Sandstorm: DnD effects for having sand in your shorts.

[User3]

Overall, it seems like a nice book. I'm not paying for it or anything, but it would round out your collection. I can compare it mostly to Frostburn/

So, here is a little preview:

---A Searing Spell feat that makes your fire spells burn fire immune guys for all those guys who want to burn Fire Elementals. It costs +1 spell level and its metamagic, so that kinda blows compared to Piercing cold from Frostburn that punches through resistance and most immunities(not cold-subtype) and costs nothing.
---Most of the feats suck, as well as the PrCs. Frostburn had stuff that would be useful in any terrain even though it was themed, while Sandstorm has stuff thats only useful in Desert waste(like desert movement. desert-only attack forms, PrCs for riding desert-only beasts, feats that negate desert effects).
---Some new touchstone locations. Only a few to write home about, but its nice to not have to fvck with planar effects/planar adventuring to use this mechanic.
---a crap load of supernatual desert terrain. Really, you DM really must hate you when the ground itself starts to murder you(and you, of course, can't fight back).
---There is a arcane caster PrC that seems custom-designed for Sorcerers. You can take it as your 6th level and as its 1st level it adds like 7 spells to every spell level to your spells known. Its costs some random skills(Knowledge: nature anyone?) and a specific Touchstone site/feat that is also decent for only Sorcerers(the base power adds +1 caster level to Charisma based spells and +1 to Charisma skill checks). The only downside is that the spells added are ostely the crazy seldom-used stuff like the full suite of animal buff spells(Eager's Splendor, etc) and some of the crappier desert spells. Unfortunately, this still makes this a "must take unless you are deliberately trying to suck as a Sorcerer and are punishing your party with your sucky character" class.
---Alot of the new spells have odd new mechanics. For example, your spell does damage, then if that damage is more than half your HP they make a another fort save or die.
The upside is tht they added a Flesh to Salt spell, so you can now turn your enemies directly into swag, depending on the going rate of salt in your campaign.

[Murtak]

---There is a arcane caster PrC that seems custom-designed for Sorcerers. You can take it as your 6th level and as its 1st level it adds like 7 spells to every spell level to your spells known.

Spells known or spell list? I seem to remember being vaguely impressed with some CA class until I noticed it added to the spell list.

[Wrenfield]

---a crap load of supernatual desert terrain. Really, you DM really must hate you when the ground itself starts to murder you(and you, of course, can't fight back).

This is retarded. It's an unfightable hazard that says if your party does not expend a Teleport or Mass Fly spell or run like hell for a very long time (and in a direction that hopefully takes you out of the effect), some or all of you die or get massively debilitated. Meaning low level partys just die.

[RandomCasualty]

1111353904[/unixtime]]

---a crap load of supernatual desert terrain. Really, you DM really must hate you when the ground itself starts to murder you(and you, of course, can't fight back).

This is retarded. It's an unfightable hazard that says if your party does not expend a Teleport or Mass Fly spell or run like hell for a very long time (and in a direction that hopefully takes you out of the effect), some or all of you die or get massively debilitated. Meaning low level partys just die.

Well really, there needs to be high level terrain hazards of some kind, since the majority of hazards are simply stuff that mildly inconconviencies low level parties, and which mid level and up cahracters just don't care about.

I haven't read the thing in Sandstorm yet, but the base idea is still pretty sound. That way you really can have deserts so vicious that low level parties are advised to stay away from them and even high level parties take shelter from the sandstorms.

[User3]

Wait, we should encourage more teleport ambushes?

...

Assuming that wasn't the intention, deadly terrain effects you can't avoid but have to get through to advance the plot are lame. It's sort of like the DM forcing traps on your party. And while I can tolerate an unavoidable crushing wall trap while fighting a minotaur, I will be super pissed if the adventure comes to a grinding halt because of sand.

This is precisely the reason they had jade in OA. It rewards people not lazy enough to spend 30 seconds to make a standing declaration that they got some jade fingers. And the Shadowlands rarely had anything you wanted in it in the first place.

[RandomCasualty]

1111365158[/unixtime]]
Assuming that wasn't the intention, deadly terrain effects you can't avoid but have to get through to advance the plot are lame. It's sort of like the DM forcing traps on your party. And while I can tolerate an unavoidable crushing wall trap while fighting a minotaur, I will be super pissed if the adventure comes to a grinding halt because of sand.

Why? Environment encounters are encounters just like meeting a sandworm or a tribe of orcs bandits. I don't see anything wrong with having encounters with the environment, it's something different aside from another pack of wandering monsters and helps to actually emphasize the harshness of the setting.

