4 Missing Conditions

Warhammer 3rd puts just about everything on a card. This is mostly great, because it means less time spent looking things up in a rulebook. Condition cards, in particular, are really useful because they serve as reminders to the players about various weird effects the PCs are suffering from. Not only do you not have to look things up, but you're also less likely to forget to apply that penalty to your die rolls. It's right there! How can you forget it?

Well, that only works if they actually make a Condition card for things that logically should be a condition. Here's 4 and a half Condition cards I made for my table because I felt their absence was troubling.

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Darkness
Warhammer has specific rules for actions taken in darkness. Such actions get a whole bunch of black penalty dice added to them. This should totally have been put on a card in the core set, so I made one:

To the left is my first draft, which faithfully summarizes the official rules.

To the right you'll find my revised version. I swapped out two of the misfortune dice for one purple die in cases where there's literally no light. It better matches the penalty from the Blinded condition, and also provides for an increased chance of rolling Chaos Stars, which is the symbol that generates all the hilarious fall-off-the-side-of-the-location-card effects scattered throughout various Warhammer encounters.

For the record, I totally would have started the purple dice much earlier on that list if not for the existence of the Dwarven and Elven racial ability. The night vision possessed by those two character races cancels two black dice from darkness penalties, but has no impact on purple dice. If not for that, every instance of two black on that card would be replaced with a purple.

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Prone

There's a few points where the rules discuss what it means to be knocked prone. Standing up from being knocked prone officially costs a manoeuvre. Elsewhere in the rules they suggest you might apply fortune or misfortune dice to rolls involving prone individuals, but leave the specifics up to the GM.

As flexible and vague as that is, is it would be rather helpful to have at least the minimum effects put on a Condition card for easy reference. So I made exactly that.

I included a specific statement that you can't change locations while prone. That seemed the most elegant way to restrict crawling, which officially has no rules. Per the books only common sense stops you from running while prone.

EDIT: As has been pointed out by comments here and at the Warhammer forums, I really should revise this to add a misfortune die to ranged attacks from long and extreme range. It only makes sense.

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Fire

After much searching the books, I could only conclude that Warhammer 3rd doesn't actually have any official fire rules.  There are, however, a number of location cards for things like burning buildings, barges and cities.  Each time an adventure needed to take place inside or adjacent to a fire, they made a card to capture the feel of it. They aren't quite uniform, but they have a few commonalities. They usually slowly load you up on Fatigue points, sometimes give you minor penalties on your actions,  and if you roll Chaos Stars near a fire it may well result in actual wounds.

The upshot of this is that I could reverse-engineer some baseline effects for standing in or near a major fire. Since I have a Bright Wizard pyromancer in my gaming group, this seemed worth putting on a generic reference card.

EDIT: I neglected to mention the real point of this card. It's not really intended to be applied as a condition directly to a target. Mainly it's a cheat-sheet that summarizes the most common effects of all the various fire-related location cards. That's why instead of "Dependent Effect" it says "Likely Affects Of A Burning Environment". I don't generally let my players thumb through my binder of unused location cards during the game, but I wanted our Bright Wizard to be able to eyeball the strategic benefits of setting a building on fire.

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Non-Lethal Damage

Warhammer 3rd has no official rules for pulling your punches or dealing non-lethal damage. A number of GMs have attempted to address this specifically with custom actions or house-rules that inflict fatigue points instead of wounds. This runs into problems, though, as Fatigue and Wounds are mechanically very different.  PCs are generally KO'd much faster by fatigue than wounds, and per the default rules NPCs don't take fatigue.


My version of the card is a voluntary effect. The main effect is that it cancels your critical hits on any attack that gets no Chaos Stars.

As it turns out, the normal healing rules are very generous, so once the fight is over normal wounds feel like non-lethal damage.  Critical wounds take longer to heal, and are also what determines whether or not a KO'd character actually dies.  As long as you take zero crits, you can technically survive an infinite number of normal wounds.

I kept the side-effects of the card pretty minimal, so it'd be worth using when the situation warrants. It adds a misfortune die and reduces damage by 1, just to pay lip service to the notion that you're intentionally not giving it your all.

Flying In To A Black Hole

I've been doing a little reading, and I believe the following adequately summarizes the likely visuals and clues as your spaceship approaches and fall into a black hole:

Black Holes cannot currently be directly observed, since they swallow up the light and radiation we would use to see them. It would be possible to detect distortions where light is bent by some unseen object of great mass. Determining whether such a distortion was from a genuine black hole, as opposed to distortion caused by a Massive Compact Halo Object or other hypothetical form of Dark Matter would probably be difficult and dangerous. As such, a Black Hole might serve as a navigational hazard in a role-playing game.

