Help for the Environment rules for a Black Hole 3.5E/PF1

Hey buddy! :)

Idk I have a lot of space battles and such in my campaigns and a large amount of my campaigns take place in space or other extreme environments.

Well they might take place within the environments but if there is no mechanical effect (upon immortal characters) from those environments then that renders the actual environment itself irrelevant.

I think Gods should be able to be in those environments without harm, I always felt that in terms of mechanics most gods aren't really godlike in terms of the limits of their power in either Deities and Demigods or IH, so to have something where they're legitimately unharmed by the universe as they are the universe, makes sense and makes them very imposing by mortal standards. They aren't just human+'s they're something much more, and I think no other ability they possess really exhibits that more than their natural immunity,

I'd rather have them resistant (in some way) to the effects of an epic environment than immune to it.

A fight on the surface of the sun might deal 100d10 damage per round (save for half).

much like a Sidereal's Cosmic String.

Cosmic String ensures extremely powerful cosmic forces are not getting rolled over by uppity mortals and immortals.

Its the cosmic tier safety net, in the same way that an Immortal's manifestation can only be defeated within its home plane is the immortal tier safety net.

You can easily make scenarios showcasing the power of the cosmos without making your character's in danger themselves, ships falling into the gravity well of a black hole, two neutron stars colliding and spraying chunks of Neutronium everywhere across light-years and inhabited worlds in the way. The gods have to save that ship or save those world's,

That seems to me just a backdrop though and not an epic environment. There has to be some measure of peril to it to avoid becoming an irrelevance.

just because Superman isn't effected by something doesn't mean everything he cares about isnt.

Depends on whether we are roleplaying AS Superman though, or as the Mortals falling into the black hole. If a black hole is just a 'backdrop' against which the action takes place then as far as it matters to Superman he might as well be having a fight in front of a painting of a black hole for all the difference it will make.

Its much more interesting if the environment has some physical mechanic that is acting upon 'Superman', but its something he can survive for a time. Anything worth doing should be difficult.

Once you make gods immune to everything you just have to come up with MORE things they are not immune to before you can challenge them. Then of course you allow them immunity to this new 'thing' and you have to create something even more deadly, ad infinitum.

A god having Damage Reduction 40/magic (for example) is mechanically more interesting than Immunity to Non-Magical Weapons.

It just takes a tiny amount of finesse as a storyteller, and not making hamhanded storylines to make it work easily.

Honestly, ask yourself, beyond a few minor buffs and access to divine abilities what makes an immortal truly separate from an epic mortal without their mastery over the places they go? If a God is subject to the same dangers a human is, what makes them a God? They're barely more than a human at that point, more like an advanced half angel or something, and I don't even thing that's opinion really, I think mechanically that's what would be reflected.

Just because something can survive walking through a volcano, survive in space, survive the crushing pressures at the bottom of the ocean, survive a trip to the Sun's core, survive a black hole, etc. Doesn't mean they should automatically be 100% immune to it.

An epic environment (IMO) should inconvenience a deity in the short term (rounds) and potentially kill them in the medium term (minutes-hours depending upon the lethality).
 

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Hey buddy! :)



Well they might take place within the environments but if there is no mechanical effect (upon immortal characters) from those environments then that renders the actual environment itself irrelevant.



I'd rather have them resistant (in some way) to the effects of an epic environment than immune to it.

A fight on the surface of the sun might deal 100d10 damage per round (save for half).



Cosmic String ensures extremely powerful cosmic forces are not getting rolled over by uppity mortals and immortals.

Its the cosmic tier safety net, in the same way that an Immortal's manifestation can only be defeated within its home plane is the immortal tier safety net.



That seems to me just a backdrop though and not an epic environment. There has to be some measure of peril to it to avoid becoming an irrelevance.



Depends on whether we are roleplaying AS Superman though, or as the Mortals falling into the black hole. If a black hole is just a 'backdrop' against which the action takes place then as far as it matters to Superman he might as well be having a fight in front of a painting of a black hole for all the difference it will make.

Its much more interesting if the environment has some physical mechanic that is acting upon 'Superman', but its something he can survive for a time. Anything worth doing should be difficult.

Once you make gods immune to everything you just have to come up with MORE things they are not immune to before you can challenge them. Then of course you allow them immunity to this new 'thing' and you have to create something even more deadly, ad infinitum.

A god having Damage Reduction 40/magic (for example) is mechanically more interesting than Immunity to Non-Magical Weapons.



Just because something can survive walking through a volcano, survive in space, survive the crushing pressures at the bottom of the ocean, survive a trip to the Sun's core, survive a black hole, etc. Doesn't mean they should automatically be 100% immune to it.

An epic environment (IMO) should inconvenience a deity in the short term (rounds) and potentially kill them in the medium term (minutes-hours depending upon the lethality).
Idk man, they shouldn't be called gods then.

If they just die when walking in space or a volcano they seem pretty weak to me.