High level weather encounters aren't broken, it's only bad if you use them against low level PCs, but the same is true of CR 20 monsters. So I don't see what your point is.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

Actively hostile terrain is one of those things that is cool if you use it sparingly but pretty dang lame if you use it frequently or in a wrong way.

-Desdan

[User3]

High level weather encounters are still like regular weather encounters in that they involve you making checks and rolling your saves. And little else. Unlike monster encounters there is little reward for tactical decisions or player involvement. It is also a reactive encounter, something that is not affected by player decisions. I am against that.

There is almost nothing the party can do against this other than avoid it or weather it. Except that by high level there are plenty of ways to avoid it or ignore the effects for anyone to care. So the weather has to be ubiquitous (which is like forcing traps on the party) or extremely deadly (which is lame).

Having sandstorms teach the cleric archer a little humility while fighting the bandits is one thing, threatening a team with TPK just because they want to go to the desert is lame.

[RandomCasualty]

1111370526[/unixtime]]
There is almost nothing the party can do against this other than avoid it or weather it.

That's actually kind of cool though. How many stories have started because a group took shelter from a storm and thus started some kind of story?

It's good to be able to have a storm that can threaten high level characters that they have to take shelter from. Beating teleport is awfully easy too, you just say that the storm nullifies teleportation effects. It can take place in the astral too.

Weather effects shouldn't be "boom you're dead!" they should be gradual effects where the PCs know that they have to take cover at some point, or they take a pretty serious disadvantage, or at the very least a risk.

Now I agree with Desdan that they should be used sparingly, and in remote treacherous areas that only high levels frequent, especially planar sites.

[Neeek]

1111371370[/unixtime]]That's actually kind of cool though. How many stories have started because a group took shelter from a storm and thus started some kind of story?

I assume from this you've never played a game that involved a sandstorm.

It's not fun. Dealing with weather is incredibly boring. Dealing with weather than necessitates that you carry weaker party members is even less fun.

You know what you do when a sandstorm starts around your characters? You resolve the entire storm in 1 minute or less. Any longer and you'll start wondering why you are playing in the first place.

[MrWaeseL]

1111353904[/unixtime]]

---a crap load of supernatual desert terrain. Really, you DM really must hate you when the ground itself starts to murder you(and you, of course, can't fight back).

This is retarded. It's an unfightable hazard that says if your party does not expend a Teleport or Mass Fly spell or run like hell for a very long time (and in a direction that hopefully takes you out of the effect), some or all of you die or get massively debilitated. Meaning low level partys just die.

I agree. Even planets that attack you can be killed, but not this?

[RandomCasualty]

1111380083[/unixtime]]

I assume from this you've never played a game that involved a sandstorm.

It's not fun. Dealing with weather is incredibly boring. Dealing with weather than necessitates that you carry weaker party members is even less fun.

You know what you do when a sandstorm starts around your characters? You resolve the entire storm in 1 minute or less. Any longer and you'll start wondering why you are playing in the first place.

Weather adds another depth to the game. More than simply monster encounter over monster encounter. It also makes those weather control spells a bit more valuable too, you know, those spells nobody ever takes.

If you want harsh terrain where it's supposed to be difficult to survive you have to have mechanics for it. Some people don't want harsh climates or terrains and simply want to be able to play every area like it was a walk in the park. Other groups want to have deserts feel like deserts and people freezing to death on glaciers. And yeah, that takes powerful high level effects if you want it to affect high level characters.

Personally I find the "I'm above all weather and terrain" mentality of high level characters to be pretty bothersome. I mean even 3rd level characters with endure elements can easily cross a glacier no problem. Where's the fun in that?

I'm sick of the mentality that something can't be dangerous unless it happens to be a monster. Everything in 3rd edition sucks ass except monsters. Traps suck, weather conditions suck, terrain hazards suck. That paradigm has to go... lets have some interesting hazards that aren't a typical cookie cutter monster encounter.

[The_Hanged_Man]

1111431169[/unixtime]]Weather adds another depth to the game.

Is "boring and lame" really a depth?

[RandomCasualty]

1111431974[/unixtime]]
Is "boring and lame" really a depth?

Boring and lame is an opinion. I personally think that weather adds detail to the campaign world. I mean if it's not a harsh terrain, why bother having deserts and swamps and all that other crap? Why not just have your entire world be plains.

Deserts, glaciers and swamps should not just be flavor text. If anything, that's boring and lame.

