How does something like this even work, thermodynamically? It seems to break every law of science and common sense and game balance there is.SRD wrote:Brown mold feeds on warmth, drawing heat from anything around it. It normally comes in patches 5 feet in diameter, and the temperature is always cold in a 30-foot radius around it. Living creatures within 5 feet of it take 3d6 points of nonlethal cold damage. Fire brought within 5 feet of brown mold causes it to instantly double in size. Cold damage, such as from a cone of cold, instantly destroys it.
Does it double in surface area covered, or does it get twice as thick, or both? Does it double only the mold within 5' of the flame, or does it double the entire contiguous colony? Notice how it doesn't do anything to stop fire from burning, especially since it only does nonlethal damage, so does a dropped torch or something crazy like a flaming sphere result in the entire dungeon complex covered in brown mold (or a 10' radius solid sphere if it only doubles within reach). What happens if it ends up next to a magically eternal source of flame, or powers forbid, in the Plane of Fire?
Or is just a mediocre Gygaxian legacy hazard with purposefully vague text so that no player will be able to predict what their DM will do with it?