Cold: Does rain make the -5 for wet clothing apply to no clothing?

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by BraselC5048

First off, does rain make it count as "wet clothing" if you're wearing "no clothing?" That's the first part of the question.

I have no idea what is the right answer to this question. By the letter of the rules, it shouldn't, because there's no clothing to speak of. By the spirit - I don't know; cold rains means little to no evaporation of water from the skin, and evaporation is one of the sources of feeling colder if wet, but OTOH, new cold water keeps coming and has good thermal conductivity.

I gave my answer to #2 in hopes that the answer to #1 will be resolved eventually.

Originally Posted by BraselC5048

If not, then there's no reason for a critical failure to be worse, since it's still only -5, at least for my purposes right now.

On the other hand, if it does, and even if it doesn't, then it seems that for an average person, the difference between -5 and -10 cold should be more than 5%. For that matter, light clothing that's wet ought to be worse then light clothing that's not wet by a larger margin than that. Perhaps 2 FP lost on a critical failure? It's just that massively increasing how bad the situation is doesn't make the FP go away any faster once you're already likely going to fail the roll, and that just doesn't quite feel right. It seems that worse cold should make you freeze faster.

To me, it's a matter of symmetry. If there's nothing extra-good that's supposed to come out of a critical success, then nothing extra-bad should come from a critical failure either. E.g. with Bleeding, a critical failure triples the HP lost at that minute, while a critical success counts as three successes in a row and thus stops bleeding permanently.