In most settings, we can assume there will be some way of detecting and avoiding a black hole. Established space lanes and commonly traveled routes will avoid black holes and suspected black holes. The ships' computer might analyze visual data from the sensors, compare them to star charts, and compute likely gravitational distortions in the vicinity. With superscience or applied phlebotinum you might be able to build a sensor that accurately detects the warping of spacetime that occurs near a black hole.

So, black holes should really only be a danger to vessels exploring remote areas of space, or to ships that for whatever reason have lost their navigational sensors, computers, or star charts. For the sake of drama, though, we'll assume you've somehow bumbled upon a black hole without warning. It's not going to look like a big area of darkness as you might expect, at least not until you get very close. Instead, light from objects far beyond it will be bent, so you'll actually see behind the black hole. Objects on the other side of it will be distorted, but if they're just distant stars the distortions might not be immediately obvious. At near ranges to the event horizon, you'd be able to notice the big black spot, but the relativistic speeds used by most fictional space propulsion systems may well mean you have very little time to react.

At the Event Horizon, light is in orbit. As you cross that horizon, if you look perpendicular to your motion, you'll see light that has circled around. If the Schwarzschild Radius is small enough, you may actually see yourself in the distance, or even a chain of yourselves, as light runs circuits around similar to what happens on a hypersphere. Of course, if the black hole is large, the diameter of the event horizon may be so long that you and your spacecraft are tiny specks. One dramatic element the GM could narrate in would be the ship's automated proximity alarm going off, as the computer suddenly detects several other ships. This phenomena would alert you to the fact that you'd reached the Event Horizon, but it'd be too late to escape unless you have an FTL Stardrive. Unless you can travel Faster Than Light, the best you could do at this point is establish an orbit of the black hole. Again, the likely speed your craft was traveling at, and the relatively narrow band of the event horizon, means you're not likely to be in the orbital plane for long.

As your orbit decays and you fall into the black hole, things start getting distorted. This is going to be a nightmare, but at least you won't be staring a multiples of yourself any more. You'll be stretched in the direction of the black hole, and squished in the directions perpendicular to that. The parts of you closer to the singularity will feel much greater gravity, and start falling inward faster than the parts of you that are further from it. This stretching is called "spaghettification", but it'll actually look more like what happens when you stretch a broken rubber band. As you get longer, your midsection gets thinner.

Objects closer to, or further from, the singularity would get dimmer, and the light coming from those directions would have a reddish tone. This is the result of red shift, the phenomenon of the light taking longer to reach you. Looking perpendicular to your velocity, everything would be brighter, and have a slight bluish tone. This is the result of blue shift, the phenomenon of light taking less time to reach you. Your view would become distorted to include more of the plane perpendicular to the radius of the black hole, and our binocular vision would have serious trouble interpreting the distorted space. It would appear that the universe had been flattened into a plane perpendicular to your motion. These distortions would eventually become so strong that you would die, and then be crushed into the singularity. You'd be ripped apart on one axis, and crushed on the others.

Time would dilated as you accelerate into the black hole, but you'd be unable to notice. If your spacecraft were very large, you might be able to notice things ahead of you slowing down and stretching. It probably depends on the size of your ship, the size of the black hole, and the speed of your approach.

An outside observer watching your approach on the Schwarzschild Radius would see a very interesting display, though. First, you'd start to fade - this is the redshift effect again, as light coming from you takes longer to travel the distance to them. You'd appear to stretch. Your travel toward the center of the black hole would speed up, but the dilation of time would mess up their perception of it, and your other motions would seem to slow down. Eventually, as you cross the event horizon, you'd vanish from sight completely, as the light bouncing off of you would get stuck on that side of the Event Horizon.

Caveat: I do not have any scientific credentials, so it's certainly possible that I may have misunderstood something in the sources I read. It's not like your players can say "that's not what happened the last time I fell into a black hole" though, so it's probably accurate enough for gaming. At least, accurate enough if your players aren't professional astrophysicists.

1. Wikipedia article on black holes

2. CNN article on falling into a black hole

3. Non-Fiction Book: Hyperspace by Michio Kaku

Read more about Black Holes at Arcana Wiki.

