Dragon Encounters

How to Use: Basic Fire Elemental Tactics

The fire elemental’s behavior is motivated by a liking to setting things on fire. Like the other elementals, it isn’t trying to hurt them; it’s trying to share its flame element with them. This should result in the fire elemental constantly attacking the PCs who aren’t on fire to set them on fire.

Combat Encounter 1: Wall of Fire Elemental (difficulty 6)

Fire elementals can be used defensively or offensively. To use it as a defensive force, I would simply put it in an empty stone room, behind a wall of bars.

The room is of empty stone because the owner hardly wants to see his own base destroyed. The bars won’t constrict the elemental at all, but will make it hard for the players to fight back. For a nice-looking symmetrical arrangement, put walls of bars on either side. The elemental can spend its turns strolling down the middle, and move back to safety at the end of its turn.

The elemental, combined with the barred walls, acts as a mobile wall of fire — a burning zone no one can cross unscathed.

Combat Encounter 2: Burning Down the House (difficulty 7)

Fire elementals are excellent for burning down houses also and similar structures. Have one sent to destroy a building if the players have managed to defeat its owners or guards, either as an act of revenge or to destroy something of importance before the players can take it.

This idea can actually be played in several ways.

Option A: Race for the Prize

In our first version, have the players be after a specific object. After successfully taking out the villains, a fire elemental is released as a last attempt to stop the players.

The fire elemental will be focusing on the nearest flammable objects/areas. If the players move into its vicinity it will set them on fire, which will also happen if it’s already set everything around it on fire and they’re closer than the next flammable area.

In order to make this work, you will need to give the players obstacles that they want to get past. Locked doors and chests will work, as well as doors barred shut, with the bars too hot to pull back, or perhaps melted into place. An area that they haven’t yet searched for treasure will also be important in your players’ eyes.

Before It’s Too Late

The players will nead to focus on getting past the obstacles, or searching the area, while also fending off the fire elemental, while under a tight time constraint.

In addition to the difficulties of preforming simple tasks in an area that’s on fire, the fire will collapse the structure eventually. As calculating when a structure will collapse in flames is not an easy thing to do, I suggest giving the house an HP number, with it taking a certain amount of damage each turn based on your estimate as to how much the fire has spread.

If the house runs out of HP, it will collapse, but well before that the players should start getting warnings and suffering inconveniences from the fact that the house is getting damaged. Once a quarter of the house’s HP is missing, give warning that it’s beginning to collapse. Remember that the first quarter is the slowest to disappear.

Option B: While Fighting the Villain

If the villain is still alive, the house burning down around them forms an exciting extra to the climatic fight. If the villain is fireproof, this increases the danger and forces the players to move fast to win.

Otherwise, you can have the villain be suicidal (the players ruined everything!) and he doesn’t mind falling if he can take them down with him, or you can have him struggling to escape while the players have to risk everything to stop him.

Option C: Rescuing the Treasure

There are sevral items the players want, whether quest objects, magical items, documents with information, or just valuables. The fire is spreading across the house. The easiest path would be to just take on the elemental, but that will cost your players the treasure. Make sure they know this.

You will need to find a way to protect the treasure once they pick it up. A bag of holding would work, as would a familiar or NPC who will take the treasure outside for them. In a pinch, you could find an excuse to give them fireproof satchels, or just announce that anything they’re carrying won’t burn. (The last is something that players are often willing to take for granted.)

Escaping the Fire

Similar to the original scenario, and best used after they won the main fight, but whereas in the first scenario they had to fight their way through the fire to a nearby objective, here they have to stay ahead of the fire until they reach a distant objective.

To build drama, you could have the fire elemental appear once or twice, popping out of a crack in the wall and setting fire to one or two of them before disappearing through the wall on the other side. This could also leave a trail of burning floor that will cut the party in two for a turn.

Ideally, use this when they’re locked into a different combat, or dealing with some obstacle.

The logical way to end this will be for the fire elemental to emerge in front of them just as they’re getting to the end. It’s the obvious final fight, and they’ll be happy to get back at it. You will need to have a few other creatures ready to be thrown into the fight for balance, depending on how hurt they are and how hurt the elemental is.

Water Changes Everything

If there is any water source, that will change the terms of whichever scenario variation you use quite a bit. While the amount of damage the elemental takes crossing water is relatively small, I would argue that it’s still against its instincts to get its feet wet, no matter how small the damage.

Whether this will help the players is uncertain. The elemental can move through even a small hole, and it’s quite easy for it for slip away and get around the PCs, which will end with it coming at them from another direction.

What if a players can conjure water? I would guess that will depend on how continues the water flow is, and how agreesive the elemental is. In general, I’d say that it will flee before a continues water souce, and focus its attacks on a wizaed who conjures a small amount of water to use against it.

A Wild Fire Elemental

A wild fire elemental will be miserable one. Unless it has the unbelievable luck of being right at the entrance of a live valcoano, it will have no easy way to access the earth’s core, or most likely to even know that the core exists.

Laccking good options, it will attemps to mold the material plane to what it’sused to. This means setting fire to as much of what’s around it as possible, resulting in it first setting off forest fires and then dying when it can’t find more food. It won’t think to pace itself.

Combat Encounter 3: Forest Fire Scenario (difficulty 7)

A wild fire elemental will generally be found the middle of a large forest fire. Finding a way to reach the elemental will itself be a major challenge. Even assuming they use potions of fire resistance, or wait until the fire is dying out, a burnt out area doesn’t have stable footing.

