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Table of Contents
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.
Vision
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.
Light
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.
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.