Lava Burns in Scion

There's a touch of debate on lava stats at the Scion forums, which lead me to google "lava burns". I found this:

>>If you put your hand in activly flowing lava, will your hand just
>>burn, burn off completely, or will you die from severe burning?

>> Jennifer

> The serious injury might kill by causing shock.

>>Dear Jennifer,

>>I'm not exactly sure why anyone would WANT to put his or her hand into
>>lava, are you? If it happened by accident you would get badly burned
>>but your hand wouldn't just melt off. A geologist at the Hawaiian
>>Volcano Observatory fell into some lava up to his knees about 11 years
>>ago. He was wearing boots and long pants, and luckily there was
>>someone to pull him out immediately. He had mostly second-degree burns
>>- which were very painful of course and he spent the whole summer in
>>the hospital - but he was back at work in 5 months. It is a very scary
>>thing to think about, even after all these years.
>>-- Scott Rowland, University of Hawaii

> He had only 2nd-degree burns?

>>From liquid thats red-hot, I'd expect instant fourth-degree burns [all
> the way to the bone].

(quote from Honolulu paper at
http://starbulletin.com/2002/12/29/news/story2.html, about halfway down
the article):

On June 12, 1985, geologist George Ulrich had just taken a temperature
reading of fresh lava, 2,079 degrees. Suddenly a lava crust broke, and
Ulrich stepped into the lava over his boots but was protected by NOMEX
burn-resistant clothing.
Another geologist pulled him out in about five seconds. Ulrich was flown
to Straub Clinic & Hospital on Oahu for treatment of first-, second- and
third-degree burns. He recovered fully.

In my opinion, that suggests lava, in Scion terms, should be 10+X dice of Lethal, where X is the bonus to soak granted by NOMEX burn-resistant clothing. The GM would have to set the level of X. In the absence of further research, I'd be inclined to set X=2.

If a mortal takes 5 damage he's still looking at a month and a half of bed-rest before the pain subsides enough that his actions are no longer penalized. Each point of damage beyond that adds a month to recovery time.

As far as humans are concerned, Agg and Lethal are basically the same thing. I can't think of any mechanical difference between A and L for a mortal with no supernatural abilities. The differences between Agg and Lethal all involve supernatural healing and soak for characters that have Epic Stamina. As such, I'd make lava lethal, and save aggravated damage for supernatural sources.

Scientific Laws in Amber

More old Amber files from my long-lost website. This one is a discussion of the laws of physics and magic in Amber.

These laws of physics, chemistry, biology, and magic are gleaned from careful readings and contemplations of Corwin’s saga. They do not draw upon Merlin’s story, as it contradicts much of Corwin’s exposition upon how Amber functions. Some of these laws are obvious from a single quick read of Nine Princes, but others are more subtle and required greater study of the books to draw these conclusions. As such, you might find a few surprises here:

1. Pattern is greatly diminished in and near Amber.
   
2. Logrus is either painful and difficult to use in Amber, or just doesn't exist.
   
3. Shapeshifting in Amber is very difficult, possibly very painful.
   
4. The very nature of Amber is toxic to chaosites.
   
5. Silver gains special properties in Amber.
6. Sorcery doesn’t work in Amber.
   
7. Magic items are powerless (or at least less powerful) in Amber.
   
8. Poisons and Drugs don’t work in Amber.
   
9. Illness and disease don’t spread very quickly in Amber.
   
10. Gunpowder doesn’t work, except for the stuff from avalon.
11. Electricity doesn’t flow very well in Amber.
    
12. The closer you get to the Pattern, the more restrictive the above rules become.
    
13. It is possible for characters to manufacture exceptions to these rules.
    
14. A whole separate set of laws governs Primal Pattern Land.
    

That's the short version. Here's the much longer versions, complete with arguments, counter-arguments, examples from the books, painful tangents, etc.

