Nerfing Create Water (yes, really!) or how to make desert survival actually matter [Archive]

Aotrs Commander

2023-07-08, 07:55 AM

So as I was reminded today, Create Water is something of a problem.

It is an example of why I call a story-breaking spell. A spell which, while it might not have any particularly mechanic-breaking power, completely circumvents some challenges - and also undermine the actual world-building, unless playing a tippy-verse style campaign. (Which I wouldn't, personally.)

In this specific case, I am running a mega-campaign in Osirion (i.e. A Desert), framed around the Mummy's Mask adventure path, but mixing in AD&D's Deserts of Desolation, and as many PF1 Osirion modules and society bits as I could cram in.

Part of that campaign is explictly a desert sirvival scenario, which the PCs will reach at a first-order magnitude pass estimated level of 8. (It might be higher.)

According to the rules (PF1's specifically) a Medium creature ina hot environment requires 1 gallon of water per day, two if the temperature spikes.

Create Water, a 0th level spell, can create 2 gallons/level.

In 3.5, this would mean a single spellcaster would only be able to cast it four times. (8 gallaons/level.) Pathfinder 1 has this unlimited, but i have already capped some captrips - Create Water among them - to only be able to be cast four times (same number as you would in 3.5) before being expended.

However, that's still 64 gallons of water per day at level 8 (from a single 0th level spell slot) - eight cubic feet, so maybe a bathfull? That means a single oth level spell slot can obiviate the need for the party to carry water, as that would be enough for eight party members AND THEIR CAMELS (at 4 gallons/day so a total of 40 gallons), but horror of horrors, they'd require a second 0th level spell slot for hot days (where they'd need 80 gallons).

This kind of defeats the point of, like, ever having any challenge in survival.

"But Aotrs, adventurers shouldn't ever have to worry about being attacked while resting or food or water, that's something that they should be able to hand-wave away as never being important!" I disagree and I don't want them to do that. Especially in a campaign in which that's... Kind of a point.

So, I need to fix one of two things.

One, nerf Create Water; either by reducing the amount it creates, or perhaps more reasonably, limiting the amount of water it can create per cast (ala spell damage dice cap) - or even, perhaps, raising the level of the spell. To the point it should mitigate - but not obiviate - the amount of water the PCs will have to deal with.

Two, adjudicate whether the quoted 1-2 gallons of water per day is actually (close enough to being) right and to adjust if not.

I am entirely open to other suggestions on how to make this work; perhaps by making sure the PCs carry sufficient containers for that water, but that seems (by the time you add a camel) almost trivial to fix.

One other factor in play in this specific case is a limiaton of the character classes the PCs can choose - specifially, they are not allowed to have any of the classes that have seen regular use (which basically wipes out the entire core classes of both 3.5/PF1), which should mitigate stuff like Rope Trick/Magnificant Mansion et al shanigans.

(This time. I was EXTREMELY generous to the current campaign's party in allowing the wizr to have a special, upgraded version of Rope Trick that was 3rd level but did not asplode when the party took the Handy Haversacks in it when I realised that was what would happen with the regular version.)

Create Food and Water is another potential problem, but at least that's coming off a 3rd level spell slot and would require either and oracle burnig a spell learned or a shaman in the party, neither of which is guarenteed; and scrolls, of course, would cost more.

pabelfly

2023-07-08, 08:22 AM

Why not simply ban "Create Water", say it doesn't work, or that it needs a higher-level spell slot?

ShurikVch

2023-07-08, 08:42 AM

Forget about Create Water - what's about Survival 10 (https://www.aonprd.com/Skills.aspx?ItemName=Survival)?

Get along in the wild. Move up to half your overland speed while hunting and foraging (no food or water supplies needed). You can provide food and water for one other person for every 2 points by which your check result exceeds 10.

Beni-Kujaku

2023-07-08, 08:57 AM

Aotrs Commander

2023-07-08, 09:15 AM

Forget about Create Water - what's about Survival 10 (https://www.aonprd.com/Skills.aspx?ItemName=Survival)?

And this is why I make threads - I'd totally forgotten that. Duh.

However, to the rescue; the PFSRD has an additional paragraph.

Finding Water

Source PCS:Q2016

One of the most vital tasks in traveling deserts is locating the next water source. An individual requires roughly a gallon of water a day while traveling in a desert’s heat, or more if she wishes to have enough to bathe or cool off. The temperatures around oases are often cooler due to the presence of water and shade, making them important resources for resting, treating sunburn, and so on. A gallon of water weighs about 8 pounds, meaning that 3 to 4 days’ worth of water constitutes a light load, or half of a Medium load, for an average PC. Create water can only conjure 2 gallons per caster level, which makes scrolls or even wands of create water limited in their usefulness when multiple people require water.

The Survival skill can help characters find water and survive in the wilds, but in deep deserts off of established trade routes, water and food alike are difficult to come by. In these harsh, remote regions, the DCs of Survival checks to get along in the wild increase to 20, and an adventurer can provide food and water for one other person for every 4 points by which the check result exceeds the DC. At the GM’s discretion, a roll of a natural 20 can indicate the discovery of a small but reliable oasis.

The part in red is very funny, because the author apparently forgot Create Water is a cantrip that can be spammed at will in Pathfinder... They were clearly working with the same INTENTION as me, to not make it trivial to ignore looking for water.

The bolded part is more useful.

But the point is extremely well made. And i think there's definitely something here. I've never run (or really played, even) in a campaign that wasn;t temperate based, and one feels that DC 10 for getting along in the wild is fine for temperate regions... But a bit silly for, like, deserts. As this says, by RAW, a commoner with no skills has a 50% chance of finding enough food and water to survive one day in ANY environment, which could give you a fair chance of surviving for extended periods, and that's with literally no investment.

Which now that I actually am stopping to consider it... Is kind of not good. A bit of a classic case of "3.5 (or 3.0) did this, it works for temperate, nobody gave it anymore thought (including me until now."

At the very least, then, I need to implement the bolded paragraph, if not straight-up revise the skill entirely.

Thank you, that's an immediate issue found!

SirNibbles

2023-07-08, 09:16 AM

Yeah, in a survival campaign, there's no reason to not ban it. It won't affect anything else in the game, and allow your scenario to work. Basically you can say "Well, it doesn't really create water per se, but condenses water from the air, and it doesn't work in especially dry areas", and "Survival checks cannot help you find food when there's no food at all.".

Agreed on simply banning the spell, or making it a higher level spell. It is a savior against certain death so I think even in a regular campaign it is undervalued.

As for survival, you could impose penalties for areas where food is scarce, or even make the checks impossible for water in the desert, but they still should be allowed to take the action which does require them to move at half speed all day.

The lack of water could be solved by drinking from desert plants such as cacti if they are present in your campaign setting, though not all succulents are safe to drink from.

Other things to consider are desert wells and oases, which may or may not be guarded or have fees to drink from.

EDIT: PF's rules seem a little less defined when it comes to heat compared to those of 3.5:

THIRST
In normal climates, Medium creatures need at least a gallon of fluids per day. Smaller creatures need half as much per size category smaller, and larger creatures need four times as much per size category larger.

In very hot climates, creatures need more water to avoid dehydration. In environments above 90° F, creatures need double the normal amount. The amount of water required to avoid dehydration increases by a factor of 1 per temperature band (see page 154) higher than hot—a Small creature needs 1-1/2 gallons in severe heat, 2 in extreme heat, and so on. A creature can go without water for a number of hours equal to 24 + its Constitution score. After this time, the creature must succeed on a Constitution check each hour (DC 10, +1 for each previous check) or take 1d6 points of nonlethal damage. In environments above 90° F), the time a creature can go without water before making Constitution checks is reduced, as shown on the table below.

Creatures that have taken nonlethal damage from lack of water are considered dehydrated and become fatigued. If a dehydrated creature would take nonlethal damage from hot environmental conditions, that damage instead becomes lethal damage.

Rules Compendium, page 140

Just to Browse

2023-07-08, 10:42 AM

My bias is to increase the level of all spells that create water, rather than banning them. It changes the decision from "do you have create water?" to "how many spell slots can you afford to spend on create water?". It also changes the scope of play; at low levels you will have a limited travel range based on how much water you can carry, but at high levels you can trivially spend a couple spell slots, allowing the party to travel in comfort for weeks.

If the estimated level for that survival section is lv8, I would increase the level of all water-creation spells by something absurd like 3 or 4 levels.

Quertus

2023-07-08, 10:43 AM

Let me start by adding a third vector (after “spells” and “character skills” (ie, Survival)): player skill. So, things like looking for cacti, traveling at night, building condensation factories, etc.

Now let me add a 4th vector: race. Warforged, Bone template, Elan - plenty of races that can just ignore these problems.

And a 5th vector: items. Mostly the Decanter of Infinite Endless Water, but also Eternal Wands or simple scrolls or Heward’s Handy Haversack can change the difficulty of the challenge.

That out of the way, on to my PoV. My personal stance is, the point of having a character with Create Water is that they can bypass these challenges easily. Same for a Ranger, a Warforged, or just someone prepared for the environment with a camel or Decanter of Endless Water.