Like, a ring of universal elemental immunity you can buy with 1.4 million gold in the epic handbook. Like legitimately a mortal with some money can render himself practically immune to most environmental effects, coupled with the planar adaption spell and they're basically able to, theoretically, at level 25 do what you're basically saying a greater deity shouldn't be able to do.

That makes no sense.
 

Hey Beefy buddy! :)

Idk man, they shouldn't be called gods then.

I think there is a smidge of a difference between walking in a volcano and walking on the surface of the sun, or a difference between battling in space and battling on the event horizon of a black hole.

If they just die when walking in space or a volcano they seem pretty weak to me.

Depends how powerful they are.

But it goes to highlight what I have been saying. Once you close off the avenues of mortal damage (acid, cold, fire etc.) it becomes a game-mechanic 'arms race' of...

"Well gods are immune to acid, but not this 'Super-acid' that can melt souls."
"Yes but my sidereal is the cosmic god of Super-Acid, so he has immunity."
"But he is not immune to 'Hyper-Acid' - the tears of a Time Lord, which can eat time itself."
etc.

Like, a ring of universal elemental immunity you can buy with 1.4 million gold in the epic handbook. Like legitimately a mortal with some money can render himself practically immune to most environmental effects, coupled with the planar adaption spell and they're basically able to, theoretically, at level 25 do what you're basically saying a greater deity shouldn't be able to do.

But they still wouldn't be nuke proof. Just because something has fire immunity doesn't mean its able to survive on the surface of the Sun.

That makes no sense.

Not needing to breathe air and immunity to cold would allow you to survive in Space.
Immunity to fire would allow you to survive a volcano - albeit your movement rate would still be hampered as if walking through treacle.

That's fine for Gods showing off.

Those are more like Mortal Hazards than true epic environments.

But when there are massive gravitic and nuclear effects kicking off then I am against wholesale immunity with the excuse of "well they are gods". There needs to be some measure of logic and some measure of peril - otherwise all environmental effects are completely and utterly irrelevant.
 

Hey Beefy buddy! :)



I think there is a smidge of a difference between walking in a volcano and walking on the surface of the sun, or a difference between battling in space and battling on the event horizon of a black hole.



Depends how powerful they are.

But it goes to highlight what I have been saying. Once you close off the avenues of mortal damage (acid, cold, fire etc.) it becomes a game-mechanic 'arms race' of...

"Well gods are immune to acid, but not this 'Super-acid' that can melt souls."
"Yes but my sidereal is the cosmic god of Super-Acid, so he has immunity."
"But he is not immune to 'Hyper-Acid' - the tears of a Time Lord, which can eat time itself."
etc.



But they still wouldn't be nuke proof. Just because something has fire immunity doesn't mean its able to survive on the surface of the Sun.



Not needing to breathe air and immunity to cold would allow you to survive in Space.
Immunity to fire would allow you to survive a volcano - albeit your movement rate would still be hampered as if walking through treacle.

That's fine for Gods showing off.

Those are more like Mortal Hazards than true epic environments.

But when there are massive gravitic and nuclear effects kicking off then I am against wholesale immunity with the excuse of "well they are gods". There needs to be some measure of logic and some measure of peril - otherwise all environmental effects are completely and utterly irrelevant.
Sup Krusty! 😜

Well, you're contradicting yourself there.

You're saying that the surface of the sun does a different kind of fire damage, but does it really? No source material says that, not IH or the Manual of the Planes, or any other material I've seen vice DanDwiki creations like Atuin the Star Turtle.

If we're just making things up on the fly that's tantamount to creating new rules mid game, and how is someone supposed to have a constructive or credible debate when one side is just making rulings up on the fly?

There's literally no in game reason a ring of fire immunity which will let you go to the plane of fire unharmed, literally a permanent firestorm, shouldn't allow you to stand on the surface of the Sun. On a cosmic level the surface of the sun isn't even that hot, like a 2 or 3 out of 10, maybe even less when compared to the Planck temperatures, or even like a blue giant star, much less a freaking quasar.

Yes divine fire exists, but is that not a divine product? Why would an environment produce a divine effect without a God or will present? Moreover that kind of fire is still half normal fire and thusly blocked by immunity. Look at the pulsed x-ray, that you created, of the Neutronium Golem.

At what point does the immunity I the magic in a ring of fire immunity just 'stop', you tell me? Because even mortal casters are capable of stopping time, altering reality and teleporting across the cosmos. So say what you want but you're simply dumbing down the powers of Gods to make it "more exciting" when it's unnecessary and makes the campaign more roll heavy or "dangerous" when it doesn't actually much help the plot or the excitement of the campaign as all of it will still be perfumatory at best due to every single God being able to teleport and planeshift at will, so what's the point?

I've ran my campaigns this way for going on 13 years and we've never had any problems whatsoever and all these so called backdrops you talk about simply allow for good and exciting storytelling without the party having to make a thousand unnecessary rolls when they're already having to make a thousand rolls, or have you forgotten all the rolls needing to be made in a single round of IH gameplay?

