Types Of Combat Hazards – Environment

Wind affects archers, flying mounts and wizards, and more.
The first type of hazard we talked about was Terrain. Another variety of combat hazard is environmental. What are the physical surroundings like? Are there any interesting global effects in place?
My definition of environmental hazard is one that affects everyone. If a hazard is limited to just certain areas of the battlemap, then it is not environmental but another hazard type.
Ground
What are the combatants standing on? Ground is the same as default terrain, bit it’s included here to help you get a complete picture of your combat environment. Determine if there are any global features and modifiers due to the nature of the footing.
Overhead
What do combatants see when they look up? Ceiling? Sky? Perhaps they see large stalactites swarming with bats, a sheet of fire, or black clouds ready to let loose a hailstorm. As with ground, determine if there are any global features and modifiers due to the nature of ‘sky’.
Air or atmosphere
What’s the space like between the ground and the sky? The atmosphere is often overlooked as an entertaining hazard. Thin oxygen makes encounters with undead even more interesting (assuming undead in your game don’t breathe). Dust, airborne particles, and gases can cause choking, sneezing, or limited visibility. Next time a combat takes place in the middle of a boring city street, add smog or smoke to spice things up.
Light
Lighting and visibility are critical to survival for most combatants. If your game system has special rules for limited visibility, such as line of sight or concealment, then consider the lighting a great source of potential hazards.
Imagine a crazy strobe effect caused by a huge fan near a light source. Diabolical game masters might introduce epilepsy rules a couple sessions prior to such an encounter, and then assign a racially modified chance of seizure during such a combat. While you should make the chance very low, the added tension when you ask each player to roll would be momentarily exciting. In addition, the strobing effect might improve stealth skills and abilities during the combat, cause ranged attack modifiers, and so on.
Another example might be a light switch. One side can see in the dark, the other can’t. The switch now becomes an important tactical element to the fight. Does one side need to guard the switch, disable it, or control it?
Sound
Sound is another under-used environmental factor. If communication is limited, combatants must resort to poorer coordination or alternate methods to provide status updates, offer ideas, or issue commands. Conversely, if sound is enhanced so you can hear the slightest whisper, it will be hard to keep your foes from overhearing what you say.
An example of a sound hazard is loud machine noise. Pounding, grinding, rattling, and rumbling machines would make casual conversation impossible. You might restrict players to six words each round on their turn because of the environment their PCs are in.
Esoteric
Depending on your game system and genre, this category is for any global or physical surrounding effects that don’t fall into the other environmental categories.
For example, in one campaign I crafted evil ruled the night, and good ruled the day. If encounters took place at night, any evil foes received a combat bonus. If encounters took place during the day, good combatants received a bonus.
Ambiance
Rules should not be the only determinant for environmental effects on combat. Looks for ways to add flavour to your fights with evocative global effects, such as strange lighting or unusual ground.
Be sure to use description to bring out the full flavour of the hazard. You should provide a description before combat starts so the PCs know what they’re dealing with (as much as they can perceive, at least). However, you should also weave in descriptions of the hazard during combat as well, so players don’t forget about it, take it for granted, or get too lost in number crunching.
The best way to continually message your group about flavour and hazards during combats is to roleplay. Have the foes react to the hazards and environment. Even if no special rules are in effect because of the ambiance (especially when no rules are in effect – many players will then stop thinking about it and focus just on buffs and drawbacks) you should have NPCs and monsters interact with the environment.
Inconsequential behaviours and reactions are a great way to roleplay.
“The beast slips on the wet grass but recovers gracefully, revealing its dexterity despite its massive, stinking bulk.”
“The giant bees sway back and forth in the breeze, which brings you scent of the goblin camp you’ve been heading toward.”
“The warrior parries your blow and a sharp ringing sound echoes throughout the canyon, letting all canyon denizens know for miles that blood will be spilt today.”
Another technique is to roleplay, if the foes can communicate. Have NPCs remark to each other or the player characters about the environment. Add elements of the environment into combat challenges and insults.
A related technique is to visualize to improve your descriptions and roleplaying. Pretend you are the enemy. What do you see around you? How does the environment play to your strengths and affect your weaknesses? Are you comfortable? What’s making you uncomfortable (other than you’re in a fight)? Run through the five senses and not only visualize what you see, hear, smell, taste, and touch, but how you react to each sense as well.
Finally, keep this visualization going throughout the combat, updating it with what’s happening each round. Are you surrounded, hurt, on fire? Can you taste blood, smell fear, feel your attacks sink in, see your foe trip and fall, hear the leader issuing commands? Describe what’s in your imagination during each foe’s turn to bring combat and hazards to life.
- Hazards of Combat: What is a combat hazard?