The true difficulty isn’t set by the challenge, but by the combination of the challenge and the characters. That is, DC 50 Spellcraft check may be impossible for a 1st level Barbarian (or even most epic level Barbarians), but it’s trivial for Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named. And that’s a good thing.

So, OP, if you’re dead set on forcing something to be challenging (which I don’t recommend in the general case), then don’t hack the rules. Instead, talk to your players, and ask them to bring characters for which this scenario is challenging.

But, before you do that, ask yourself why that’s important. Ask yourself what set of solutions you expect them to implement / would consider valid, and ask yourself why it’s important to railroad them into only using those solutions, instead of the solutions they want to implement to the problem at hand.

Because, at my tables, a GM says “Survival scenario”, and you can expect to see a Bone Druid with maxed out Survival, and an Elan Cleric with Create Water / Create Food and Water, and the players to still be worried they’re not adequately prepared for all possible meanings of “Survival”.

EDIT: that said, I’m more about “how does this party deal with…”, with “suddenly, Survival” (and “suddenly, Spellcraft DC50”, and “suddenly…” etc) than with the concept of a Survival-themed campaign. Shrug.

Gruftzwerg

2023-07-08, 10:50 AM

For a desert campaign I would suggest to have a look into the Dark Sun 3 rules (updated for 3.5). Here the official link (https://www.athas.org/products/ds3).

I have to admit that I didn't really get much into it myself, but I bet they have some rule variations that should be fitting for your campaign.

Seward

2023-07-08, 11:24 AM

Troacctid

2023-07-08, 11:50 AM

If you want this to be a special challenge that isn't easily bypassed by the tools that are designed specifically to be used against challenges like this—which I don't really understand why that would be necessary, but whatever—you should be thinking about why you want dehydration to be a concern in the first place. It can't be for verisimilitude, because if it were, the players using magic to bypass it shouldn't be an issue; that's exactly what you would expect characters in the world to do. Are you trying to put a time pressure on the mission? Are you trying to encourage players to interact with the environment in particular ways? Are you trying to create a sense that the environment itself is hostile and unsafe?

The fact of the matter is that the wilderness survival rules were deliberately designed to be flimsy challenges that can be really circumvented, and you shouldn't be leaning on them to provide any real danger. Regardless of what your reasons are, you'd be better off changing the desert, rather than nerfing the spell. All the deadliest deserts in fantasy fiction have some kind of additional magical elements that provide extra levels of danger. Maybe the land carries a withering curse, or maybe it's linked to the Plane of Fire, or maybe the sand itself is toxic.

If you don't add anything extra, your players are probably just going to circumvent the environmental dangers in some other incredibly trivial way, because that's just how environmental dangers are designed to work.

Aotrs Commander

2023-07-08, 04:05 PM

Don't forget Create Food and Water. As a L3 cleric/shaman spell it isn't as problematic as create water for this kind of scenario, but it'll feed and water the entire party for one spell slot a day (by the time you can cast it at L5 the spell will support 15 humans or 5 horses. )

That's entirely worth it in a desert situation.

Hero Feast does something similar too but as a L6 spell it isn't likely to come up.

Endure elements is also somewhat problematic for trivializing desert environments, although honestly simply traveling at night mitigates most desert dangers not tied to food/water, if you can shelter during the day (spells that create shelters or dig rapidly are pretty helpful, plus of course your rope trick line of spells)

Other spells that bypass desert challenges. Mount means not having to bring pack animals and all the issues they cause. Tenser's Disk is also helpful that way. (Mount+Tenser Disk lets the caster ride and the baggage/other party members float behind them) Phantom Steed lets you cross terrain really fast, Phantom Chariot (and driver perhaps) does it for the whole party.

There's other stuff on the druid list that might be problematic too. You'll need a deep dive in the spell lists for any class you allow to be sure somebody in the party won't trivialize an aspect of this challenge you consider important. Stuff like Dream Feast, Expeditious Excavation, Hidden Spring, Nature's Paths, Read Weather, Ant Haul, Deadeye Lore, Ice Armor, Crafter's Fortune, recharge innate magic (if a spell-like racial is problematic) are all L1 spells that might impact this kind of campaign on cleric, druid or wizard spell lists, in addition to stuff I mentioned above.

snip

A fairly simple "fix" would be to limit primary casters with access to these lists to spont casters, with each spell chosen being vetted by GM for appropriateness to the campaign. Prep casters, especially divinie prep casters are extremely problematic if you don't want to just campaign ban large numbers of spells across the board. Spont casters limit the issue to PC's, but allow for consumables/NPCs/items etc which might be highly valued in emergencies but not routinely trivialize survival challenges.

Dutifully checked up on all of those; of those on the 3.Aotrs spell list, aside from the as-mentioned Create Food and Water, the others are not going to be major problems, I think, given the party size of eight. The prep casters thing is already a fair bit taken care of, since there will be no wizards, clerics, archivists or druids (as part of the Usual Suspects that this party says they can't have, which includes most of the core classes, actually...) and thus they would be slightly more of an investment to perform.

(They aren't getting the super-special version on Rope Trick, so either they use the regular one and don't have group preferred Handy Haversacks or they have to have at least some people on watch.)

QUOTE=Seward]As others have noted, the mundane Surival skill is also very problematic (doubly so if skill boost spells exist). That skill is intended and designed to allow all of this kind of thing to be handwaved for a few skill points spent by somebody in the party, VERY few if spent by someone with decent wisdom. Modifying DCs will help, but high skill rolls are pretty easy to cheese if the GM isn't paying attention and/or you don't have a social contract with the players not to try to break the meta-situation.[/quote]

Thanks to this thread, I have definitely addressed that issue, which was this afternoon's work. Having done that, it was now a simply fix to adjust Create Food and Water to fall in line with that, so that it isn't quite so strong.

I have adjusted Create Water to be expended after one casting and to create 8 gallons of water. Still largely obviates having to carry water, but it is bit more sensible. I made a new Greater Create Water as a higher level spell (4th, same as Minor Creation, since it IS creating summat out of nowt) that generates as 8 gallons/level (as much as four cantrip's worth); I am still half convinced it should be half that, mesen, but never let it be said I don't at least consider what people say, even if I don't agree with them.) Why do it at all? Because I am not then completely removing whatever shanigans 8 gallons/water per level can do entirely from the game (for things I cannot forsee, but which do not necessarily pertain to being used for desert survival), just making it a bit harder to do.

That out of the way, on to my PoV. My personal stance is, the point of having a character with Create Water is that they can bypass these challenges easily.

I don't want players to bypass challenges, I want them to engage with them. And in more of a way than "I use this one ability that makes it not be a challenge."

That means nobody gets to Thanos-snap the BBEG instead of having a good fight (if i want that sort of fight, we'll play Rolemaster), nobody gets to "roll diplomacy" instead of having to roleplay, or in this case, completely trivialise the survival campaign with 0th level spells.

(I appeciate that currently, traps have been basically just "roll dice to bypass" since 3.0 and I really need to work on trying to make them much more interactive (hopefully the more modern Paizo stuff will be); something I have done when fully writing my own quests, but not when it's just been "and this chest is trapped with [x].")

So, OP, if you’re dead set on forcing something to be challenging (which I don’t recommend in the general case), then don’t hack the rules.

That's a cause lost before it even started, I'm afraid; let me put it to you this way - there is no set of rules of any wargame or RPG I have ever played seriously in since I started gaming that I have NOT significantly modified the rules for. (The ones that I didn't play seriously - i.e. extensively - were ones that were tried and discarded as having nothing to offer over the other existant systems.)

As noted, I have just spent most of the day working on re-codifying the rules for diet, survivial and starvation and I can hear you all screaming internally as I say that.

I can probably upset you all more by saying that 3.Aotrs also has rules for bulk (in addition to weight), Long-Term Exhaustion, malnutrition and sleep deprivation... The latter three of which, in the case of normal play, will likely never come up.

Rules-smithing is just what I DO.

Instead, talk to your players, and ask them to bring characters for which this scenario is challenging.

I gave them a 20-page player's guide as a pre-pre campaign brief (we are a long way off still) and when I've completed... Basically today's rule stuff and talking at you folk, I'll send them an update to the bits of the rules. (I can almost certainly guarntee you there will be no commentary from all but maybe one of them...)

SirNibbles

2023-07-08, 04:36 PM

Another thing to keep in mind for a desert campaign is that water sources (and potions) may evaporate:

Burning Heat: At some point, increasing temperatures push past even unearthly heat and graduate to actual burning—when material objects catch fire spontaneously due to the heat. For instance, paper catches fire at 451º F (and dried-out skin catches fire at around the same temperature). Characters carrying fuel for their lamps or other combustibles discover that it catches fire at around 260º F. Water boils at approximately 212º F (depending on barometric pressure), and many potions or elixirs could quickly boil away to nothing somewhere near that temperature range.

Sandstorm, page 13

I don't know if the intent is for a sealed potion to turn to steam and destroy its container, or if it simply squeezes out of its container, or if it just evaporates when you try to open the potion to drink it.

