Acid energy

[Wiseman]

There are things listed as energy damage, despite the fact that it might not make much sense as an energy. How is acid an energy? I can get fire, electricity, sonic, and even cold (which should be the absence of energy but thats an entirely different issue). But how is acid an energy, it's never described as a form of energy, every description of an acid spell seems to imply it as spraying acid at someone, in LIQUID or GAS form.

[deaddmwalking]

While Acid as an 'energy type' is stupid, that was required to ensure it would work with other energy types that are less stupid. Protection From Energy (and others) need to be able to resist fire or electricity. If they didn't cover Acid as well, Acid would be the superior option.

Likewise, if Acid is a physical thing (which would make sense) it would not be subject to Spell Resistance, also making it the superior option.

Since the designers don't want Acid to be a superior choice to fire, they made it any energy type like most of the rest.

Note, however, that postive and negative energy are not energy types as far as playing by the same rules.

[nockermensch]

There are things listed as energy damage, despite the fact that it might not make much sense as an energy. How is acid an energy? I can get fire, electricity, sonic, and even cold (which should be the absence of energy but thats an entirely different issue). But how is acid an energy, it's never described as a form of energy, every description of an acid spell seems to imply it as spraying acid at someone, in LIQUID or GAS form.

Acid is an energy type because green is such an obvious color for your videogame sprites, but you need to tie the green bolts to something.

Red bolts -> Fire
Blue bolts -> Cold
Yellow bolts -> Electricity
Green bolts -> ???

Both Acid and Poison could fit the bill for Green bolts, but only Poison works with Purple, so Acid became Green in fantasy games.

And this is it. People can give you some bullshit explanation about how it was an obtuse attempt to tie "energies" to the classic elements, but the core issue was always videogame graphics.

[echoVanguard]

Likewise, if Acid is a physical thing (which would make sense) it would not be subject to Spell Resistance, also making it the superior option.

It's worth pointing out that most Acid spells in 3.X/Pathfinder are SR:No for exactly this reason.

echo

[Tumbling Down]

Both Acid and Poison could fit the bill for Green bolts, but only Poison works with Purple, so Acid became Green in fantasy games.

Well actually it's because poison would be a rather common immunity in dnd, whereas nothing is immune to acid, unless it is specifically given an arbitrary allowance to be so -like an angel.
There's also nothing that prevents you from having purple be Giant Frog damage, like Dragon Age did.

But yes, acid is green damage, so instead of asking "why is acid an energy?" you should be asking "why the blueberry fuckmuffins is it called energy damage, when one of the energy types is acid?"

---

Anyway, if you absolutely hate acid energy, you really could just change green damage to e.g. disintegration damage -since 3.5 changed disintegrate to save-or-blasting anyway.

That way you would get wizards casting Melf's Disintegration Arrow and Disintegration Fog -or Protection From Disintegration, for that matter.
Similarly, you would get rogues chuckking disintegration flasks, fighters with Disintegration Burst great swords and balors, who show up with Disintegration Resistance 10 for absolutely no fucking reason other than to screw over blaster wizards.

[nockermensch]

Both Acid and Poison could fit the bill for Green bolts, but only Poison works with Purple, so Acid became Green in fantasy games.

Well actually it's because poison would be a rather common immunity in dnd, whereas nothing is immune to acid, unless it is specifically given an arbitrary allowance to be so -like an angel.
There's also nothing that prevents you from having purple be Giant Frog damage, like Dragon Age did.

But yes, acid is green damage, so instead of asking "why is acid an energy?" you should be asking "why the blueberry fuckmuffins is it called energy damage, when one of the energy types is acid?"

---

Anyway, if you absolutely hate acid energy, you really could just change green damage to e.g. disintegration damage -since 3.5 changed disintegrate to save-or-blasting anyway.

That way you would get wizards casting Melf's Disintegration Arrow and Disintegration Fog -or Protection From Disintegration, for that matter.
Similarly, you would get rogues chuckking disintegration flasks, fighters with Disintegration Burst great swords and balors, who show up with Disintegration Resistance 10 for absolutely no fucking reason other than to screw over blaster wizards.

Since Disintegrates manifests as a thin green line, I find this idea excellent.

