Alternative Environmental Damage

[shadow]

I'm in the midst of creating a homebrew d20 system that's essentially based on 3.0/3.5. Other than the alternative classes, the biggest change is that I'm using a vitality/wound point system. (This means eliminates the concept of non-lethal damage.)

In the midst of tinkering with the rules, I realized that the environmental damage from the DMG guide need to be overhauled for my game. As they stand right now, the rules seem to break down in mid to high levels. For example, the rules as written state:
In conditions of severe cold or exposure (below 0° F), an unprotected character must make a Fortitude save once every 10 minutes (DC 15, +1 per previous check), taking 1d6 points of nonlethal damage on each failed save.

These rules allow for fighters and warrior type characters with high fortitude saving throw bonuses and a large number of hit points to stay out in below zero temperatures in nothing but a loin cloth for several hours and avoid any ill effect. Granted, I'm going for a heroic game, but I still want to have themes of survival and "man vs. the environment".

Also, as I stated earlier, I'm using a vitality/wound system so I'm eliminating the concept of non-lethal damage.

Right now, I'm thinking of having heat and cold deal constitution damage, but I'm afraid such a system would end up being a little too deadly. Has anyone come up with house rules that address these problems?

 

[ValhallaGH]

In the midst of tinkering with the rules, I realized that the environmental damage from the DMG guide need to be overhauled for my game. As they stand right now, the rules seem to break down in mid to high levels.

They don't break down, so much as intentionally do something totally different from what you've decided they should do.
The ability of high-level warriors to stay out in freezing cold for hours was intentional. It was to encourage a specific style that automatically scaled from heroic-gritty for the first several levels to cinematic-epic around level 11 (and that's before spells like Endure Elements are brought into the mix).



Now, for what you want, I'd advise dealing 1d2 or 1d3 Wound damage for a failed Fort save. For a more cinematic version, where characters can (barely) survive for extended periods out doors, I'd go with 1d8 Vitality damage.


P.S. There's a dozen (or more) wound / vitality variants out there. Only a few actually damage Constitution with any sort of frequency. I'm assuming that you're not using one of those variants.

 

[Hawken]

Just to clarify, vitality points are in effect non-lethal damage. So, while you're not specifically tracking non-lethal, you're still using them.

I'd say environmental damage should be independent of vitality completely, and maybe even wound damage, depending on how that is generated.

Without shelter, a human is going to freeze to death if left out overnight. It doesn't matter how well he fights with a sword, casts a spell or picks a lock. If he's exposed to extreme cold without shelter or something to mitigate it, he's going to die of exposure and he's going to die quicker the colder it is.

Same with extreme heat, if he can't hydrate enough in extreme heat, or get cooled off, he's going to get heatstroke or something and keel over dead. Again, it doesn't matter how good he is in combat, or spellcasting or sneaking around.

Have environmental damage do temporary Con (and maybe other stats too) damage. Tougher people can last a little longer, but they're still human regardless of how talented they are and they'll die just the same.

And you could do the same for falling damage too. An expert swordsman that falls from 100' is just as dead as a peasant that takes the same fall. Skill with a sword isn't going to prevent him from suffering the same amount of trauma to his body. The only thing that could mitigate falling damage would be the surface landed on and whether there's anything between them and the ground that could slow their fall without the impact of that killing them.

This may be the wet blanket on heroic deeds but its just a plain and simple fact that the human body can handle only so much trauma under certain conditions before it just stops and swordplay and spellcasting ability aren't mitigating factors.

DM: You slip and fall 100'.
PC: No problem, I'm a 10th level fighter with a +18 Fort save and 150hp, I can survive it.
DM: Explain to me again how your mastery of swordplay keeps you from going 'crunch'.
PC: Because I can kill a Beholder single handedly.
DM: And that's going to make the ground less soft how?
PC: ...?

 

[Michael Silverbane]

I would probably replace the Fortitude save with Constitution checks (possibly making the DCs somewhat lower to compensate, as well as possibly spreading the check out over a greater time frame) and have a failure result in lost vitality points.

 

[Celebrim]

I think the only thing I'd change is I'd scale the DC with temperature (+1 to DC per 10 degrees below 60 F), give some bonus to save for wearing appropriate clothing, and I'd have it start doing an increasing amount of lethal damage as well.

I don't really have a problem with the hero surviving in harsh conditions for hours. If you want to get picky about this, look up how long it takes skin to freeze at various temperature conditions or how fast hypothermia sets in, and work back to some numbers from there.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I would (and did) make hunger/thirst, environmental damage, and falling into automatic wound damage. A tad less harsh than Con damage but nonetheless prevents high-level characters from being able to go a year without food or survive a thousand-foot fall.

 

[ValhallaGH]

DM: You slip and fall 100'.
PC: No problem, I'm a 10th level fighter with a +18 Fort save and 150hp, I can survive it.
DM: Explain to me again how your mastery of swordplay keeps you from going 'crunch'.
PC: Because I can be on fire for four minutes with no ill effect.
DM: And that's going to make the ground less soft how?
PC: Well, if I'm tough enough to survive four continuous minutes of burning without harm then I'm obviously super-humanly tough and your ideas about falling danger don't really fit my character. Also, real people have survived falls over 33,000 feet, so I'm on fairly solid reasoning for believing that my super-being can survive this fall.
DM: ... Well you die. Because I'm being petty.
PC: That's not fair, but I'll deal with it.

There, I corrected the conversation to be representative.

 

[Sadrik]

I use CON damage after zero HP and this topic is pretty interesting to me.

In conditions of severe cold or exposure (below 0° F), an unprotected character must make a Fortitude save once every 10 minutes (DC 15), taking 1d6 points of nonlethal damage on each failed save. After the first 10, every 10 minutes of exposure raises the DC by 1 and the damage by 1d6.

Perhaps just adding the last senstence. That way the heroic characters can survive a bit longer than the less heroic but it does snowball...

Also my massive damage rules are changed from the RAW for every 50 damage you take you take 1 CON damage (in a wound system this could be extrapolated to 1 wound). If I want a more gritty game it is easy to accomidate, I can lower that 50 point threshhold down to say 25 or heck even 10. All of a sudden characters are taking a lot of real damage from falls and attacks that deal a significant amount of damage in one punch.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

How about having certain damage sources deal VP and WP simultaneously: each damage track WP and VP has an associated save, and damage on each track is (usually) Nd6 VP, and N WP. So a hero who, frex, falls from a great height might 15d6 damage to VP, as well as 15 damage to WP.

This might apply to various environmental damage sources (eg, falling, crushing, extreme temperatures and pressures), as well as most energy types.

 

[shadow]

I'm going for a "heroic" game. I definitively like larger than life heroes, but I have seen some absurd situation arise in game using the RAW. (For example, players flatly stating that they don't need to worry about provisions because "it's only 1d6 non-lethal damage if I fail a saving throw".)

The two options that I'm considering right now are:

1. Having environmental effects and starvation deal wound damage. This is the easiest. However, I have one problem with this approach: since wound damage is also used to track damage from combat, this essentially leads to keeping track of two types of wound damage. If you don't differentiate between wound damage dealt from combat and wound damage dealt from the environment, you can have characters "heal" the effects of starvation with magic and healing potions. (Which is something that I'd like to avoid.)

2. Having environmental effects and starvation deal Constitution damage. This would probably be more "realistic", but it would definitely be deadlier. Especially given the fact that a reduction in Constitution leads to a lower fortitude saving throw which can quickly lead to a downward spiral.