Environmental Effects: Difference between revisions
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Outside the safety of city walls, the wilderness is a dangerous place, and many adventurers have gotten lost in its trackless wilds or fallen victim to deadly weather. The following rules give you guidelines on running adventures in a wilderness setting. Any level of sturdy shelter is enough to halt environmental effects, no matter how crude. A cave serves nicely, and even a simple overhang will serve. Many items and spell effects that provide shelter also stop all environmental effects. Portable shelter, such as camp fires and tents, are not nearly as good, but still far better than nothing, and a tent combined with sturdy clothes appropriate to heat or cold can make the wilderness...not cozy, but much less dangerous. | Outside the safety of city walls, the wilderness is a dangerous place, and many adventurers have gotten lost in its trackless wilds or fallen victim to deadly weather. The following rules give you guidelines on running adventures in a wilderness setting. Any level of sturdy shelter is enough to halt environmental effects, no matter how crude. A cave serves nicely, and even a simple overhang will serve. Many items and spell effects that provide shelter also stop all environmental effects. Portable shelter, such as camp fires and tents, are not nearly as good, but still far better than nothing, and a tent combined with sturdy clothes appropriate to heat or cold can make the wilderness...not cozy, but much less dangerous. | ||
NOTE to GM's: The Environment rules are optional, but provide a great way of creating a real 'survival horror' experience if you're running a low-level, [[Campaign_Power_Level | low-power]] 'grime and guts' sort of a campaign. Indeed, the whole 'Grim World' power level pretty much cries out for the Environmental effects rules, to make it truly, perfectly awful. However, approach with caution! Even high-powered, well-equipped adventurers that are not prepared for environmental effects can find themselves in a lot of trouble very quickly if they aren't used to it. Since environmental damage is non-lethal (until it starts killing you), very few of the most common and potent defenses will work against it, and even extremely mighty parties can find themselves in trouble quickly. This might be the effect you're after, but be careful! Also, be wary of the scaling of environment effects, especially the Falling Object rules. Giant toppling trees are extremely deadly, which is what you would expect from dropping a Redwood on somebody, and avalanches and tsunamis and pyroclastic flows are just utterly unfair. Use these things sparingly...unless your campaign is into such things, of course. | |||
== Environmental Damage == | == Environmental Damage == | ||