How do people survive outside the poles?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

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In the environmental rules, characters are expected to make fort saves each hour they spend in temperatures above 90 degrees.failure inflicts 1d4 nonetheless damage. 90+ degree days are the norm in summer for much of the world.

Your average farmer has 10hp and a fort save of +1. The farmer will fail over half his saves. On a day with 10 hours of heat, that means collapsing unconscious. A mildly unlucky day is fatal.

A month of weather like this would kill most of the population.


that's why barbarians from extreme climates are so resistant, they have to rise in level quickly to even survive.


Klorox wrote:
that's why barbarians from extreme climates are so resistant, they have to rise in level quickly to even survive.

91 degrees isn't extreme.even I'm the Northern US, periods of 90+ degree whether happens occasionally.


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Places where temperatures regularly reach 30°C or more are siesta country... wonder why Africans have that stereotypical image of being lazy? try being seriously active in a tropical/equatorial country.


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johnlocke90 wrote:

In the environmental rules, characters are expected to make fort saves each hour they spend in temperatures above 90 degrees.failure inflicts 1d4 nonetheless damage. 90+ degree days are the norm in summer for much of the world.

Your average farmer has 10hp and a fort save of +1. The farmer will fail over half his saves. On a day with 10 hours of heat, that means collapsing unconscious. A mildly unlucky day is fatal.

A month of weather like this would kill most of the population.

You can tell these rules were written by modern Pacific Northwesterners where a day that touches 90 is hell on earth, to be hidden from underground, in a pool or air conditioned spaces.

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kyrt-ryder wrote:
johnlocke90 wrote:

In the environmental rules, characters are expected to make fort saves each hour they spend in temperatures above 90 degrees.failure inflicts 1d4 nonetheless damage. 90+ degree days are the norm in summer for much of the world.

Your average farmer has 10hp and a fort save of +1. The farmer will fail over half his saves. On a day with 10 hours of heat, that means collapsing unconscious. A mildly unlucky day is fatal.

A month of weather like this would kill most of the population.

You can tell these rules were written by modern Pacific Northwesterners where a day that touches 90 is hell on earth, to be hidden from underground, in a pool or air conditioned spaces.

You'd think that, until you look at the rules for cold weather. Put it together with the hot weather rules, and you realize that the authors must have been living in like an environment suit or something.


I personally wear twenty pounds of padded armor every winter. :-)


Jiggy wrote:
kyrt-ryder wrote:
johnlocke90 wrote:

In the environmental rules, characters are expected to make fort saves each hour they spend in temperatures above 90 degrees.failure inflicts 1d4 nonetheless damage. 90+ degree days are the norm in summer for much of the world.

Your average farmer has 10hp and a fort save of +1. The farmer will fail over half his saves. On a day with 10 hours of heat, that means collapsing unconscious. A mildly unlucky day is fatal.

A month of weather like this would kill most of the population.

You can tell these rules were written by modern Pacific Northwesterners where a day that touches 90 is hell on earth, to be hidden from underground, in a pool or air conditioned spaces.
You'd think that, until you look at the rules for cold weather. Put it together with the hot weather rules, and you realize that the authors must have been living in like an environment suit or something.

Jiggy, we never get under 0 degrees Farenheit in the Puget Sound region. Up in the Seattle Area temps under 10 are unheard of and under 20 are fairly rare.

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Damn, I need to move to Seattle.

Where I live, you can have summers over 90F for multiple extended periods, and winters as low as –25F (before windchill) for multiple extended periods.


kyrt-ryder wrote:
Jiggy, we never get under 0 degrees Farenheit in the Puget Sound region. Up in the Seattle Area temps under 10 are unheard of and under 20 are fairly rare.

Are you speaking in Celsius or in Farenheit?


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Klorox wrote:
kyrt-ryder wrote:
Jiggy, we never get under 0 degrees Farenheit in the Puget Sound region. Up in the Seattle Area temps under 10 are unheard of and under 20 are fairly rare.
Are you speaking in Celsius or in Farenheit?

Farenheit, that's why I said Farenheit.

