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Alongside exploration and social interaction, combat is one of the three pillars of play inDungeons & Dragons. Every action that your players take in D&D or any other roleplaying game will fall neatly into one of these pillars. While some roleplaying games favor one of the other pillars, combat is undoubtedly D&D’s sacred cow.
All you need to do to confirm this statement is take a look at the game’s rules. Well over eighty percent of them are concerned with combat. Consequently, getting the most out of our combats is paramount to running a great D&D session and factoring in the weather is one easy way to always make your combats feel different and dynamic.
Obscuring Vision
Perhaps the simplest way to involve weather in your combats is to make it reduce the sight range of creatures. Aheavy precipitation, thick fog, or snow stormmightreduce visionto60 feet, 30 feet,orless.This will force ranged combatants into close quarters where they will be much less comfortable.
Instead of outright disallowing ranged attacks,one of these weather effectsmight just applydisadvantage to attack rolls made outside of a certain range.Alternatively, bad weather like this could only have the effect of causing perception checks to be made at disadvantage.
Applying disadvantage to attacks made at a certain range will severely hamper rogues in particular as it will prevent them from making Sneak Attacks at range.
If you really want your opponents to have a leg up on the party,make the effect asymmetrical.The adventuring party might suffer disadvantage on attacks at a certain range while the monsters don’t. This might seem unfair, but there are tons of explanations for why monsters wouldn’t have an issue with a weather effect.
For example, they could be natives to a foggy environment experienced in peering through the haze, elemental creatures who are one with the snow or rain, or simply have some kind of magic ability or spell cast upon them that allows them to ignore the weather effect.
Asymmetrical combat circumstances are great for providing a challenge but using them too often will get under the players' skin. Most combat encounters should feel fair.
Saving Against Exhaustion Or Status Effects
Another common way to involve the weather is byforcing your players to save against exhaustionwhen exposed to certain environments. Theinterior of a volcano,awinter storm on a mountainside,oraflooding river in the middle of a battlefieldare all examples of places where you might call for characters to save against exhaustion.
While you can make an entire battlefield force the characters to save against exhaustion while in combat there, it can be more interesting to make only portions of the battlefield force characters to save against it.
Exhaustion comes in multiple levels that continually worsen as a character fails more saves. If enough of these rolls are failed, a character will end up outright dead. Here’s a table examining the consequences.
1
Disadvantage on ability checks
2
Movement speed halved
3
Disadvantage on attack rolls and saves
4
Hit point maximum halved
5
Movement speed reduced to zero
6
Instant death (no death saves)
Theexhaustion mechanicsfound inFifth Editionhave been viewed by some asespecially harsh.Thankfully, you may use the exhaustion mechanics coming to the next edition of D&D if you or your players feel this way.
Having all your players make their saves against exhaustion simultaneously at the end of a combat round is easier to manage than reminding each player to save at the end of their turn.
In the next edition,a level of exhaustion provides a -1 penalty to a character’s d20 rolls and spell save Difficulty Class (DC).This penalty can stack up to a total of -10. If a character reaches ten levels of exhaustion, they die.
A failed save while in an area of bad weather might also imposestatus effectssuch as blinded, deafened poisoned, and restrained. In extreme cases, weather might even paralyze or stun a creature. Exiting the area of bad weather might immediately cure the associated status effect. Then again, it might not. As always, the harshness of your encounter design is left to you.
It might feel nice to change how weather affects a character that’s struggling against it, however, players will notice if someone is receiving preferential treatment. Better to be harsh and fair than kind and partisan.
Slippery Surfaces
Rain or ice can make for especiallyslippery surfaces that require a Dexterity saving throw to cross without falling prone.Characters with a decent passive perception might notice that they could slip on these surfaces while those who aren’t as perceptive will have to just move through them to find out.
you’re able to rule thatslipping on one of these surfaces either interrupts your movement or reduces your speed to zero entirely.It’s up to you how punishing you want the mechanic to be. Additionally, you might rule that the slippery area also counts asdifficult terrain.
Melee attacks made against a prone creature are rolled at advantage. As a result, slipping and losing the rest of your movement nearby a handful of enemies can easily result in the end of a character’s life.
Slipping on a narrow crossing such as a bridge may also result in a character falling off the edgeof the platform. If you want to be forgiving, you can give a character who slips in one of these spaces an Acrobatics check or additional Dexterity saving throw to catch the ledge before plummeting off the side.
Persistent Damage
Yet another way to use weather in combat is to make itdeal damage to characters subjected to it.Acid rain, hail, falling meteors, and moreare all possible weather conditions that might damage creatures standing in them.
you may make this damage nearly unavoidable by subjecting an entire battlefield to it,providing the party an opportunity to cast a spell or perform an action that might provide them cover from the reoccurring damage.This is a great way to reduce a party’s hit point total before a climactic encounter.
The damage these types of weather deal should only be unavoidable if it deals a relatively small amount . Otherwise, allow characters to make a Constitution saving throw or other relevant ability check to avoid the damage or reduce it by half.
Alternatively, you canconstruct a battlefield that already has areas of cover from the damaging weather.Fill these areas withenemies who can forcibly move other creatures out of the coverand into the damaging weather, and you’ve got a spicy encounter brewing.
Monsters with high Strength can use the Shove action fairly reliably to move creatures where they wish. Alternatively, you could have them grapple and throw characters back into the damaging weather conditions. Give a monster proficiency in Athletics if you want them to truly excel at this strategy.
Environmental Disasters
Finally, you can use weather to have an environmental disaster like ahurricane, fire tornado, flood, volcanic eruption, meteor shower,orearthquakebe visited upon the party. These types of weather effects bring theutmost extremesto a combat encounter andshould be used sparingly.
That being said, they areperfect for a climactic boss encounterat the end of a campaign arc or one shot. An environmental disaster in a combat encounter might challenge characters withsome of or all of the previously mentioned weather effects simultaneously.
Alternatively,the disaster could move around the battlefield like an invulnerable enemycausing anyone caught in its wake to make a deadly ability check or saving throw.Rolling a d4 or d8 to decide the cardinal direction the disasters movesin is the safest and fairest way to decide its movement.
That being said, you could also introduce some method to the disaster’s madness.The disaster may have a specific movement pattern that discerning players can identifyand use to their advantage. Whatever method you choose,the saving throw this disaster requires should be brutal and even creatures who save against it should suffer some kind of harmful effect.
Weather conditions are often overlooked in D&D, but they can offer a ton of interesting parameters to the encounters we build. Beyond that, changing weather makes your game world feel both alive and lived in. After all, strangers do like to default to talking about the weather, don’t they?
