Mountaineering rules!

[Dungeon-noob]

Sooo, i'm working on a simple quick campaign, for which the first act will mostly consist of crossing a bunch of high and scary mountains with a bunch of monsters. I have my monster lists picked out, loot mostly prepped, and am generally ready. All except for some of the enviornmental challenges. The DMG gives very simplistic rules for dealing with temperature, and none for other hazards such as landslides, avalanches, storms, lighting, or extreme cold. So here are the questions i'd like to ask the mightly playgrounders to help with:

1. for those who know about mountains better then me, what sort of dangers does one face when crossing? I'm thinking starvation, dehydration, monsters, harsh cold, and landslides/avalanches.

2. how should i model the enviornmental difficulties? as an aside to this question, i have heard of something called a skill challenge in some older edition, how does that work?

3. how much XP should i award for these challenges?

I'd be greatly obliged if anyone could give me some good pointers.

[Spiritchaser]

Sooo, i'm working on a simple quick campaign, for which the first act will mostly consist of crossing a bunch of high and scary mountains with a bunch of monsters. I have my monster lists picked out, loot mostly prepped, and am generally ready. All except for some of the enviornmental challenges. The DMG gives very simplistic rules for dealing with temperature, and none for other hazards such as landslides, avalanches, storms, lighting, or extreme cold. So here are the questions i'd like to ask the mightly playgrounders to help with:

1. for those who know about mountains better then me, what sort of dangers does one face when crossing? I'm thinking starvation, dehydration, monsters, harsh cold, and landslides/avalanches.

2. how should i model the enviornmental difficulties? as an aside to this question, i have heard of something called a skill challenge in some older edition, how does that work?

3. how much XP should i award for these challenges?

I'd be greatly obliged if anyone could give me some good pointers.

Objective hazards in the mountains vary wildly depending on where you are.

You want scary mountains, go for winter.

Some snow covered glaciers are relatively benign, some are diabolical, with hidden crevasses under that snow. Do they know how to use an avalanche probe?

Some slopes are known for avalanches, some angles are relatively safe.

The weather and cold can kill you but a shovel can build a quinzee in a couple of hours and a snow cave in less.

Winds can get up fast, crossing a col in a whiteout without a guide could easily lead to death. Even on safer terrain, without proper technique, navigating blind is going to be hard.

About that wind? Winds can go from 20mph to 60 or even 100 in less than an hour. That’ll blow a skier over.

Cornices of snow will form on the lee side of ridges, you can walk on something with a whole lot of nothing below it.

There are almost no end of challenging skill tests you can come up with on a mountain. Winds too high to fly? Try ice climbing with athletic checks against CON, heck, athletics checks against INT are fair game. Rope work can be Dex or int as well, depending on what you’re doing. Survival? Everywhere.

Crossing a slope without proper footwear? Tough

Trying to make distance without skis on? Really tough

Trying to climb rocks coated with ice in the cold at altitude?

Navigation, survival, balance, travel times... heck even just carrying enough food for a few weeks is tough, and that says nothing of water...

It takes a lot of fuel to melt enough water to keep going (hopefully the party has some magic!)

For background try and find some old epics issues of climbing magazine, or at least some excerpts on the web. Some of those stories are dynamite. I used to have a collection but I had to ditch them in a move.

Also, see if you can find an article called “the coldest war” that was published in outside magazine (Search for the outside magazine article about the karakorum not the book about Korea) Outstanding war journalism.

You don’t need monsters to threaten a party in the mountains.

[Unoriginal]

The DMG gives very simplistic rules for dealing with temperature, and none for other hazards such as landslides, avalanches, storms, lighting, or extreme cold.



EXTREME COLD
Whenever the temperature is at or below 0 degrees Fahrenheit, a creature exposed to the cold must succeed on a DC 10 Constitution saving throw at the end of each hour or gain one level of exhaustion. Creatures with resistance or immunity to cold damage automatically succeed on the saving throw, as do creatures wearing cold weather gear (thick coats, gloves, and the like) and creatures naturally adapted to cold climates.

DMG p.110

The same page also has rules for strong wind and heavy rain, which to me seems like the components of a storm.

And it also has the rules for high altitude's effects, which seems a good thing to use for mountain-climbing.





IMPROVISING DAMAGE
Dice Example:
1d10 Burned by coals, hit by a falling bookcase, pricked by a poison needle
2d10 Being struck by lightning, stumbling into a fire pit
4d10 Hit by falling rubble in a collapsing tunnel, stumbling into a vat of acid


DMG p. 249

[Gilrad]

I've been playing Out of the Abyss and I am pleasantly surprised at how the random encounters in The Underdark has kept my group entertained for an entire session where we did nothing but travel.

If you never intend to play it (or if you already have), you could probably modify a lot of those encounters for your party.

Trying not to get too spoilerey here but time pressure is the real element that makes all those random encounters in OotA feel so impactful. Maybe in a mountain you could use food and heat scarcity? e.g. The party only has enough firewood and rations to make a ten-day journey in ten days. Losing half a day to complications too many times could spell disaster for the party.