- Hazards of Combat: Craft a spirited name for your hazards
- Types Of Combat Hazards – Terrain
- Types Of Combat Hazards – Environment
- Types Of Combat Hazards – Traps
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August 24th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
[…] Types Of Combat Hazards – Environment […]
August 24th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
One of my campaigns took place on a planet inside a nebula, so I decided on a twilight by day and a blue-green sky by night where they could see the nebula. It’s little things like this make it more real and enjoyable.
August 24th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
Agreed, Katana. Nice touch.
August 25th, 2009 at 8:22 am
Yeah, It’s amazing what little things like that will do even to players who normally don’t RP much/well. I started DM’ing my 2nd campaign a few months ago and already discovered how awesome it is using environment to mess with my players. I spent quite a while describing in great detail the ominous storm approaching, and the players (having good knowledge of the cliches) were practically walking on needles in anticipation of the inevitable encounter. But it never came.
August 25th, 2009 at 8:27 am
Bait and switch – that’s evil! What game system are you using for your campaign?
August 25th, 2009 at 10:17 am
I use D&D 3.5, the only system that more than 1 of us has the books to/knowledge of… I would want to do a HERO game but no one has any $$ sadly.
Related to the topic, I have been working on tables to simulate an area in the world that is very prone to quakes. Randomly roll every 3 rounds to see if there is a minor tremor and if so roll on severity (determines reflex DC to avoid falling prone). Better hope they not standing near the edge of a cliff or around sharp objects :D
August 25th, 2009 at 11:02 am
I’d love to try HERO someday as well. It’s a time issue for me right now.
Random earthquakes make my dice shake!
August 25th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
Naaah, that’s not evil, Johnn: Evil is doing that, and interrupting it every now and then to have the PCs make saving throws with no discernable consequences (after each of which you carefully scribble something illegible and meaningless on a scrap of paper). Talk about paranoia…
As a long-time player of the Hero System, I can state that it has its benefits and its drawbacks. Characters take more time to generate, and because you get to choose every element of the resulting character, relative levels of player skill in character construction can become a major issue. Combats take longer to resolve. But, because of its ‘building blocks’ nature, character constructions are infintely more flexible and unique.
Hero 6th edition has just been released, and it’s a total rewrite from the ground up – I’m going to be fascinated to see what’s changed….
August 26th, 2009 at 8:01 am
ooooo, that sounds like an awesome system actually. Would probably work for my group too, as only one player (our usual DM) puts thought into character creation beyond “wouldn’t ability be cool!!”. Yeah, I play with a weird group: They usually make crippling choices in the name of it being “in character” and “good RP”, but then half of them play the game as if it were a video game.
Since we are used to 1-2 characters always completely overshadowing the rest of the party, we are also used to the DM giving various boosts to the lower ranked characters to catch them up (free feats, gear, etc). In many other groups I know that would lead to an all-out rebellion by the players that didn’t get boosted, but we are reasonable people and see it only like it is: the DM boosting the other characters to our (usually my…) level to keep the game fun.
So yeah, provided that the Hero System allows for easy DM Powerups I think we could do it. Over half the group are huge superhero comic junkies too so maybe they will actually TRY.
August 26th, 2009 at 8:13 am
DM powerups are really easy, with Hero, but an even better technique is to let the player who makes himself most in-tune with the character construction process to act as an unpaid consultant to the others. If you’re really fussy, make sure that his chosen character type is a telepath or detective or whatever to justify his knowing the other character’s secrets – and make sure that the other players think about how they will react to the knowledge that someone has secrets, because eventually, the truth (in-game) will come out!
August 26th, 2009 at 8:58 am
I trust them to keep player knowledge separate from character knowledge, but that being said if we did do a Hero game I would probably not only be the DM but the only one who has the time to familiarize myself with the new rules, so I could technically help out.
Apparently, the 6th edition Hero system has been designed to be compatible with Champions Online. Considering that me and maybe one other member of the group will be playing that, perhaps a 6th edition Hero game will be easy.
August 28th, 2009 at 6:41 am
I don’t believe I’ve seen anyone mention wet grass as a terrain hazard before!
August 28th, 2009 at 10:54 am
You’re a slippery one Noumenon! I suppose the owner of the grass could say he fell on his own blade?
September 8th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
[…] Environment as a Combat Hazard […]
October 1st, 2009 at 6:10 am
[…] Environment as a Combat Hazard […]
November 28th, 2012 at 4:06 pm
This article just spawned this idea…
The River of Dust is used to deposit undead on enemy shores.
Dust covered zombies stride out of a wave of dust. Dirt spills from their mouths and eyes.
The dust sticks to their gooey bodies as the PCs hack and slash. Each blow mixing more gore with more dust.
Eventually the player’s weapons will be caked in a mud of magical dust bonded with undead ick.
Now I’ve just got to figure out how to represent this in the rules and I’m good.