Differentiating Elemental Damage?

[Aetis]

D&D 3.5 does not do this, but there are many examples of elemental damages doing different things in video games. Acid damage might inflict a damage-over-time effect, while cold damage slows the enemy. Lightning damage has a chance to stun, and so on.

Has anyone here experiment with applying different effects with different elemental damages?

[GreatDane]

The orb of x spells in the Spell Compendium reflect this mechanic pretty well. Outside of that, I think it would be a tough system to implement. Elemental damage is all over the place, and the type is often an afterthought or flavor. Status conditions in 3.5 are usually pretty hefty affairs that severely hamper a character's/monster's ability to fight effectively (or at all). Adding the ability to inflict a status condition every time elemental damage comes into play would make status conditions very common, meaning they'd have to be pretty minor, or else change the nature of combat. If electricity damage had a chance to stun opponents, imagine how appealing a shocking weapon would be!

If an individual character wanted to do this, I think it would be fairly straightforward to offer metamagic feats that get the job done. A character could also invent new spells. Adding it to the system as a whole is a pretty big change, though.

[sleepyphoenixx]

A lot of blasting spells already have additional effects. It is in fact one the things that separates a good blasting spell from a bad one.
And there are metamagic feats for more like Born of the Three Thunders, Deafening Spell, Flash Frost Spell and so on.

So if you want extra effects on your elemental damage the options are already there. There's no need for a custom system.

[The Viscount]

Psionics does a good job of this with its version of evocation, the discipline of psychokinesis. These powers typically have the word "Energy" in the title and let you select which of the 4 types of energy you want to use when you manifest. Take Energy Missile for example. There's a little bit of something extra for each type that would make you select it. It's true that fire gets the least, but it also has the use of damaging (Cold) creatures, which are fairly common.

[Calthropstu]

Psionics in PF have this.

Fire damage deals +1 per die, cold targets fort instead of ref, electric has a higher dc and sr penetration bonus and sonic ignores hardness of objects.

[Fizban]

If you look at the energy spells before splatbooks started just making "X but with a different energy type" and Spell Compendium just buffing out any drawbacks, it's easy to see how they originally did have some huge differentiation. In targeting and area.

[Aetis]

Hmmm... instead of adding crowd control, what about changing the actual damage numbers around? (kinda like what psionics did but go deeper)

Fire uses exploding dice, lightning combines all of the dice into single range (instead of 6d6 you use 1d36) for massively increased variance, cold deals flat 3 instead of 1d6?

I'm just throwing out random ideas.

EDIT: typos

[Cosi]

I think this is reasonable. I'd probably give it out as a bonus to Warmages and/or Specialist Evokers, because Evocation is kind of bad and it makes those classes feel more specialized.

I don't like the "mess with the damage numbers" suggestions. That makes the damage types distinct, but it doesn't make them feel more meaningful. No one is going to say "wow, this extra point of damage per die really makes it feel like I'm hitting people with fire damage rather than acid or sonic damage".

If you look at the energy spells before splatbooks started just making "X but with a different energy type" and Spell Compendium just buffing out any drawbacks, it's easy to see how they originally did have some huge differentiation. In targeting and area.

That's not really what OP is asking for. Yes, the fact that cone of cold is a cone and lightning bolt is a line is a real difference between the two spells, but if you asked people what kinds of effects they associated with fire damage, they would not say "being in a circular AoE" or "firing multiple rays".

[awa]

I have used different elemental effects but it was for a modified version of the game a straight port would not have worked well. But you might get some ideas even if they need tweaking to work for your game.

fire had a chance of catching foes on fire
cold could fatigue 1 rnd
electricity could entangle 1 rnd
acid weakened armor
light was always ghost touch
sonic ignored hardness

You needed to do a minimum of 4 damage to have a chance of applying the effect and they got a save

My game was low level so d6 extra fire damage actually mattered, and things like shocking weapons did not exist so easy at will elemental damage was not possible.

[Climowitz]

Fire damage moves the targets as a explosion
Cold damage reduces ms
Lighting damage arcs to other target nearby for a fraction damage
Sonic damage interrupts casting
Acid damage deals damage again next turn
Water damage reduces armor
Wind and earth damage may knock down
Light and darkness damage if any may blind or reduce vision