Pierre de Galt's page

In several places, PCs can earn Preparation Points, and depending on how many they earn, there are various degrees of success.

There is also an adjustment for 6 players, but it's confusing.

For 4 or 5 players, the three degrees of success require 0, 1–2, and 3+ Preparation Points.

For 6 players, the three degrees of success require 0, 1–3, and 5+ Preparation Points.

What if a 6-player group obtains exactly 4 Preparation points? Should the medium degree or the highest degree of success be used? Or is this a failure?

An adjustment of 1–4 and 5+ would make sense, as would one of 1–3 and 4+, but 1–3 and 5+ (leaving out 4) is confusing.

(Is this a result of an original "5 players: 0, 1–3, 4+; 6 players: 0, 1–4, 5+" being shortened into just "6 players: 0, 1–3, 5+" which is neither flesh now fowl?)

I wonder how this will interact with Organized Play?

Section C "Holiday Hunt" has you hunting for arabuks after sunset in "extreme cold (Core Rulebook 400)". If you fail your skill check to find tracks or guess likely locations, you will need "over an hour" to find an arabuk.

Core Rulebook 400 says that "Extreme cold (below –20° F) deals 1d6 lethal cold damage per minute (no saving throw)."

Regular armor environmental protections are no help here, as those protect you only against cold "as low as –20° F" (i.e. up to severe cold but not extreme) and do "not protect against cold … damage from … environments that deal damage without allowing a Fortitude saving throw" (Core Rulebook p. 198f.)

A thermal capacitor armor upgrade in your armor may or may not help: those allow you to "exist comfortably in conditions between –50° and 170° F without needing to attempt Fortitude saves" (CRB 207), but extreme cold deals damage without a Fortitude save so I'm not sure whether the armor upgrade would negate the damage entirely ("exist comfortably") or only apply the cold resistance 5.

Also, thermal capacitors are at least level 5 items and characters in this scenario may be level 3. The party *do* have the ability to get a mk 1 thermal capacitor as a gift during the scenario but (a) that's only if they succeed at two skill-check tasks, (b) it's only 1 capacitor for up to 6 characters, (c) characters might not have an upgrade slot in their armor.

This means that parties may be looking at over 60d6 lethal cold damage if they fail their skill checks, just to get to the arabuk (plus an unspecified amount of additional damage on their way back). (And Fortitude checks of DC up to 75 or take additional nonlethal cold damage.)

Even if they are good at tracking and find the arabuk in 20 minutes, that's still 20d6 cold damage with no save allowed.

This seems excessive so I must be missing something.

How is this intended to be handled?

Is the extreme cold only intended to be severe cold (–1° F to –19° F), perhaps? Then normal armor would protect against it completely and the cold environment would be reduced to mere flavour rather than a lethal hazard.

Or is there an errata somewhere that I'm missing?

Or is this to be read as written, perhaps as an advertisement for the thermal capacitor armor upgrade ("this item exists and sometimes your life may depend on having one")?

The encounter scaling instructions for encounter B (khyyrent guards) are identical to those in encounter A8 (skeletal khyyrents) and reference skeletal khyyrents pulling themselves up out of the rubble.

Is the effect ("staggered for the first round") intended to be the same for the khyyrent guards as for the skeletal ones, or something different?