For example in a single basic fight between a party of Gods fighting another party of Gods, or to a slightly lesser degree any party with epic enemy spellcasters of any significant level: Any passive effects from enemies, multiple spell saves, 20-25 in a row or much more, any divine aura, any gaze, any other aura, etc etc etc., which all players have to make every single round.

So with that established, how will more saves make the game more exciting?

It sounds good, but in reality it's making it tedious when it doesn't need to be.

I can cite mechanics and flow of gameplay, but regardless of what I say, you seem to already have your mind made up, so what's the point of argument when one side already had their mind polarized and refuses to actually listen, give any ground, or understand why the other side may have the perspective they have? 😒

Regarding things like Tears of a Timelord or other unnatural environments or far less common than a single black hole or neutron star situations, the natural immunity, as presented, rules as written, only blocks natural effects, not magical effects or magical environments. I would like to believe the Tears of a freaking Time Lord would have some magical component to them. Lol.

On that note, if you had a black hole that had devoured a dead magic zone, that should affect a God just fine, a black hole made of the remnants of a magic star, should affect a God just fine, any magic involved will neutralize a God's natural immunity, as per the RAW as it specifically states it only applies to natural effects and not magical effects, so just change that aspect and say black holes are partially magic in nature as they devour everything.

Theoretically, all sufficiently powerful natural effects perhaps might or should have a magic component to them as in a world like dnd or IH magic is another elemental force of the universe like energy or matter, another component of the universe, so one would expect a black hole to have devoured a lot of magic over time, a strange star to have magic coursing through the quark gluon plasma of it's core, a white dwarf to be filled with not just cooling condensed nickel-iron but pure magic as well.

From that perspective I can get behind the idea of extreme environments being too extreme for a basic divine being. Eventually though, and I believe it's at Sidereal level, they gain immunity to magical environments as well, which at that point, narratively speaking, would also make sense and in terms of gameplay mechanics, to make them immune to more extreme environments.

Rule it as you will, but I think it's odd that you of all people would change the ruling on this given that so many monsters that are at an even level with gods, Adamic Dragons for example, are designed with the adaption power or other similar capabilities, which allows them to exist comfortably in any environment yet a God, who would, in general, smoke an Adamic Dragon unless it's a weak or badly rolled God and a strong Adamic, you think now shouldn't be able to. I thought that was the point of natural immunity? ¯\(ツ)
 
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Chess435

Explorer
There's definitely a lot of nuance to this question, but here's my two cents.

A low tier immortal (Up to Demi-deity) is immune to any sort of enviroment a mortal could reasonably live in, but can be seriously hurt or even killed if they end up in extreme conditions unprepared, unless they have an aligned portfolio. (A minor deity of a particular forest is probably gonna have a bad time if dunked into a volcano, but if they brought their handy ring of fire immunity, they'll probably survive but still not have a great time.) They don't need to breathe but still need protection against the other effects of space.

A full-fledged deity is immune or resistant to almost any conceivable environmental condition on Earth. You won't kill their manifestation with natural effects outside of truly apocalyptic events, but you might be able to slow one down a bit by dipping it in an undersea trench or under the planet's surface. They can survive in open space indefinitely, but may still struggle with hostile conditions. (Dunking a god into the sun will probably kill it unless you picked a fight with a sun deity, in which case the GM gets to laugh at you for your terrible planning skills.)

A sidereal is completely immune to pretty much any natural effect on a planetary scale, and can even deal with stellar objects with only minor inconvenience. Certain special stellar objects (Like Pulsars and neutron stars) could continually damage and eventually destroy a sidereal's manifestation, but you'd need to be able to trap it long enough to take effect. (You can chuck an Elder One into a black hole, but you also need to be able to stop it from simply teleporting away. Keep in mind you also have to deal with Cosmic String as well.)

Once you hit Demiurge levels, there's pretty much no stopping you by natural causes. A Demiurge will simply unravel black holes, ignore gravity, and chuck stars at you. You might be able to give it pause if you manage to trick it into eating a supernova, but good luck repeating that trick. Nothing short of a complete dimensional collapse will do one in, and even then you've stopped it for a few days.
 

There's definitely a lot of nuance to this question, but here's my two cents.

A low tier immortal (Up to Demi-deity) is immune to any sort of enviroment a mortal could reasonably live in, but can be seriously hurt or even killed if they end up in extreme conditions unprepared, unless they have an aligned portfolio. (A minor deity of a particular forest is probably gonna have a bad time if dunked into a volcano, but if they brought their handy ring of fire immunity, they'll probably survive but still not have a great time.) They don't need to breathe but still need protection against the other effects of space.

A full-fledged deity is immune or resistant to almost any conceivable environmental condition on Earth. You won't kill their manifestation with natural effects outside of truly apocalyptic events, but you might be able to slow one down a bit by dipping it in an undersea trench or under the planet's surface. They can survive in open space indefinitely, but may still struggle with hostile conditions. (Dunking a god into the sun will probably kill it unless you picked a fight with a sun deity, in which case the GM gets to laugh at you for your terrible planning skills.)