Areas that don't get under 0 C are subtropical if not tropical. We're just buffered by huge bodies of water [the Pacific Ocean and it's middle finger known as the Puget Sound]


Which is why we should never try to use real-world climate within fantasy world rules :)
90°F are common here during late spring and summer without people dropping left and right. Maybe there is something to kyrt-ryders theory.

(The old AD&D survival guide wasn't bad at it, though.)


Weather in Seattle.

Mid April - Mid October, 65-80 degrees, mostly sunny, with an occasional shower or spike in temperature above 80.

Mid October - Mid April, 55-70 degrees, mostly cloudy with intermittent periods of rain, with one "Pineapple Express" every year around Christmas, where it's windy as s%&+, with constant downpours, but it's 80 degrees.

Seattle also has a ten and a half month growing season.

Silver Crusade

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The D&D environmental rules are all basically garbage and pretty clearly come from somebody with no experience of real weather or the outdoors.


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Jiggy wrote:

Damn, I need to move to Seattle.

Where I live, you can have summers over 90F for multiple extended periods, and winters as low as –25F (before windchill) for multiple extended periods.

We occasionally get below 25F (Canada), but in summer over 90F is common. Heck, in D&D terms I never really considered myself to have high "constitution", but I'd work full days in the blazing sun over 90F in heavy protection equipment... Constitution checks at 90F seems low. Should be at least 95, probably 100, if you ask me. And not worded in a way that can actually kill you as soon as the threshold is met, no matter what you are doing... Taking a nap in the shade and dying because of damage rolls for 4 hours at 90F in the shade and with a breeze...


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Nobody *really* uses these lame environment rules anyway, do they?

This said, sure, 90°F isn't that bad, especially if you're used to it. But get above 110°F and you're looking at serious problems. So there *is* a place for such environment rules... they just need to be a little better thought out and graduated according to severity.


People in hot areas have a trait that lets them weather the heat better.
People in cold areas are used to always having cold weather clothing at hand.

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Wheldrake wrote:
Nobody *really* uses these lame environment rules anyway, do they?

I don't.


I used to, because they're a fairly accurate representation of my own experiences with climate resistance.

Then I learned just what sorts of things people really endure in different parts of the world and how tough the human body can be regarding climate.

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I lived for several years in the Alaskan interior. There's a VERY powerful ability to acclimate to local conditions. When -60 degree daytime temps are routine and -20F feels like too nice a day to waste indoors, you develop a whimsical view on the d20 environmental rules. At least on the cold end... under the high temperature rules 90+ certainly seemed lethal enough :D

(The last year I lived in Fairbanks, I remember being surprised at learning that an "unbearably hot" spring afternoon was actually 60 degrees...)


When I was younger I used to ride my Bike outside in the Summer. In Phoenix Arizona . Wonder what my Con was to survive that?

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My deployments to the Middle East were training to survive in the Valley of the Sun.

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TriOmegaZero wrote:
My deployments to the Middle East were training to survive in the Valley of the Sun.

I still thank the deployment gods that I never had to go directly from Alaska to the Middle East. I did have to go several months after coming down to the "lower 48", and they were all "you need cold weather gear. The desert is COLD in February!".

I was all "please tell me you're joking that you think those temperatures qualify as cold..."


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The environmental rules are a fail vs reality because they are simplified to make them gameable. Since even a minimal survival skill can mitigate most of it, it isn't so bad. You can actually have serious heat injury easily at 90F, if you aren't taking the right precautions or are susceptible. An active, armored individual toughing it out at 90F could reasonably die. Summer military trainiing events regularly have heat injuries, even with their focus on preventing them.

Honestly, considering that the core of most games is the, at best, surreal combat system, the environmental system is passable.

EDIT/ADD
Yes, adapting to changing temperatures is huge. Years ago at the SCA 30 Year event, I had friends from Southern California and from Moosejaw in Canada camping with me. At the very same time, comfortable to me, the Californians were bundling up while the wilting Canadians were asking if it ever cooled down.


deusvult wrote:
TriOmegaZero wrote:
My deployments to the Middle East were training to survive in the Valley of the Sun.

I still thank the deployment gods that I never had to go directly from Alaska to the Middle East. I did have to go several months after coming down to the "lower 48", and they were all "you need cold weather gear. The desert is COLD in February!".

