XP and Hazards


Rules Questions


If you encounter an environmental hazard and manage to avoid it, do you get the XP?

Ex- Hiding in a cave against corrosive rain.


bumping because I don't know


This is up to each individual GM.

Generally, if the PCs have to do something unusual to handle an obstacle, then that obstacle should be worth some XP.

For example, traps have a CR value - disabling them, circumventing them, or even just springing them and suffering the consequences, are all valid ways to handle the trap (though some are more embarrassing than others). All of those are worth XP based on the CR of the trap.

Environmental hazards might or might not fall into such a consideration.

If it was just a case of:

GM: It's cloudy. A few drops of rain fall. They sizzle on the ground and on your armor wherever the drops land.
PC: The rain is corrosive?
GM: It seems so.
PC: Let's avoid the rain. We hide in the cave of the monster we just killed.
GM: OK. Eventually the storm ends.

Then no, I wouldn't give them XP. They did the obvious thing with no risk and no creativity required, so no XP.

But if they had to race to find unknown shelter before the acid killed them, or if the cave was occupied by some encounter and they had to negotiate sharing the cave for the duration of the storm, or if there was any other reason that this would be an encounter with risks and that encourages creative problem solving (instead of just a brief description of odd weather), then yes, they should get XP.

How much XP?

That's a factor of the difficulty of the encounter (yes, corrosive rain could be described as an encounter).

How difficult is the encounter?

That's a factor of how much damage it can do, how dangerous it is, how many resources the PCs must expend to deal with it. I would suggest comparing it to various acid traps and/or even to various monsters - how many HP would the PCs lose if they handle it badly, how many spells (healing magic, protective magic, etc.) would they use to deal with it, etc. Then set the CR of the storm equal to the CR of comparable traps or monsters.

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