[DrPraetor]

Oh come on, they have Discworld physics anyway. Heat isn't vibration, it's caused by the flow of mysterious caloric or phlogiston or something - which is why for example Xorn and people using "Haste" do not get hot. Also, cold is an energy type: I think it's in Sourcery where someone's magic staff gets so cold that it causes the water to "un-boil"? Things can radiate cold and so forth, it's a form of energy; so is dark, although technically I guess "negative energy" isn't. “Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.” - Terry Pratchett

Acid is the mysterious energy which infuses both stomach acid (so it's a counterpart to the bile humor or something) as well as aqua regia, which is a clear liquid that is infused with green acid energy, in the same way that the mysterious greek fire is infused with caloric. Phlogiston. Whatever.

Of course, aqua regia/universal solvent also disintegrates things, so acid=disintegrate=harm certainly works.

[Sashi]

Yeah, the first rule of energy club is that you don't bring physics into it.

"energy" just means "damage from sources other than hitting/cutting" and even then there's "force" as an energy type, which ultra-clouds the issue.

[echoVanguard]

Yeah, the first rule of energy club is that you don't bring physics into it.

I admit, this made me chuckle.

echo

[TarkisFlux]

I wrote a sidebar for a dead project that has since been lost about how Acid Energy could make sense. So I can't point at it, but I could recreate the thought of it.

Acid is just a predominance of loose protons in a solution (or air I guess), but it's not like anyone in D&D land knows that. If you evoked up a bunch of loose protons for a brief moment, and they reacted with things like they normally do before passing, it would look like you dipped something in acid of varying strength. And if you just categorized damage types based on appearances, like animist D&D folks, that's what you'd call it because that's what it obviously was. It's problematic for physics in that protons aren't actually bosons and don't behave like other "energy" types, but since you can spontaneously vibrate molecules more or less (fire, frost), spontaneously generate free electrons (lightning), or spontaneously generate hardcore short ranged phonons (sonic) in D&D land, it's not substantially more weird than everything else. Energy violations of Heisenberg for the win.

Now that means that lots of spells that say they actually generate acid are either mislabeled Conjuration or incorrectly fluffed, but that's another issue.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Acid should be a "damage type", along with all the other damage types. There's nothing gained by having "energy" separate from "damage" when effects like resist energy still give the full list of five "energy types", and some (e.g. 3.5e Energy Substitution) don't even follow the list.

As Tarkis says, acid is a form of electrochemical energy encoded as an affinity for electrons. That's no dumber than cold being thermal energy encoded as a heat sink, fire being thermal energy encoded as a heat source, electricity being electrical energy encoded as a voltage drop, or sonic being kinetic energy encoded as high frequency vibrations/compression waves.

But perhaps that's a good argument for using more fantastic damage types like 'positive energy', 'negative energy', or 'disintegration energy'.

[tussock]

Fire damage is various materials reacting with oxygen (or melting from associated heat).
Acid damage is various materials reacting with acid (or melting from associated heat).

It's not a consistent name, but it's the same as fire for most purposes. The injuries are basically the same too, not particularly amenable to rapid healing. Never mind, neither is a sword wound that gets into nerves and tendons.

[K]

I wrote a sidebar for a dead project that has since been lost about how Acid Energy could make sense. So I can't point at it, but I could recreate the thought of it.

Acid is just a predominance of loose protons in a solution (or air I guess), but it's not like anyone in D&D land knows that. If you evoked up a bunch of loose protons for a brief moment, and they reacted with things like they normally do before passing, it would look like you dipped something in acid of varying strength. And if you just categorized damage types based on appearances, like animist D&D folks, that's what you'd call it because that's what it obviously was. It's problematic for physics in that protons aren't actually bosons and don't behave like other "energy" types, but since you can spontaneously vibrate molecules more or less (fire, frost), spontaneously generate free electrons (lightning), or spontaneously generate hardcore short ranged phonons (sonic) in D&D land, it's not substantially more weird than everything else. Energy violations of Heisenberg for the win.

Now that means that lots of spells that say they actually generate acid are either mislabeled Conjuration or incorrectly fluffed, but that's another issue.

Free protons? Mmmmm, that's very good and I might steal it some day.