Forest Fire Hazards

Obstacles/Hazards of a forest fire include

• Pits that are not just covered, but where the ash will slide over the PC as he falls in, preventing him from talking and causing suffocation.
• Burned out husks of trees. They will block line of sight, and will fall over onto any PC that gets close (the fire elemental is insubstantial)
• Constant ash. So if they use any spells that have an area of terrain effect, treat it as though the area also becomes heavily obscured for at least 2-3 rounds.

As the Fire Spreads

An easy way to stage a forest fire fight that the players can handle would be to have the elemental just beginning to enter a new area when they meet it. Perhaps it’s just passed through from the plane of fire, perhaps it just found a place where a fallen log will let it cross a river. If you don’t want it to be random, have the players trying to rescue a person or a rare plant or animal before the fire can get there, or assisting with digging fire breaks, either manually or as guards.

In this case, the first challenge to the fight will be the surrounding terrain catching fire. While in theory the wind could greatly affect its spread, it might be simpler to just let every square adjacent to a square or hex on fire to catch on fire. Of course, any place the fire elemental moves through will also join the fire.

This should give you an area in which the casters can avoid the fire while continuing to have sight. The melee will just have to take damage.

Fire Elemental Camouflage

The second challenge is that fire gives the fire elemental good camouflage. It is possible that they’ll only be able to see it clearly if they’re within 10-20 feet of it (decide your level of difficulty). In addition, if it moves away from being near any PC, it could be that the players won’t know where it is. Just make sure that you don’t lose track yourself.

If you want a second stage, you could have the elemental become aware of the damage its taking, or be spooked as it starts to rain, and dodge back into the burned out area. If the players want to finish it off, they’ll have to follow it in. I already mentioned the non-fire dangers of a burned area above, and you can add burning patches that the players will have to circle, embers to any pits they might fall into, and so forth.

Combat Encounter 4: Volcanic Explosion (difficulty 8)

The other place that a fire elemental might be found in the wild is if the players are caught by a volcano erupting. Tasha’s suggested using the effects of the Fireball spell to mimic the fireballs a volcano might throw out, but that’s random and unavoidable damage which serves no purpose. A fire elemental or two might mimic the feeling better, possibly in combination with a galeb duhr to mimic flying boulders.

(Actually, I have in mind the galeb duhr’s animated boulders, not the galeb duhr itself. See it’s statblock if you don’t know what I’m talking about.)

Story wise, the explanation will be either that the volcano is releasing magic, causing some of its flames and boulders to temporarily animate. If you’re just using fire elementals, you can say instead that the fire elementals were living in the lava of the volcano, and the eruption is throwing them up.

Volcano Combat Challenges

A fight near a volcano is deadly, and the players need to escape the area as soon as possible, not remain to fight the elemental. Since the elementals have no motive to attack the PCs either, you’ll want to place them where at least one of them is blocking the easiest way out. They don’t have to fight the elemental, they can backtrack toward the volcano and look for another way instead, but of course that’s not such a great option.

The most logical extra challenge is that lava is flowing toward the PCs, and they have to get past the elementals fast. Other means of adding challenge to your fight, while at the same time also simulating a volcano erupting, are:

• Earthquake effects: This is an extremelly obvious effect, to the extent that if you don’t use it you’re probably missing realism. This can be played out with high DC Dex saves to avoid being knocked prone, changes in height for some of the PCs as the land abruptly rises and falls, chasms appearing and disappearing near them, and having large amounts of rocks/mud/water be sent sliding onto them. Incedentally, the liquids will be painfully hot, because volcano.
• Ashes: Volcanos throw up huge amounts of ashes.  Pompeii was destroyed by a volcano’s ashes, not by lava or heat. While you obviously don’t want to kill your players, a cloud of ashes will suddenly and drastically reduce visibility, and possibly turn some of the area into difficult terrain, which might also be hazardous terrain if the ashes are hot.
• Fireballs: While dropping fireballs on them unexpectedly stinks, dropping fireballs after giving them warning isn’t as bad. (It’s up to you whether the fire elemental is enough warning, or whether they should see other fireballs in the distance.) I will remind you that these fireballs aren’t being deliberately aimed at them, so there’s no reason they should necessarily hit in optimal places. In other words, it’s fine to miss most or all of the party.

More Volcano encounters

Summary: Six Fire Elemental Ideas

• The fire elemental’s basic combat strategy is to move between the PCs, trying to set them all on fire. It doesn’t have much self-preservation, but its master could have commanded it to end its turn where bars will protect it from attack.
• A fire elemental in a dark area is a interesting, double-edged tank. On the one hand, the fact that no one can block it advancing is a pain, but on the other it helps the PCs see the ranged support. Darkvision is limited to 30 feet.
• Have the villain release a fire elemental as he sees he’s lost the fight. The players will have to decide which part of his possesions to grab, and how many should do that and how many should fight the elemental.
• A fire elemental in a building that isn’t totally staone acts as an ambusher and as a time clock. They won’t be able to corner it, they’ll have to keep ahead of it, and they’ll presumably still face it in the end.
• A fire elemental in an area where its gotten to run wild will have natural camouflouge. Range will need to get close to detect which fire is the elemental, and it’s possible that the players will lose track of it altogether.
• Even moving through an area which a fire elemental burned down will be a pain. Ashes will conceal pits, obscure vision if disturbed, and burned remenants can fall over easily. Let them fight the fire elemental there.