1. Pattern is greatly diminished in and near Amber. Corwin says as much, and it’s supported by the books. It is not totally impossible to use, as both Fiona and Oberon take short-cuts that Corwin felt he couldn’t, and Corwin surprises himself in the fifth book by starting his hellride closer than he ever had before.
2. Logrus is either: 1) dangerous to the user near Amber, 2) painful and difficult to use in Amber, 3) totally powerless in Amber or 4) non-existant anywhere in the universe and purely just an addition of the second series. The most common explanation it seems in campaigns is a combination of 1 and 2. The typical interpretation is that using the logrus near the pattern can have explosive side-effects. (in fact, the rulebook seems to provide this flashy destructiveness as the usual product of anytime two great powers touch).
   I see a logic flaw with that: if there’s some sort of explosion whenever pattern and logrus meet, why didn’t the chaos forces round up a few fanatics to summon the logrus in Amber and (suicidally) blow up the damn castle? Security was pretty lax in Eric’s reign, judging from how easily Dara got to the Pattern chamber (and how freely Random wandered the castle a few years after trying to kill the King), so there’s little that could be done to stop them.
   Logrus being largely powerless and painful and exhausting to use in Amber fits well enough with the apparent lack of Logrus in Corwin’s saga. (Afterall, the only time Logrus seems to be used in the first 5 books is when Brand summons a monster to attack Caine. And that could just as easily have been the work of Advanced Pattern or Trump.) So, that’s the ruling I tend to use.
   One day, when improvising, I did have a logrus tendril blow up when it hit the pattern. I wish I hadn’t. I’m stuck with it now. My only defense is that I can claim logrus tendrils have a very short range in Amber, and so won’t hit the pattern unless actually used in the dungeons. Coupled with my restrictions on shapeshifting in Amber, this almost covers it.
   Of course, in truth, all of this is flawed. The obvious correct answer should be that Logrus doesn’t exist. As defined in Merlin’s saga and the RPG, logrus is too powerful. If the lords of chaos find it that easy to move through shadow, then they would have always been a constant threat to Amber. Instead, Chaos is the last enemy anyone suspects when the black road shows up. ("Oh, them! But they’re out at the other end of the universe. They haven’t been a threat since Benedict was a baby. They can’t be responsible for this.." seems to be the line of thought) The lords of chaos should have little capacity for moving through shadow on their own, after all, that’s why they needed Brand’s help, and the black road, and hybrids like Dara and Merlin.
3. Shapeshifting in Amber is very difficult, possibly very painful. The very nature of Amber and it’s primal order makes it so. If it was easy, the lords of chaos would have used shapeshifting to infiltrate the City and Castle and perform commando raids or sabotage. They never did, so it must be very difficult for them to take Human form (or shift at all) in Amber. Possibly you can only shapeshift in Amber if you are descended from Dworkin, since only he, Oberon, and Dara ever do in the series.
   It must be really hard for Amberites to shapeshift there too, because if it was anything that could be even remotely described as easy, you can bet that Corwin’s siblings, in their collective millenias of life and struggle would have learned how to do it.
4. The very nature of Amber is toxic to chaosites. Otherwise, even if they couldn’t shapeshift to infiltrate the city, little guerilla bands would have broken off from the black road to harass the amberites after the defeat at Garnath. They needed the black road not only to travel to Amber, but to make Garnath habitable for them.
5. Silver gains special properties in Amber. At first I just thought the Weir were vulnerable to silver. But it occured to me that Corwin refers vaguely to "Certain Beasts" in Amber that silver was potent against, not just specifically the weir. It's possible that Silver is potent against shapeshifters, or potent against shadowlings and chaosites when used in Amber. The specifics of that will be up to individual GM's.
   Just bear in mind that both Corwin and Eric bear silver blades, Corwin's guns used silver bullets, Benedicts mechanical arm was silver, Fiona drops a silver bracelet for Julian and Corwin to rush to. Greyswandir and Ben's Arm both peirced the veil between ghosts and reality in Tir Na Nogth, which could be a property of Dworkin or Oberon's magic, or could be a property of silver itself in that realm.
   It certainly would be in keeping with what we know of Oberon and Dworkin for them to have defined Amber as not only being toxic to chaosites, but to make silver a secret weapon there. Perhaps silver focuses the energy of Order inherent in the place. Hey, GM, it's your call.
6. Sorcery doesn’t work in Amber. Or at least the shadow manipulation and shadow opening microspells don’t. If they do, then why didn’t Corwin or Bleys toss a couple spells at Eric when they attacked? And why didn’t Corwin use a spell to escape the dungeons later? Magic must be crippled in Amber, if not, then all the family would have learned it and used it in their battles.
   Corwin does use a powerword to give Strygalldwir a hot-foot and break his concentration, but doesn’t do the same when Brand is walking the Pattern and obviously needs to concentrate. Either Corwin is a fool, or he is operating under the assumption that magic will not function near the Pattern. Consider that Rebma is lit by magic lights atop the pillars, but in Castle Amber they use lanterns. In Corwin’s saga, the only time magic is used in Amber is when Brand lights a cigarette just by staring at it. But is that magic, or Pattern, or pyrokinetic psychic power?
   Side note: We all tend to assume that the Jewel of Judgement allows weather control as one of it’s powers. But, maybe it just strengthens the magic of the user. Maybe you need to be both attuned to the Jewel and have sorcery in order to summon a storm in Amber. (or cast any spells at all in Amber)
7. Magic items are powerless (or at least less powerful) in Amber. Obviously, artifacts that shapeshift or use sorcery are crippled by the same restrictions discussed above. Greyswandir must have at least "deadly damage", if not greater, magical strength: it cleaves demons in half and sets them afire, and Corwin prefers it to all other weapons. But Eric takes several minor wounds from Greyswandir that don’t worry him at all until his brother starts taunting him.
   Also, if magic items work in Amber, who cares about Corwin’s guns? I’ll take a wand of fireballs or enchanted self-loading crossbow. Curiously, the only magic items that seem to function in Amber are the Jewel of Judgement and the Trumps. This implies that these either aren’t magic per se, or they are but are both on some primal order of power beyond normal magic. (trump as powerful as the Jewel? Blasphemy! But interesting)