[User3]

Actually, I rather prefer having deserts, swamps, glaciers, and so forth be mostly flavor text. It makes it much easier for me to run campaigns centered around PCs who are desert nomads, or gator-huntin' swamp folk, or ice barbarians, or whatever.

"Wilderness Survival" is not really a genre that D&D lends itself well to, unless your Cleric is so low level that he can't cast Create Food and Water".

--d.

[MrWaeseL]

Weather adds another depth to the game. More than simply monster encounter over monster encounter. It also makes those weather control spells a bit more valuable too, you know, those spells nobody ever takes.

Watch out RC, you're beginning to sound like a D&D designer

[User3]

We have 7 people in our gaming group - 6 players and 1 excellent DM. All of us have been playing 15-20 years and have played in every conceivable D&D environmental sub-genre. This includes the multitude of various geographies and weather conditions.

Right after Frostburn was published, our DM decided to use its "Extreme Cold" weather and geography rules in our current campaign. This includes using the book's various dangerous snows and blizzard hazards.

Let me tell you this .... the 6 players unanimously HATED the powerlessness we felt in dealing with said "killer snows". The game dragged on forever and the strategic objectives in the campaign just seemed like they would never be reached. All of the party took moderate to severe damage from the environment. And none of us had a reasonable chance at "fighting back" or dealing with the ugliness of our scenario.

This was the first time in years we actually had to verbally tell our DM .... "Hey, this part of the game is just not fun. Can we ditch the TPK Snow-n'-Blizzard thing and just move on?"

. . . . .

So to RandomCasualty, I'm very curious about how in-depth and how comprehensive an exposure you and your group has had in actually playing in Frostburn/Sandstorm-type adverse weather conditions.

Because you seem to be a big fan of them. So your actual in-game playing experience with such stuff would be greatly appreciated so you can enlighten us how "fun" such weather conditions can be for a gaming party.

Weather adds another depth to the game. More than simply monster encounter over monster encounter. It also makes those weather control spells a bit more valuable too, you know, those spells nobody ever takes.

[Murtak]

How deadly are these terrain features / hazards anyways? Also can you prepare for them in advance? If a couple resist fires and cure wands will get me through the desert of hopli-powah that seems fine to me. That is pretty murderous for any low level party but as long as the desert does not suddenly turn up out of nowhere, well, it is not like you wouldn't have heard of it before.

Anything that basically equates to being constantly ambushed by low level stuff seems fine to me. It drains party resources and thus makes the game dynamics work a little differently. You have to plan your rests a little differently, be a little more careful, and so on. That can make for a nice change of pace. And it is a lot less annoying then actually having to kill the 300 goblins per day this equates to.

If however you are getting actual save or die effects or serious stat drains or the like that sucks.

[RandomCasualty]

Well the key is that weather conditions need to be used sparingly. They should be a feature of an adventure but they shouldn't take over the entire campaign.

Really dangerous weather should be unique to a few remote locales and be something used once in a while, because it can get annoying if it's overused.

But it has to be something major and something that PCs generally have to take shelter from. If the adventure is just "you take xd6 damage being out in a sandstorm you can't avoid" that just sucks ass. Weather should certainly be something the PCs fear, but it should be in the sort of way that they take shelter from it, not just some random inescapeable depletion of resources without player input.

If you're using weather as a random rolled encounter that says "Ok you run into an acid storm, everyone takes 10d6 acid damage. Ok next encounter" that's not a good use for weather.

Dangerous weather should be a plot device that forces people out of its way and into some kind of shelter. Weather effects should be visible from some distance to give PCs time to prepare. Granted WotC designers don't quite get this either, as their weather effects in Frostburn tend to just be "random encounter - 10d6 damage" variety.

As for weather effects in my own games, I've used extreme weather effects before, and none of my PCs seemed to complain. Granted none of them were true WotC weather effects, but I had a sandstorm that would quickly shred people out in it, as well as various magical anomalies that did all sorts of weird things.

[Username17]

DEEP HURTING! DEEP HURTING!

And now watch as all of your dreams perish in a hell of sand! There's plenty of Deep Hurting left for you...

If you are under the strange delusion that having everything grind to a halt because of a sandstorm is anything remotely equivalent to entertainment, go watch MST3K #410: Hercules vs. the Moonmen. This will cure your delusion.

---

There are two kinds of terrain features: Battle Terrain and Flavor Text. That's it. So if the forest is being destroyed by the Retinite, and you have to go face it in its lair, it's fine to have there be sand blowing around and shit during that encounter. It slows people down and impinges on vision or something and has no effect on the Retinite, so everyone knows that they are being screwed - and that screwing is part of the Retinite's CR. But if there's just sand blowing around outside somewhere, I don't give a damn.

