🏔️5e - Environment🏔️
Not all dangers while adventuring are from enemies, monsters, and beasts. Whether urban or rural, the very environment a hero must traverse in order to complete their quest (or the battlefield they find themselves on) can present a multitude of hazards.
Be sure to pay attention to the environment around your character as they move through it, and be wary of any hidden threats — or anything you can leverage to get the upper hand in a fight.
Falling
When a creature falls, it takes bludgeoning damage and lands ☠️Prone. The amount of damage the Creature takes is calculated as follows:
The Creature falls less than or equal to 50 ft: The Creature suffers 1d6 damage per 10 ft. it falls.
The Creature falls between 50 and 150 ft: The Creature suffers 2d6 damage per 10 ft. it falls.
The Creature falls between 150 and 300 ft: The Creature suffers 3d6 damage per 10 ft. it falls.
The Creature falls 300 ft. or more: The Creature instantly dies.
A creature that falls into water takes half damage, or no damage if it dives with a successful Athletics check (DC equal to the distance it falls divided by 5).
Suffocating
See ☠️Suffocating for more information.
Drowning, strangulation, smothering, strange alternate planes of reality with no air — many situations can lead to suffocation. A creature can hold its breath for a number of minutes equal to 1 + CON (minimum of 30 seconds). Once a creature is out of breath, it begins suffocating and gains 2 ☠️Fatigue and 2 ☠️Strife at the end of each of its turns. When a Creature can breathe again, it removes all levels of Fatigue and Strife gained from suffocating.
Underwater
A creature that cannot breathe water begins to suffocate underwater once it cannot hold its breath.
In addition, creatures without swim speeds have DISADV on attacks made using any weapon other than a dagger, dueling dagger, javelin, shortsword, spear, or trident. Ranged weapon attacks automatically miss beyond their normal range underwater, and bludgeoning and fire damage are halved. A creature that takes damage while holding its breath underwater must succeed on a 🎲Concentration Save or immediately begin suffocating as if its breath had run out.
Vision and Light
Most creatures rely on sight for even the most mundane, everyday tasks. Adventurers are no different, and the amount of light in a given area impacts their ability to perform both in and out of combat. Other environmental features {like fog or heavy rain) may obscure a creature’s vision and cause difficulty.
A 💡Lightly Obscured area is one that creates a minimal, but not insignificant, amount of visual impairment. A moderately wooded area, lingering smoke from a sacked town, dim lighting, and the like can all cause an area to be lightly obscured.
When within this area, creatures have DISADV on Perception checks that rely on sight. See also: 💡Dim Light.
An area that is 💡Heavily Obscured may be a shoreline cloaked in dense fog, a jungle full of thick foliage and hanging vines, or darkness (magical or otherwise), that obstructs vision completely. A creature in this area is considered ☠️Blind.
Three types of lighting exist within an area: bright light, dim light, and darkness.
💡Bright Light is the most common. Even on a cloudy day the sun provides bright light, as do torches, bonfires, magical lights, and other similar sources (though often within a limited radius). Most creatures suffer no penalties from being in a brightly lit area.
💡Dim Light creates a 💡Lightly Obscured area. Dim light is typically found on the outer reaches of artificial light sources, such as the depths of a room lit only by candles or the outer ring of a bonfire. Dim light can also be found during dawn or twilight, or beneath a full moon.
💡Darkness creates a 💡Heavily Obscured area. Creatures venturing out at night, delving underground, or traveling into a windowless dungeon without any alternate sources of light will find themselves at a distinct disadvantage.
Blindsight
Not everything relies on vision to sense the world. A creature with 👁️Blindsight is not affected by 💡Darkness or other 💡Heavily or 💡Lightly Obscured areas, and can see through ☠️Invisibility, within a certain radius. Creatures adapted to the darkness (like bats and moles) or creatures without eyes (like purple worms) have blindsight.
Figments: Creatures that do not rely on visual sight, noted as having blindsight (blind beyond this range), are immune to visual illusions (such as those created by minor illusion).
Darkvision
Many creatures within the realms of medieval fantasy are gifted with sensitive sight. 👁️Darkvision allows a creature to see within 💡Darkness as if it were 💡Dim Light, and dim light as if it were 💡Bright Light, though the creature cannot perceive colors while in darkness, only shades of gray.
Truesight
Some especially powerful creatures, like particularly old dragons, have 👁️Truesight. This allows a creature to see in normal or magical 💡Darkness, perceive ☠️Invisible creatures and objects, automatically detect illusions and succeed on its saving throw against them, and perceive the original form of a shapechanger or creature that is transformed by magic.
A creature with truesight can also see into the Ethereal Plane.