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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercule" data-source="post: 4680931" data-attributes="member: 5100">I really like a lot of what Mearls comes up with....But, whenever he has a major epiphany or brainstorm, I almost always cringe.  In this case, I don't know that I buy the "boring" bit (yes, it's inferred, not explicitly stated), but I have some sympathy to the other issues.  I don't think he had the right answer, though.Let's look at the "world" as a whole.  There are arctic areas, there are desert areas, there are temperate areas, and so forth.  If the campaign focuses on the temperate areas (which has generally been the default assumption), having the non-native critters (say, a viking frost giant) with the normal resistances/vulnerabilities works fine.  It reflects some fluff in an easy-to-use mechanic and makes the alien seem alien.  The problem really only comes if you use resistances all the time (like, say, most of the epic foes).Now, let's change the focus to an arctic campaign.  How do we want this to play?  Well, the frost giant is still going to be resistant to cold, but cold effects are going to be easier to come by and easier to make more potent -- a frost brand forged at the North Pole sounds like it should be cooler than one forged in Italy, IMO.  So, how do we make that work?  I'd say start with the assumption that even basic cold effects are five points stronger.  The easiest mechanic for this is to just lower all cold resistances by five points.  Leave the spells, weapons, etc. alone, and just tweak the resistance.  If you want to keep fire from being the obvious "hit their weakness" attack, make the assumption that fire effects are harder to manifest in the setting and reduce vulnerabilities by five points.  If you want something even more extreme, reduce by ten or more.  In a desert, flip these."So," you ask, "what if the arctic characters move to a temperate or desert zone?"  Well, here's where I think we can actually get even more flavor from the deal.  Introduce a feat or background bit called "Frostborn" or some such.  A frostborn character manifests their personal powers (i.e. spells) with the "cold" keyword to inflict an additional 5 damage, but they also manifest "fire" spells inflicting 5 less damage, even if that brings it to zero.  The above modifications for an arctic campaign are really just a shortcut to the same math.Sure a player might be able to abuse this and only take "cold" spells, but that's really just emphasizing the theme, and it really screws him if the GM starts sending immune creatures (which should be rather rare) against him.  I'd also advocate some playtesting to get it right.  It's possible that the Frostborn should include "resist cold 5" or "vulnerable fire 5" or both as part of the feat/trait.  It's also possible that, rather than actually doing more/less raw damage, the character should just be able to bypass 5 points of resistance or increase existing vulnerability by five.  Either way, I think it's important to include both the bonus and the penalty together for the Frostborn, Crucibleborn, etc. both for game balance and for flavor.</blockquote>

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