___

Here's the rule for cold weather, which you may or may not need for the coldest desert nights:

Any liquid exposed to freezing temperatures freezes after 1 hour of continued exposure. Frozen liquid must be thawed before it can be used; one serving of frozen liquid can be thawed by a single torch’s flame in 10 minutes. The thaw spell can do the same in the matter of an instant. Water freezes at 32° F, but most potions are made of hardier stuff and freeze at temperatures of 20° F or lower. Oils are even more difficult to freeze, and only do so at temperatures of –20° F or lower. A frozen potion’s or oil’s magical qualities are unharmed by freezing, although the liquid must be thawed before it can be used.

Frostburn, page 79

Quertus

2023-07-08, 06:18 PM

I don't want players to bypass challenges, I want them to engage with them. And in more of a way than "I use this one ability that makes it not be a challenge."

Right. So... if the players do a quick Google search, and report back to you that camels can survive up to 7 months (!) without water, or if they go for undead mounts, or phantom steed tech, or any of the other numerous techs available to them to chip away at the problem without necessarily 1-shotting it, your response would be... what?

If one player just wasn't interested in engaging with that particular part of the premise, and brought a Warforged, an Elan, an Undead, etc... a) is there any other premise, anything left to the campaign for them to interact with; b) your response would be... what?

Which circles back to my question, why do you want them to engage with this particular challenge? Would the campaign be any less interesting if they were a group of undead adventurers, who laughed at the weak organic creatures who suffered in the desert, who actually used the setting to their advantage, destroying others' water while not caring about it themselves? Or a group of Warforged chefs who were busy practicing frying eggs on themselves / each other as them marched across the dunes? In what way would this alternate engagement with the setting be bad?

I don't want players to bypass challenges, I want them to engage with them. And in more of a way than "I use this one ability that makes it not be a challenge."

That's a cause lost before it even started, I'm afraid; let me put it to you this way - there is no set of rules of any wargame or RPG I have ever played seriously in since I started gaming that I have NOT significantly modified the rules for. (The ones that I didn't play seriously - i.e. extensively - were ones that were tried and discarded as having nothing to offer over the other existant systems.)

I mean, I've played with actual players (see also "no adventure survives contact with the players") - my experience says that wanting them to engage with challenges is a "cause lost before it even started", as (at least the players I've encountered) have brains, and will pull out concepts like "Camels can go up to 7 months without water" and "why don't we just destroy the dam" and "shoot the hostage" and so on, rather than engage in a challenge that they don't like, or that doesn't favor them. While I appreciate the concept of trying to make rules "better", when that better isn't "simulate a camel's ability to go 7 months without water" but "you will suffer from dehydration, dagnabbit!", I just don't see the point of putting forth the effort when it's a house of cards, and missing even a single thing makes the whole house of cards collapse into a non-challenge when the players just divert a river or something.

So, maybe I'm missing something, but, again, what kind of solutions are you willing to accept, and why? Like, if "enough" PCs came with Create Water, and they rode Camels, and traveled at night to remove the "double water from high heat" issues, would you just agree, yeah, unless key members get taken out, they've "solved" the water problem, and move on? Or would that be unsatisfying?

Maat Mons

2023-07-08, 07:29 PM

My advice is, do all your survival-oriented games at low level. The higher level the party is, the more types of things cease to be challenging for them. It’s basically what makes high levels not just low levels with bigger numbers. Survival challenges are inherently low-CR.

Personally, I buy a Ring of Sustenance for every character, wealth permitting. This is especially true in Pathfinder, where it lets you prepare spells with only 2 hours of rest. It’s mostly to spend less time unconscious in hostile environments, but no longer needing food and water is a nice bonus.

If you’re using Pathfinder rules, it’s perfectly safe to bring a Handy Haversack into a Rope Trick.

A number of spells and magic items utilize extradimensional spaces, such as rope trick, a bag of holding, a handy haversack, and a portable hole. These spells and magic items create a tiny pocket space that does not exist in any dimension. Such items do not function, however, inside another extradimensional space. If placed inside such a space, they cease to function until removed from the extradimensional space. For example, if a bag of holding is brought into a rope trick, the contents of the bag of holding become inaccessible until the bag of holding is taken outside the rope trick. The only exception to this is when a bag of holding and a portable hole interact, forming a rift to the Astral Plane, as noted in their descriptions.

The best thing about PnP gaming, the thing that makes it worth all the trouble, when you could just play a video game, is that it allows for infinite creativity. In a video game, there are a finite number of ways the player is allowed to deal with a problem. If the DM quashes any attempts at outside-the-box thinking, you’re giving up the major selling point of the genre.

I would much rather have players engage their minds to find a novel way to circumvent an obstacle than have them obligingly follow a path I’ve laid out for them. I mean, if everything always goes as the DM plans, then the players don’t really have any agency, do they?

Quertus

2023-07-09, 09:41 PM

It occurs to me that getting the party across the desert has so many solutions that, regardless of whether Create Water is unlimited water from unlimited cantrips, it's likely a trivial problem unless the system and world are hacked to the point of being unrecognizable. However, where this makes a big difference is at a large scale: if a town suddenly finds itself without water / with its oasis drying up, or if the PCs (or someone else) want to march an army into / out of / across the desert, if the module has you scratching your head why some group hasn't crossed the desert / left their oasis / whatever before now, etc. At that point, I think only... infinite cantrips, Decanter of Endless Water, taking 10 on DC 10 Survival checks, turning everyone Undead, (hiring a small army to help with) crafting an aqueduct as you go (if starting from a river outside the desert and working inwards), or maybe liberal use of Control Weather or Craft:Well could scale to support such large numbers.

Gemini476

2023-07-10, 10:14 AM

Honestly, Create Water's just one of those spells where it becomes really obvious that D&D cares less and less about Outdoor Survival as time goes on.

OD&D: 4th-level spell, waters a dozen men and horses. Double the amount for every level above 8. This is a spell for keeping your 170-odd god-given zealots alive. (Basic D&D follows this, later.)
1E: 1st-level spell, four gallons of water per level. Requires a drop of water to create more. It's reversible, so only good-ish Clerics will cast this while evil ones stick to Destroy Water.
2E: As above, but they add a note that water is ~8½ lbs./gal and ~64 lbs./ft3.
3E: It's now a 0th-level cantrip since those exist, but only makes two gallons per level. It adds a note that one cubic foot is about eight gallons and simplifies it to 60 pounds, I guess. (Checking Wolfram Alpha it's really closer to 62.2 lbs., so they're both wrong.)
4E: Traveller's Feast is a 4th-level Ritual that, for 35gp, gives food and water for five Medium or Small creatures for 24 hours. Notably the one place where this really matters, the Dark Sun Campaign Setting, they just... outright tell you to treat the ritual (and some other class features and magic items) as if it doesn't exist.
5E: Create or Destroy Water is back to ruin your desert campaign. It's a 1st-level spell, now, and makes ten gallons of water right from level 1 - with every spell slot it's "heightened" increasing it by ten gallons.

With every edition, it gets easier and easier to cast and makes it easier and easier to keep your party quenched.

...Also, note that by the time the party is level 8 they're largely getting beyond the need for wilderness survival just, like, in general? That's a low-level concern when you're poor and lacking in magic, not something to worry about when you're getting close to the levels where you can just teleport right from the oasis to the dungeon entrance with 30 gallons of water in your Bag of Holding (type I). Or rent out an entire caravan.

If you want the lack of water to actually matter in your campaign, I'd recommend that you just... follow the advice of the 4E Dark Sun Campaign Setting and delete the spell from your campaign setting as a whole. The same goes for any non-drinking races and other abilities, if you don't just want your party to swap over to being a bunch of robots that don't need to worry about that stuff.

ericgrau

2023-07-10, 10:17 AM

IMO you have most of the answers for create water now. You may also want to look into other spells like endure elements. And other spells 5e removed for grittiness. AFAIK you can't get endure elements at any level or via any item in 5e (or at least I haven't found it yet), but raising the spell level instead of banning it is also a good solution similar to create water. In general I'd ask players to run splatbook survival spells by you as they will likely go up in level. But let them know if they won't be unplayable and if they should still consider them.

Doctor Despair

2023-07-10, 10:41 AM

Honestly, Create Water's just one of those spells where it becomes really obvious that D&D cares less and less about Outdoor Survival as time goes on.

...Also, note that by the time the party is level 8 they're largely getting beyond the need for wilderness survival just, like, in general? That's a low-level concern when you're poor and lacking in magic, not something to worry about when you're getting close to the levels where you can just teleport right from the oasis to the dungeon entrance with 30 gallons of water in your Bag of Holding (type I). Or rent out an entire caravan.

As noted: you could also restrict levels for this adventure. Make them not level 8 adventurers.

I'll add a note to the fact that, as the DM, you can just add custom magic effects. Make the desert cursed such that any nonliving liquid (read: not part of a living creature) within its area instantly evaporates (and it extends up to 100 feet through extradimensional portals when opened, so opening a bag of holding causes all the liquid inside to do the same). They literally can't make/bring water with them. It's desolate and lifeless. Now they really have to think about how they'll bypass this (assuming you ban undead/construct races and don't have rings of sustenance around). Maybe you make some special locations or towns that somehow eek out an existence they can beeline to before they succumb.

