How cold does it get? Endure elements

[eyebreaker7]

How cold does it get in the coldest areas? Endure elements protects down to -50. Is that enough? I know it doesn't prevent damage.

[hamishspence]

Endure elements protects down to -50. Is that enough? I know it doesn't prevent damage.

It might not block cold spells, but it does block the damage done by low temperature environments to a point:

https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/endureElements.htm
A creature protected by endure elements suffers no harm from being in a hot or cold environment. It can exist comfortably in conditions between -50 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit without having to make Fortitude saves). The creature’s equipment is likewise protected.



https://www.d20srd.org/srd/environment.htm#coldDangers
Extreme cold (below -20° F) deals 1d6 points of lethal damage per minute (no save). In addition, a character must make a Fortitude save (DC 15, +1 per previous check) or take 1d4 points of nonlethal damage. Those wearing metal armor or coming into contact with very cold metal are affected as if by a chill metal spell.

So, presumably. that 1d6 lethal damage just doesn't happen, nor does that 1d4 nonlethal damage - if you take "Suffers no harm" literally.

Frostburn modifies this a lot though, making it less deadly, and introduces Unearthly cold (-50°F or less)- which can still be protected against - but endure elements on its own is not enough to protect fully. It introduces a protection system of tiers ranging down to tier 4 (Extreme cold is tier 3).

Since cold weather gear is "protection 1", Endure Elements is protection 3, and protections stack, cold weather gear plus the endure elements spell protects fully against Unearthly Cold.

Some areas are colder than Unearthly cold though. Just being in Caina in the Nine Hells does 3d10 cold damage per round. Auril's realm in Player's Guide to Faerun is even colder - 3d12 damage per round. But it's not specified what the equivalent real-world temperatures are.


One way of handling it might be to simply extrapolate downwards from the existing temperature bands in both Frostburn and Sandstorm.

The "Unearthly heat" band, is 30 degrees wide (180°F to 210°F). After that, it's "Burning heat" (3d10 fire)

If the Unearthly Cold" band is similar, than "deadly cold" (3d10 cold damage) might be expected to start at below -80°F.

Or, you could introduce bands that do 1d6 damage per round, and then the full 3d10.

How cold does it get in the coldest areas?
-144°F is the coldest recorded temperature in Antarctica, for comparison.

[Hish]

I believe this is the 100,000th thread posted to the 3rd edition subforum. Congratulations!

[False God]

The "coldest areas" of what? Earth? As posted, -144F is the coldest recorded temperature, in Antarctica of course. Some places in Russia regularly record -80F. The Midwest of the USA often sees -25 and -30.

So, if you're talking about "Endure Elements" at least in real life, you'd be fine in most of the habitable-but-cold zones of the world, have some regular too-cold-to-handle days in the cold-enough-to-question-why-people-live-here places, and have zero protection in the coldest parts of the world.

And of course don't forget the wind chill.

[hamishspence]

At least using the Frostburn rules as written, you'd have partial protection rather than zero protection. You'd have to create multiple temperature bands below "unearthly cold" for zero protection.

Using core rules on their own, it's true that you'd have zero protection. But it wouldn't do more than 1d6 damage per minute. You'd need to introduce houserules, for it to do more.

[Palanan]

Also don’t forget altitude. The coldest temperature recorded at the summit of Mt. Everest is -41° C, which is within the range covered by Endure Elements.

But by the time you’re at 10 km altitude, in the upper troposphere, it’s already below -55° C, and at 20 km (in the lower stratosphere) you’re at -60° C. (The stratosphere begins warming in its upper layers, and is close to 0° C by 50 km, but long before then you have worse problems to deal with.)

[hamishspence]

The Nailed to the Sky epic spell might be a good guideline here. Characters in vacuum, in orbit, take 2d6 heat or cold damage, per round:

https://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/spells/nailedToTheSky.htm

Presumably the heat damage is during the day (sunburn) and the cold damage during the night.

[Saintheart]

Frostburn modifies this a lot though, making it less deadly, and introduces Unearthly cold (-50°F or less)- which can still be protected against - but endure elements on its own is not enough to protect fully. It introduces a protection system of tiers ranging down to tier 4 (Extreme cold is tier 3).