A sidereal is completely immune to pretty much any natural effect on a planetary scale, and can even deal with stellar objects with only minor inconvenience. Certain special stellar objects (Like Pulsars and neutron stars) could continually damage and eventually destroy a sidereal's manifestation, but you'd need to be able to trap it long enough to take effect. (You can chuck an Elder One into a black hole, but you also need to be able to stop it from simply teleporting away. Keep in mind you also have to deal with Cosmic String as well.)

Once you hit Demiurge levels, there's pretty much no stopping you by natural causes. A Demiurge will simply unravel black holes, ignore gravity, and chuck stars at you. You might be able to give it pause if you manage to trick it into eating a supernova, but good luck repeating that trick. Nothing short of a complete dimensional collapse will do one in, and even then you've stopped it for a few days.

I could agree with this if it was pulled back one step. So a Sidereal would have powers over Cosmic forces, so imo their immunity should apply to Cosmic forces. A Demiurge literally encompasses whole swaths of the multiverse and several dimensional layers, their total immunity should be a given, but I think a Sidereal should be immune to all effects that one would typically find within their own universe; maybe stopping at the black hole level, but including black holes as well.

Gods however, imo, if immunity is being pulled back, which, again, I don't think it should be, 15 years in to pull it back now seems pedantic, and makes the already save heavy game have even more saves but whatever, if that's what you all are going with, I think Divine Immunity should apply up to the extreme environment point. So suns, fine, white dwarfs, cool, volcanos okay, void of space, sure, center of a sun, maybe problematic, stuck in the corona of a sun, not a great idea, black hole, bad idea, strange star not a good idea, point blank with a gamma ray burst, definitely not a good idea.

I can get behind that and think that had I not already been using the rules as written for so long and that apply to players divine realms and other things already I'd be in agreement with you guys. One of the main reasons I say it should go to that point is that the primary metal of the gods, Orichalcum, is mined from still cooling white dwarf stars, so if the gods can't even get to said white dwarfs without dying, this seems problematic, and they'd likely need Orichalcum to begin with to mine the material, how would they potentially get Orichalcum?

It seems like a feedback loop.

There are a lot of logistics to this that seem like they're being edited broadbrushedly without any actual thoughts about the whole divine environment and what their day to day looks like ,or what their infrastructure is actually supposed to have within it. Divine immunity should work as written, at least to the level of not just stellar objects but up to the main sequence star level, more than makes perfect sense it seems necessary to make the gods realms make sense.

Otherwise I like the idea. I think if greater stellar objects are considered to naturally have magic within them then even RAW divine immunity having a cap makes sense.

Not that I agree with it, just playing devil's advocate here, but if that was how the original rules were meted out I think that actually makes sense and I would add it in.

Generally with the Pleroma (the greater multiverse that encompasses all other universes) I do this already as I believe the Pleroma is supposed to be as far beyond the gods as mankind is beyond bacteria, thusly I make it a very hostile and very terrifying place.

So I think walking back everything one step to make it so Gods have some kind of universal limits does make a certain kind of sense, I just think it's a short distance to being outclassed by clever epic mortals, especially with epic magic. So we have to be careful in making gods so weak that there's no difference between them and the humans praying to them.
 
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Sup Krusty! 😜

Hey buddy! :)

Well, you're contradicting yourself there.

...lets investigate.

You're saying that the surface of the sun does a different kind of fire damage, but does it really?

Tangentially, yes.

While Fire is Fire, standing on the surface of the Sun would not just deal fire damage* but would come with crushing Gravitic Damage, Electromagnetic Bombardment, Crazy Pressure and the effect of constant nuclear explosions going off.

*Also according to this next video the sun is NOT actually on fire.


No source material says that, not IH or the Manual of the Planes, or any other material I've seen vice DanDwiki creations like Atuin the Star Turtle.

Did they explain the gravity, pressures, electromagnetism and nuclear explosions that would be acting upon creatures and characters?

If we're just making things up on the fly that's tantamount to creating new rules mid game, and how is someone supposed to have a constructive or credible debate when one side is just making rulings up on the fly?

I'm not making up stuff on the fly. I'm trying to mechanically explain gravity, pressure, electromagnetic waves and nuclear explosions in D&D.

There's literally no in game reason a ring of fire immunity which will let you go to the plane of fire unharmed, literally a permanent firestorm, shouldn't allow you to stand on the surface of the Sun.

Heavy Gravity, Electromagnetic Waves, Constant Nuclear Explosions, Insane Crushing Pressure...four things the Plane of Fire doesn't have.

On a cosmic level the surface of the sun isn't even that hot, like a 2 or 3 out of 10, maybe even less when compared to the Planck temperatures, or even like a blue giant star, much less a freaking quasar.

According to you a Ring of Elemental Immunity is all we need to survive Planck Temperature.