[MGuy]

I wrote a sidebar for a dead project that has since been lost about how Acid Energy could make sense. So I can't point at it, but I could recreate the thought of it.

Acid is just a predominance of loose protons in a solution (or air I guess), but it's not like anyone in D&D land knows that. If you evoked up a bunch of loose protons for a brief moment, and they reacted with things like they normally do before passing, it would look like you dipped something in acid of varying strength. And if you just categorized damage types based on appearances, like animist D&D folks, that's what you'd call it because that's what it obviously was. It's problematic for physics in that protons aren't actually bosons and don't behave like other "energy" types, but since you can spontaneously vibrate molecules more or less (fire, frost), spontaneously generate free electrons (lightning), or spontaneously generate hardcore short ranged phonons (sonic) in D&D land, it's not substantially more weird than everything else. Energy violations of Heisenberg for the win.

Now that means that lots of spells that say they actually generate acid are either mislabeled Conjuration or incorrectly fluffed, but that's another issue.

I like this and will be keeping this in mind sir.

[Sashi]

There's a lot wrong with that. Chemical reactions are slow and exposure to acid usually takes awhile (minutes, hours) to produce chemical burns. Human skin is quite resistant to acid and if the acid doesn't get in the eyes or mucous membranes, there's a surprisingly small amount of damage from even very strong acid exposure. I've gotten 1M (ph=0) acid on my hands a number of times and suffered essentially no ill effects since I washed it off within a minute or two. Contact with eyes is bad because your eyes are fragile, but the burns are almost never "bad" objectively (in terms of how much damage is done), it's just the location that makes chemical burns to the eye bad. Compare a nail through the foot vs a nail through the eye.

Recently (the last few decades) there has been a trend in throwing acid on women who dress "inappropriately", refuse marriage proposals, or otherwise "flaunt the patriarchy". These attacks result in fairly large-scale exposure for long periods of time. If you're attacked in a field and have to walk an hour to the nearest water source, or are held down and refused treatment the results are often horrific (warning: destruction in faith in humanity if you follow that link). The vast majority of women attacked this way survive as long as they receive treatement and are prevented from getting an infection, because the acid spreads out and inflicts first and second degree burns over a large area.

The most dangerous acid is Hydrofluoric acid, because it's relatively unreactive and small so exposure often goes unnoticed while whole HF molecules penetrate deeply into flesh and produce highly localized bone-deep burns that don't start to hurt for hours. People who die from HF exposure die of infection or heart attack because the fluorine reacts with Calcium and interrupts the nervous system, the "acid" part is incidental.

It's also very deadly to breath in things like like HCl vapor, or phosgene. If that gets into your lungs the only way to treat it is a trip to the hospital for (not particularly effective) lung lavage, so you're virtually guaranteed a long exposure that damages your lungs, filling them with fluid and killing you through (essentially) pneumonia.

This is way different from if you just summoned a bunch of free protons into space adjacent to a person, or even touching their skin. A bunch of free protons would quickly spread apart and look like extremely low-energy ionizing radiation. Because all the protons are "kicking" each other equally (instead of being driven by a particle accelerator) the kinetic energy would be low and the penetration depth would be only a few millimeters at most.

The end result would be a minor radiation burn, some hydrogen gas, and a bit of current from the highly-localized charges. If you summoned enough protons there would be a superficial radiation burn, some fairly bad static electricity, and (possibly) a hydrogen gas explosion for a lot of sound and fury but not much damage. But it would all be superficial and eminently survivable unless you got them really good in the face or the wound got infected.

[Endovior]

Thank you, Doctor Science.

That really is interesting... unfortunately, it's actually not relevant to a universe where someone really could wave his hands to summon up some 'acid energy'. We're already in the business of curbstomping the laws of physics, so the way acid works in the real world is immaterial. All we really need here is some vague justification that lets up have Electricity counter Acid in the same way that Fire counters Cold.

[ishy]

If you're attacked in a field and have to walk an hour to the nearest water source, or are held down and refused treatment the results are often horrific (warning: destruction in faith in humanity if you follow that link).

Why are 50% < of the images there about one single blond white woman?

[nockermensch]

Thank you, Doctor Science.

