Wanted to run a quick question by folks, as the Cruel Weather hazard come into play recently and want to ensure I'm interpreting this correctly.

LB, pgs 35-36:

"The company is surprised by the changing weather and is repeatedly caught in the open by rain or snow. All Look-outs make a Perception test (Awareness). If no hero overcomes the test, all members lose a number of Endurance points equal to the length of the journey in days (emphasis mine).

Our Look-out made a Travel test and failed, with an Eye. I determined he would make a Cruel Weather test, which he failed. I then assessed a 5 point Endurance loss on all PCs.

However, this was the second leg of a 10-day journey. A 10 point Endurance loss seemed excessive but, the rule, as written, includes the "equal to the length of the journey." So, just wanted confirmation that other LMs are only assessing 3, 5, 6, and 4 point Endurance penalties (corresponding to the seasonal days between Fatigue tests). Or, am I just a big softy?

I haven't utilized this yet - but it makes sense to be 1 endurance for each day of THAT portion. So Five sounds acceptable to me, FWIW.

But my opinion and 2 bucks will get you a cheap cup of coffee.

Either go with the length of that leg of the journey (eg, in this case the remainder of the journey of 5 days) or they length of time between fatigue tests (eg, 3, 4, 5, or 6 depending on the season).

I'd go with the latter personally as a loss of 3, 4, 5, or 6 seems more than enough whereas journey legs could last any amount of days (assuming consistent terrain) - 10, 15, 20, etc days!!! Extremely harsh compared to many other Hazards.

I agree, the numbers seem much more reasonable. Getting hot by a storm ona 30 day trip should not be 6 times worse than being hit by a storm on a 5 days trip right? It's nto like the storm is going to last a month!

My only critique however is that maybe the weather should be more of a threat in the winter, 3 days of winter storms is a lot nastier than 6 days of summer thunderstorms right?

Yeah, they need to effectively be the reverse of Fatigue Tests, if using that (ie, 6 points for Winter and down to 3 for Summer).

Personally, rather than fanny around around with that I'd just go with losing endurance equal to three times your encumbrance gear rating, so by the RAW that'd be 3 for summer/spring gear and 6 for winter/autumn gear. So, in other words, I'd houserule it.

Personally it makes as much sense if not more to apply Fatigue as opposed to Endurance damage.

But that's just me.

@Rich H - nice suggestion. I suppose you could mechanically/randomly determine which day they were caught in the open and assess the penalty from there (if I wanted to be an even bigger softy). I like it.

@Cynan - kind of my thought. I mean, say the test failure occurs in the middle of a 30-day journey, how would one assess that, you know, if it applied beyond the failed segment? 15-days? 30? Now you've saddled the PCs with a 30-point Endurance hit and, while it might be very realistic to have a PC die of exposure, it wouldn't make for very much fun (especially if you weren't the cause of the failure).

To be fair on the winter weather, a PC would pick-up both a Fall/Winter Fatigue penalty and an Endurance loss.

Well, yeah I agree, except the OP was asking for a RAW interpretation. I got halfway through my last post and realised I was no longer giving one!