Do fireballs make a sound in AD&D?

[Urban Ranger]

@ Jamski's geekness

[DrSpike]

Even if fireballs themselves produce no sound, the person being hit by them presumably does. Possibly even badger related.

[Drogue]

Originally posted by DrSpike
Even if fireballs themselves produce no sound, the person being hit by them presumably does. Possibly even badger related.

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[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Drogue

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Good choice.

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by Jamski
Badger = Banana

I assume that any fireball that is powerful enough to destroy all the furniture and kill a load of gobins - or even quite tough creatures - is going to make a hell of a racket.

If its hot enough to kill stuff straight away, then it must heat the air very fast too - gives an explosive pressure wave, even without the initial explosion - however, we can assume an initial explosion because the fireball is not an instantly created spherical volume of fire, but a small point or ball of fire that then expands outwards to 30 feet, with a duration described as "instantanious". For a volume to expand from a point to a volume instantaniously a speed of near infinity is assumed. That will break the sound barrier and cause the "boom" sound associated with a grenade, for example.

-Jam

It dosen't take much for even a little fire to severely harm living creatures -- all it takes is inhaling at the wrong moment.

According to the 1st edition DMG, the following saves are required for objects in a fireball (number or better on a d20):

bone or ivory 17
ceramic 5
cloth 20
crystal or vial 10
glass 11
leather or book 13
liquid 15
metal, hard 6
metal, soft or jewelry 18
mirror 14
parchment or paper 25
stone, small or gem 7
wood or rope, thin 15
wood or rope, thick 11

Note that failing dosen't mean ash, it just means unusable. Half the furniture (and about a third of the books) would survive the initial strike.

Of course the fact that steel items would be destroyed a quarter of the time in the same strike implies there are zones of differing heat intensity within any given fireball -- possibly very small, with huge differences.

[Skanky Burns]

How would you ever be able to save parchment or paper then?

[The Mad Monk]

It's not easy.

Objects in a character's possession automatically save if the character saves, and need only roll to save if the character fails -- but if they need to roll, they gain full benefit of any save bonuses.

In addition, all magic items receive a bonus of +2, with an additional bonus of +5 if the magic in question deals with fire.