperjera Dec 22, 2014 14:55:47	This is an interesting idea I had not thought of and most likely will not come up in a game I'm running.  However, looking up the amount of energy it takes to boil and freeze water from room temperature indicates the following:  45g of water from 25C to boil requires 116 kJ, 120g of water from 25C to freeze requires a release of 52.8 kJ.  Therefore it takes much more energy to boil water and this supports the resistance to fire damage while in water.  I would rule that the water would freeze solid from a cold spell.  However, if the target was in hot water then the opposite would be true (i.e. resistance to cold damage and water would boil from a fire spell).    It's an even more intersting question if a ray spell of a fire or ice elemental type would reach it's target under water.  I feel that is strictly a DM call and physics cannot be applied to support any solution because it's magic.