Weatherproofing

Weatherproofing is the process of protecting certain instruments from being damaged by weather effects.

Protection Mechanics

Substances that can be applied to instruments to protect them have two different aspects that impact the final level of protection: the quality of the substance itself, and the thickness of the coating on the instrument. Higher quality weatherproofing items can be applied to a higher thickness level which provides more and longer protection.

Weather checks occur roughly every minute. If during that time the protection offsets or prevents damage, the thickness of the protection will decrease by 1.

You can APPLY a substance to the instrument to add protection, or SCRAPE the instrument to remove layers of protection. Quality and skill influence the RTs when adding and removing weatherproofing. Bards get a skill bonus in this calc. Quality also affects how much you APPLY or SCRAPE each time.

The type of weatherproofing (oil, beeswax, lacquer, etc) is ultimately cosmetic. The system does differentiate them for messaging, and you must use the same type already present on an instrument (or SCRAPE it off to start fresh), but which you choose is up to you.

Note: Certain instruments will come with a non-functional level of a particular type of weatherproofing already present on them, if the SHORT, TAP, or LOOK contain certain words like wax, shellac, or lacquer. For those instruments you can either apply more of a matching type to provide protection, or scrape off the existing material to apply a different one. ^[1]