8. Poisons and Drugs don’t work in Amber. Otherwise, with all those years of sibling rivalry and family dinners, some brash kid would have killed half the family in a single sitting. Corwin drinks freely with his relatives, and there's no mention of royal food testers.
   If drugs worked, Gerard wouldn’t have hung Corwin over a cliff after beating him up, he would have administered sodium pentathol, or an herbal equivalent to truth serum, and slept easier afterwards. Corwin says most earth medicines won’t work in Amber, so why should miscellaneous drugs or poisons fare any better?
   The real question is: do they not work at all in Amber, or do they just not work on an Amberite in Amber? Perhaps the Pattern protects it’s initiates when that close to the source. Can you poison a shadowling in Amber?
9. For some reason, illness and disease don’t spread very quickly in Amber. Otherwise, the Lords of Chaos would have tried viral warfare. Biological warfare was employed in ancient times by catapulting plague-ridden corpses over the city walls. Certainly a few wyverns could have dumped diseased bodies into Amber as they flew over.
   This is also reinforced by Corwin’s comments about most anti-biotics not working (and his being vague about what does work) in Amber: there’s no practiced and accepted way of dealing with disease in Amber because in Amber disease is very rare. Again, perhaps the pattern protects it’s initiates. Also remember that in Lorraine the black circle spread poison and plague, that it ruined the crops and made people ill. In Garnath, all it did was discolor some grass.
   This law has been argued against before. Some folks just think it's all those Amber-ranked endurances that prevented viral warfare on the "real earth". They point to the long lifespans of the "ordinary" castle servants as evidence that all living things in Amber have great resiliancy and superior stamina. This had me fooled and reconsidering for a while. :)
   Then I remembered that Corwin with his high-ranked endurance lived through the black plague, but wasn't totally unaffected. If it could zap his brain, then it would seem possible for bacterial warfare to work in Amber. Then again, one could argue the other way. Afterall, it seems odd that the Black Death, a resperatory illness, should cause Corwin's amnesia. Perhaps whatever Eric did to best Corwin originally also inflicted brain damage, and dumping him in a plague outbreak was just Eric's last bit of insurance incase the headshot wasn't fatal enough.
10. Gunpowder doesn’t work, except for the stuff from avalon. (Is gunpowder totally inert in Amber, or does it burn but not explode?) There has to be some hitch in the physical laws there that prevents gases from expanding beyond a certain speed. Otherwise, not only would gunpowder and gasoline be utilized, but steam would be too. In WWII, the British navy created several prototype steam-powered anti-aircraft guns. If shadowlings can be this creative, so can Amberites. So whatever the law of physics that prevents gunpowder from exploding in Amber, it must also prevent watervapor and other chemicals from rapidly expanding or exploding. Remember, the ships have sails in Amber, not steam-driven paddlewheels.
    One of the pleasant side-effects of this is that it would probably be easier to contain or snuff fires in Amber. That would also explain why Eric doesn’t think twice before burning Garnath. One quick rain shower and it’s out, with no chance of the hot coals stirring up secondary blazes later. It also adds further explanation to why Chaos never tried commando raids to burn the city. It takes longer than usual to start a fire in Amber, and it has less chance to spread from building to building. They might have even tried, and failed.
    Side note: all this poses an interesting question. I pull the pin on my grenade in Amber. Is the fuse rendered inert permenantly, or is the reaction just suspended or slowed? Will the primer burn itself out in a non-explosive fashion, or will it be stuck in mid-reaction and detonate as soon as I set foot out in shadow? (Thanks to Userkaf and Whisper for pulling their triggers and forcing me to deal with this one)
11. Electricity doesn’t flow very well in Amber. If it did, they wouldn’t need lanterns in the castle, they’d flip a light switch. Even ruling out steam or combustion as a power source, Oberon could have built a hydroelectric plant to power the castle. And even if there’s no waterfall nearby, why didn’t he import flashlights with really good batteries for use in the dungeons at least?
    Electricity might work on Amber, but just generate so much heat and resistance that it constantly melts the wires and just isn’t worth the continual maintainance and upkeep. Or maybe the very nature of Amber drains and discharges electrical energy very quickly, making it impractical or useless.
    Further evidence: on earth, a bolt of lightning can cause heart attacks via electric shock in humans a hundred yards from the strike point. But in Amber, Eric rains down lightning near his own troops with no adverse side effects. It only blasts those who are within the focal bolt, the energy seems to ground itself immediately with little or no spill-over into the surrounding area.
12. The closer you get to the Pattern, the more restrictive the above rules become. For example, Corwin’s car continues to run at the far end of Arden, after he’s arrived at the "real Earth", but before they reach even the outskirts of Amber itself. The black road is strong in Garnath, but extends only to the foot of Kolvir, with no sign of it in the city, castle, or pattern chamber. Corwin states that he had to train his gunners on a world near to Amber, he couldn’t find one far from Amber but with the same laws of science. The stairs to Rebma are lit by a magic glow, but Castle Amber uses lanterns. It’s easier to shift shadow the further you are away from Amber.
13. It is possible to make exceptions to these rules. Consider the trumps, which break the anti-magic law. Benedict's Arm, which functions where most technology is impaired. Corwin's guns. Oberon's many tricks and talents. All of these can be traced back to him or ultimately to Dworkin. Just be warned: those two (and maybe anyone who's attuned to the Jewel) or perhaps the Pattern itself, can make or break or find loopholes in these rules with a bit of effort.
14. A final note: We never see anyone use the pattern to shadow-walk in the castle itself, but we do see Fiona use the pattern in Primal Pattern Land. Oberon creates the blood bird right next to the Primal Pattern. In fact, Greyswandir seems more powerful there then in "normal" Amber. So maybe a whole separate set of laws governs that place. Who knows, maybe guns and spells and flashlights work there too?

