Opinions wanted

[absentwizard]

Solution 2) Fireball carries more fuel, compressed.
Solution 3) Fireball actually converts atmospheric nitrogen to hydrogen, then reacts it with oxygen for the fire. Hilarious: It is technically a steamball now.
Solution 4) Fireball does not actually burn, but simply is a a thermal mass being thrown. Simple to increase heat capacity.

[Tinker Kid]

On the front of the character. I second on the bear mass, but respectful disagreement with the wizard on claws and axes; claws do approximate fingernails, however there's more to the structure than being made of keratin, and more to its' effectiveness than its' place on the Mohs scale. Hair is made of keratin too, and is obviously less hard than fingernails, and obsidian is harder than steel but will shatter like nobody's business if you try to stab a breastplate with an obsidian dagger. All that is to say I actually think you're totally right about normal bear claws vs steel, but I can easily imagine claws that have secondary structures that improve their strength, or are composite with other biological materials. Maybe we can invoke nanotubes! =D =D =D

On the topic of Science in my Fiction, and in particular @Mordelian: I think the crux of it is that, no matter the format, good stories are true, even if they're set in an imaginary world filled with dragons... no one is saying "that is unphysical, YOU CAN'T DO THAT"; I mean we're talking about a werebear who can gain 1200lbs in a few minutes and completely rebuild his anatomy. Which is awesome. The point is that, even in fantasy, you can ask yourself "how does this work? Why does this work?" And if you know the answers to those questions, it informs how you tell the story, and talk about the world around you. It lends the work a sense of credibility, of depth, and, even in fantastic lands, a sense of truth. He's asking about claws and steel and conservation of mass not because breaking those rules are BAD, but because we're operating in a world where things work in a way presumed to be like the real world except where noted. So steel's still made of atoms, bears are still made of cells... so it's interesting to wonder what happens.

I do put a LOT of 'science' into my fantasy, but straight up my absolute favorite setting to play in is an alternate reality where very truly the laws of physics as we know them just don't exist. The world is made up of threads of elemental power which knit together the world. So really, steel isn't made of 'atoms' or anything like that. The sun doesn't run on fusion, and people are bags of water wrapped in fat and glued together with little robots. Works pretty well.

[absentwizard]

Correct. The two things that you worry about are strength (what you might term hardness), which is the elastic resistance to structural change and toughness, which is the energy required to fracture. Diamond has high strength and horrible toughness. Iron/steel and whatnot has good both. Keratin has lower toughness and much lower strength. ^_^

I am not saying that stuff has to adhere to real physics. I am saying that stuff has to adhere to _a_ physics. Until you make the new physics, we have to assume real physics. Heck, one of my favorite authors writes books where the "physics" runs on narrativium.

[Zook Murnig]

You can name names here, absentwizard. It's Pratchett. We all know it.

[absentwizard]

Nonsense. He'll always be pterry to me.