Alternatively: make the entire desert radiate a low-grade anti-magic field that blocks spells that are level 2 or lower and suppresses magic items that are caster level 4 or lower. Casters still get to cast their stronger spells, but no create water -- unless they dedicated a higher-level spell known to casting an alternative spell with a similar effect. Again, you'd need to ban the ring of sustenance and undead/construct races.

Replace rust monsters with desiccation monsters (there's probably actually similar monsters in Sandstorm). They rush the party and target the sources with the most non-living liquid water on them. A desiccation monster that makes a successful touch attack causes the target liquid in the struck container to evaporate, drained completely away immediately. The touch can destroy up to a 10-foot cube of liquid instantly. Magic liquid, such as potions, must succeed on a DC X Reflex save or be drained.

You're already homebrewing. Get creative if you want this to be a challenge. I hope there's other challenges though, as Quertus said.

Rynjin

2023-07-10, 10:57 AM

I'm trying to figure out why there is a conception that 8th level characters should be more than mildly inconvenienced by a trek across the desert? These characters are one level away from being able to simply Teleport across said desert entirely.

Wilderness survival works great as a low level challenge in Pathfinder, especially if you're trying to fend for a bunch of people dependent on you; several campaigns, such as Ironfang Invasion and Serpent's Skull rely on this conceit.

But those campaigns do it in book 1 for a reason. High level characters have more tools to overcome challenges, that's the entire point of leveling.

Why treat level 8 characters as if they're level 1?

King of Nowhere

2023-07-10, 11:17 AM

The llimitation I put in place in my world to prevent "infinite X" loops can also help you here: it says that you cannot permanently create anything with magic without paying a cost. So, a fireball will create sudden heat, then the heat will disappear - but it already dealt the damage, so it's fine. but all the spells that create something permanently, the duration is reduced to hours or days. unless you pay xp or diamonds or other similar valuable components.

how does that translate to create food and water?
well, you create the water, and you drink it, but it will disappear eventually. the food you consumed for energy, burned into CO2 through the krebs cycle, that CO2 will eventually disappear, but you already got energy out of it, and while heat will also locally disappear to comply with the laws of thermodinamics, as far as your body is concerned you gained the energy. but those proteins you ate that your body used to build up stuff, those will disappear. that magically conjured water, that will disappear eventually.
If you ate small amounts of conjured food/water, the molecules will disappear gradually from inside your body; but molecules break up inside your body all the time, you're built for it, it's not a big deal. But if you eat nothing but conjured food, you're going to evaporate.
And this is also why you can't use a decanter of endless water to irrigate the desert, or do anything else that would break the world economy.

You can use conjured food in a pinch, it will sustain you for a while. But you need a regular intake of real food, or you'll still starve.
In your case, create water will sustain the party for a few days, it's a useful tool to have, but it doesn't negate the need for real food and water.

it's effectively a nerf; the spell still exhist, it's still useful, it doesn't flat out solve the problem. would that be good for your purposes?

That's a cause lost before it even started, I'm afraid; let me put it to you this way - there is no set of rules of any wargame or RPG I have ever played seriously in since I started gaming that I have NOT significantly modified the rules for.

Aaah, I sense a kindred spirit. Go ahead and don't let others in this forum tell you that you're doing it wrong.

Forget about Create Water - what's about Survival 10 (https://www.aonprd.com/Skills.aspx?ItemName=Survival)?

as others already pointed out, the dm is fully justified in raising the DC for particularly hostile environment. Heck, if the party was stranded into the middle of antartica, you'd be perfectly justified telling them that no, a roll of 100 on survival does not enable them to find food because there isn't any food there. just like a high search check does not allow you to find a treasure that don't exhist

MonochromeTiger

2023-07-10, 01:13 PM

You're running into a pretty common issue with trying to run a survival scenario in... well not just Pathfinder, most RPGs really. The rules aren't really built for it, they have some environmental effects that can be dangerous and they have some supplements or side notes that could be used to try making a survival scenario but put simply most of these games have too many answers to too many problems for you to really catch everything needed to make a survival scenario as "do or die" as you seem to want.

Going by Pathfinder 1e, level 8 will have full casters like Wizard, Cleric, and Druid casting spells up to SL4 and partial casters like Bard and Paladin between SL2-3 depending on if they're more magic focused (bard) or more martial focused (paladin). Just from the Wizard/Sorcerer spell list and keeping strictly to spells from Paizo's own content you've got plenty that could be used to negate or mitigate the heat of a desert going up to SL4 and I can list off a few that don't even account for creative uses.

Keeping only to Wizard/Sorcerer list, only official spells, and only the ones that specifically mention making water or dealing with extreme heat or give a way of being out of the elements completely and excluding any that can also cause damage.
SL0/Cantrips: Drench, Create Water, Breeze.
SL1: Endure Elements, Gentle Breeze.
SL2: Communal Endure Elements, Rope Trick.
SL3: Conjure Carriage, Tiny Hut.
SL4: Anywhere But Here (bonus points for also getting you out of the desert entirely by jumping to a random plane), Secure Shelter, Shadowy Haven.

Those range from bonuses against extreme heat to creating water that can negate the threat from not finding water normally to letting the players create a refuge out of the sun (in the case of Conjure Carriage it even lets them keep moving while technically in the shade). It doesn't touch on creative uses of magic like using Wall of Ice and melting it with a strong fire effect to get water. It doesn't mention using any of the transformation effects like Beast Shape to use a form adapted to the environment, Gaseous Form to technically not be subject to the desert's heat in the same way, or Elemental Body for the obvious counters to environmental effects. It doesn't go into how many movement effects involve being out of the heat of the open air. It also doesn't include spell lists other than Wizard/Sorcerer and the other counters those have like how Clerics and Druids can create a temporary spring of water at SL1 , Druids get Grove of Respite which provides food and water at SL4, and of course you can get into various tricks using other spell effects to similarly counter the situation.

It's not a system where survival scenarios were really built around from the start, it's a system where the main threat was supposed to be big monsters with too many teeth and claws. As a result getting a survival scenario to actually work and not either have some counter that negates it or, worse, actively punish people if they don't know those counters and just get unlucky, is difficult.

Lord Torath

2023-07-10, 03:01 PM

The 2E Dark Sun Rules Book dropped the amount of water created by Create Water and similar spells to just a 1/2 gallon per level. The average human-sized character needs 1 gallon of water per day (at least in 2E Dark Sun), so Aotrs Commander's player would only get 2 gallons of water spamming the cantrip 4 times a day. Well, assuming they're 1st level...

There was an official adventure where part of the plot hook was your water was lost in a sudden (magical) sandstorm, and the disguised BBEG tricked the party into helping him by giving them poisoned water (promising an antedote if they help him). And since the PCs had none, they'd obviously accept - except that we had a water cleric who could Create Water (1.5 gallons per casting) and two thri-kreen (need 1/8th the normal amount of water), so we didn't need any of his poisoned water. Exploring ancient ruins was interesting enough to get us to bite, however.

Remuko

2023-07-10, 03:57 PM

SL4: Anywhere But Here (bonus points for also getting you out of the desert entirely by jumping to a random plane)

i had never heard of this spell and found the name funny so i looked it up. i doubt it would work

Target you and up to four willing creatures, none of whom can be on their home plane

underlined the important bit.

a bit more from the description portion

A creature can be affected by anywhere but here only if it is currently not on its home plane (although targets can, by chance, end up traveling to their home plane as a result of this spell). Subjects always appear in a location that is not inherently harmful, but the exact destination is otherwise random.

Wintermoot

2023-07-10, 07:13 PM

No one's quite sure how it happened. A genie's wish gone terribly wrong. An evil God's revenge. A mummy's curse.

No one knows why, but everyone knows what.

Sometime, a few months ago, the spell "create water" changed. Instead of creating water, every casting summons in a violent, hasted, tiny water elemental that immediately attacks and tries to kill everyone around it, including the caster. It only remains for three rounds before it disappears into a puff of dust, or until its killed. If you kill it, it explodes into a two gallon 30' burst of water, but good luck catching or capturing much.

Long considered a necessary boon to the people of the desert, now its become a curse. Clerics and priests who used to provide for their communities are now shunned and driven out lest they accidently create more evil water mephits that try to destroy the villages.

Perhaps the party can figure out what has happened and fix it, or perhaps they'll figure out how to properly weaponize the spell to their advantage.

Hunter Noventa

2023-07-11, 07:59 AM

I wouldn't ban the spell entirely, but make it's level variable by the environment. Its harder to create water in the hot, dry desert than it is at an oasis. (Why would you do it at an oasis? Maybe the actual oasis water is nasty).

You could also make it easier to cast at night when the temperature is low, but still not trivial. But if they stumble upon a cave with an underground spring they can't quite reach? Its free because they're pulling it from the spring instead.

False God

2023-07-11, 08:45 AM

Magical Desert

Certain spells don't work, or have reduced functionality.

Why? Dead dog, evil curse, too close to the elemental plane of fire, doesn't really matter. So long as whatever the problem is remains beyond the party's ability to quickly fix.

End of the day? Survival checks are harder and any spell to make it easier to survive is heavily restricted or just plain doesn't function. Go to cast "Create Water"? It makes sand instead.

You can come prepared with a "known limits" that locals can inform the party of, but maintaining the "it's magical" gives you the ability to restrict something you hadn't considered when it pops up.

