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[Adrian]

They basically fall apart if you do as much as brush your elbow against them. Boring and not (F/f)un.

I say let liquid and gaseous beasts spread their syndrome more readily.
Gaseous beasts could have a permanent, miasma-like cloud of syndrome carrying gas/mist around them.
The liquid variants could leave puddles of extract in their footprints and turn into a tile of 7/7 extract contaminated water when they die.

Additionally, because of their amorphous body, i think they need to be able to phase through fortifications and through through the cracks on doors.
With the exception being liquid beasts and floodgates.

And while beasts made of fire die just as easily, i think a living conflagration setting the caverns ablaze is plenty scary as is.

[Scruiser]

I hope the new pulping mechanics in the 40.xx release can be expanded to add a balanced but interesting durability mechanic for forgotten beasts and demons.  Some of the ones made out of ash and such get killed far too easily. On the other end of the spectrum is the invincible ones (haven't seen any cases in more recent versions of DF but I heard it was there in the 40d versions).  A mechanic to allow gaseous and liquid beings to take damage without being invincible or instantly shattering would be nice.  Tokens to allow creatures made of weird materials to have special traits would be nice too.

[Witty]

Toady has mentioned in the past the need to buff up the more exotic procedural creatures.

But I really like the suggestions here. I'd much rather have a FB made of a poisonous gas with unique properties rather than just a tag that makes the creature a little more durable to attacks. 

[Ngosp Umbabok]

One way to increase there survivability without simply giving them "hit-points" could be to to give them 1 or several cores of some sort of special material that resides within the beast. These cores could be related to the material the beast is made out of such as a ball of ice at the center of a beast made out of water or a ball of coal at the center of one made out of fire.

The destruction of this/these cores could cause the death of the beast or make it more vulnerable. A lucky crossbow-shot or spear poke could be enough to reach it.

[Chevaleresse]

How about gas beasties that split in half when sliced just right, creating two new beasts?

[Adrian]

Considering we don't actually control Dwarf Mode combat, slicing them "just right" would effectively turn into a roll of the RNG.
You would, inevitably at some point, end up with two monster who then each have an equal chance of getting sliced "just right".
Then three, etc.

I don't think anything good will come from that.

[Bumber]

Flame FBs might require prolonged contact with water to kill. Freezing water/steam/etc. FBs is not so much an option on some embarks, however.

Perhaps FBs could require certain materials to damage them (borrowing from the system that affects werebeasts,) with other non-artifact weapons passing straight through. The core idea is doable as a backup for players that don't have any appropriate weapons.

[Robosaur]

I don't think mundane weapons should be able to harm gaseous or liquid FBs at all.

[IndigoFenix]

I think it would make sense to have fluid body parts damaged by 'turbulence'.  If you swing a weapon through a creature made of gas or liquid, you don't break it apart completely but you swish it or splash it around.  Do this enough, and it loses consistency.  Broad weapons would probably be more effective than cutting ones, and the size and speed of attack should matter more than the weight or hardness of the material.  Such creatures should also have a very fast healing factor, at least for the explicitly magical creatures.

[Scruiser]

So not an HP meter that linear accumulates damage, but a system for tracking how disrupted the material is at one time?   It could be derived from the material properties (some form of MAGICAL_VISCOSITY value token or something)  and affected by the overall size of the body part made of the unusual material.

[Adrian]

So not an HP meter that linear accumulates damage, but a system for tracking how disrupted the material is at one time?   It could be derived from the material properties (some form of MAGICAL_VISCOSITY value token or something)  and affected by the overall size of the body part made of the unusual material.

I think what you're referring to is what IRL is called Reynold's Number. It describes the turbulence of a flow of liquid through pipes and around objects. (Or depending on your perspective, the turbulence created in a fluid when an object moves through it.)

The fun thing about it is that it's straightforward math and physics. It takes in the velocity of an object (or flow of liquid, depending on perspective), a length variable which is dependent on the context, fluid density and fluid viscosity, and outputs a dimensionless number.
And while it's depending on the situation, a good rule of thumb i've learned is that any Reynold's Number >10.000 is likely to be a turbulent flow.