Yes divine fire exists, but is that not a divine product? Why would an environment produce a divine effect without a God or will present? Moreover that kind of fire is still half normal fire and thusly blocked by immunity. Look at the pulsed x-ray, that you created, of the Neutronium Golem.

I don't have a problem with gods being immune to fire. But that won't let you survive the surface of the sun.

I do have a problem with gods being immune to gravity, pressure, nukes and other such fundamental forces because it renders stellar phenomena utterly irrelevant.

At what point does the immunity I the magic in a ring of fire immunity just 'stop', you tell me? Because even mortal casters are capable of stopping time, altering reality and teleporting across the cosmos. So say what you want but you're simply dumbing down the powers of Gods to make it "more exciting" when it's unnecessary and makes the campaign more roll heavy or "dangerous" when it doesn't actually much help the plot or the excitement of the campaign as all of it will still be perfumatory at best due to every single God being able to teleport and planeshift at will, so what's the point?

Its not about stopping fire damage, its about taking all the other forms of damage into account.

I've ran my campaigns this way for going on 13 years and we've never had any problems whatsoever and all these so called backdrops you talk about simply allow for good and exciting storytelling without the party having to make a thousand unnecessary rolls when they're already having to make a thousand rolls, or have you forgotten all the rolls needing to be made in a single round of IH gameplay?

I have no intention of retconning anything in the IH.

But if you wanted to replicate an epic environment (such as the surface of the sun), immunity to fire won't suffice.

My goal here is to make challenging epic environments for epic mortals, gods and potentially even sidereals. If we carte blanche say they are immune to everything then that becomes a pointless waste of time AND a missed opportunity, because having the environment be a hazard is a great part of D&D.

Fighting on an event horizon would be cool, but if it has ZERO mechanical effect upon characters then it becomes WORTHLESS.

For example in a single basic fight between a party of Gods fighting another party of Gods, or to a slightly lesser degree any party with epic enemy spellcasters of any significant level: Any passive effects from enemies, multiple spell saves, 20-25 in a row or much more, any divine aura, any gaze, any other aura, etc etc etc., which all players have to make every single round.

So with that established, how will more saves make the game more exciting?

It sounds good, but in reality it's making it tedious when it doesn't need to be.

I'm not retconning the IH or 3.5E. I already know its complex (overly so in my opinion).

I can cite mechanics and flow of gameplay, but regardless of what I say, you seem to already have your mind made up, so what's the point of argument when one side already had their mind polarized and refuses to actually listen, give any ground, or understand why the other side may have the perspective they have? 😒

The question is not who's mind is made up. The questions are:

1. Do we have mechanics to replicate the surface of the Sun, event horizon of a black hole etc.
2. Would epic environments be a fun addition to epic/immortal/sidereal and if so what would they be?

Regarding things like Tears of a Timelord or other unnatural environments or far less common than a single black hole or neutron star situations, the natural immunity, as presented, rules as written, only blocks natural effects, not magical effects or magical environments. I would like to believe the Tears of a freaking Time Lord would have some magical component to them. Lol.

Perhaps every Sun is simply an 'atom' of the demiurge?

On that note, if you had a black hole that had devoured a dead magic zone, that should affect a God just fine, a black hole made of the remnants of a magic star, should affect a God just fine, any magic involved will neutralize a God's natural immunity, as per the RAW as it specifically states it only applies to natural effects and not magical effects, so just change that aspect and say black holes are partially magic in nature as they devour everything.

Theoretically, all sufficiently powerful natural effects perhaps might or should have a magic component to them as in a world like dnd or IH magic is another elemental force of the universe like energy or matter, another component of the universe, so one would expect a black hole to have devoured a lot of magic over time, a strange star to have magic coursing through the quark gluon plasma of it's core, a white dwarf to be filled with not just cooling condensed nickel-iron but pure magic as well.

There you go, then use that. All stellar phenomenon are in some part magical or sentient or derived from some magical sentient source.

From that perspective I can get behind the idea of extreme environments being too extreme for a basic divine being. Eventually though, and I believe it's at Sidereal level, they gain immunity to magical environments as well, which at that point, narratively speaking, would also make sense and in terms of gameplay mechanics, to make them immune to more extreme environments.

Exactly, at a certain level an immortal will be immune to a given environment. But at THAT point using such environments becomes pointless. Which then necessitates we come up with a NEW environment that DOES impact them.

Rule it as you will, but I think it's odd that you of all people would change the ruling on this given that so many monsters that are at an even level with gods, Adamic Dragons for example, are designed with the adaption power or other similar capabilities, which allows them to exist comfortably in any environment yet a God, who would, in general, smoke an Adamic Dragon unless it's a weak or badly rolled God and a strong Adamic, you think now shouldn't be able to. I thought that was the point of natural immunity? ¯\(ツ)

Maybe I'm going senile in my old age amigo. ;)

I want gods to fight on the surface of the Sun, even on an event horizon of a black hole. Those things should be EPIC encounters not interchangeable backdrops of irrelevance.

