Tips on running cold-based survival session

[pabelfly]

I'm interested in running part of my session with some of the cold survival rules from Frostburn (players are braving cold alpine mountains to hunt a snow dragon). Does anyone have any tips or experience in running such a session?

[Saintheart]

Running it in sessions, no, but running in PbP, yes. A cold-based adventure is one of the few I've actually managed to complete. The IC thread is here (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?611269-A-Gathering-Storm), the OOC thread is here (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?611207-A-Gathering-Storm-OOC-Thread).

First thing is that if the party's past about level 6-7 or so, accounting for cold environments will be a minor inconvenience at best. It's just the way resource management and environmental dangers rolls in D&D 3.5. So, with that preface aside...

Number one, if possible, make sure nobody brings a full-charged wand of Endure Elements. No need to worry about players memorising the spell, because it's then a question of balancing how many spell slots they can afford to blow on E.E. thus compromising their magic supplies a bit. In particular this is something to twist the party with if it's accustomed to getting around with a bunch of familiars, animal companions, mounts, or pack animals in tow; players often remember to prepare themselves for cold weather, but they don't remember to prepare their other living creatures the same way. That 30-charge wand gets burned out a lot faster if it's covering 4 players + 4 mounts each day.

Number two, don't leave the temperature constant over the course of the expedition. Set yourself a simple weather generator per day: 1d6 roll, 1 the temperature stays as it is, 2 the teperature gets warmer by 1 band, 3-4 the temperature gets colder by 1 band, 5 the temperature gets warmer by 2 bands, 6 the temperature gets colder by 2 bands. Gate it so the weather can never get any warmer than the Cold temperature band (40 F to 0 F) and likely no colder than Extreme Cold. This is important because the party might content itself with preparing for Cold temperatures and find itself in serious trouble after a couple of days or so when the weather worsens. And remember Survival checks allow parties to predict the weather about 24 hours out. But even then, consider as one of the suite of random encounters a sudden change in the weather, dropping the temperature by a band.

Number three, nighttime presents a great opportunity to just drop the temperature by a band and start smashing the party with Fort saves overnight if they haven't thought of it or have tried just sleeping in the open. Good complications could include damage to the party's portable shelters or so forth. And remember, armor with no insulation chills the body very quickly.

Number four, don't abstract the Fort saves if they run into situations where exposure is hitting. Remember failing Fort saves in cold environment leads to nonlethal damage which very easily brings on frostbite (-2 to DEX) until it's healed. I've had players try to tough out walking in freezing environments and they quickly get hit with fatigue and damage.

Other ideas:

- Snowblindness.
- High winds should be a thing, whether to slow travel or complicate encounters.
- Lots of creatures native to cold environments get really solid bonuses to hiding in snow: Yetis (+12), Frost Folk (+8). Ambushes should be easy to pull off, and don't forget deep snow amounts to difficult terrain (and something that nothing native to that environment should be encumbered with.)
- Below freezing, potions freeze just like water does. Frostburn says they don't suffer damage as such but can't be used until thawed over a fire. Me, I like the idea of the potions being in glass bottles which explode on the expansion from freezing, ruining them.

That's the stuff I can think of right now. Environmental management's fun.

[pabelfly]

Running it in sessions, no, but running in PbP, yes. A cold-based adventure is one of the few I've actually managed to complete. The IC thread is here (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?611269-A-Gathering-Storm), the OOC thread is here (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?611207-A-Gathering-Storm-OOC-Thread).

First thing is that if the party's past about level 6-7 or so, accounting for cold environments will be a minor inconvenience at best. It's just the way resource management and environmental dangers rolls in D&D 3.5. So, with that preface aside...

Number one, if possible, make sure nobody brings a full-charged wand of Endure Elements. No need to worry about players memorising the spell, because it's then a question of balancing how many spell slots they can afford to blow on E.E. thus compromising their magic supplies a bit. In particular this is something to twist the party with if it's accustomed to getting around with a bunch of familiars, animal companions, mounts, or pack animals in tow; players often remember to prepare themselves for cold weather, but they don't remember to prepare their other living creatures the same way. That 30-charge wand gets burned out a lot faster if it's covering 4 players + 4 mounts each day.

Number two, don't leave the temperature constant over the course of the expedition. Set yourself a simple weather generator per day: 1d6 roll, 1 the temperature stays as it is, 2 the teperature gets warmer by 1 band, 3-4 the temperature gets colder by 1 band, 5 the temperature gets warmer by 2 bands, 6 the temperature gets colder by 2 bands. Gate it so the weather can never get any warmer than the Cold temperature band (40 F to 0 F) and likely no colder than Extreme Cold. This is important because the party might content itself with preparing for Cold temperatures and find itself in serious trouble after a couple of days or so when the weather worsens. And remember Survival checks allow parties to predict the weather about 24 hours out. But even then, consider as one of the suite of random encounters a sudden change in the weather, dropping the temperature by a band.