-----

D&D isn't well suited for survival games. I quite enjoy the genre, but even at low levels some basic features can allow a party to bypass even some of the most difficult natural challenges. HOWEVER, D&D makes exceptions to most of these rules for magical environments.

So, short of "play a different system", IMO the easiest solution is just to say "the desert is magical".

satorian

2023-07-11, 08:47 AM

Were I a cleric player in this campaign, I'd keep quiet as the DM explained his ground rules. Even with all the troublesome spells listed on this thread, you're bound to forget several that could solve the problem trivially.

The problem isn't the desert. As others have said, it's 8th level characters don't care about most environmental hazards. This is by design. They're supposed to find ways to breath water so they can go beat up suhuagin and take their stuff, or fly to high aeries and steal the Sword of Wind from the lord of the eagles.

An 8th level cleric, empowered emissary of a very real and present god, doesn't find an oasis. An 8th level cleric is an oasis (and an 18th level cleric is a paradise).

Bronk

2023-07-11, 08:48 AM

Given everything you've said, I'd enforce the harshest desert rules from Sandstorm. I would also have monsters be able to smell the water, and attack the party for it ASAP, the biggest containers first. That will make the players think about what they're doing as they dole out just as much as they need each time create water is cast, while setting up guards and being worried about attacks. They'll have their water, but it'll be a thing each time, which is what you wanted I think.

I'd also throw some particularly zealous Anhydruts into the mix. If you're already going for forced desert survival mode, might as well have things they have to hide from and avoid as well.

Gnaeus

2023-07-11, 09:42 AM

But the point is extremely well made. And i think there's definitely something here. I've never run (or really played, even) in a campaign that wasn;t temperate based, and one feels that DC 10 for getting along in the wild is fine for temperate regions... But a bit silly for, like, deserts. As this says, by RAW, a commoner with no skills has a 50% chance of finding enough food and water to survive one day in ANY environment, which could give you a fair chance of surviving for extended periods, and that's with literally no investment.

Which now that I actually am stopping to consider it... Is kind of not good. A bit of a classic case of "3.5 (or 3.0) did this, it works for temperate, nobody gave it anymore thought (including me until now."

At the very least, then, I need to implement the bolded paragraph, if not straight-up revise the skill entirely.

Thank you, that's an immediate issue found!

I think thats a legitimate point about commoners and DC 10, but not particularly applicable to 8th level PCs. An 8th level ranger (or comparable other PC with max survival) should have desert survival skills that exceed an average Fremen or Aiel. They SHOULD be able to survive and guide a party in a seemingly waterless environment. Whether that is filtering urine or collecting dew or reducing water loss or gathering water from kills or some less guy at the gym solution. I think I'd be pretty mad as a player if the DM just said "DC 35 hur hur hur." I'd be ok with "all PC concepts must be city slickers, you are forced into the desert randomly, no survival specialists allowed." But "Survival doesn't work" is a lot like saying "your PC concept is invalid and you are going to be bad at your basic job and look like a chump because I wanted to play with dehydration rules". Its like realizing your party has a rogue and arbitrarily setting Trap DCs to unreachable. You should ban it, or let it be useful.

King of Nowhere

2023-07-11, 11:28 AM

satorian

2023-07-11, 11:36 AM

35 seems a bit too punitive but depending on the desert a DC anywhere between 20 and 30 seems right. Which means a 8th level ranger can survive on his own just fine, but he probably won't be able to provide enough for everyone.

Lay of the Land is still a spell. Know exactly where every oasis, areas of denser cacti growth, and cave for shelter from the sun is. Add max survival and some well-timed Augury, and you can plot a course safe enough to obviate any real risk.

Gnaeus

2023-07-11, 12:18 PM

I'm not even concerned about the spell side. Imagine you find and nerf all of them. This is the skillmonkey equivalent of making a monk because you saw crouching tiger/hidden dragon and then realizing that the druid's bear can beat you up. It is a character concept issue. If you are a "nature character" with the mechanically appropriate skills, not being able to survive in the desert makes your character bad at the thing he should be awesome at. It makes your seasoned adventurer look like a fool. Again, if you bar those concepts, no big deal. There is nothing wrong with limiting PC concepts for a story. But allowing survivalist characters (in mid levels no less) and not letting them shine in a survival game is mean.

Aotrs Commander

2023-07-11, 12:39 PM

I think thats a legitimate point about commoners and DC 10, but not particularly applicable to 8th level PCs. An 8th level ranger (or comparable other PC with max survival) should have desert survival skills that exceed an average Fremen or Aiel. They SHOULD be able to survive and guide a party in a seemingly waterless environment. Whether that is filtering urine or collecting dew or reducing water loss or gathering water from kills or some less guy at the gym solution. I think I'd be pretty mad as a player if the DM just said "DC 35 hur hur hur." I'd be ok with "all PC concepts must be city slickers, you are forced into the desert randomly, no survival specialists allowed." But "Survival doesn't work" is a lot like saying "your PC concept is invalid and you are going to be bad at your basic job and look like a chump because I wanted to play with dehydration rules". Its like realizing your party has a rogue and arbitrarily setting Trap DCs to unreachable. You should ban it, or let it be useful.

There is some room between "standard investment of 1 skill point/level renders skill checks automatically meaningless at any point pass bottom level" and "impossible DC makes skill checks pointless."

I did basically what it said in that addendum in PF1; said the difficulty was 20 + 1/4 in regions like deserts/ice fields, and 15 + 1/3 in more arid areas areas and 10 +1/2 in standard temperate.

(My players, incidently, all agreed with me when I explained the changes on Monday.)

Which brings me to a point. Not talking to any particular playgrounder, this is just a general address.

I've gotten a lot of pushback on this thread that (to be hyperbolically reductive) appears to boil down to basically "how dare you make players have to care about food and water, you should just ignore that and focus on letting your player's characters be awesome, because I wouldn't want to have to play that."

So let me clear the air, to save us all some grief, let me say this: I come to the playground with these threads for some mechanical advice on how to do some thing (because the upside of my players being happy to play anything I so, the downside is they are generally not very interested in rules-smithing).

But not on whether I am going to do something or not.

I'm afraid by the time I come to posting up a thread, I'm sorry, but by that very action, I have already decided I'm GOING to do something, it's just a matter of how. Thus I'm afriad no amount of telling me how you wouldn't want to play that personally is going to be able to change my mind; since, with respect, if you are not one of other the eight people turning up on Monday night, then, I'm very sorry, but you don't get a vote in what I decide to do, no matter how many other people consider the way I play and what I want to do to be Doing It Wrong.

I am happy to take onboard any criticism of the mechanics I am implementing, and how to improve that implementation. But the implementation is going to be happening, regardless of opinions.

To be brutally honest, I am frankly finding it very tiring having to spend more time arguing with people who Disapprove Of What I Like Doing more than I am Talking Cool Maths Stuff. Which is why I basically didn't come to the playground during and after lockdown, honestly. Just having to compose this post (rather than simply ignore everyone which would feel rude), and cut it down to be as polite as possible, has been both time-consuming and exhausting.

So, please, I beg of you, if you don't have any Cool Rules/Maths Stuff to suggest, pause a moment and consider whether it is REALLY worth your time typing up an arguement because I Am Wrong On The Internet and whether your time would be time better spent doing something more beneficial, like... Literally ANYTHING else.

I've said my piece; thank you for your time, and I won't belabour things any more and will now go back into my quiet corner. (And contemplate whether I really should just stop trying to leave it.)

Remuko

2023-07-11, 01:03 PM

pause a moment and consider whether it is REALLY worth your time typing up an arguement because I Am Wrong On The Internet and whether your time would be time better spent doing something more beneficial, like... Literally ANYTHING else.

i am reminded of a quote i saw once

after each ego death event, the new ego that arises is less brittle, more resilient. what will destroy the sixth iteration of a person, the first iteration could not have survived mere contemplation of. eventually the capacity to let someone be wrong on the internet emerges

Seward

2023-07-11, 01:50 PM

Hmm...the whole "rope trick haversack" comment.

You do realize that if you allow extradimensional spaces in your party they're excellent for making a lot of desert environmental stuff meaningless.

You can bring enough portable shelter to not need to find any. Enough empty waterskins to fill up massively when you do get a water source of any kind. Food in vast quantities. Even just a place to store armor when it's too hot to wear it, to be put on right before a battle, perhaps with a resist fire spell added if you've nerfed Endure Elements.

Well...if your players are fine with keeping in the spirit of the campaign and are ok with the rules mods and character restrictions you-all do you. If it's fun, it's fun. Myself, if I wanted to run a survival campaign in any environment, D&D isn't the system I'd reach for (not ANY of the editions) except possibly at the lowest character levels. I'd shift to something more tailored to human-scale adventures, not larger than life sword and sorcery protagonists.

Trying to fence in the social contract with rules modifications that aren't intended to just increase the resource burn a bit (like the whole Dark Sun thing reducing the effect of create water) is probably going to be futile against player cleverness.

King of Nowhere

2023-07-11, 02:25 PM

Which brings me to a point. Not talking to any particular playgrounder, this is just a general address.

