Re: (TFT) Re: Melting points of caldrons

[Pasha and or Rick Smith <pnrsmith@istar.ca>]

Hi all,
	Different fires burn at different temperatures.
The coolest you could expect a wood fire to burn at is 
around 235 to 250 degrees C.  I would guess that a large
bon-fire would be at around 500 C.  Ditto for a Fire hex.
It is hard to make a wood fire more than about 900 C,
to smelt most metals you need tricks to raise the temp.
of the fire (forced drafts, refractory furnaces, special
fuels, etc.).

	This suggests that a hex of lava is twice to
three times as dangerous as a Fire hex.  However in
a flame, swirling plasma wraps around you, can be
breathed into your lungs, etc.  Where as lava just 
gets on your boots.  However if you are covered, you
can step out of a flame instantly (unless your clothes
kindle), where as lava sticks to what briefly was 
your skin and clothes.

	If you approach a field of fresh lava, the 
lava is so hot that your skin will burn just from the
heat coming off it.  It would be far worse if you were
in a cave with lava (Diablo has a special 'cool lava').

	Heat energy is transmitted in 2 major ways,
radiated heat (carried by infrared light) and by 
conduction.  Flames (plasma) radiate heat extremely
well, but I suspect that the conduction is moderate.
Lava radiates heat poorer than a fire but the energy
is conducted better by a solid on solid touch.  (I 
suspect, this is me guessing.)


	Suggested rules:
	If you stand in lava, it does 6 points of 
damage per turn but the armor rating of your 
footwear protects for its normal armor rating. After
one turn the footwear is destroyed.
	If you are covered in lava (or fall full 
length in it) lava does 18 points of damage per turn
(armor protects normally for one turn).  However,
it is hard to get it off of you so normally you will 
take that 18 points per turn for several minutes 
until it cools.  Jumping into cold water and try to
pull the chunks of cooling rock off you will reduce
this to 18 pt. of damage / turn for a couple minutes.

	If you jump over lava,  or stand beside it
treat it as if you are in a fire hex.  If there is a large
field of lava, treat the 'in a Fire hex zone' as 
extending up to 5 hexes away.  (This is radiated 
heat so the zone is fairly insensitive to wind 
direction.)

	(Basically, unless something special is 
going on, falling into lava is death.)


	There have been cases where very hot 
runny lava has gone down steep slopes faster than
a person could run, but most of the time people are
able to avoid it.  The small amount of lava coming out
of a caldron would freeze almost instantly so it would
be tricky to use.

	Perhaps the best use would be on top of a
castle wall.  A glop of lava breaks free of the 
caldron and falls onto an attacker.  Most of it would
splash off the victim but it would still likely do 10 to
12 points of damage / turn as well as being hard
to remove.  (This suggests that melted lead (melting
point 327.5 C) splashed on some one would do 3 pt
of damage per turn and it would be hard to remove.)

	Rick

>Message text written by INTERNET:tft@brainiac.com
> >Hi all,
>
>        Lava as it comes out of a volcano is about 
>1150 degrees Celsius (+/- 25 C or so). <
>
>Cool! So how much damage does Lava do? How hot is a fireball? Normal
>campfire? 1-hex Fire?
>
>How fast does lava move generally? In other words, if some mad evil wizard
>did try to create this (and no group of adventurers were able to stop him
>in time!) then how dangerous would this Lava-pot be?
>
>Michael 
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