Number three, nighttime presents a great opportunity to just drop the temperature by a band and start smashing the party with Fort saves overnight if they haven't thought of it or have tried just sleeping in the open. Good complications could include damage to the party's portable shelters or so forth. And remember, armor with no insulation chills the body very quickly.

Number four, don't abstract the Fort saves if they run into situations where exposure is hitting. Remember failing Fort saves in cold environment leads to nonlethal damage which very easily brings on frostbite (-2 to DEX) until it's healed. I've had players try to tough out walking in freezing environments and they quickly get hit with fatigue and damage.

Other ideas:

- Snowblindness.
- High winds should be a thing, whether to slow travel or complicate encounters.
- Lots of creatures native to cold environments get really solid bonuses to hiding in snow: Yetis (+12), Frost Folk (+8). Ambushes should be easy to pull off, and don't forget deep snow amounts to difficult terrain (and something that nothing native to that environment should be encumbered with.)
- Below freezing, potions freeze just like water does. Frostburn says they don't suffer damage as such but can't be used until thawed over a fire. Me, I like the idea of the potions being in glass bottles which explode on the expansion from freezing, ruining them.

That's the stuff I can think of right now. Environmental management's fun.

This was really helpful, thanks.

[Fizban]

Probably less relevant in your situation, but: tell the players that anything they haven't written on their character sheet, their character does not have. When half of them show up failing to write down clothing, laugh as you magnanimously grant them pants to keep the game PG and watch them scramble to cover themselves in layers of rags taken from corpses to avoid freezing to death.

(This is what happened when I ran some of World's Largest Dungeon with freezing temperatures in the first zone).

If you manage to get the bruisers to take the heavy armor off, make sure to have some light combats where that lack of armor matters, or will matter if they don't handle things some other way. On the other hand, if this gets someone to go from two-handed to sword-n-board, balancing AC vs not freezing to death, cool.

Aside from direct magic, more levels means more cash for even the non-magical solutions, and if extradimensional storage is cheap and easy in your game it makes carrying all that (or armor you've taken off while it's cold) that much easier. Figure out what you're going to allow as "Improvised Shelter" beforehand, since there is an expensive and heavy item which says all it does is give that bonus: either this item is useless, or "improvised" shelter is actually only "DM's mercy."

Water hazards go from "lol I tie a rope to a tree" to "we're all gonna die" when it's cold enough.

For describing those temperature variations, don't forget wind chill.

Make sure you're comfortable with the minutiae of the cold effects you're going to be using:
-Saintheart mentioned how any time you take nonlethal from cold, you get Frostbite causing -2 Dex- this takes a DC 15 Heal check (plus bonus/penalties if you're still cold/warm/etc) to remove.
-But this is separate from Hypothermia (on the same page 10 in Frostburn) which says you also get Fatigued when you take that nonlethal damage, which causes -2 Dex and -2 Str and you can't run or charge, and requires a different DC 15+mods check to reduce (which is different from how Fatigue normally works, and may or may not interact with spells that cure Fatigue). You might not want to run both of these, or you might find it ideal to make the players slowly figure out all the little different ails they've run into and how to fix them as part of the punishment of wilderness survival.
-If magical Frostburn damage comes up, it can be hard to find the reference (page 17), and has its own little rules: it turns into perfectly normal damage if you can get to Moderate temperature, but otherwise requires a massive DC 25 CL check to magically and cannot be naturally healed if you cant get out of the Cold band- but Frostburn damage does not inherently cause frostbite or hypothermia. As the section says, you can use the Moderate temperature requirement to make the outside temperature matter ("control temperature becomes invaluable") even if technically the character was doing fine thanks to their cold protection. Your players might not like this distinction, however, so figure out how you're going to run and describe it beforehand. And on the other hand, creatures that cause magical frostburn damage in areas that aren't actually cold, aren't any better than normal cold damage.


The way most people seem to play, and even the way it is generally presented, DnD has no real continual risk. Either you're fighting something, or you're not. Maybe, if they're old-fashioned, your DM actually rolls regular random encounter checks and you might have to fight something when you're not at your best, which might even be a decent threat- but even then serious assassination attempts are frowned upon. The PCs are either clearly in danger, or not, and they're not then they have no ongoing problem. No fear, no stretch on supplies, just a future 20x20 room with some orcs to shoot when they decide to leave stasis. Adding a continual hazard changes that: now resources must be dedicated to simply continuing to exist (even permanent items representing a critical point of failure if lost), and if you can't fully negate the danger than you're on an actual serious "we're taking X damage per Y time" time limit. And unlike drowning, the heat/cold rules kill slowly enough that you can seriously turn up the pressure without risking an unintended PC death. Good stuff.

