Environment Rules

= Breaking Objects = A character may attempt to damage or even destroy objects in the environment such as doors, walls, desks, chairs, and many more. When breaking an object that is unattended you do not need to make a sunder check, rather you can simply make an attack and damage roll (against an AC of 5).

When damaging a wall or other larger structure you only damage a segment as large as your character, as such a medium size character only will damage a wall in 5 foot segments. If you wish to destroy more of the wall at once you must treat the hardness of the object as double for each size category above your own.

Hardness
Hardness is similar to DR like a creature would have. Whenever an object receives damage the hardness is subtracted from the damage before being applied to the object's hit points. Unlike DR Hardness applies against both physical and elemental damage; in addition hardness is doubled against all elemental damage, unless that elemental damage would be something the object would be weak against, at which point its hardness is treated as half. For example a iron door hit by fire would double its hardness against the damage, while a wooden door hit by fire would be weaker against the attack and would treat its hardness as half.

Most magic items, unless otherwise specified, have an additional 2 hardness and 10 hit points over their mundane counterparts, making them more resistant to damage despite their size or material.

Hit Points
Like creatures, objects have hit points, but once an object’s hit points reach 0 it is considered destroyed. When an object is below half its total hit points it gains the broken condition; for many objects this may not have immediate effects on the object, unlike weapons and armor that have immediate penalties for gaining this condition.

Basic Material Types
These types of materials can adjust the hardness or hit points of an object. When an object had a mixture of multiple materials (such as a wooden door reinforced with iron), simply take the average of the hit points and hardness between the two.

List of Example Objects
In this section we’ll define the hardness and hit points for various objects. Weapons and armor are not listed here and the rules for their hit points and hardness are located on their page.

= Starvation/Dehydration = If a character goes without food or water for too long they begin to risk their health, eventually leading to death. A character needs at least one gallon of water to avoid dehydration and one pound of food each day to avoid starvation. For each size category below medium reduce the value by 50% and each size category above medium increase by 50%. In Tier 2 Heat a character will need an additional 50% water plus an additional 50% for each category above Tier 2 to avoid dehydration.

A character can go without water for 2 days plus a number of hours equal to their constitution score, after which the character must begin to make survival checks (DC 12, +1 for each previous check) each hour to avoid taking 1d6 points of nonlethal damage.

A character can go without food for 5 days, after which they must make a survival check (DC 12, +1 for each previous check) or take 1d6 points of nonlethal damage.

A character who has taken nonlethal damage from Starvation or Dehydration is fatigued and cannot recover this nonlethal damage until they get adequate food and water; this in addition to potential fatigue caused by nonlethal damage. This nonlethal damage bypasses any resistances or immunities and temporary hit points a character may possess.

= Suffocation = A character unable to breathe can hold their breath for a number of rounds equal to their constitution score.. If the character has ranks in survival they may add their ranks in survival to the number of rounds they can hold their breath. If a character takes more than a single move action each round the amount of time they can hold their breath is reduced by 1 round. Once a character has run out of rounds of breath they must make a survival check (DC 12, +1 for each previous check) or take 2d10 points of nonlethal damage.

A character who has taken nonlethal damage from Suffocation is fatigued and cannot recover this nonlethal damage until they are able to breathe again; this in addition to potential fatigue caused by nonlethal damage. This nonlethal damage bypasses any resistances or immunities and temporary hit points a character may possess.

= Mundane Fire = While fire is a powerful element of magic, and can be utilized to cause great destruction, fire exists outside of magic. This section will define details regarding fire within the environment and how it affects a creature.

The size of the flame determines the severity, and thus damage the flame causes, as well as the effort required to extinguish it.

The effort to extinguish a flame is the action required to put out the flame assuming you’re a medium sized creature. For each size category above medium you treat the flame as one size category smaller for the effort required to extinguish it, and for each size category below medium you treat the flame as one size category larger.

Damage per round is the amount of damage a creature sustains through continual contact with the fire, usually if a creature has been in contact with the flame for 1 round; taking the damage at the beginning of their turn.

Additional radius is the amount of radius the flame deals damage to the creature for being near the flame, due to the intense heat given off by it. While within the listed additional radius creatures take damage equal to half the size of the flame.

For flames larger than colossal the fire no longer does additional damage for being larger, as it is assumed this is the most intense non-magical fire can be. Different materials for fuel may produce stronger flames, but otherwise the difference in materials should be minor enough to have little effect on the damage of the fire.

= Weather = Weather has various effects based on severity. Weather is broken down into various categories such as precipitation, wind, heat, cold, and other effects. A single weather event may have different multiple of these categories, but varying severities of each, such as a rainstorm having heavy downpour with light wind. The exception being heat and cold as a high severity of heat cannot also have a high severity of cold.

Certain effects may combine, such as precipitation and cold turning to snow or even hail.

Below are the various types of weather, and the effects of their severity levels.

Precipitation
Precipitation includes rain, though may also include snow, sleet, and hail if cold enough. Precipitation in itself may have little to no effect on a creature directly, though when combined with extreme heat/cold/wind can have more extreme effects.