I was all "please tell me you're joking that you think those temperatures qualify as cold..."

With half of my family being from Wisconsin, we get that all of the time. Though the same thing can be said of the opposite. The last time I visited Wisconsin was in July and people were moaning about the "hot" 80 degree weather. Having lived in triple-digit heat for at least a third of my life, I was amused.


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pauljathome wrote:
The D&D environmental rules are all basically garbage and pretty clearly come from somebody with no experience of real weather or the outdoors.

If i had a dollar for every time i heard "according to the boyscout manual you died 4 hours ago..."


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kyrt-ryder wrote:

I used to, because they're a fairly accurate representation of my own experiences with climate resistance.

Then I learned just what sorts of things people really endure in different parts of the world and how tough the human body can be regarding climate.

one of the advantages of being human is we're able to survive in much wider extremes compared to other animals. If anything humans in pathfinder should knock back the checks in both directions by like 20 degrees, while other races maybe do the same in a single direction.


Bandw2 wrote:
one of the advantages of being human is we're able to survive in much wider extremes compared to other animals. If anything humans in pathfinder should knock back the checks in both directions by like 20 degrees, while other races maybe do the same in a single direction.

Our natural resiliency isn't horrible, but it isn't all that good. We have clothing and are often smart enough to wear the right things. We build shelter, and are often smart enough to use what is available. When these things are not available, we often die of exposure if we do not have the skills to mitigate, and sometimes even when we do. In disasters, exposure is often the biggest risk factor.

Having your character die because you didn't properly equip for your environment is not actually heroic though.


To be fair, a body CAN get hypothermia in temperatures as warm as 50 degrees depending on covering, duration of exposure, and other weather conditions. Likewise, a body CAN get heat exhaustion at temperatures below 100 degrees, depending on exertion and other weather factors.

Reducing the Save DC in the highest level condition each for cold and heat would make the rule much more reasonable; that way unless your Con really sucks or you continue to roll very badly for several hours, you'll not lose more than a few nonlethal points. Which is reasonable, considering how exhausted you can feel after a long summer walk.

EDIT: You could argue we all have some degree of survival skill in the modern world as relates to Cold and Heat; we know to stay hydrated in hot weather; we know to dress in layers and avoid alcohol in cold weather. So we should generally get a bonus to the Fort Save, unless we're ignoring our own knowledge.


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Daw wrote:
Bandw2 wrote:
one of the advantages of being human is we're able to survive in much wider extremes compared to other animals. If anything humans in pathfinder should knock back the checks in both directions by like 20 degrees, while other races maybe do the same in a single direction.

Our natural resiliency isn't horrible, but it isn't all that good. We have clothing and are often smart enough to wear the right things. We build shelter, and are often smart enough to use what is available. When these things are not available, we often die of exposure if we do not have the skills to mitigate, and sometimes even when we do. In disasters, exposure is often the biggest risk factor.

Having your character die because you didn't properly equip for your environment is not actually heroic though.

i'm just saying, we can live literally anywhere in the world for quite a while without any clothes. If a blizzard rolls through you need to do what animals do and stay underground and wait until the blizzard passes saving energy.

the fact is our body can survive extremes for much longer periods switching in between than almost every other animal on the planet. we're of course not number 1, but we're within the top 80-90 percentile for sure.

also of course I'm assuming a fit human who is constantly getting as much calories as he's using.

You take a grizzly bear and put it in the middle east, it will die during the summer. You put a Desert lizard in europe during winter and it's dead pretty quickly.

then put on top of that our ability to adjust clothing and what not and we go higher in the tier.

Modern technology of course puts us at #1 best at surviving the elements, as creating shelter does count since it's how many animals survive harsh winters.

a common misunderstanding is that human's aren't great at anything compared to animals, except the brain, and this isn't true, we have our own little things that behave VERY well compared to animals. Visual color definition is an obvious one, we have red/green sensors, what's this do for us? green doesn't look brown, so brown fur coats don't camouflage predators for us in grass.


Wheldrake wrote:

Nobody *really* uses these lame environment rules anyway, do they?