[pabelfly]

Probably less relevant in your situation, but: tell the players that anything they haven't written on their character sheet, their character does not have. When half of them show up failing to write down clothing, laugh as you magnanimously grant them pants to keep the game PG and watch them scramble to cover themselves in layers of rags taken from corpses to avoid freezing to death.

(This is what happened when I ran some of World's Largest Dungeon with freezing temperatures in the first zone).

If you manage to get the bruisers to take the heavy armor off, make sure to have some light combats where that lack of armor matters, or will matter if they don't handle things some other way. On the other hand, if this gets someone to go from two-handed to sword-n-board, balancing AC vs not freezing to death, cool.

Aside from direct magic, more levels means more cash for even the non-magical solutions, and if extradimensional storage is cheap and easy in your game it makes carrying all that (or armor you've taken off while it's cold) that much easier. Figure out what you're going to allow as "Improvised Shelter" beforehand, since there is an expensive and heavy item which says all it does is give that bonus: either this item is useless, or "improvised" shelter is actually only "DM's mercy."

Water hazards go from "lol I tie a rope to a tree" to "we're all gonna die" when it's cold enough.

For describing those temperature variations, don't forget wind chill.

Make sure you're comfortable with the minutiae of the cold effects you're going to be using:
-Saintheart mentioned how any time you take nonlethal from cold, you get Frostbite causing -2 Dex- this takes a DC 15 Heal check (plus bonus/penalties if you're still cold/warm/etc) to remove.
-But this is separate from Hypothermia (on the same page 10 in Frostburn) which says you also get Fatigued when you take that nonlethal damage, which causes -2 Dex and -2 Str and you can't run or charge, and requires a different DC 15+mods check to reduce (which is different from how Fatigue normally works, and may or may not interact with spells that cure Fatigue). You might not want to run both of these, or you might find it ideal to make the players slowly figure out all the little different ails they've run into and how to fix them as part of the punishment of wilderness survival.
-If magical Frostburn damage comes up, it can be hard to find the reference (page 17), and has its own little rules: it turns into perfectly normal damage if you can get to Moderate temperature, but otherwise requires a massive DC 25 CL check to magically and cannot be naturally healed if you cant get out of the Cold band- but Frostburn damage does not inherently cause frostbite or hypothermia. As the section says, you can use the Moderate temperature requirement to make the outside temperature matter ("control temperature becomes invaluable") even if technically the character was doing fine thanks to their cold protection. Your players might not like this distinction, however, so figure out how you're going to run and describe it beforehand. And on the other hand, creatures that cause magical frostburn damage in areas that aren't actually cold, aren't any better than normal cold damage.


The way most people seem to play, and even the way it is generally presented, DnD has no real continual risk. Either you're fighting something, or you're not. Maybe, if they're old-fashioned, your DM actually rolls regular random encounter checks and you might have to fight something when you're not at your best, which might even be a decent threat- but even then serious assassination attempts are frowned upon. The PCs are either clearly in danger, or not, and they're not then they have no ongoing problem. No fear, no stretch on supplies, just a future 20x20 room with some orcs to shoot when they decide to leave stasis. Adding a continual hazard changes that: now resources must be dedicated to simply continuing to exist (even permanent items representing a critical point of failure if lost), and if you can't fully negate the danger than you're on an actual serious "we're taking X damage per Y time" time limit. And unlike drowning, the heat/cold rules kill slowly enough that you can seriously turn up the pressure without risking an unintended PC death. Good stuff.

Thanks for the tips. I'm actually looking forward to doing environmental hazards, especially using monsters when players are suffering fatigue and possibly exhaustion.

[PraxisVetli]

I had a thread some time ago discussing blizzard's effects and things like Do potions Freeze (they do).

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?622627-Weather-CR0

[pabelfly]

I had a thread some time ago discussing blizzard's effects and things like Do potions Freeze (they do).

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?622627-Weather-CR0

Thanks for the thread link.

So I think my players will be fairly prepared for the cold since we went over Frostburn cold-weather gear the session prior. I'm actually more excited about high altitude sickness and very high altitude sickness, since they'll have to deal with fatigue and exhaustion, encumbrance and carry weight will matter for some party members that haven't invested in strength to a ridiculous degree. Hopefully all of this might even make the encounter with the white dragon more interesting to boot.