Environmental Effects: Difference between revisions
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==Environmental Effects as Encounters== | ==Environmental Effects as Encounters== | ||
The GM may rule that any or all unusual environmental effects count as an Encounter for calculating the duration of spells and other effects. A blustery, windy, day does not usually count, getting hit with an avalanche or a flash flood usually does count, and the effects of a Volcano...might, depending upon circumstances. If a volcano makes the world so nasty it ends your spell effects every hour or two, well, that's just part and parcel of the terrible majesty of Nature! As always, the GM adjudicates all such circumstances. | The GM may rule that any or all unusual environmental effects count as an Encounter for calculating the duration of spells and other effects. A blustery, windy, day does not usually count, getting hit with an avalanche or a flash flood usually does count, and the effects of a Volcano...might, depending upon circumstances. If a volcano makes the world so nasty it ends your spell effects every hour or two, well, that's just part and parcel of the terrible majesty of Nature! As always, the GM adjudicates all such circumstances. | ||
==Scaling of Environmental Effects== | |||
GM's may choose to increase the scaling of Environmental non-lethal damage as a way of providing more challenge to their players. Increasing damage to 2d6 or 3d6 per interval can place appropriate levels of stress upon player resources. Note that healing spells and class features normally heal non-lethal damage at the same rate as they heal lethal damage. A very effective stressor is to rule that non-lethal damage is no longer affected by healing spells, or even no longer affected by anything save rest. As always, all such adjustments are up to the GM, but approach with care! | |||
==Beneficial and Fantastic Environmental Effects== | |||
Most of these rules are aimed at fairly mundane and quite dangerous aspects of the environment. Falling objects, cold weather, wildfires, avalanches and collapses, are all things that are depressingly common in the 'real world.' But this is a game, and YOUR game environment doesn't have to follow the mundane rules all that closely, if you don't want it to. Giant wise trees, ancient groves full of peaceful life, magical forests, blessed meadows, healing and wondrous springs, highly integrated ecosystems, all these things and many more can be used to add many new and unusual effects to the environment, both for good and for ill. | |||
If you want to design a custom environment effect for your game, we strongly advise that you lay out for the players what unusual effects exist and what they do, IF the characters could reasonably know about them in advance. We don't need to explain what a falling object is, since such things are very familiar to the players from the real world, but if you decide to incorporate Basilica Grass as a common feature, well, you need to explain what Basilica Grass does, assuming the characters would know what it is. | |||
Some quick examples to set the mood: | |||
* Basilica Grass grows incredibly quickly, to waist height in a single evening, but it is extremely fragile, crumbling to dust with a touch. Adds bonuses to concealment and tracking, but does 1d6 environmental non-lethal damage per hour due to allergenic dust coating EVERYTHING. | |||
* Mallorn Groves are composed of weirdly twisting Mallorn Trees, which catch the wind and make random musical sounds. Scares away predators, and thus adds bonuses to survival skill to forage for food, but creates random squares of difficult terrain from the twisting, entwining growth. | |||
* Ghost Fronds are tall, eerily glowing plants that give off dim light in a ten foot radius. They are ethereal plants, which weirdly bridge the Material Plane, and are animated to boot. They move on their own, angrily lashing at motion near them, which is harmless to material creatures but dangerous for ethereal beings. They grant light in the darkness and drive away all ethereal creatures, but inflict the [[Distracted]] condition at the beginning of any combats. | |||
* Forgewood Trees are sturdy, gnarled trees that glow orange with their internal heat. Their thick, gnarled bark is warm to the touch, and they radiate heat as a campfire, negating cold environmental effects in a ten foot radius. Touching or climbing one inflicts [[Singed]] (doing fire damage), as a campfire does, and being in a Forgewood Grove in hot weather doubles all hot weather environmental non-lethal damage. | |||
* Wolframith Trees are weird, skinny trees with bright silver leaves that distill death aura from sunlight, and are killed by water. They inflict 1d6 per minute of un-typed environmental damage, but only during daylight and only if they have line of sight to a creature. At night, they are harmless. | |||
* Floating stones can be found in flat wastelands, and are exactly what they sound like, rocks that float. The create a 3 dimensional terrain, with large stones filling one of more squares and being perfectly solid to walk upon. At night, if the winds and other conditions are just right, they move around. Can have many effects, left to the GM to interpret. | |||
As can be seen, many weird and interesting effects can arise from magical, wondrous, and fantastic environments. | |||
==Altitude== | ==Altitude== | ||