Not Used: Increase environmental damage

I'd like to suggest that the environmental damage be increased. A simple idea would be 5 damage for winter and summer. In addition, extreme regions would be unaffected by weather but cause more damage year round; Calithia and especially Icereach could cause 10 or more. Currently, the occasional one point of damage is meaningless for PCs, even low level ones. Increasing the damage would give a better sense IMO that running around in extreme weather without protection is not all that great for your health.

PCs would have to wear cloaks or rings, or keep potions of Endure Elements handy to ward off the temperature. EE would be enough for summer and winter, but wouldn't be enough for Icereach or Calithia. The lava area already causes fire damage, perhaps the underwater areas could also do 5 cold damage, to simulate the water draining away your body heat. If you plan on creating outside planes, like the plane of fire or hells, they should cause major damage per unit of time, 30 or more.

I'm guesing that people base their views on environmental damage in part on how NWN presented Cania in HOTU. That only caused one or two points of cold damage, which was a total joke IMO. I think 30-40 would have been better there... it's not as if they didn't hand out several items that blocked that much cold damage as it is. Other planes should be very hostile to Prime Plane life, and you should need powerful protections just to survive. Local conditions, while not as extreme, should also be somewhat damaging.

As it stands, even without any protections, simple +1 regen cancels out such damage. I don't think that's right. I think exerting yourself running around, fighting, running, fighting, climbing and so on in hostile weather or environments should cause appreciable damage; PCs should need to protect themselves or be prepared to use up healing to compensate.

If you want to get fancy, you could factor in armor values. Armor could help keep you warm in cold climes, but make you hotter in hot climes. You could take the base AC of what's in your armor slot and add that to heat damage while subtracting it from cold damage. For example, Plate has a base AC of 8, so you might take (10+8 ) or 18 while in the blistering Calithian desert, but only (10-8 ) 2 while exploring Icereach, since the armor keeps you snug and warm. Normal clothes have no base AC so wouldn't adjust either way. If you wanted, you could give cloaks and boots each one point of cold protection.

If you think 5 damage for weather and 10+ for regions is too much or unrealistic, ask yourself whether you think having 300 hit points is also unrealistic. What do you guys think?

I like the idea overall, but some of your numbers do seem a bit high (having worn body armour for 12-18 hours a day in 135 degree heat, I do feel I have some perspective on the subject ). There are stat penalties to deal with too, which feels more on par with "reality" in my opinion.


As an ever so slightly off-topic side note, I was thinking that a check could be added to these scripts to see if the PC is polymorphed. It just seemed off that I'd lose spells due to lowered wisdom when it got cold out and my druid, having shapeshifted into a bear, was no longer technically wearing a cloak.