Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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Interesting question. It might have real impact, too, for example to determine how hard Call Lightning hits.
There's this bit in the guide to organized play:
Additionally, the GM may consider utilizing terrain and
environmental conditions when those effects have been written into the flavor of a scenario but the mechanics that are normally associated with them by the Core Rulebook have not been added to the encounters.
But that's kinda the inverse of your question. Even so, I think that if the scenario does say something about the weather, you're supposed to stick with it. If it doesn't mention it? I don't know.
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Can a GM roll for the weather in the scenario they are running and use those results during the game? I know it's not something we usually think about but is that something that is considered within my purview as a GM at a PFS table?
If you want to describe the morning on the dockside as misty, or as plagued by an annoying drizzle, with no mechanical effects, go ahead.
If you want reflex saves to dodge the 6d6 lightning bolts that the thunderstorm that you made up is throwing out, no
Generally adding minor flavour-text to the adventure is fine, just don't change mechanical bits, and don't change the flavour so much that it's no longer recognisable.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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If a bad guy has Call Lightning and the adventure doesn't say anything about the weather, I'm gonna assume calm weather. If the adventure mentions bad weather I'm gonna apply his heavy-duty blasts.
If there was nothing in the adventure about the weather, no bad guys with weather-dependent abilities, I'll feel free to describe the weather as good or bad (but not adventure-stopping bad). If it then turns out one of the PCs uses Call Lightning, he's just had a lucky break.
If I know ahead one of the PCs has Call Lightning, I'll run the weather strictly as written, and in the absence of relevant writings, I'll use nice weather.
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Can a GM roll for the weather in the scenario they are running and use those results during the game? I know it's not something we usually think about but is that something that is considered within my purview as a GM at a PFS table?If you want to describe the morning on the dockside as misty, or as plagued by an annoying drizzle, with no mechanical effects, go ahead.
If you want reflex saves to dodge the 6d6 lightning bolts that the thunderstorm that you made up is throwing out, no
Generally adding minor flavour-text to the adventure is fine, just don't change mechanical bits, and don't change the flavour so much that it's no longer recognisable.
Though a severe thunderstorm with a tornado in a 1-5 could be exciting and the thing a table always talks about I'm thinking more about the more common rolls like a rainstorm, snow, fog, or a hot day in the desert. Seriously I've just been randomly rolling weather in my home game and the results can be staggering with ranged characters having to figure out other options because the rain is throwing them off and really making those melee characters shine as they close. Or hell even just remembering to factor weight and realizing that the best defense against the cold short term is 8 extra pounds on the wizard can really do a lot and change play in really fun ways.
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That's something we can't do. While brock's answer was a teensy bit hyperbolic, his point stands: no mechanical weather or enviroment effects are to be included unless the scenario calls for them either explicitly or via flavor text("Dense fogbonks rolled into Oppara's docklands as the night fell..." etc). It follows then that randomising weather and adding mechanical variables would result in a modified scenario, which is verboten.
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There was a long thread about this (among other things) where one GM argued that because of the line from Guide to Organized play, if no weather was mentioned in the description, he could make up any kind of weather he wanted. (This was because he felt that scenarios were sometimes too easy, upping the challenge etc.) Almost everyone else argued that the GM could only make weather a mechanic if the scenario specifically mentioned a specific kind of weather in the descriptive parts without mentioning the mechanics for that.
After pages of this the someone from the campaign staff finally confirmed the later view.
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Unless the scenario has weather impacting encounters - that is, written in - it's simply a mechanical layer which slows things down, anyway. Home play? okay, I guess, but in a 4-5 hour game, you just need to keep things streamlined!
That said, I mention non-mechanical weather to set atmosphere (meaning no fogs, etc) as needed.
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I would feel comfortable adjusting weather to enhance the scenario, especially if there's a PC at the table who has a class feature or spell selection that takes advantage of the environment. Or if I need to present the table with an obstacle to make an encounter more than a speed bump. Mike has commented about this adjustment before.
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When I first started in PFS, most of my play was with a home group that included a druid who used Call Lightning a lot. We decided as a group that any time he used it, if the scenario didn't specify the weather, we'd roll a 20% chance that it was cloudy enough to give him amped up damage, though never stormy enough for any other mechanical affect unless the scenario said so.
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This is another issue that has people running scared because of run as written syndrome, notably so by the sounds of Leathert's thread (I haven't seen it, though).
Doug and Fromper both have valid ideas on how to work this into scenarios, as long as players still consider it fair play. I can't imagine Mike or John having issues with it if that's the case.
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We are allowed to use the mechanical effects of weather or other environmental effects if they are mentioned in the scenario. Adding weather because you feel like it is beyond "run as written". Now, if you have a home group who are all into it, you can do whatever you want and no one will know, but for public games, adding in other factors like weather shouldn't be done (based on my non-authorative read of the Guide.
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Well the assumption was that the weather is happening all the time as it does in real life and we as GMs just don't think about it since it either doesn't really matter or its a pain to roll random weather. That being said I've found it to actually be far more of an enriching experience to add weather and see everything adapt to it and would love to just be able to use the random weather roller and see where it goes in game. As for worries of abuse that can happen but that's a risk anyone takes when they decided to GM and is something we as GMs just need to monitor in ourselves.
And for the players there are more than a few spells and at least 1 skill have abilities that revolve around it or aid them in defending against the most of the things weather will throw at you that a lot of people already use and I think would like to wring out the weather based benefits of.
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That being said I've found it to actually be far more of an enriching experience to add weather and see everything adapt to it and would love to just be able to use the random weather roller and see where it goes in game. As for worries of abuse that can happen but that's a risk anyone takes when they decided to GM and is something we as GMs just need to monitor in ourselves.
The problem is that one man's enriching experience is another man's GM abuse.
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Well the assumption was that the weather is happening all the time as it does in real life and we as GMs just don't think about it since it either doesn't really matter or its a pain to roll random weather. That being said I've found it to actually be far more of an enriching experience to add weather and see everything adapt to it and would love to just be able to use the random weather roller and see where it goes in game. As for worries of abuse that can happen but that's a risk anyone takes when they decided to GM and is something we as GMs just need to monitor in ourselves.
And for the players there are more than a few spells and at least 1 skill have abilities that revolve around it or aid them in defending against the most of the things weather will throw at you that a lot of people already use and I think would like to wring out the weather based benefits of.
Equally, you are going to wind up, sometime, with the group whose only damage dealer is the archer, and your random weather just nerfed him, turning an interesting game into an unwarranted, and largely unavoidable, TPK.