This said, sure, 90°F isn't that bad, especially if you're used to it. But get above 110°F and you're looking at serious problems. So there *is* a place for such environment rules... they just need to be a little better thought out and graduated according to severity.

I do :)

But I also have tweaked the weather rules some, so that it takes advantage of acclimation. In addition, for heat between 90 and 109, I have it to where you can avoid the rolls for a time by just drinking water, wearing loose or shaded clothing (like the rice patty hats), and occasionally grabbing shade. If you do that, you are usually okay. I did something similar with the colder weather, changing it to 32 degrees as the first section and again, allowing for acclimation.

Course I also take into account wind chill for cold weather and relative humidity for hot weather, so there will be times where players will have a bad time in the heat. 95 degrees feels like death when the relative humidity is 65% or more.


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Envall wrote:

People in hot areas have a trait that lets them weather the heat better.

People in cold areas are used to always having cold weather clothing at hand.

I was getting ready to say something similar until I looked up the hot weather and cold weather clothing in the PRD. All they do is provide a bonus to the Fortitude saves -- you still have a significant chance of failing them. These outfits would make more sense if they also adjusted the thresholds at which you have to make checks.

I guess I must be quite a bit tougher than a Pathfinder commoner -- this summer I faced down a house cat in 95 degree weather and never once feared for my life. ;)


kyrt-ryder wrote:
johnlocke90 wrote:

In the environmental rules, characters are expected to make fort saves each hour they spend in temperatures above 90 degrees.failure inflicts 1d4 nonetheless damage. 90+ degree days are the norm in summer for much of the world.

Your average farmer has 10hp and a fort save of +1. The farmer will fail over half his saves. On a day with 10 hours of heat, that means collapsing unconscious. A mildly unlucky day is fatal.

A month of weather like this would kill most of the population.

You can tell these rules were written by modern Pacific Northwesterners where a day that touches 90 is hell on earth, to be hidden from underground, in a pool or air conditioned spaces.

My thoughts too. Its almost October and I am still getting days over 90.


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I think part of this is, that they made the rules for PCs not farmers. They wanted weather to possibly have an effect on maybe a 5th level character, but be nothing for higher level characters.

they didn't want the effects to become irrelevant by 2nd or so level.

though they did this is a poor fashion.


johnlocke90 wrote:
kyrt-ryder wrote:
johnlocke90 wrote:

In the environmental rules, characters are expected to make fort saves each hour they spend in temperatures above 90 degrees.failure inflicts 1d4 nonetheless damage. 90+ degree days are the norm in summer for much of the world.

Your average farmer has 10hp and a fort save of +1. The farmer will fail over half his saves. On a day with 10 hours of heat, that means collapsing unconscious. A mildly unlucky day is fatal.

A month of weather like this would kill most of the population.

You can tell these rules were written by modern Pacific Northwesterners where a day that touches 90 is hell on earth, to be hidden from underground, in a pool or air conditioned spaces.
My thoughts too. Its almost October and I am still getting days over 90.

One problem that Pathfinder's rules have is that they don't really take into account all of the factors that makes surviving in harsh weather difficult. 90 degrees is completely bearable up in, say, Boston or Philly. But 90 degrees down where I'm at is absolutely draining, mostly because of the humidity. 80% humidity and on will make 90 F feel like 110F and greater.

There are also differences in terms of land masses, location, wind chill for the cold. Puerto Rico and Hawaii are cooler because they are islands, despite being in the tropics. The same latitude in Mexico gets hotter because it's inland, and the Sahara is even hotter because of the dessert. With all of these factors, the standard rules presented just simply can't handle it.


If it's even suggestive of an issue, have one (or several) of your divine casters produce enough Endure Elements for the entire party.

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David knott 242 wrote:
I was getting ready to say something similar until I looked up the hot weather and cold weather clothing in the PRD. All they do is provide a bonus to the Fortitude saves -- you still have a significant chance of failing them. These outfits would make more sense if they also adjusted the thresholds at which you have to make checks.

Actually, for the cold rules, the clothes debatably protect you entirely at the 40 degree to 1 degree level. That section specifies 'An unprotected character' having to make checks, after all.

Doesn't make the rest of the rules any less...inaccurate, though.