I've gotten a lot of pushback on this thread that (to be hyperbolically reductive) appears to boil down to basically "how dare you make players have to care about food and water, you should just ignore that and focus on letting your player's characters be awesome, because I wouldn't want to have to play that."

So let me clear the air, to save us all some grief, let me say this: I come to the playground with these threads for some mechanical advice on how to do some thing (because the upside of my players being happy to play anything I so, the downside is they are generally not very interested in rules-smithing).

But not on whether I am going to do something or not.

Indeed, that's a common attitude whenever one wants to discuss some homebrew nerfs. Apparently some people in this forum have very strong opinions about that.
I had faced some of the same pushback when I was looking for advice on my campaign. My suggestion is, just ignore that and focus on the helpful answers. There are always some.

and yes, I also find that players respond well to general nerfs when they are well motivated and make sense. And if they work poorly, the players are more likely to offer suggestions on improving than to just ask for no more nerfs. In general, as long as a dm works with the players, the players will accept most things

ShurikVch

2023-07-11, 02:48 PM

Heck, if the party was stranded into the middle of antartica, you'd be perfectly justified telling them that no, a roll of 100 on survival does not enable them to find food because there isn't any food there.
Let me quote the information from Internet there:

Foraging for food in Antarctica can be challenging due to the harsh and remote environment. However, it is possible to find some edible plants and animals.Some of the plants that can be found in Antarctica include lichens and mosses. These can be used to make soups and teas.Seals and penguins are also common in Antarctica, and their meat can be used as a food source. However, it is important to be aware of local regulations and ethical considerations before hunting these animals.It is also important to be prepared with proper clothing and equipment, as well as knowledge of survival skills and first aid, before embarking on any foraging efforts in Antarctica.
Thus, while difficult, it should be completely doable (especially with the superb 100 check result!)

King of Nowhere

2023-07-11, 03:47 PM

Let me quote the information from Internet there:

Thus, while difficult, it should be completely doable (especially with the superb 100 check result!)

I specified the middle of antarctica for a reason.
on the coast you can find penguins. on some of the rocky places you can find moss and lichens (though finding enough to survive would be in the dc 30-40 range). in the interior, where there's nothing but the ice pack, i'm not aware of any macroscopic life form.

Quertus

2023-07-12, 01:20 PM

I'd be ok with "all PC concepts must be city slickers, you are forced into the desert randomly, no survival specialists allowed."

That's a great idea. Unfortunately, anyone with Create Water will solve this particular problem, even if they aren't a "survival specialist". So (AFB, I'm guessing) even the most... "civilized" of Cloistered Clerics or Urban Druids will still trivially negate this problem. Worse, saying "you can't play a character who comes with a built-in solution to this problem" (kinda my suggestion earlier) is tantamount to saying "you can't play a divine caster" -> all the "answers" divine casters normally bring to the table are suddenly stealth-banned. Which - I'm just guessing here - is likely to cause more problems to overall game balance than Create Water does.

That said, "nobody brought a Divine Caster" (because random chance, not because the GM mandated it) is totally my jam. But I can understand if it might be viewed as undesirable by those who want to optimize their party composition more than "lol random".

I think thats a legitimate point about commoners and DC 10, but not particularly applicable to 8th level PCs. An 8th level ranger (or comparable other PC with max survival) should have desert survival skills that exceed an average Fremen or Aiel. They SHOULD be able to survive and guide a party in a seemingly waterless environment. Whether that is filtering urine or collecting dew or reducing water loss or gathering water from kills or some less guy at the gym solution. I think I'd be pretty mad as a player if the DM just said "DC 35 hur hur hur." I'd be ok with "all PC concepts must be city slickers, you are forced into the desert randomly, no survival specialists allowed." But "Survival doesn't work" is a lot like saying "your PC concept is invalid and you are going to be bad at your basic job and look like a chump because I wanted to play with dehydration rules". Its like realizing your party has a rogue and arbitrarily setting Trap DCs to unreachable. You should ban it, or let it be useful.

Yeah, I fear there's a bit of a disconnect on just what "8th level" means, and how this really shouldn't be a problem faced by 8th level characters skilled at (or otherwise set up for) this kind of thing. A problem for your average 8th level character? Yes, absolutely. A problem for Quertus, the epic-level academia mage for whom this account is named? Um... yes, actually? But an 8th level Druid - a Wisdom-based caster with maxed-out Survival? Nah, they can survive the desert in their sleep - it's just a question of how many people they can bring with them.

But, again, this is why I was trying to get the OP to explain what kinds of solutions they would accept. Me as GM? I'd accept...
Planning: Undead mounts don't need water; Camels only require periodic water (like at an Oasis).
Combination Gear & Character Skills: An Eternal Wand of Nerfed Create Water can provide for the entire party (with a wielder). -- OR -- "Enough" casters with Nerfed Create Water and/or "Enough" Survival 20+ checks can provide water for the party.
Player Skills: Traveling at night negates any "Double Water for Extreme Heat" penalties.

Of course, I'd also accept "the entire party is undead, and defeats foes by destroying their water and waiting for them to perish, then loots their desiccated bodies" (and grant bonus XP for the clever solution and unique experience). Or "we invested lots of $$$ in a Decanter of Endless Water in preparation for this desert trip". Or even (unnerfed) Create Water, because I genuinely don't care - my groups have a history of finding things like "keeping the people who they are supposed to be helping from wanting to kill them" to be the campaign's biggest challenge, so I don't, as GM, need to invent new challenges for them, I just let them have challenges wherever they find them. Shrug.

What I don't know is what types of solutions the OP would find palatable. Knowing that will allow me to better focus on which of the many solutions to the "getting water in the desert" problem are actually something the OP will consider a problem. As I said earlier, among these many techniques, there are at least 5 classes of tools to look at: spells, character skills, player skills, items, and... race, I guess (I donno - that one just feels different to me for some reason). With many different individual tools in each of these categories.

If you don't know what a solution is supposed to look like, how can you claim that a particular solution is problematic? :smallconfused:

Well, unless that solution looks like your "arbitrary trap DC, your concept is invalid" line, of course. That one's DC 5 to spot that it's problematic. :smallamused: I'm glad we have official desert Survival DCs to work with (and that they aren't the standard Survival DC 10), at least. Kudos to... Oh, to the OP for pointing that one out! :smallbiggrin:

Remuko

2023-07-12, 02:58 PM

That's a great idea. Unfortunately, anyone with Create Water will solve this particular problem, even if they aren't a "survival specialist". So (AFB, I'm guessing) even the most... "civilized" of Cloistered Clerics or Urban Druids will still trivially negate this problem. Worse, saying "you can't play a character who comes with a built-in solution to this problem" (kinda my suggestion earlier) is tantamount to saying "you can't play a divine caster" -> all the "answers" divine casters normally bring to the table are suddenly stealth-banned. Which - I'm just guessing here - is likely to cause more problems to overall game balance than Create Water does.

That said, "nobody brought a Divine Caster" (because random chance, not because the GM mandated it) is totally my jam. But I can understand if it might be viewed as undesirable by those who want to optimize their party composition more than "lol random".

you may have missed it but in the first post, OP said this:

One other factor in play in this specific case is a limiaton of the character classes the PCs can choose - specifially, they are not allowed to have any of the classes that have seen regular use (which basically wipes out the entire core classes of both 3.5/PF1)

which does limit classes a lot.

pabelfly

2023-07-12, 06:40 PM

There are enough classes that can cast create water that aren't Cleric or Druid, or have access to those type of spells.

Even banning Create Water also doesn't solve the myriad of other ways that players can materialise food or water, or make food and water consumption issues trivial that have been bought up in this thread.

Quertus

2023-07-12, 07:01 PM

you may have missed it but in the first post, OP said this:

which does limit classes a lot.

Good point, and, with my reading comprehension, I am good at missing things. This one, I would say I didn't miss, but didn't really understand. That is, I don't know which core classes are still options, or how much in the way of house-ruled / homebrewed replacements might exist on those 20 pages of house rules. So... I didn't miss it, so much as it just meant I'm firing even more blind than usual. So I'm ignoring it, as that makes the discussion (which includes Create Water, meaning some classes with Create Water (as an at-will Cantrip in Pathfinder?) must still be available) much easier for me that way.

Remuko

2023-07-13, 02:33 AM

Good point, and, with my reading comprehension, I am good at missing things. This one, I would say I didn't miss, but didn't really understand. That is, I don't know which core classes are still options, or how much in the way of house-ruled / homebrewed replacements might exist on those 20 pages of house rules. So... I didn't miss it, so much as it just meant I'm firing even more blind than usual. So I'm ignoring it, as that makes the discussion (which includes Create Water, meaning some classes with Create Water (as an at-will Cantrip in Pathfinder?) must still be available) much easier for me that way.

fair enough!

Ashtagon

2023-07-13, 09:46 AM

Something to consider.

You want lack of water to be a challenge. Otherwise, you'd allow create water and that would be that. You don't want it to be a tpk. Otherwise, you'd just say "rocks fall everyone dies. lol."

So the real question is, what do you consider acceptable solutions to your "lack of water should be an challenge that requires the PCs to work to overcome"?

Once we know how you want them to be able to overcome this challenge, we can work to find acceptable solutions. So far, the only solution that seems to work is "all PCs must be temperate-climate land biologicals and create water is banned".

