The Adventuring Environment

The areas a party moves through can be every bit as dangerous as the foes that lurk within it. This isn't just a backdrop for daring deeds, it's a living, breathing entity that shapes the challenges and opportunities faced by intrepid heroes. From treacherous mountain peaks to bustling cityscapes, from forgotten ruins teeming with danger to vibrant ecosystems teeming with life, the Adventuring Environment throws obstacles, tests resourcefulness, and offers unique rewards to those brave enough to explore its depths. It's a crucible that forges legends, a canvas upon which stories of triumph and tribulation are painted.

The most fundamental tasks of adventuring—noticing danger, finding hidden objects, or hitting an enemy in combat—rely heavily on a character's ability to see. Darkness and other effects that obscure vision can prove a significant hindrance.

A given area might be lightly or heavily obscured. When they are trying to see something in a lightly obscured area, such as dim light, patchy fog, or moderate foliage, creatures suffer slight on Perception checks that rely on sight.

A heavily obscured area—such as darkness, opaque fog, or dense foliage—blocks vision entirely. A creature automatically fails Perception checks when trying to see something in that area, or if the line of their vision passes through such an area.

The presence or absence of light in an environment creates three categories of illumination: bright light, dim light, and darkness.

Bright light lets most creatures see normally. Even gloomy days provide bright light, as do torches, lanterns, fires, and other sources of illumination within a specific radius.

Dim light, also called shadows, creates a lightly obscured area. An area of dim light is usually a boundary between a source of bright light, such as a lamp, and surrounding darkness. The soft light of twilight and dawn also counts as dim light. A particularly brilliant full moon might bathe the land in dim light. Characters in dim light or shadows are considered Dazzled.

Darkness creates a heavily obscured area. Characters face darkness outdoors at night (even on most moonlit nights), within the confines of an unlit dungeon or a subterranean vault, or in an area of magical darkness. When in darkness, characters are considered Blind.

Of course, a character who is Dazzled or Blinded by light conditions cannot remove that status condition until such time as they return to normal lighting conditions.

Danger lurks not only in the form of menacing monsters and powerful adversaries, but also in the subtle perils of the environment itself. While weapons and spells pose immediate threats in combat, adventurers must remain ever vigilant, as danger can manifest in myriad forms. Treacherous traps lie in wait, cunningly designed to ensnare the unwary. Environmental hazards, from crumbling ruins to unstable terrain, pose their own challenges, testing the resilience and resourcefulness of heroes. Even a simple misstep or a fall from a great height can spell disaster for the unprepared. In this unforgiving world, adventurers must navigate not only the threats posed by foes, but also the hazards woven into the very fabric of their surroundings.

While a character can brace themselves to drop down even as far as six meters, an accidental fall leaves the character no time to prepare.

The damage inflicted on a fall depends on the distance fallen; the farther a character falls, the higher their velocity on impact.

Find the distance fallen by the character on the table below in order to find the damage. If the character was prepared for the fall, and the fall was under thirty meters total, drop the three lowest dice from the damage roll.

Damage inflicted by a fall is Vital damage, and automatically bypasses all Resistance.

A character who falls farther than 140 meters will reach terminal velocity, and cannot take more damage. After the fall, the character will be Prone.

Any reasonably-sized object that falls onto a character will inflict falling damage on that character. The Director is permitted to consider the sizes of objects to determine if something might inflict differing damage. Very large objects might inflict d10s or d12s of damage, whereas smaller objects might inflict d6s or d4s.

In addition, things that fall do not inflict Vital damage, but inflict a damage of a sort that would make sense, with Blunt damage being the most likely.

Air is very important to creatures that can breathe, but most adventuring happens in places where air is sufficiently common that the characters won't need to consider it. This is not always the case, however. Flooded underground tunnels, caves filled with toxic gasses, or swamps with patches of miasma are all places where the air supply might not be as easily available.

A creature has a number of Breath Points equal to four plus their Body score. You won't typically record this, because it only really matters when suffocation is a possibility. Only when you are deprived of air will your Breath Points be less than full.

At the start of each turn, a character who cannot breathe must expend one Breath Point, or else take 2d6 Vital damage.

At the start of each turn, if a character can breathe, they recover one Breath Point, up to their maximum.

The temperature of an environment can make a character's life difficult. Typically, temperatures will be comfortable, uncomfortable or dangerous. Temperature is, of course, relative, and a character who belongs to an ancestry noted for living in hot or cold climes may find that their comfort zones are shifted. (No such ancestries yet exist, but they may be added in future expansions.)

Comfortable temperatures are the default, and a character who is in an area with comfortable temperatures will suffer no penalties.

Uncomfortable temperatures may be too warm or too cold, and while they can reach harmful levels, are survivable for short periods of time. A character who is in uncomfortable temperatures suffers slight to all skill checks. Note that specific items of equipment may remove this penalty.

Dangerous temperatures can cause permanent harm within minutes of exposure. Dangerous levels of cold are typical of the Arctic in winter during a blizzard, whereas dangerous levels of heat include a literal inferno—equatorial heat never really reaches dangerous levels. A character exposed to dangerous temperatures suffers 1d8 points of Cold or Fire damage at the start of each of their turns.