Show Notes Elementals are the walking embodiment of the four classic forces—fire, air, water, and earth—and they're one of the easiest monster families to drop into any campaign while still feeling mythic, dangerous, and thematically sharp. (Spotify) In this remastered episode, the RPGBOT crew di...
Show Notes
Elementals are the walking embodiment of the four classic forces—fire, air, water, and earth—and they're one of the easiest monster families to drop into any campaign while still feeling mythic, dangerous, and thematically sharp. (Spotify) In this remastered episode, the RPGBOT crew digs into how to make elementals more than "a pile of hit points with a damage type"—including encounter roles, terrain design, and how to telegraph threats so your table feels challenged instead of cheap-shotted.
- What elementals are (in play): not just monsters, but mobile hazards and "terrain with teeth."
- Element-by-element encounter design: how fire/air/water/earth fights should feel different, even at the same CR/level band.
- Battlefield engineering: using smoke, wind, currents, collapsing ground, and difficult terrain to make elementals do elemental things.
- Player-facing tactics: reading resistances/immunities, avoiding trap damage types, and solving the encounter with positioning and control (not just DPR).
- GM toolbelt: telegraphing danger, escalating phases, and mixing minions/terrain so elementals don't devolve into a slog.
Practical GM ideas you can steal immediately
- Fire: oxygen, visibility, spreading zones, panic movement (force decisions, not just damage).
- Air: verticality, forced movement, disarms/knockdowns, splitting the party without hard walls.
- Water: grapples, drowning pressure clocks, currents, "you can't stand where you want" fights.
- Earth: cover that changes, chokepoints that collapse, tremors, being pinned or isolated.
Key Takeaways
- Elementals work best when the environment participates. If the room is a blank grid, elementals lose most of their identity.
- Make the "element" a problem to solve, not a damage type to resist. The memorable part is usually the smoke, the current, the sinkhole—not the stat block.
- Telegraph early, punish late. Give clear warnings (heat shimmer, rising wind, sudden undertow) so players can adapt before consequences spike.
- Different elements reward different counterplay. Fire wants spacing and line-of-sight management; water punishes isolation; air punishes clustering; earth punishes predictable lanes.
- Elementals shine in mixed encounters. Pair a "big elemental" with lesser hazards/minions so the fight has motion, decisions, and tempo.
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Meet the Hosts
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Tyler Kamstra – Master of mechanics, seeing the Pathfinder action economy like Neo in the Matrix.
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Randall James – Lore buff and technologist, always ready to debate which Lord of the Rings edition reigns supreme.
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Ash Ely – Resident cynic, chaos agent, and AI's worst nightmare, bringing pure table-flipping RPG podcast energy.
Join the RPGBOT team where fantasy roleplaying meets real strategy, sarcasm, and community chaos.
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Tyler Kamstra
Ash Ely
Randall James
Producer Dan