Gnaeus

2023-07-13, 10:24 AM

I specified the middle of antarctica for a reason.
on the coast you can find penguins. on some of the rocky places you can find moss and lichens (though finding enough to survive would be in the dc 30-40 range). in the interior, where there's nothing but the ice pack, i'm not aware of any macroscopic life form.

Your difficulties, in particular, I find unreasonably high. Commander's posted difficulty of 20/4 does seem reasonable. A DC 30 is basically a don't bother rolling, your skill is pointless. You might be able to sustain yourself for a few days, but even the most proficient person is going to starve. In a fantasy game where concepts like Aiel, Fremen, Snow Elf, etc are very very playable concepts I think thats really harsh. I am currently, as a matter of fact, playing in a group where my shaman 8, and his cousin, a ranger 8, are members of a fremen themed desert tribe. I'd be pretty annoyed if we died of thirst. I'm still not saying you couldn't/shouldn't rework the spell list for a game. Or even limit playable concepts. DC 40 to me says nothing but "don't play a skillmonkey, play a full caster or don't bother".

you may have missed it but in the first post, OP said this:

There are still plenty of PF classes that can access their spells or just have very solid nature chops. Hunter springs immediately to mind. I suspect a quick search can quickly reveal another dozen archetypes that can access create water or other substitute magics. Theres not a lot of core you can't access with not core.

King of Nowhere

2023-07-13, 01:57 PM

But, again, this is why I was trying to get the OP to explain what kinds of solutions they would accept. Me as GM? I'd accept...
Planning: Undead mounts don't need water; Camels only require periodic water (like at an Oasis).
Combination Gear & Character Skills: An Eternal Wand of Nerfed Create Water can provide for the entire party (with a wielder). -- OR -- "Enough" casters with Nerfed Create Water and/or "Enough" Survival 20+ checks can provide water for the party.
Player Skills: Traveling at night negates any "Double Water for Extreme Heat" penalties.

I also would.
the idea is to have fun through challenge. If you say "I cast this spell and it solves everything", there is no challenge, no fun. If the party can't solve the challenge, there's no fun. a good challenge should hit the sweet spot where the problem can be solved by clever application of imperfect tools.
By the rules as written, a desert is no challenge at all. the op is trying to nerf some relevant spells to bring it back to "you have to put some effort into it". I assume that's his target, at least.

Your difficulties, in particular, I find unreasonably high. Commander's posted difficulty of 20/4 does seem reasonable. A DC 30 is basically a don't bother rolling, your skill is pointless. You might be able to sustain yourself for a few days, but even the most proficient person is going to starve. In a fantasy game where concepts like Aiel, Fremen, Snow Elf, etc are very very playable concepts I think thats really harsh. I am currently, as a matter of fact, playing in a group where my shaman 8, and his cousin, a ranger 8, are members of a fremen themed desert tribe. I'd be pretty annoyed if we died of thirst. I'm still not saying you couldn't/shouldn't rework the spell list for a game. Or even limit playable concepts. DC 40 to me says nothing but "don't play a skillmonkey, play a full caster or don't bother".

For the desert, 20 seems fine.
I said dc 30-40 specifically for antarctica, which is a lot harder than the desert. After all, people have managed to live in deserts everywhere, but nobody went to live in anctartica before the modern age.

furthermore, a dc 30 at level 8 is perfectly doable for a specialist. in higher level campaigns, I've asked dcs up to 50. the idea is not to penalize someone for being a skill monkey rather than a caster, just like making a lock protected against magical tinkering is not done to penalize spellcasters (incidentally, the dc 50 was a spellcraft check asked to a wizard). rather, I see it as a reward for investing so much into a skill. "I got a +40 to a skill, but i never need to roll more than 30. why did I invest so much into this anyway?" well, because you can try to do something ludicrously difficult with a dc of 50.
incidentally, some skills are really not worth investing much into them. No matter how much you can jump, a fly spell will do it better. and will cover the need for climbing too. nothing to be done about that, really.

Rockphed

2023-07-13, 04:11 PM

So the real question is, what do you consider acceptable solutions to your "lack of water should be an challenge that requires the PCs to work to overcome"?

Based on his comments, I assume Aotrs Commander wants the players to do things like pack extra water skins and barrels, plot a winding path between oases, travel at night, and engage with the desert rather than say "I cast create water 4 times over the course of the day and we travel in a straight line to the dungeon in the middle of the desert".

As for how I would nerf create water? I would specify that it gathers water from the environment, so it will only create a cup per level (i.e. 1/16 gallon) when cast in a dry desert. Cast near an oasis or a cave with water at the bottom it will create the normal amount in the container(s) specified as pure water (so useful for using a deep well when you have no bucket or for purifying brackish or bitter water). Increasing the skill checks to survive in the desert probably helps sell why it is a desert instead of a dry farmland populated by sand farming peasants.

SirNibbles

2023-07-13, 07:15 PM

A handful of items worth keeping in mind, whether to encourage their use, alter their price, or ban them:

Clearwater Tablets: These small black pellets smell strongly of tar. Dropping a clearwater tablet into a gallon of water cleans the water of disease, poison, and other befouling toxins. Water so treated has a vaguely tarry smell and leaves a slimy black deposit on a surface it touches but is safe to drink. Magic liquids (such as potions, oils, and magic poisons) are immune to the effect of clearwater tablets. Liquids based on oil or alcohol are also not affected. Cost: 1 gp

Endurance Elixir: Imbibing this chalky-tasting green liquid instantly acclimates a creature to its surroundings. For the next 12 hours, the drinker gains a +4 alchemical bonus on all ability checks, skill checks, and saving throws made to resist natural environmental extremes, such as hot or cold weather (DMG 302). Cost: 25 gp

Complete Scoundrel, page 110

Clearwater Tablets may not seem terribly useful when there is no water to drink, but it could allow players to drink seawater, the sap from desert plants, or even go Bear Grylls style for an almost-unlimited water supply.

Portable Fountain: When it is placed on the ground and a command word spoken, this palm-sized, jade chrysanthemum expands to become a fountain, gushing fresh water from its center into a spacious basin. The fountain occupies a 5-foot square. It can be used once per day, producing 10 gallons of water. The fountain reverts to its portable form when all the water has been removed from its basin.
Faint conjuration; CL 5th; Craft Wondrous Item, create water; Price 1,800 gp.

Portable Shade: This circle of black silk is 3 feet in diameter, but it can be folded up into the size of a handkerchief. When unfolded, a portable shade floats into the air and hovers over the user’s head, moving as the user does but no more than 30 feet per round. It automatically tilts to block the sun’s rays, providing all the benefits of a parasol (see page 100), but leaving the user’s hands free for combat or spellcasting. Folding up a portable shade (a move action) ends its effect.
Faint evocation; CL 1st; Craft Wondrous Item, Tenser’s floating disk; Price 2,000 gp.

Replenishing Skin: This unremarkable waterskin is made from the hide of a camel. Whenever the skin becomes empty, it slowly refills with pure water over a period of 1d4 hours. Smaller quantities of water can be drained from the skin after a shorter time.
Faint conjuration; CL 1st; Craft Wondrous Item, create water; Price 1,000 gp.

Sandstorm, pages 134-135

Seward

2023-07-13, 07:42 PM

By the rules as written, a desert is no challenge at all.

That's not strictly true. You need some combination of the following to adventure in a desert.

1. the heat problem - some mundane gear helps a bit (hot/cold weather gear, not wearing armor), endure elements helps a lot, being competent to adventure at night (eg light sources and/or entire party can see in the dark) helps a lot, although the latter requires usually minimal survival skill to find shelter or other resources to make shelter such as a spell or three.

2. The water problem - create water, create food and water, endure elements on camels carrying a lot of water, tenser's disk or mount spells or items with extradimensoinal spaces which don't need water to carry the water, very high strength or similar buffs (ant haul) to let PC's carry large amouts of water, high survival skills, magic items like replenishing skin and of course mitigating #1 so the water costs aren't doubled.

3. The food problem. See Water except "and to carry iron rations" on things like camels, mount spells, tenser disks, extradimensioanl spaces etc. Magic items to create food or create food and water. Goodberry is possible if you have a way to grow berries somehow. Or very high survival skills to find food in a desert sufficient for the party (which is a lot easier if you don't have living mounts.

As others have suggested, parties into necromancy could just use zombie oxen or something similar to carry all the water/food/etc.

These costs are pretty easy to mitigate for most parties, although lower level tend to lean more heavily on "mule with waterskin and iron rations traveling at night" sorts of solutions than the more exotic stuff. But this is the kind of thing where having say a sorcerer with Tenser's Disk suddently seems like a really cool spell pick for said sorcerer.

An average party who a desert adventure is a sometimes thing, not the entire campaign, will use one of the above solutions, not have all the resources available for that adventure they'd have in less hostile terrain and call it a day. (said party does something similar but tailored to envt in cold terrain, mountains, swamp, underdark, crossing an ocean, in a jungle, etc)

A whole campaign in this environment is a different animal and is going to usually lead to party-wide solutions that routinely address the issues. I'd expect actually a party would start leaning into things like Survival, mundane gear and maybe a magic item or two rather than relying on spell resources routinely, to minimize risk of say, the only Endure Elements individual getting killed and causing a problem with the party dying before they can get the body to a temple.

