Elemental Overview [Dark Sun]

Priests across the desert world revere the four elements as the powers that govern every day of a harsh existence. Air is breath, drawn by a newborn and released by the dying. Water is life, always scarce and never taken lightly. Earth is the land itself: cruel, ever-shifting, but always underfoot. Fire is the burning sun, the scorching sands, and everything that has been lost.

Elementals here come in three grades: lesser, standard and greater. Common folk regard them with awe. A cleric who can call even a lesser elemental earns more respect than acolytes who cannot, and templars rightly see that power as a threat to their own, so many cities forbid summoning elementals outright. Those who speak with elementals by magic report that the elemental planes are wondrous and at times horrifying. Many worshipers have tried to cross into their element's plane to escape the world; none who vanished that way has ever been heard from, and no one knows whether they succeeded.

All elementals of this world, of every grade, are entirely immune to telepathy, psychometabolism, clairsentience and metapsionics, though psychokinesis and psychoportation affect them normally. Their extraplanar nature gives them total resistance to telepathic powers of Prime Material creatures, and they are far too dim to use psionics themselves.

Lesser elementals are the first a priest learns to call. A summoned one is pulled across the planes, sometimes against its will, to serve. Little is known of their lives at home. Their wits are no sharper than a standard elemental's, so they are thoroughly dull. Any +1 or better magical weapon can hurt one, but creatures under 2 Hit Dice with no magical abilities cannot. Protection from evil affects them as it does standard elementals. The strength of a lesser elemental depends on which of two calling methods brought it; summoning devices never call lesser elementals, only standard ones.

Their movement is tightly limited. Lesser air elementals cannot go into earth and deal only half damage to creatures underground. An earth one deals half damage to flying or swimming creatures and can neither cross water nor go into it. A fire one may not pass into earth, and water blocks it entirely, whether entering or crossing. A water one is barred from crossing or entering fire. Control can be stolen with dispel magic just as for standard elementals; if the roll is a 20, the creature merely stands on the defensive, and if the dispel fails it behaves as a standard elemental would.

Defiler magic is devastating to them. A damaging defiler spell treats the caster as 5 levels higher, and a lesser elemental caught in a defiler spell's area of destruction is destroyed instantly.

Standard elementals match the usual air, earth, fire and water elementals and are summoned, controlled and stolen in the usual way. Against them, a defiler's damaging spell counts the caster as 3 levels higher, and being inside the area of destruction costs the elemental 1d20 damage. Each defiler spell that affects a controlled elemental also adds 10% to its chance of breaking free, on top of the normal 5% per round. One that breaks loose attacks its summoner first and the defiler next.

Each greater elemental has its own strengths and weaknesses, but all share certain traits. Nonmagical weapons and weapons under +3 cannot harm them, nor can creatures of fewer than 5 Hit Dice lacking magical abilities. Protection from evil affects them strongly: they cannot strike a protected creature and recoil from the spell's boundaries.

As embodiments of the worshiped elements they resist priest magic only: 50% against spells from their own element's sphere and 25% against all other spheres, so a greater earth elemental has 50% against earth-sphere spells and 25% against air, fire, water and cosmos. Defilers are another matter. A defiler's damaging spell treats the caster as 2 levels higher, the elemental takes 1d10 extra damage inside the area of destruction, and each defiler spell raises its chance to break control by 10% beyond the usual 5% per round. Once free, it attacks its summoner and then the defiler.

Greater elementals are stupid, too dull to resist a summons, yet all resent being dragged to the Prime Material Plane. Preservers do most of the summoning, because defiling weakens the call. When a defiler tries, the DM makes two saves vs. spell on the elemental's behalf. Success on the first means the call is simply refused. Failure on the first brings it, and then the second decides: a failed second save means it serves, while a successful one leaves it free and hostile to the defiler who called it. That is why sorcerer tyrants take great risks calling elementals while their templars do so with ease. Control and theft of control otherwise work exactly as for standard elementals.

Exceptionally powerful clerics can transform into elementals as advanced beings. These clerical elementals resemble the creatures above in many ways, but very different rules govern summoning, controlling and stealing them.