DM: "This week you are battling an overgod on the event horizon of a black hole"
Player: "Cool...so what effect does fighting on the event horizon have?"
DM: "...well...none actually."
Player: ":rolleyes:"

Something doesn't sit well with me when a deity can supposedly take a nap in the core of the Sun, but would take damage from a fireball from a 5th level wizard. I know why I went with it at the time, but I'm having trouble justifying it in my head.

At the end of the day we can just use the "its a divine sun, or its a magical black hole" excuse, but if everything worth doing should be difficult, then the only time we will ever use a sun or black hole as environments is when they are magical...which defeats the point of having non-magical suns or black holes.
 

There's definitely a lot of nuance to this question, but here's my two cents.

A low tier immortal (Up to Demi-deity) is immune to any sort of enviroment a mortal could reasonably live in, but can be seriously hurt or even killed if they end up in extreme conditions unprepared, unless they have an aligned portfolio. (A minor deity of a particular forest is probably gonna have a bad time if dunked into a volcano, but if they brought their handy ring of fire immunity, they'll probably survive but still not have a great time.) They don't need to breathe but still need protection against the other effects of space.

A full-fledged deity is immune or resistant to almost any conceivable environmental condition on Earth. You won't kill their manifestation with natural effects outside of truly apocalyptic events, but you might be able to slow one down a bit by dipping it in an undersea trench or under the planet's surface. They can survive in open space indefinitely, but may still struggle with hostile conditions. (Dunking a god into the sun will probably kill it unless you picked a fight with a sun deity, in which case the GM gets to laugh at you for your terrible planning skills.)

A sidereal is completely immune to pretty much any natural effect on a planetary scale, and can even deal with stellar objects with only minor inconvenience. Certain special stellar objects (Like Pulsars and neutron stars) could continually damage and eventually destroy a sidereal's manifestation, but you'd need to be able to trap it long enough to take effect. (You can chuck an Elder One into a black hole, but you also need to be able to stop it from simply teleporting away. Keep in mind you also have to deal with Cosmic String as well.)

Once you hit Demiurge levels, there's pretty much no stopping you by natural causes. A Demiurge will simply unravel black holes, ignore gravity, and chuck stars at you. You might be able to give it pause if you manage to trick it into eating a supernova, but good luck repeating that trick. Nothing short of a complete dimensional collapse will do one in, and even then you've stopped it for a few days.

There could be:

Terrestrial Hazards: Volcano High temperatures, Arctic Freezing Temperatures, Sea Trench Pressures, Lightning Storms
Gods+: Immune, Godlings: Resistant

Stellar Hazards: Surface of the Sun, Outer Space, Extreme Pressure Environments (Planetary/Stellar cores), Heavy Gravity, Cosmic Storms
Sidereals+: Immune, Gods: Resistant

Dimensional Hazards: Black Holes, Worm Holes, Quasars, Gamma Rays, Time Storms
Demiurge+: Immune, Sidereals: Resistant (a black hole might be used to imprison a sidereal with the high EMF essentially functioning as dead-magic zones).

Universal Hazards: Big Bang (planck) effects, Tears in Reality, Cosmic Cysts, Star Plagues, Collapsing Space
Time Lords+: Immune, Demiurge: Resistant

Multiversal Hazards: Probability Crack, Logic Paradox, Anti-Maxim
Supernals: Immune, Time Lords: Resistant
 

Hey Krusty
Hey buddy! :)
Sup!
...lets investigate.
Lets
Tangentially, yes.

While Fire is Fire, standing on the surface of the Sun would not just deal fire damage* but would come with crushing Gravitic Damage, Electromagnetic Bombardment, Crazy Pressure and the effect of constant nuclear explosions going off.

*Also according to this next video the sun is NOT actually on fire.

Indeed they would be. There are myriad other problems associated with going near a star, but with sufficient spellcasting, protections or immunity the worst of the issues would be negated.
Did they explain the gravity, pressures, electromagnetism and nuclear explosions that would be acting upon creatures and characters?
Most source books treat the sun as dealing heat damage and even being inhabited by fire elementals and Jyoti, it does deal pressure damage as well. The Pathfinder source material does state that fire elementals, Efreeti and Salamanders seem to be immune to the radiation, disintegration etc etc of the sun and that it's possible for Spellcasters to go there. Sun - PathfinderWiki
I'm not making up stuff on the fly. I'm trying to mechanically explain gravity, pressure, electromagnetic waves and nuclear explosions in D&D.



Heavy Gravity, Electromagnetic Waves, Constant Nuclear Explosions, Insane Crushing Pressure...four things the Plane of Fire doesn't have.



According to you a Ring of Elemental Immunity is all we need to survive Planck Temperature.
You are kind of making all this up on the fly though, on a very basic level, you're the one who penned what does what and how right? So if you wanted to have gods only 'kind of immune' then why didn't you write that in at the time?

