Fireball wrecking damage

I always thought Fireball to be somewhat unbalanced spell. It often stroke me how easy is to block a passage from a room with monsters and simply blast them out by throwing ball after ball. Especially if spell user would use a wand.

Funny, but Gary Gygax himself thought it should have disadvantages. And it actually has by 3.5 rules:

Moreover, critical saving throw failure:

Now, should a Player be wary of downsides of using a Fireball?

ToEE does not have equipment Hit Points and Damage. I think it is due to low priority of such feature due to low occurrence of such situations. Even Sunder in T+ is implemented as drop item mechanics.

Saving Throw Critical Failure
I think in such cases Fireball damage should be checked versus worn items, as defined in the rules. For the implementation simplicity of not storing remaining item's HP, I would suggest simply checking against maximums.

In practice such rules mean that 1 should be rolled by NPC during saving throw, then magic sword should be randomly picked as target, then saving throw (most likely of same NPC) should be accounted. And only then damage should be taken. Overcoming Hardness +HP of the sword would utterly destroy it.

Dying or Dead critters
Now that is different issue.

Dead, or maybe dying also NPC is has no protection to equipment. Particularly worn ones.

IMHO all worn items should take the hit. Nonmagical without Saving Throw, and Magical with (small) Saving Throw.

Moreover inventory loot should also take hit after "backpack" would be destroyed.

Consequence
Throwing a Fireball first time is great option to weaken the enemies. But every next throw, especially when dead bodies lying around would yield destroyed loot.

 

In ToEE module? Definitively not.

In my zmod modules - oh yeah!

Moreover, I want Player to know exactly what was destroyed, similarly to what Gary Gygax did:

Source.

Second Fireball would most likely completely destroy non magical combat gear and affect critter's "backpack". Perhaps it would be nice to indicate this by burning particle effect. And Third Fireball would destroy coins in that backpack and affect existing inventory loot.

Players should be very wary about using AOE damaging spells on things, including dead bodies.

Additionally I'm considering affecting Chests as well. Although most chests would be hard to destroy in such way.

 

I missed out on energy effects:

That is why Ernie Gygax (playing wizard named Tenser) invented Cone of Cold. Cold dealing 1/4 of damage to things is quite nice.

 

Sunder is not really implemented. I sort of started on it, what you may see is mostly copy paste of disarm. I think I went 'screw this' after reading up on item HP/hardness etc.

 

Well, if Sitra would "unscrew" Sunder implementation , we could come up with some workable solution.

Technically I think there should be Condition "Object Damage", which could be applied as a part of some particular non-critter object / equipment. Such condition would store current damage, and calculate HP/Hardness using PHB formula. There is no need for protos change.

 

Obviously, that could be next logical step.

But that would require to display somehow that item is damaged. Perhaps such condition I mentioned before would show indicator while being equipped. Not sure.

In practice most players would simply reload the game if loot or even their items are destroyed. So what is the point?

The point is if having the mere potential for destroying loot, especially on already defeated foes, may cause players to start being a little more thoughtful as to how they use magic.

 

BITD i certianly remember having to roll for my armor, weapons, and items - especially after getting blasted by a dragon's breath weapon.

It was not a fun time

 

Well you have to roll 1 in d20 to start doing that. So it is only 5% chance. Isn't it?

 

Essentially dying creature is unconscious / helpless, which rends -5 dex mod to Reflex Saving Throws. But the point is - saving throws still are present, and possessions are attended. Therefore unaffected directly.

 

"What is happiness? It is moment before wanting even more happiness" @ Mad Men.

People would start using Cone of Cold, when they would realize it is not damaging loot so much. Currently there are no incentives to do that.