[ZorroGames]

If you know someone from AD&D days see if they have the wilderness survival book.

Good ideas there.

[furby076]

luckily, except in super rare cases (see mt washington, new hampshire) winds rarely get high enough to blow people away...even at everest.
As a person who has climbed some of the worlds tallest mountains, here are some hazards
1) as you go higher, oxygen becomes more scarce. You will get tired more often. Maybe make exhaustion checks earlier or set a higher DC that gets increasingly harder. At a certain height some people will get altitude sickness. Once that sets in, the only way to get rid of it is to go back down. Luckily, when you head to an area with enough oxygen, recovery is within minutes. Maybe a remove exhaustion spell is your answer. BTW, when you get altitude sickness you MUST come down or risk passing out and dying. Its not a cold, it's oxygen deprivation. NOTE: oxygen does not equal air. Plenty of air on mountains.
2) At certain height, above 18k ft, you are in the death zone. Thats when you are starving your body so much it's dying at a cellular level. You might be able to hang out for half a day. Exhaustion checks are often and severe. Come down quickly
3) Again, due to lack of oxygen, things that get wet do not dry easily. If your clothes get wet, even if it's a warm and sunny day, goodluck drying it without fire or magic (prestidigation?) If you are in the mountains when its cold, thats potential hypothermia

Luckily, the above oxygen issues are spottable (how you say), trees cant grow at higher altitudes, and vegetation becomes sparse (though not totally gone).
Encounters with wild animals should be scarce...they also suffer the same effects. Mountain lions don't like 16k feet. Hunting for food will be tough.

Pack lighter than normal. Average person, with little climbing experience should avoid carrying more than 20 lbs. I'd say seasoned adventurers, used to running, hiking, battles, etc can get away with more. But someone with 100 lbs worth of gear will be hurting. People need to drink water more often than normal

Weather patterns change quickly in mountainous areas. You can be in sun one minute, to be in rain in the next, and then back to sun. I've had clouds fly right around me (pretty cool to go from sun to cloudy and see it coming and going).

Some mountains are technical (everest) requiring special ropes and foot gear, while some do not require that gear (kilimanjaro). Decide which kind your mountain is.

If your party finds a village near the base of the mountain (which will probably still be around 5k altitude), give them a chance to get info, equipment, and most importantly - guides. Guides should probably 4-10 times the price of skilled labor. Paying up front (if they die, their family still gets the money). I'd say this gives advantage on all checks. The more guides and porters that easier the checks should be. A relatively easy journey could involve 1 guide and 10 porters per adventurer. The porters can haul up gear (food, tents, blankets, water, medical supplies and training)

Also, it's very possible to be walking around in t-shirt and shorts on mountains in the winter. I did this at Kilimanjaro. The days were gorgeous. The nights, however, freezing cold. Summit night...well, my camelback water pack froze solid. That was 2 gallons of water in about 3 hours. At the very summit, we stayed for 30 minutes. How cold was it? Well, I was staring at a glacier, and winds were in the 50 MPH range...so, cold.

[houlio]

I've been living on the slopes of a mountain for this last year. Here's a couple ideas I would add:


The weather can change very quickly here (rain shadow effect and all) and vary a lot across a pretty small area. This last weekend, we had perfectly clear skies and solid temps in the 80's-90's. In the space of about 3 hours, a storm blew in and the temp dropped enough that it snowed. My friends who live about 30 minutes away on the steppes didn't get any snow at all. Your characters can easily be left off guard this way.
Temperature change is drastic. Having cold weather clothes is important, but you might also need regular/warm weather clothes the next day (or even the next couple hours). These take up more room in your packs which can't be food/fuel. Even during winter and hiking through snow might be too warm for coats on really nice days.
If you're in winter/spring, sudden floods might be a huge concern with lots of melt water from snow. Your characters might suddenly find their trail has become a river. If they can't find a way forward, they might have to backtrack, wasting time and resources.

[BeefGood]

Avalanche rules
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?534321-homebrew-snow-avalanche-rules
In retrospect, maybe a little complex for 5e, but still might be helpful.

[Armored Walrus]

Step one, don't spend hours creating a subgame for managing things like thirst, starvation, getting lost, or freezing to death (especially since 5e already has rules for all of that) until you make sure none of your characters have a feature that will totally nullify everything you created. If you have a level 5 cleric, you're not going to starve them out unless you also cause the cleric to lose their holy symbol, or a level 1 druid. If they have a ranger, they can't get lost. If they have a high enough ranger, they can cross difficult terrain at normal travel speed.

I'm not saying you can't challenge them, but make sure you aren't spending hours prepping the wrong stuff and then finding yourself trying to backpedal and make their features not work correctly in order to save your prepped stuff. Be prepared to throw away the challenge when they bypass it with 30 seconds of thought.

Outside of that, see everything above. ;)