That really is interesting... unfortunately, it's actually not relevant to a universe where someone really could wave his hands to summon up some 'acid energy'. We're already in the business of curbstomping the laws of physics, so the way acid works in the real world is immaterial. All we really need here is some vague justification that lets up have Electricity counter Acid in the same way that Fire counters Cold.

1) Acid are free protons.
2) Electricity are free electrons.
3) Together, they form Neutrons, who do nothing.*

There, Acid and Electricity cancel each other.

(* I just made Baby Mendeleyev cry)

[Sashi]

I hate you.

I hate you all.

[TarkisFlux]

[Intersting, if slightly horrifying, stuff about acid.]

That's all true, but a condemnation of conjured acid more than evoked acid. Evocation makes things happen in a time frame that ignores normal energy propagation mechanisms (well, maybe not electricity, but there it ignores normal dielectric breakdown mechanisms for path selection). Exploding air is just a side effect of a fireball, the real thing that happens is that everything in the area gets heated up a lot because 'magic' not because of the fire in the area. Such a fire wouldn't have much time to transfer energy to a target otherwise. Acid energy, in so much as it makes any sense at all, would create free protons inside of people temporarily that might react more than normal because they don't have to actually obey normal nuclear physics for their brief existence.

Which of course is fucking nuts, but so is everything else in D&D magic.

[Sashi]

Then you're really better off calling it "disintegration" damage and it causes a small piece of the target to spontaneously convert to simpler molecules (e.g. water vapor, CO2, SO2, NH4, PH3, soot). Talking about this "summoning free protons" stuff just makes science-types cry, and clouds the (fairly important) game rule preventing players from summoning objects inside of people (so you can't kill someone by summoning 10 gallons of water in their intestines).

If you think of summoning "heat energy" or "cold energy" as literally just being rapidly imposing the result of heating/cooling something, then this makes perfect sense. This helps standardize what it means to Evoke an effect, rather than Conjure it. Spells like Flaming Sphere would then be Conjuration of a big spongy tarball that rolls around setting things on fire, while Fireball would Evoke "fire energy" into an area, bringing everything to a higher temperature than before, as if everyone was standing in a forest fire for a few seconds but without actually exposing them to or setting them on fire.

"Acid" like from vials of acid or Acid Splash would be treated like a poison that deals ndX disintegration damage on contact, with saves every minute thereafter for ndX more damage.

[K]

I've considered making a hard science magic system that only had a few rule-breaking fundamentals, but I was always a biology guy. My command of chemistry and physics ranges from "middling" to "kinda terrible."

[Endovior]

Thank you, Doctor Science.

That really is interesting... unfortunately, it's actually not relevant to a universe where someone really could wave his hands to summon up some 'acid energy'. We're already in the business of curbstomping the laws of physics, so the way acid works in the real world is immaterial. All we really need here is some vague justification that lets up have Electricity counter Acid in the same way that Fire counters Cold.

1) Acid are free protons.
2) Electricity are free electrons.
3) Together, they form Neutrons, who do nothing.*

There, Acid and Electricity cancel each other.

(* I just made Baby Mendeleyev cry)

I had meant to imply that the justification was implicit in the discussion at hand.

That said, thanks for proposing an even more ridiculous justification; I lol'd... particularly because of this:

I hate you.

I hate you all.

I revel in your delicious hatred.

Hate more, that I may devour it anew.

[TarkisFlux]

As a physicist, summoning free protons or anything that behaves like that does make me cry, but I got past the idea of D&D magic not making me cry a long time ago. I just lack a lot of experience with actual acid and dissolving material so it annoyed me less than you.

I would be down with renaming it disintegration energy, I just hadn't considered it. It's absolutely a concept I would get behind in any revamped magic system. I also prefer the hard line between evocation and conjuration that you mentioned; it was also part of the now dead project. But if it ever gets off the ground, I'll make a strong push for acid being renamed disintegration.

[Vebyast]

I'm up for disintegration. The more recent Dresden Files books have demonstrated to my satisfaction that disintegration has cooler fluff anyway. It also adds a nice side effect - fire damage lights things on fire, sonic damage can damage objects, electrical damage goes through metal armor, and disintegration damage disintegrates thing.