Since cold weather gear is "protection 1", Endure Elements is protection 3, and protections stack, cold weather gear plus the endure elements spell protects fully against Unearthly Cold.

It's not quite a case of full stacking as such. Frostburn treats it as a "find your base level of protection, then add equipment modifiers on top."

Endure Elements sets the base level of protection at 3, and then equipment like fur clothing or a cold weather outfit adds to that base. Being an arctic animal with fur confers you a base protection level of 2, and you add from there, i.e. casting Endure Elements on a polar bear doesn't mean it withstands Unearthly Cold fully, it just has a base of level 3 protection rather than 2. And so on.

At the risk of some of my players reading this, can I say that if you're dealing in a combination of a low-magic setting, mounts and animal companions being used, an adventure with wilderness travel and a time limit, and low character levels, Frostburn's cold weather rules can be a lot of fun for a DM. Admittedly my setting's an icebound one, but really where it gets interesting is because neither Frostburn or the DMG have items of clothing which are really meant to protect mounts and animals at low temperatures. Yes, there's fullcloth for horses, but that doesn't specifically provide a level of cold protection, it just makes the saves a bit better. So if you drop the temperature markedly down to Extreme Cold -- which is really only -20 to -50 -- the party now has to think about covering its animals with its Endure Elements spells as well as themselves. This has capacity to run down the reserves a bit faster. Weather prediction gets more interesting since a cold snap puts the temperature one band lower, and wind chill does the same. You can keep the weather at a balmy 0 to -20 for a while and then make the party decide whether, on a sustained wind, they should hunker down in portable huts (which might or might not be big enough for mounts or animals) or use their resources and keep moving.

[hamishspence]

It's not quite a case of full stacking as such. Frostburn treats it as a "find your base level of protection, then add equipment modifiers on top."

Endure Elements sets the base level of protection at 3, and then equipment like fur clothing or a cold weather outfit adds to that base. Being an arctic animal with fur confers you a base protection level of 2, and you add from there, i.e. casting Endure Elements on a polar bear doesn't mean it withstands Unearthly Cold fully, it just has a base of level 3 protection rather than 2.

Presumably any being with Endure Elements and a cold weather outfit or fur clothing, though, is protection level 4. And it does state that those two - outfit and furs - can be combined, and stack - equipment modifier +2 instead of +1 - producing protection +5.

Or +4, in the case of polar bears - they'd need to wear a cold weather outfit made to fit them, and heavy furs over the top of that, to be immune to Unearthly Cold, without magic.

Protection +6 is Endure Elements + Improvised Shelter.

So, you'd need to create houserules for "+5 cold" (the band worse than Unearthly Cold) and "+6 cold" and maybe even higher.

After all, altitude can make cold up to "2 bands worse" and nightfall can make cold "2 bands worse" (in exceptionally arid environments) and wind chill can make cold "1 band worse".


Antarctica has strong winds, is extremely arid (on the plateau especially) and has a long night.

The plateau is high enough to make weather 1 band worse, but not 2 (you'd need to be standing on Mount Vinson for that).

So - top of Mount Vinson, in a howling wind, late at night (midwinter, say), and temperatures were already -50°F or so before nightfall set in.

So that could be -4 for Unearthly cold temperature, -2 for arid night, -2 for altitude, -1 for wind - that's -9.

[the_tick_rules]

endure elements protects down to -50F or -45C. as some as have unless you are in the arctic and or recording breaking winter you are more or less set. if you are in the crazy places get a cube of frost resistance, it says the temp in the area around it is always 65f.

[eyebreaker7]

Would you have any problems going around barefoot in the snow, cold rivers or walking on ice if you have endure elements going? I know of course that the spell protects you from the cold but would it still protect your exposed skin to the elements? I interpret that you WOULD be protected but am I correct? I'm picturing someone running around in swim trunks and a t-shirt. So I guess the question would also be if there would be any problems walking around after going swimming in ice cold water (or falling in a river would be more accurate)?