Taking actual screen time to watch sandstorms that don't have monsters in them is a waste of screen time. That is the stuff that should end up on the editting room floor.

DEEP HURTING! DEEP HURTING!

-Username17

[The_Hanged_Man]

OT - Hercules v/ the Moonmen is one of the best movies EVER! I
chuckle just seeing the name.

[RandomCasualty]

1111449068[/unixtime]]But if there's just sand blowing around outside somewhere, I don't give a damn.

You would if it was blinding and/or powerful enough to rip the flesh from your bones.

[Username17]

No. Seriously, "Sand that rips the flesh from your bones!" is either:

A> Flavor text. It's all sandy and shit, so that's why there's noone else around here for you to buy/steal from.

B> Part of some fvcking DM railroading plan. Oops, it's all sandy so now you guys have to do the only adventure that I'm the slightest bit prepared for and I'm not creative enough to just ad hoc something else or rub serial numbers off of wilderness encounters such that there's even the illusion of choice.

C> Some sort of arbitrary trap encounter that moves to the PCs instead of vice versa.

Now, I don't really have a problem with A. I like descriptive text as much as the next guy, and a tirade about how it's all sandy and shit is just as potentially entertaining or boring as a description of how it's Dark/Cold/Arousing/Windy/Damp/Foggy/Moist/Whatever. That's fine as long as it doesn't get in the way of the action.

B is just horseshit, plain and simple. If the story begins because the DM's weather patterns happened to force the PC's inside just in time to witness the crime and then prevented them from going outside so there was nothing to do except jump down into the sewers.. that's retarded. That shit works in novels. It can be really cool in novels. But that sort of no-choice pin ball is the worst thing you can do to a cooperative storytelling game. Without exception, really.

And C is no more or less interesting in potentia than is an encounter with a trip-wire that releases a bunch of water, or a crushing stone press, or whatever. The thing is, however, that traps are individually not that interesting. Taking more than a little piece of the game time with resolving a single arrow trap is just as much of a waste of time as is... spending more than a handspan of attention on the logistics of an individual whirlwind or cold snap.

It's not particularly interactive and is not particularly the player's fault. As such, having it be particularly important to the flow of the game is DEEP HURTING!

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1111458683[/unixtime]]No. Seriously, "Sand that rips the flesh from your bones!" is either:

A> Flavor text. It's all sandy and shit, so that's why there's noone else around here for you to buy/steal from.

B> Part of some fvcking DM railroading plan. Oops, it's all sandy so now you guys have to do the only adventure that I'm the slightest bit prepared for and I'm not creative enough to just ad hoc something else or rub serial numbers off of wilderness encounters such that there's even the illusion of choice.

C> Some sort of arbitrary trap encounter that moves to the PCs instead of vice versa.

It can be all of those things... but you need it to generate realistic terrain. If you want harsh terrain nobody wants to live in and nobody travels to, you should have some kind of mechanical thing to back that up.

If you have the desert of death, with sandstorms that tear the flesh off the living and deep inherent negative energies that drain the life slowly from living creatures that travel through them, then you better damn well have some mechanics to back up the hype, otherwise your PCs will pretty much take all your flavor text to mean absolutely nothing. And once your PCs start disregarding what you say, they are likely to overlook clues or warnings you give them.

It might be that I prefer to run a darker game where things really can kill the PCs on a regular basis that aren't monsters. The answer to every trap or problem isn't "I'll soak it and get a little healing later." and so on. I don't like to hype up dangerous terrain unless it really is dangerous. If the desert really is mild mechanically, then your description should be mild too. "It's a little hot but you've seen worse."

Now this doesn't mean every world should have harsh weather or difficult terrain. If man versus nature doesn't fit at all into your plot and you don't want it to be a focus, then by all means just don't use advanced weather rules. It doesn't mean they're wrong for all types of games however.

And really hostile weather conditions probably shouldn't be common in normal deserts, but I really am a strong supporter of truly vicious conditions on other planes. When you go to the elemental plane of fire, you should expect to get burned, a lot.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I can thyink of exactly one situation where I would consider it acceptable to kill someone with weather.

As in, the Secret city of Blahblah is surrounded by a deadly whirlwind, and they need the sacred doodad of et cetera to enter, where they hope to accomplish tasks such as X, Y, and Z.

If you don't have the sacred doodad, you're going to die. If you DO have it, you can enter without harm.