Hi, my name is James and welcome to Code/Switch, today I want to talk about the weather. My friends and I have gone back and forth about 1st level spells from Pathfinder that we’d like to use, during the summer, someone gave the answer of the spell endure elements. The spell endure elements last for 24 hours and allows you to exist comfortably in temperatures from -50F to 140F. Today, during our first cold snap of 2019, I want to examine how useful the spell would actually be.

I live just outside of the city of Philadelphia, so I’m going to be using data for Philadelphia because it’s easy to find and a reasonable approximation. I’m also going to use the temperature conditions from the Pathfinder 1e CRB to show when the spell will be useful as its written. Pathfinder 1e has 3 levels of heat and 3 levels of cold ranging from harmful to severe to extreme. Your cold ranges from from 40F to 1F for harmful cold, 0 to -19F for severe cold, and -20F+ for extreme cold. Heat is 90 to 109F, severe heat 110 to 139F, and 140F+ for extreme heat.

I found climate data from Penn State University that shows the average temperature for each day in Philadelphia in 2018, and counted the number of days that fell in our aforementioned temperature ranges. I’m using average temperature because the endure elements spell last for 24 hours, and I want to get the most out of the spell. 

Turns out, Philadelphia is much cooler than I think it is.

Using this data I found 86 days fell into the base “cold” temperature range, and 5 days fell into the “severe cold” temperature range, anddd that’s it.  While Philadelphia had 26 days with highs into the harmful heat range, it had no days with the average temperature in the 90s or above, so while endure elements will help you feel comfortable during the afternoon, it’ll go to waste in the evening.

Using this data we’ve learned the endure elements is helpful for 91 days out of the year, roughly 25% of the year, in Philadelphia. All in all, not a bad answer for a useful first level spell. Shame the real answer for the best first level spell in real life is obviously stumble gap.

I wish people would stop casting stumble gap on roads.

Find me and the rest of the KD Crew at our Discord!