Roughin' It
Welcome to the final day of Frontier Week. Those of you who read my Dark Designs articlefor this week will recall that I gave a few pieces of advice about running games on the frontier. One piece of advice I gave was to make good use of wilderness effects to drive home to your players that they are, in fact, out in the boonies. Today’s article is going to expand on that, in a way. Because, you see, while it’s important for GMs to be able to drive home the point that the frontier is wild by throwing all kinds of unpleasant nature at the PCs, it’s equally important for nature-inclined PCs to drive home the point that they’re used to that sort of thing by, well, being better at dealing with it than others.
The following feats all require that the character have at least one favored terrain, and are designed to represent characters that are very well suited to surviving in a specific kind of environment. Not all favored terrains are represented here (there’s nothing very “frontier” about urban environments, for example, and some terrains (such as plains), are simply too featureless to lend themselves to such feats.
Blood of the North
Prerequisite: Favored terrain (cold)
Benefit: You gain a +4 bonus on saving throws to resist the effects of cold environments (such as subdual damage from cold and exposure). Additionally, you need only make such Fortitude saves half as often (so a check that would normally be made every hour is made every two hours, a check that would normally be made every ten minutes is made every twenty minutes, etc.).
Bog Raider
Prerequisite: Favored terrain (swamp)
Benefit: You are especially adept at moving and fighting in swampy environments. You can move through areas of shallow bog normally, and areas of deep bog cost only two squares of movement to enter, instead of the normal four. Additionally, when crouching in deep bog to gain improved cover, you suffer only a -4 penalty on attack rolls made against creatures that aren’t underwater.
Normal: Normally, entering a square of shallow bog costs 2 squares of movement, and entering a square of deep bog costs 4 squares of movement. Normally, characters crouching in a deep bog to gain improved cover suffer a -10 penalty on attack rolls made against creatures that aren’t underwater.
Cold Tolerance
Prerequisite: Favored terrain (cold)
Benefit: You are not beset by frostbite or hypothermia from cold damage until you have taken nonlethal damage from cold or exposure equal to 1/2 your maximum hit points. You do not begin taking lethal damage from cold or exposure until you have taken an amount of subdual damage from cold or exposure equal to twice your total hit points.
Normal: A character who has taken any subdual damage from cold or exposure is beset by frostbite or hypothermia (treat as fatigued), and once a character has taken an amount of nonlethal damage equal to her total hit points, any further damage from a cold environment is lethal damage.
Mountain Man
Prerequisite: Favored terrain (mountain)
Benefit: Your time in high altitudes has left you exceptionally well acclimated to them. You require only 24 hours to reacclimatize yourself to high altitudes. Additionally, once acclimated, you are immune to the effects of high altitude even at high peak zones above 15,000 feet.
Normal: Normally, a character who is not acclimated to high altitudes must live in them for a full month before becoming acclimated, and at altitudes above 15,000 feet even acclimated characters must still make saving throws to avoid the effects of the altitude, they simply receive a +4 bonus on such rolls.
Sand Devil
Prerequisite: Favored terrain (desert), Survival 5 ranks
Benefit: You can predict sandstorms, and are better able to survive them. As long as you are in the open and can survey the strength and direction of the wind and view your surroundings, you automatically know if a sandstorm is going to arrive in the next eight hours, and roughly how long it will be. Additionally, while in a sandstorm, you take only a single point of nonlethal damage each hour, and can see farther than normal, with a maximum sight distance of 1d10 x 20 feet, though you still suffer the normal penalty to Perception checks made within the sandstorm.
Normal: At GM’s discretion, a character might be able to predict a sandstorm by predicting the weather with the Survival skill. Characters caught in a sandstorm take 1d3 points of nonlethal damage each hour, and the maximum sight distance is 1d10 x 5 feet. Regardless of whether or not a character has this feat, they take a -4 penalty to Perception checks while in a sandstorm.
Slopewalker
Prerequisite: Favored terrain (mountain)
Benefit: You are especially well trained for fighting on a slope. When attacking foes downhill from you, you gain a +2 bonus on melee attack rolls instead of the normal +1, and foes attacking you from uphill do not gain any bonus on such attacks due to the slope. Additionally, when traveling up a steep slope, you are not as hampered as other characters, and can move at a rate of two squares per three squares of movement.
Normal: Normally, characters attacking a foe downhill from them gain a +1 bonus on any melee attack rolls they make. Characters travelling up a steep slope must normally spend two squares of movement to enter a square uphill from them.
Sustained
Prerequisite: Favored terrain (desert)
Benefit: You can go twice as long without food or water before you begin suffering from the effects of starvation or dehydration. Additionally, you gain a +2 bonus on Constitution checks made to resist the effects of starvation or dehydration. Finally, you are not fatigued from taking nonlethal damage from starvation or dehydration until you have taken an amount of nonlethal damage equal to 1/2 your maximum hit points.
Normal: Normally, characters can go without water for 1 day plus a number of hours equal to his Constitution score before suffering any penalties, and can go without food for 3 days before suffering penalties. Normally, a character who has taken any nonlethal damage from the effects of starvation or dehydration is automatically fatigued.
Tree Dancer
Prerequisite: Favored terrain (forest or jungle)
Benefit: You are specially trained in the art of fighting in the forest, dodging behind and around trees while fighting, confusing and frustrating your opponent. When in the same square as a tree, the AC bonus you gain increases to +3, and the bonus to Reflex saves increases to +2. Additionally, you do not provoke attacks of opportunity for moving out of any square, as long as the square you are entering has a tree in it.
Finally, while in the same square as a tree, you can attempt a special maneuver to dodge your opponent at the last minute and have him strike the tree instead. Beginning this maneuver is a full-round action. Once you have begun it, the next time you are attacked before the beginning of your next turn, you may make a Reflex save (DC 15). If you succeed, you may take a 5-ft. step out of your square, causing the attacker to miss you, and instead hit the tree, dealing damage as normal (the tree has hardness 5 and 150 hp). If the attack deals at least 1 point of damage to the tree (after hardness), the weapon becomes stuck in the tree. In order to remove the weapon, the attacker must succeed on a Strength check (a move action), with the DC equal to the amount of damage done to the tree. Even in the case of a failure, if the result of the Strength check is 10 or higher the DC is reduced by 2 for all future checks to free the weapon.
Normal: Normally, fighting in a square with a tree in it grants partial cover (+2 to AC and +1 to Reflex saves).
Woodland Tracker
Prerequisite: Favored terrain (forest or jungle)
Benefit: You are especially adept at finding intruders in the woods, as your experience in such places makes it easy for you to find those that don’t belong. You do not suffer the normal penalty to hearing-based Perception checks in the forest due to background noise, and, in fact, are able to use the background noise to your advantage, helping you to find disturbances, and granting you an additional +2 bonus on Perception checks and Survival checks made to track or hunt in the forest. Additionally, creatures hiding in undergrowth do not have concealment from you, though creatures in heavy undergrowth still have concealment (10% miss chance) from even your keen eyes, but do not gain the normal +5 bonus on Stealth checks against you.
Normal: The background noise in the forest makes Perception checks that rely on sound more difficult, increasing the DC of the check by 2 per 10 feet, not 1. Any creature in a square with undergrowth has concealment (20% miss chance), and creatures in heavy undergrowth are even more concealed (30% miss chance, and a +5 bonus on Stealth checks).