King of Nowhere

2023-07-14, 06:32 AM

That's not strictly true. You need some combination of the following to adventure in a desert.

1. the heat problem

ah, right. I forgot that by raw you die of heat in mild summer weather

Quertus

2023-07-14, 05:31 PM

If you say "I cast this spell and it solves everything", there is no challenge, no fun.

No challenge? Sur... we'll get back to that one. But no fun? Nah, it can be great fun! That "I expected this to be a challenge, but, for you it's trivial"? Or "I expected this to be trivial, but for you, it's a challenge"? Those are incredibly fun.

As for no challenge, well, as I've mentioned or at least hinted at before, if you have a solution that involve casting a spell everyone who can cast that spell goes down, many parties / groups tend to be so unprepared, so thrown by the change, that things are far more challenging for them than if they hadn't been relying on that solution in the first place.

So, IME, relying on a "solve everything" spell can actually be a great source of both challenge and fun. Much more so than jumping through the checklist hoops of "we have camels / undead mounts, we have an Eternal Wand of Create Water and 2 casters, and we travel at night", at least for my enjoyment of the game. The first is a chance for Expression, to show whether you're playing characters who will think in terms of having backup plans, and creativity, for if they don't, what they do when their one and only plan fails; the second is just busy work as far as I'm concerned. Unnerfed Create Water engages me as a player; reading the GM's mind on what kind of solution they are looking for does not (and actively turns me off of the game).

ShurikVch

2023-07-14, 06:16 PM

OP - do you using psionics (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/alternative-rule-systems/psionics-unleashed/psionic-powers/s/sustenance/) in your game?

icefractal

2023-07-14, 06:33 PM

While survival-based gameplay isn't usually my cup of tea, it's not like it's an invalid preference. Nor would I call it any kind of "GM tyranny" as long as the players are told ahead of time. I mean, would you call "I'm running 10th level non-gestalt even though I know that 20th level gestalt exists" to be a tyrant GM nerfing the PCs?

On a separate matter, I get the OP's objection in terms of world-building. By PF1 RAW, any community with Clerics, Druids, or even Adepts in it just doesn't have to worry about water supplies at all. Which is fine if that's the kind of setting you want, but otherwise a pretty big logic hole.

And personally, I'm not down with "all NPCs are idiots who can't put two and two together" - unless it's an isekei-style game where that's the point. Nobody but the PCs thought of this obscure combo that requires three specific feats and a particular PrC? Sure, plausible enough. Nobody but the PCs thought of casting cantrips repeatedly? Nope, breaks WSoD too much.

How I'd be tempted to change it, because it's more interesting on a world-building level (but possibly unwieldy in play) is Dark Sun style - Create Water extracts water from the air, causing a certain radius to be drier for a certain amount of time - and during that time, further Create Water in the same area will fail. The radius and time both depending on the climate, so in a rainforest it's like "a 10' radius for 5 minutes" and in the desert it might be more like "a half-mile radius for one day".

That not only limits it in a workable (setting-wise) way, but leads to interesting possibilities like "Someone is trying to sabotage this desert town by constantly creating and wasting water as often as they can, which prevents the local Druids from making enough to supplement the wells as they had been previously. With the right measurements you may be able to triangulate their position."

King of Nowhere

2023-07-15, 02:50 PM

So, IME, relying on a "solve everything" spell can actually be a great source of both challenge and fun. Much more so than jumping through the checklist hoops of "we have camels / undead mounts, we have an Eternal Wand of Create Water and 2 casters, and we travel at night", at least for my enjoyment of the game. The first is a chance for Expression, to show whether you're playing characters who will think in terms of having backup plans, and creativity, for if they don't, what they do when their one and only plan fails; the second is just busy work as far as I'm concerned.

when put like that, neither seem like much fun. I agree that tracking camels and supplies is generally busywork and not much fun, having a spell that solves everything is lame. And if that spell suddenly stops working, it can be a good plot hook, but it doesn't work every time. and, at least for me, it needs to have some solid foundations in worldbuilding to be accepted.
It's not even a single spell; it's the general attitude of a wizard, when presented with a problem, to rifle through dozens of splatbooks (or, better, an internet forum) until they find a spell that solves exactly that problem. oh, it's fun to have tools to solve problems, but if you can solve everything without effort, then it's no more fun.

We agree that creativity is fun. saying "we don't have problems with the desert because we can create food and water" does not require creativity. Neither does "I take 10 on a survival check". And even "we buy camels and load them with everything".
On the other hand, in my experience just taking out all simple solutions and seeing what the players come up with (and, at least with my players, I can be sure that they will come up with something) is almost always fun. Hence why, as a general rule of thumb, removing simple solutions generally increases fun.

Quertus

2023-07-15, 04:03 PM

when put like that, neither seem like much fun. I agree that tracking camels and supplies is generally busywork and not much fun, having a spell that solves everything is lame. And if that spell suddenly stops working, it can be a good plot hook, but it doesn't work every time. and, at least for me, it needs to have some solid foundations in worldbuilding to be accepted.

Less "the spell stops working", more "the caster is down". Logical consequences, not contrivances.

It's not even a single spell; it's the general attitude of a wizard, when presented with a problem, to rifle through dozens of splatbooks (or, better, an internet forum) until they find a spell that solves exactly that problem. oh, it's fun to have tools to solve problems, but if you can solve everything without effort, then it's no more fun.

I find it generally better to craft problems that require effort, than to artificially nerf abilities to force that effort. One solution (intelligently crafting interesting problems) requires creativity; the other... usually not so much.

As to general attitude... y'know, IIRC, @NichG recently had a thread about "which systems let you hunt for Voltron solutions to problems" or some such. I don't know if anything resembling an answer to that question ever came out of the thread, but part of the Premise was actually that D&D was one of the superior systems in that regard. :smallamused:

We agree that creativity is fun. saying "we don't have problems with the desert because we can create food and water" does not require creativity. Neither does "I take 10 on a survival check". And even "we buy camels and load them with everything".
On the other hand, in my experience just taking out all simple solutions and seeing what the players come up with (and, at least with my players, I can be sure that they will come up with something) is almost always fun. Hence why, as a general rule of thumb, removing simple solutions generally increases fun.

I mean, Indiana Jones shooting the swordsman was a simple solution, and great fun. The scene wouldn't have been as good if the "GM" had come up with some contrivance to remove Indy's bullets. I do think that simple solutions have their place, and organic events conspiring to sometimes, unexpectedly remove those simple solutions can lead to fun "now what?" moments of creativity. But I don't see any value in having it be central to the campaign, and mandating the pre-campaign planning be "we prepare (unnerfed) Create Water" vs "we prepare undead mounts, ride at night, and bring enough nerfed Create Water". It's just... the same thing with extra steps. No real creativity involved, nothing to make this campaign stand out as worth the mental effort to not just write "Create Water" down on the character sheet. Whereas "the guy who had Create Water got taken out; now what?"? Yeah, we're gonna have to get creative, and we'll remember that.

King of Nowhere

2023-07-15, 08:11 PM

Less "the spell stops working", more "the caster is down". Logical consequences, not contrivances.

what are the chances that the caster is down and will remain down all day? not how most campaigns are run.

I find it generally better to craft problems that require effort, than to artificially nerf abilities to force that effort. One solution (intelligently crafting interesting problems) requires creativity; the other... usually not so much.

generally, yes. however, d&d 3.5 is such that at high optimization levels martials can kill anything and casters can do anything. some level of general nerfing is required to make the system work - though you prefer to call it "balance to the table", which basically means the players spontaneously nerfing themselves.

regardless of general circumstances, though, sometimes you do have a cool idea but the system does not support you. in the op case, he had some cool ideas for desert survival, but the game gives you a few cantrips and cheap magic items that make the whole business trivial. In such a case, your options are
1) give up on the cool idea
2) change game system entirely
3) tinker with the game system to get the result you want

Mind you, I think the first session the party will start brainstorming their resources to deal with the desert, then come up with a calculation of how long they can keep going, and then handwave it in the future. because that's what my players have always done in similar situation.
I put them in a cool magic place that would zap them with random effects at random times, and at first we'd roll a lot of dice for it. After a while, we calculated how many healing spells they would need per hour, and just subtract them from the prepared ones. the first time we were in a no magic mart campaign, we spent the better part of a session building up contacts of potential sellers and buyers; gradually, we moved to "we spend a couple days moving through our contacts to sell the loot".
Similarly, I expect that after a while the party of the op will just handwave it by saying "we can keep going for 10 days with our regular supplies management, so let's plan our movements around that".
But it can be fun for the session it will take to reach that conclusion. If you find the idea of brainstorming how to make life support supplies last longer to be boring, well, we d&d players are a bunch of weirdos who have fun telling made up stories while rolling dice to determine how the story goes on. dealing with imaginary life support or fighting imaginary dragons is not a big difference.

I mean, Indiana Jones shooting the swordsman was a simple solution, and great fun.

Yes, but it worked because it was a one-off joke. If the whole movie had been like that, it would have been boring.