Rain
Rain by itself may have little effect by itself, but if on dirt or similar terrain it may begin to turn to mud becoming difficult terrain after at least 4 hours of Tier 2 precipitation, reducing by 1 hour per tier after 2.

Precipitation and Snow
When in temperature tier 2 or higher severity of cold the precipitation turns to snow. Snow both can reduce visibility as the severity increases, but can accumulate to become difficult or worse terrain.

If sleet is occurring the higher precipitation may cause it to become dangerous to creatures. Creatures may seek shelter to avoid this damage.

Precipitation and Extreme Heat
Once heat hits Tier 5 the precipitation itself turns to boiling rain, causing 1d6 fire damage per minute in Tier 2 or higher rain. For each tier of precipitation beyond 2 the damage increases by an additional 1d6.

Wind
Wind has the following tiers of effect. Wind has 5 tiers of force; tier 1 wind is what is usually considered normal wind levels, giving no penalties. The following adjustments should be taken into account based on the wind level of an area.

Direction: It should always be noted the direction the wind is blowing (N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW) as this has an important interaction with the speed adjustment.

Speed Adjustment: Speed adjustment is the important part of how wind interacts with a creature.


 * When a creature moves against the wind (such as walking north into wind blowing from the north) their speed is reduced by an amount equal to the speed adjustment noted on the chart. Creatures moving in a diagonal direction into the wind such as moving North East into wind from the north still counts as walking against the wind.
 * Creatures moving with the wind instead gain the speed check as a bonus to their movement.
 * Creatures moving neither with or against (such as going east with wind from the north) have their speeds reduced by half the amount.
 * For every size category above medium the speed adjustment is reduced by 5 feet. For every size category below medium the speed adjustment is increased by 5 feet.
 * If the speed adjustment is equal to a creature’s base move speed they must spend a full round action each turn to move 5 feet and avoid being blown away regardless of the direction they are moving in. If the speed adjustment is greater than the creature’s base speed they are instead blown away.
 * A blown away creature is thrown in the direction of the wind 2d6x10 feet and takes 2d6 points of damage upon contact with a solid surface at the end of the movement. This damage is in addition to any falling damage from the creature being knocked off a ledge or out of the air if flying.

Fly Adjustment: Creatures within the wind gain a bonus to their fly checks when flying with the wind. When a creature is flying in any other direction they take a penalty to their fly checks equal to the fly adjustment.

Ranged Weapon Penalty: Ranged weapon projectiles from thrown weapons, arrows, bullets, bolts, etc.. take the listed penalty to their attack roll when fired within the windstorm conditions. For weapons sized for creatures category below medium these penalties are increased by 50% (rounded down) for each size category below medium. For weapons sized for creatures above medium these penalties are reduced by 50% (rounded down) for each size category above medium.

Changing Wind Direction
When a spell or ability is capable of raising or lowering the wind tier, if the spell is capable of reducing the current wind below Tier 1, for each tier below 1 you may choose a different direction of the wind within the affected area with a new tier of wind equal to the amount you would have reduced the wind below Tier 1.

Visibility Reduction
If the precipitation would reduce visibility the visibility is reduced by an additional 10 feet for each tier of wind beyond 2nd. Otherwise creatures 100 feet away have concealment, while creatures up to 300 feet away have total concealment.

Wind Penalties
For each Tier of precipitation beyond 2nd the fly check and ranged weapon penalties are increased by 1.

Snow and Hail
For each step of wind beyond 2nd the damage caused by hail increases by one step from 1d4 to 1d6, 1d6 to 1d8, 1d8 to 1d10, 1d10 to 2d6.

Temperature
Temperature is the sliding scale of heat and cold of an area. Temperatures are listed in Fahrenheit. The Tier of temperature is a show of the severity of the effect in either direction of extreme heat and extreme colds, with Tier 1 being considered normal temperature ranges that while may range into discomfort do not present immediate risk to a creature’s life. As the tiers increase a creature becomes more at-risk for adverse effects in the extreme heat or cold. The effects of both tiers are similar though some creatures or items may only have resistance to certain Heat Tiers or Cold Tiers, but not always both.

The longer a creature spends in extreme heat or cold the more fortitude saves they will need to make, each time they make a save the DC increases by 1 as their resistance is slowly worn away. The DC resets to base value and the creature may recover from fatigue brought on by the extreme temperature once the creature has found relief from the extreme condition (such as through finding shelter, or through magical means) for at least 1 hour.

Damage from temperatures is untyped and cannot be reduced in any way, instead creature’s resistance allows them to treat the weather severity as reduced based on their level of resistance.

For every 2 points of Resist a creature has to Fire or Cold they treat the weather severity as 1 step lower to a minimum of Tier 1. For example a creature with Resist 2 Fire would treat Tier 3 Heat as Tier 2 heat; and a creature with Resist 4 Cold would treat Tier 5 Cold as Tier 3.

Creatures with weakness to fire or cold. receive a -1 penalty per tier of severity they experience. For example a creature with Weakness to Cold would receive a -5 penalty to fortitude saves in Tier 5 cold.