How to do a Temperature system in Open Legends

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1

I have been working on a Temperature system for a frozen western campaign ill GMing but I am not sure how I should do this with out just using the toughness score and taking points away from there health.

I came up with two scores one for cold and one heat!

My cold score works like this, similar to other stats like it all players start with ten. We then add your will power and fortitude to this plus armor bonus. You can increase you temperature by siting next to a fire or seeking shelter. You temperature decrease over time from being out side in the cold and depending on the season the decrease in temperature can be greater. A roll of a dice dependent on the season decides the decrease in temperature, your temperature can also decrease from things like swimming in cold water. The temperature stat starts at full and decreases over the events of the campaign once you drop bellow a 10 in the stat cold you begin to suffer frostbite, when you drop bellow 5 you begin suffering hypothermia, once you hit 0 zero you die almost immediately from the cold.

The Heat Mechanic would work in reverse meaning you want your score to be lower so the stats you have would decrease the heat score not increase it, also you would be penalized for wearing cloths. If anyone has advice for how to do the heat stat let me know.

This is a hardcore campaign and the players have accepted that but I would like assistance creating this system of temperature!

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2

You can use Fatigue and just to fortitude rolls when in the cold or heat. Giving advantage or disadvantage (or just changing the CR to pass) based on clothing and closeness to heat/cold

Though not sure that is the overall feel you are going for with the heat/cold thing.

3

Its meant to more be a damage to health in another way but fatigue could be a side effect I was looking to make a new stat for my players to keep track of and to make the world a bit more hardcore since that is what they asked for.

4

You could also make it count as Lethal Damage when they get too cold/hot.

Without modifications, Fatigue and Lethal Damage are ways to do more permanent effects.

conversely you could look at any of the banes and say they are present until you get rest/warmed-up/cooled-down type of thing.

Might be easier than keeping track of another number system. But then again, the system might be easier overall once it’s made.

Just a few suggestions to throw out there.

The only concern with the current system you’ve suggested is players that don’t invest anything in some of the attributes will immediately fall to frostbite. For OL, the 10+ was designed to have a buffer before you hit 0, even if you didn’t have anything invested in those stats for HP. 0 is when you are unconscious, 0 is when you finally take a blow that drops you, etc.

So maybe instead of at 10 you do that, maybe at 5 you suffer frostbite, and at 0 you suffer hypothermia, then -5 is when you die, etc…

dunno, hard to say how much, especially not knowing how the world actually effects things, etc.

Using things like Fatigue, and Lethal and Banes that stick until you recover makes it easier to be flexible about it than the cold/heat pool I think. Not saying it won’t work, just writing out my thoughts as I think them.

could be just make a bane like Fatigue that gives increases levels that you have to work off/recover from. Radlands did this with radiation, made 8 levels instead of the 6 that fatigue has but modeled it after fatigue.

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5

All right thank you I’ll take this into account I guess I could modify fatigued and some other banes to make some killer cocktail to reflect temperature as well as have 5 be frost bite 5 does make more sense

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