And it's not just according to me, you're either immune to something or not. Even source material allows a fire elemental or other fire subtype creature to survive any level of heat, that doesn't mean they won't just die anyway from the universe itself delaminating at the planck temp but the heat won't be the thing that kills them.
I don't have a problem with gods being immune to fire. But that won't let you survive the surface of the sun.
You seem to, and it kind of does, that and a high enough Damage Reduction and lightning resistance will reduce the majority of a star's effects.

Plasma, which the corona of the sun is made of, according to PF deals half lightning and half fire damage, both of which could be handled by a ring of elemental immunity or by polymorphing into a plasma elemental. The radiation poisoning should be able to be handled by a simple immunity to poison, or again by polymorphing into a plasma elemental, or Ersatz, the bludgeoning damage from the pressure wave could be handled by a high enough DR or regeneration.

The only thing that remains is the Disintegration aspect which may be more difficult to deal with indeed but is that disintegration simply an effect of the previously stated aspects of the star itself? If it isn't and it's treated as actual disintegration damage, what are we treating that as? Magic? Or a non-elemental non magical untyped effect? If we're treating Disintegration as it's own element now and not a by-product of other energies ferocity then that adds a whole additional level to this but one without a clear means of handling, but as beings already exist comfortably on the sun itself, this becomes a problem and one that either has to be defined or ignored.
I do have a problem with gods being immune to gravity, pressure, nukes and other such fundamental forces because it renders stellar phenomena utterly irrelevant.
Then why make them gods? Why have them called gods if they're barely stronger than people? This is the fundamental crux of my position, right here? Why make or call them gods if their power is almost equivalent with a human? Demigods or lesser beings I can get your point. Hercules certainly shouldn't be able to survive any of that. But Apollo? Zeus? Pelor? Come on.
Its not about stopping fire damage, its about taking all the other forms of damage into account.
I get that, but I'm saying, how is that fun? If you don't trivialize some of the insane aspects of reality, you can't actually tell the story you are setting out to tell, you know, the point of dnd? You get inundated with mechanics and turning the game into a science simulator, which to a degree I like, and I think you should throw some science in, but to the effect of getting in the way of the campaign I disagree with. Adding in the color shift when travelling light speed for example is a nice touch to add, making the players feel the pressures and all of that is great whenever I have the players go into the atmosphere of a gas giant for example, which recently happened which is why I bring it up, I explain the way the character can feel the crushing gravity and the solid rains of ice and particulates, the thousand mile per hour winds, and the miles wide lightning bolts of tremendous intensity, but it isn't something that is a danger to them, they wouldn't explore these places if they were and given that one character is literally a planar cartographer, that would be unfortunate. No one wants to spend years on a character to have them die an ignoble death on some backwater gas giant pointlessly. Bogging everything down just makes the game unplayable unless you want to have everything taking place planetside which seems like a lot of basic humans are going to constantly die and the planet will have to be infinitely be wished back into existence with all the damage divine level characters can dish out.
I have no intention of retconning anything in the IH.

But if you wanted to replicate an epic environment (such as the surface of the sun), immunity to fire won't suffice.

My goal here is to make challenging epic environments for epic mortals, gods and potentially even sidereals. If we carte blanche say they are immune to everything then that becomes a pointless waste of time AND a missed opportunity, because having the environment be a hazard is a great part of D&D.

Fighting on an event horizon would be cool, but if it has ZERO mechanical effect upon characters then it becomes WORTHLESS.
Just because it doesn't present a danger to the party doesn't make it a worthless mechanic, it's like I said about hamhanded storytelling and using finesse as a DM the other day. You just have to use the tools at your disposal to make a story, it doesn't always have to be a possible threat to the players.

Having used these settings multiple times over the years i can say from experience that in reality it makes for new and exciting storytelling for both the DM who can let their imagination run wild and the players who suddenly will have a great story about fighting a god of death on the surface of a black hole.

Moreover as something with intention can be used in my settings if a player was to throw an enemy into the black hole, I might very well allow it to work properly for that as there suddenly is an intent behind it vice a mindless mechanical effect.

It might be interesting on an intellectual level for the DM to have it work exactly like a real life black hole, spaghettifying everyone who gets close god and mortal alike, but to the players it's going to come off as unfun and suck ass to have their character permanently pwned. Black holes warp time itself, a god who fell in would be stuck as relative time would seem to speed up for them and universe would go on without them, they'd permanently die from the encounter, which I suppose if you're an naughty word you might find fun to, like tearing the legs off of an ant, do to your hapless players but I personally think that wouldn't be cool.

Let me give a lower level example:

If you have a setting underwater for example in basic 3.5/Pathfinder and want to incorporate Aquatic Elves and Aboleth, then making the party constantly check the equivalent of pressure gauges is only A) going to dissuade players from wanting to attempt it, especially careful players and B) going to cause a headache for yourself in terms of making the setting playable. Don't you see that? You'll lose the story you're trying to write by making it so self involved. All the time and energy and love you put into a story or a part of a story can disappear in an instant if the players don't feel like it's actually feasible to succeed.

