D&D 5E Does fire resistance protect you from smoke inhalation?


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It depends on what the smoke inhalation would do to the creature. If it does fire damage, then yes. If it causes the incapacitated or poisoned condition, then no.
 


Asphyxiation and Immolation are two very different kinds of death.

That said, I don't see the value in using it. Mostly because it will quickly become way too much for a character with no resistances to live in, let alone do anything heroic.
 

I like your answer. So what would you say smoke from a burning building is?


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I would suggest looking at some of the cloud spells and finding one that does what you want, fog cloud, stinking cloud, and cloudkill are some examples of varying levels of bad stuff happening to someone inhaling smoke. The following link shows some effects of smoke inhalation and how to treat it:
http://www.webmd.com/lung/smoke_inhalation_treatment_firstaid.htm#1

Another mechanic that could work is asking for Constitution saving throws at regular intervals (every minute, every couple of rounds, whatever). The DC starts at 10 and increases by 1 with each new saving throw. Each time a PC fails a saving throw, they suffer 1 point of exhaustion. Be careful that you do not ask for the saving throw too often, because this can snowball quickly.

EDIT: I will say when the party went through this very scenario, I gave the Tiefling and others with fire resistance advantage on the Constitution saving throw to avoid taking a point of exhaustion.
 
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We FINALLY have a simple game, why complicate it?

Is it related to fire? Is it something that fire does? If the fire goes away, will the effect go away?

Yes?

Give it to them! :) It's Fire Resistance, not Direct Flame Damage Resistance, or Oxidation Resistance, or.... ugh.
 

E.g. Tieflings. Thinking about burning building / forest situations.

No, it wouldn't stop you from suffocating or coughing from smoke inhalation. Necklace of Adaptation or similar items/spells would be needed.

But if you are going to get that detailed, someone with fire resistance would last much longer, simply because they wouldn't get heat damage to their lungs along with it.
 

If you want to put in a suffocation effect from being in a burning room, then fire resistance wouldn't help, suffocation doesn't even deal damage exactly, it just drops your HP to zero.

If you want to put in a smoke effect, I would probably treat it as poison not fire.

But in most cases I'd recommend ignoring that and just having a fire cause fire damage. Maybe in a special situation, like if escaping from a burning building is the main challenge, then it might make sense to be more complicated/realistic.
 

I've done burning building scenarios and did the smoke damage separate from the fire damage.

My rough rules were that I had the PCs making Con saves with DC starting low (5) and increased slowly depending on what the PCs did and where they went.

For the effects of failed save, I just used the exhaustion table.

[EDIT] I didn't have anyone with fire resistance in the group, but if I had I probably would have given them advantage on saves.
 
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As a general guide, I'd say it isn't worth the trouble and that resistance/immunity should be applied to secondary effects, as well.

In the specific case of a tiefling, they only have resistance. That's half damage, which can be described/justified any way the group feels appropriate. Maybe it means that the tiefling only marginally effected by the temperature at which a house would burn, but has trouble with the smoke, etc. It could also mean that their system is adapted to be able to process the ash and smoke from a burning landscape to the same extent to which they can deal with the heat.

For immunity, well, we're talking about dragons, demons, devils, golems, and other critters that pretty well defy biology and other assorted fields of science. Don't overthink it. It would be really super lame for a glabrezu to stride through a fire with a smirk on his face, only to step into an eddy and gasp for breath.

I know it's glib, but I'd say that it's just a game. Don't sweat the small stuff. Unless you're doing something truly unique (i.e. you'll only need to worry about the ruling once, ever, for your whole life) with a given scenario, this is truly small stuff. Fire damage includes whatever is going on with the flaming whatever.

That said, some people want to sweat the small stuff. D&D isn't designed to do that. If this bothers you, there is enough hand-waving around other small stuff that you're going to go insane. Either switch systems (though I don't know of any that would actually consider this sort of question worth addressing -- maybe Fate, depending on how you want to handle aspects) or lower your bar and accept the system for what it is.

Note that I'm talking just about the secondary effects of a burning house. If you want to put pods in that release poison spores or something similar, knock yourself out and welcome to the Evil GM Club. Your card is in the mail.
 

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