D&D (2024) Should the environmental conditions scale by tier?

[bedir than]

Let's say you started play in a realm where there are tornadoes or hailstorms. Your characters level up to 5th level.
Do those weather conditions get more severe because the group is now Tier 2?

What would that mean for the town or village where they are?

Would your heroes help the commoners who are now in more danger because of them?

 

[billd91]

No, why would they scale with level? That’s just nuts.

 

[mamba]

No, nothing scales with tier. The farmland you started out in does not suddenly turn into a hellscape because you leveled up. You will have to go and find something tier-appropriate to do, possibly in a location you would not have survived in when you started out.

 

[Horwath]

no, nothing should scale by that.
however, you are able to visit more dangerous areas because of your higher level.

the idea behind bounded accuracy(in theory at least) is that your scaling is slower so even low level problems "might" affect you later on.

if environment DC is 15, it will be a problem for most 1st level characters and it will still be somewhat a problem for some 15th level characters.

 

[Tessarael]

Adventures in other newer locations can and should at times have more difficult environments to survive in. It is the difference between the PCs surviving in the desert at low levels, and the City of Brass in the Plane of Fire at high levels. Both are fun and level appropriate. It is also good for those high level PCs to take a waltz across the desert, and remember how difficult it was when they were young and inexperienced. Now you can have fun by having a volcano or other environment change make things much more difficult to challenge them in what they thought was familiar surroundings, but let them have their fun too.

 

[Deset Gled]

No.

But I am curious what lead to this question being asked? This feels kinda like a scenario out of a video game, not a TTRPG.

 

[Sorinth]

No but also yes.

A regular storm will be the exact same, but I'd be more willing to have a super storm event happen.

 

[Tessarael]

No.

But I am curious what lead to this question being asked? This feels kinda like a scenario out of a video game, not a TTRPG.

Conflicts should scale with character level, so what to do with environmental challenges - scale them, or not, and when to scale them. But yes, I agree, challenges scaling directly vs. character level is classic for quite a few video game RPGs these days.

 

[Stormonu]

No, it shouldn't scale, but as others stated there may be areas that have unusual and more dangerous that may be traveled to (like going to Death Mountain vs. wandering around the Hamlet of Nutberg).

In prior editions of D&D, this was often what the planes were used for. When characters became heroic enough that the mundane world wasn't so challenging any more it was time to skip off to another plane and tackle the increased danger there. (Planescape sort of turned that on its head by starting in the outer planes, though).

Still, running an adventure where the characters are facing a thieves guild on a moonless night presents a very different challenge when doing the same in the middle of a storm as a tornado tears through the streets, or the nearby dormant volcano has been awakened by any angry god who is flooding the streets with lava and minions from the plane of fire...

 

[GrimCo]

No. From world building perspective it doesn't make sense. PCs aren't first or only tier 2/3/4 characters in the world. If place was serene pastoral landscape when they were lv 1, it's still the same when they are level 20. But now, as others pointed out, they can venture to the places that would kill them at level 1.