Ultimately the players need to actually be able to access areas effectively to do anything with them at all, otherwise it's entirely masterbatory.
I'm not retconning the IH or 3.5E. I already know its complex (overly so in my opinion).
Then why make the argument in favor of it then?
The question is not who's mind is made up. The questions are:

1. Do we have mechanics to replicate the surface of the Sun, event horizon of a black hole etc.
2. Would epic environments be a fun addition to epic/immortal/sidereal and if so what would they be?
According to you that's the question, but that's not the question I asked, is it?

To answer your question however, let me answer your question with a question:

Conflicting source materials and choosing between a playable place a PC could actually go compared to a simulation of the actual effects of the sun itself is the actual question a DM will be faced with. If they want to actually use the sun in any playable way before level 120, they'll have to tone down the effects of the sun itself or allow things like Planar Adaption, the dreaded Natural Immunity and/or that pesky ring of Fire Immunity to simply suffice. Or the party will have to polymorph into beings already found on the sun itself. Otherwise it's utterly inaccessible and therefore mechanically irrelevant.
Perhaps every Sun is simply an 'atom' of the demiurge?
That'd be cool af actually.
There you go, then use that. All stellar phenomenon are in some part magical or sentient or derived from some magical sentient source.
Well, as I said, I'm not in favor of this, so I'm gonna decline on that one.
Exactly, at a certain level an immortal will be immune to a given environment. But at THAT point using such environments becomes pointless. Which then necessitates we come up with a NEW environment that DOES impact them.
Not at all, Abrogate can definitely be used to negate someone's Divine Immunity I'd argue. Send their little asses hurtling towards certain doom in a poof. lol. And why wouldn't a god use abrogation to use the environment as a weapon?
Maybe I'm going senile in my old age amigo. ;)

I want gods to fight on the surface of the Sun, even on an event horizon of a black hole. Those things should be EPIC encounters not interchangeable backdrops of irrelevance.

DM: "This week you are battling an overgod on the event horizon of a black hole"
Player: "Cool...so what effect does fighting on the event horizon have?"
DM: "...well...none actually."
Player: ":rolleyes:"
You're the only one who thinks like that man, maybe other people in this particular thread but I'm telling you, my players enjoy being able to freely explore space and do so without feeling like they're constantly going to die. Why would anyone think that's fun?

Moreover it isn't irrelevance. The before mentioned Superman reference from yesterday or whatever, an evil god may need an item that's falling into a black hole, they may have followers on worlds being bombarded by strangelets or Q-balls, a ship may have their mortal family onboard etc, it really isn't hard to add the danger aspect in whatsoever, you just find something the player cares about and exploit that.

Or like I just previously stated, abrogate their ass. OR have a black hole with a dead zone around it or a sidereal in it's core. It's not hard.
Something doesn't sit well with me when a deity can supposedly take a nap in the core of the Sun, but would take damage from a fireball from a 5th level wizard. I know why I went with it at the time, but I'm having trouble justifying it in my head.

At the end of the day we can just use the "its a divine sun, or its a magical black hole" excuse, but if everything worth doing should be difficult, then the only time we will ever use a sun or black hole as environments is when they are magical...which defeats the point of having non-magical suns or black holes.
No it does not.

They're some of the most interesting effects in the cosmos, being able to actually explore them is a very cool thing, it's why shows like Star Trek gained popularity. Also since only Gods have Divine Immunity it gives the players the ability to make safe divine realms and other places where only they can go, which gives them a very useful tool. It also allows for things like bad ass solar temples literally in the heart of a star to exist or a hammer forged in a black hole or a golem made in the center of the earth to actually make sense, otherwise they're entirely impossible to make unless you're level 320, at which point, why would you bother making those items?
 
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There could be:

Terrestrial Hazards: Volcano High temperatures, Arctic Freezing Temperatures, Sea Trench Pressures, Lightning Storms
Gods+: Immune, Godlings: Resistant

Stellar Hazards: Surface of the Sun, Outer Space, Extreme Pressure Environments (Planetary/Stellar cores), Heavy Gravity, Cosmic Storms
Sidereals+: Immune, Gods: Resistant

Dimensional Hazards: Black Holes, Worm Holes, Quasars, Gamma Rays, Time Storms
Demiurge+: Immune, Sidereals: Resistant (a black hole might be used to imprison a sidereal with the high EMF essentially functioning as dead-magic zones).

Universal Hazards: Big Bang (planck) effects, Tears in Reality, Cosmic Cysts, Star Plagues, Collapsing Space
Time Lords+: Immune, Demiurge: Resistant

Multiversal Hazards: Probability Crack, Logic Paradox, Anti-Maxim
Supernals: Immune, Time Lords: Resistant
I actually really like this list, these are pretty cool ideas tbh. Like I said to Chess, I might incorporate some of these but i'll move the scaling around some for myself and my campigns.
 
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