Elemental attacks in the world of Dice Mob refer to primary methods, other than force trauma, for causing physical harm to a character. There is also a sense of the early elements of air, earth, fire, and water which are present in many medieval RPGs, and we have some sense of those in Dice Mob as well, but these are somewhat different than those though related.

These elemental attacks are much more related to the defenses they are attacking, except that instead of grouping them together we separate them out into the actual attacks being performed even though some pairs of them are similar enough that they are defended using a single number of dice.

For the purposes of Dice Mob, there are poison attacks, disease attacks, burning attacks, acid attacks, freezing attacks, and electrical attacks. We'll go through each of them individually and discuss them further.

Attacks using poison follow the general rules for shape, size, and range.

Additionally poison attacks affect anyone struck by at least one point of poison damage is considered poisoned. A character who is poisoned automatically rolls at the beginning of each turn against an equal amount of dice to the amount of damage they took the previous round. This continues each round until the defender beats all attacking dice or they are cured, either magically or medicinally. If multiple poison attacks are successful, later rounds are defended against individually.

Example: John the Barbarian is hit with a poison bolt. His poison defense is three. The attacker has five dice. The rolls are 5, 3, 6, 1, 1 vs 6, 6, 2, which is 6 vs 6, 5 vs 6, 3 vs 2, and two 1’s that aren’t defended. John takes 3 points of damage. The next round John has to defend against three dice, the ones he couldn’t defend against the first round. If he is attacked by another poison bolt and defends against all but the two he can’t defend against AS WELL AS a second defense roll against the residual poison from the first attack. If that attack is successful as well, the third round likely could include defending three times, once against the attack, once against the residual poison from round one, and once against the residual poison from round two.

Attacks using disease follow the rules listed above for shape, size, and distance. Anyone struck by at least one point of disease damage will be required every day thereafter to defend against a number of dice equal to the damage they took initially. If they cannot defend against all dice, they will permanently lose one hit point. This continues until they successfully defend against all dice or they are cured, magically or medicinally.

Attacks using freezing follow the rules listed above for shape, size, and distance. Additionally freezing attacks affect anyone struck by at least one point of damage with the loss of a non-combat, combat, passive, or defensive action (due to slowing) and a loss of a die when determining initiative. This continues each round until the defender beats all dice OR some sort of warmth counteracts it OR it reaches the number of rounds equal to the skill degree of the user attacking them.

Cumulative freezing attacks on the same character do not have a cumulative effect on initiative, e.g. they still only lose one die, but it is cumulative in regards to the number of actions lost. Theoretically a person with the standard one combat action, one non-combat action, one passive action, and one defensive action could be rendered effectively immobile (with only free actions possible) given enough freezing attacks sent in their direction, especially if they have been unable to evade them. Generally actions are removed in the order of non-combat first, combat second, defensive third, and passive fourth.

Attacks using burning follow the rules listed above for shape, size, and distance. Additionally anyone struck by at least one point of damage will have ignitable equipment catch fire and cause one point of damage per round to them and anyone within one meter of them until some method to used to put it out using a non-combat action. (If they are not wearing anything flammable, no further damage is taken.) Equipment which catches fire will be destroyed after two additional rounds of burning. Magical equipment can catch fire if it is of a material which is considered flammable.

Attacks using acid follow the rules listed above for shape, size, and distance. Additionally acid attacks affect anyone struck by at least one point of damage with a number of dice each round thereafter equal to the amount of damage they took the previous round. This continues each round until the defender beats all dice OR the acid is washed off. Equipment with acid on it will be destroyed after five additional rounds by the acid unless it is washed off or unless it is somehow impervious to acid.

Attacks using electricity follow the rules listed above for shape, size, and distance. Additionally the electricity can arc from any person struck to an ally or opponent within one meter with a dice attack equal to the successful dice striking the defender. If more than one ally or opponent is within a meter, the one it arcs to will be chosen at random via a die roll. The electricity will continue to arc until a defender successfully saves against all attack dice, including arcing back to a person already struck or even the initially attacking person if they are close enough.