Putting a mechanic like this into Dwarf Fort means making the assumption that any turbulent flow through a gas/liquid beast is damaging to them, and that "killing" such a beast means you're basically stirring them to death.
It also means doing extra math to add some kind of object form factor to the Reynold's equation, since blunt attacks are more likely to create a turbulent flow than, say, stabbing them with an adamantine spear.

And then there's whips.
Since increasing speed increases Reynold's number, and the tip of a whip moves faster than sound, a whip effectively becomes a monster-killing weapon.

EDIT:words.

[Scruiser]

Right, reading the article you linked, Reynold's number is calculated as the ratio of interial forces to viscous forces.  The interial forces are calculated from the size and shape of the object moving through the beast/demon.  The viscous forces are calculated from density and "Dynamic viscosity".  Material raws already have density, thus they only need a "DYNAMIC_VISCOSITY" token to allow for full calculation of Reynold's number. 
The beast/demon itself could then have another property specified in its creature RAWs for the Reynold's number inside its body required to kill it/destroy the body part.  So for most beasts/demons, a value of 10.00 (the value at which the flow is turbulent) would be enough to destroy that body part causing it to collapse/dissipate.  This value would need to be balanced carefully to make demons kill-able, but tough.  (Interestingly, this would make some weapons like maybe whips or bolts more effective against demons.)

[Adrian]

Yup, that's basically how it all works.
Though it'll need some work with object form factors, since the equation assumes the object moving through liquid is a perfect sphere.
And "10.000" is ten thousand. I use periods as thousand- and commas as decimal-separators. It's a convention i picked up somewhere.
Also it's good to see that 3 years of studying Chemical Engineering paid off enough to suggest a new feature for Dwarf Fortress.
Three years of my life not entirely wasted.

[Scruiser]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_mark  The usage of a period or a comma for a decimal mark varies from country to country  .  I guess I learn something new every day.  Ouch, 3 years on engineering?  So like one year short of completing a degree?  I hope you at least got a job where math skills and such can be put to use.

So anyway, does anyone with engineering math skills have the precise formula Toady should use?  I am not quite sure how to convert the definition on the wikipedia page into the final algorithm.  Let's see... density and viscosity will come from material RAWs, mean velocity can come from weapon properties and the weapon user stats like normal or from the projectile velocity... that just leaves characteristic length.  I guess characteristic length could be guesstimated as the length of the edge for edged weapons, or the radius of the impacting surface area (assuming its a circle for simplification purposes) for blunt weapons.  Would that at least give the correct order of magnitude?

[Adrian]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_mark  The usage of a period or a comma for a decimal mark varies from country to country  .  I guess I learn something new every day.  Ouch, 3 years on engineering?  So like one year short of completing a degree?  I hope you at least got a job where math skills and such can be put to use.

I quit university of my own volition. While the subject matter really was interesting, the culture there was extremely twisted. No one there cared if you were actually learning anything as long as you got this many points on your tests and preformed this well in this much time on practical assignments.
So i quit and started studying the thing i find interesting in my own time and at my own pace, and i can honestly say i learned more on my own than at uni.

So anyway, does anyone with engineering math skills have the precise formula Toady should use?  I am not quite sure how to convert the definition on the wikipedia page into the final algorithm.  Let's see... density and viscosity will come from material RAWs, mean velocity can come from weapon properties and the weapon user stats like normal or from the projectile velocity... that just leaves characteristic length.  I guess characteristic length could be guesstimated as the length of the edge for edged weapons, or the radius of the impacting surface area (assuming its a circle for simplification purposes) for blunt weapons.  Would that at least give the correct order of magnitude?

Yeah, i think the characteristic length can be turned into a k-factor that describes weapon shape, since bolts and spears would leave little turbulence in their wake when they go into a gaseous monster compared to the broadside of an axe.

Also, i have an issue with RAW defined Reynold's numbers that i can't quite formulate correctly.
Mostly because the RN describes a physical situation, and i find it extremely unlikely that one creature made of water could react differently to an attack than another creature made of the same material to the same attack.
I believe it would be much more apt for fluid creatures to reconstitute their body with a healing factor that undoes accumulated Reynold's damage. A healing factor both inversely proportional to the viscosity of material creature is made of (Since magma is much more viscous than gas a magma creature should reconstitute itself much slower than a gas creature) and the amount of Reynold's damage it has accumulated.
Because then you would be able to kill them by dispersing their body so badly they can't reconstitute themselves anymore.