I mean, seriously, I'm from Montana. I've both known people who went outside for an hour in less than -20 degree weather (something that should apparently have caused 60d6 lethal damage no matter what...you get no save and clothing doesn't protect you as per the rules), and have personally walked around for several hours in 95 degree weather in heavy clothing without passing out or even coming close (I was admittedly tired after that, but not even close to passing out or anything).

In fairness, though, the rules date back entirely unaltered to 3.5, and are thus very much not Paizo's fault per se.


I like to imagine that most people have alternate racial traits appropriate for their region - for example, humans in cold areas have Heart of the Snows. Living long enough in a different area might allow them to change to the local equivalent. XD

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GM Rednal wrote:
I like to imagine that most people have alternate racial traits appropriate for their region - for example, humans in cold areas have Heart of the Snows. Living long enough in a different area might allow them to change to the local equivalent. XD

The issue with that is, as noted above, Montana regularly hits both the high and low end of that spectrum (at least to the extent we regularly have above 90 degree days in the summer, and below 0 nights in the winter).

Montana is not alone in this...


Here in Los Angeles it got to 95 degrees F on Christmas a couple years ago, so sub 100 never really seems too hot to me (I also grew up without air conditioning, so even here I know that's not entirely the norm).

But even I was able to go up north and acclimate pretty quickly to working in the rain without a jacket in Washington on the Canadian border. Maybe it's just a matter of assumed lack of acclimation time.

Or just an abstract of assuming adventuring is more strenuous?


Indeed, continental climates [including deserts] can have extreme temperature variation even in the same 24 hour period.


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I think the biggest change I'd make is removing damage and instead having it evolve into stages of Fatigue and Exhaustion.


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Odraude wrote:
I think the biggest change I'd make is removing damage and instead having it evolve into stages of Fatigue and Exhaustion.

I like this idea, with someone who has collapsed from the exhaustion THEN taking lethal damage until dead.


What always puzzles me about these rules is that cold resistance doesn't protect against cold weather as the exposure causes non-lethal damage. Ditto for fire resistance and hot weather.

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Serisan wrote:
What always puzzles me about these rules is that cold resistance doesn't protect against cold weather as the exposure causes non-lethal damage. Ditto for fire resistance and hot weather.

As far as I'm concerned it does. Even in PFS.

There are times when one just has to say that the rules are SO stupid that they should be ignored :-)


Bandw2 wrote:

I think part of this is, that they made the rules for PCs not farmers. They wanted weather to possibly have an effect on maybe a 5th level character, but be nothing for higher level characters.

they didn't want the effects to become irrelevant by 2nd or so level.

though they did this is a poor fashion.

I would note that you could remove the damage and it is still relevant due to the fatigue effect. Fatigue is painful regardless of level.

And 90 degrees is just such a low bar. You go out in summer in the majority of the world and its over 90 degreees. Heat damage should be 100+.


Like I said, look at where Wizards of the Coast [and Paizo for that matter] are located.


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deusvult wrote:
I lived for several years in the Alaskan interior. There's a VERY powerful ability to acclimate to local conditions. When -60 degree daytime temps are routine and -20F feels like too nice a day to waste indoors, you develop a whimsical view on the d20 environmental rules. At least on the cold end... under the high temperature rules 90+ certainly seemed lethal enough :D

Having been born and raised in Fairbanks, I can attest to this. We laugh at cold, and wail in abject misery when it gets much above about 70 degrees Fahrenheit.


pauljathome wrote:
Serisan wrote:
What always puzzles me about these rules is that cold resistance doesn't protect against cold weather as the exposure causes non-lethal damage. Ditto for fire resistance and hot weather.

As far as I'm concerned it does. Even in PFS.

There are times when one just has to say that the rules are SO stupid that they should be ignored :-)

I would note its not that unrealistic.

Flame Retardant Clothing will help protect you from fire, but it will make hot weather worse.


Observation: The rule isn't as insane as it seems.

90F without high humidity and wearing suitable clothes is no big deal. I live in a climate where our highs break this for months at a time, I've seen lows that almost reached it.

However, doing heavy activity in plate mail in 90F weather is quite another matter--this is up there in the danger zone. Your fighter types should be taking damage in that sort of situation.

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