Alternative Weather Chart

I love the Weather System in the 7th Sea RPG. Here's a somewhat simpler (and kinda house-ruled) version of the chart for it, one that takes up less space behind your GM screen. To use it, you need two glass beads or drama dice. The chart ain't pretty, but it's clear and functional.

Prior to the GM spending Drama Dice, assume the bead/die in the bottom row starts at "Typical". The top row bead/die starts at "Chill" in winter, "Comfortable" in spring/fall, and "warm" in summer. In all other ways, it functions by the normal weather chart rules. When the GM spends a Drama Die he can move either bead to an adjacent space - the two rows are not considered adjacent to each other.

Scions in Space!

A few minutes ago I posted some handy facts about re-entry and vacuum-exposure on one of my other blogs. Here's how it relates to Scion:

If pushed out the airlock of the spaceshuttle, a Scion would have four factors to deal with:

1. Hard Vacuum: 6B/Action, Trauma 5
2. Heat: 4L/Action, Trauma 3
3. Cold: 4L/Action, Trauma 3
4. Asphyxiation: 1 unsoakable bashing per 30 seconds after (Stamina+Fortitude)x30 seconds
   

If they were in a shadow, the Heat danger would go away, but the trauma value of the Cold danger would increase. The Fire Purview could render you immune to the heat. An astronaut in top physical shape (8 to 10 dice on Stamina+Fortitude, Bashing Soak of 4 or 5) could survive for a couple minutes with some lucky die rolls, but eventually they will die.

A Legend-4 Scion with Epic Stamina 3 would have 4 auto successes plus at minimum of 3 dice on the rolls. He'd have and a minimum Soak of 5 Lethal, 6 Bashing. And he could hold his breath for 8 times that of a Mortal with his mundane stamina. So, he'd stand a good chance of being unharmed until he'd spent at least 12 minutes in earth orbit. He'd be immune to the extreme temperatures, rarely take damage from the vacuum, and eventually die of oxygen deprivation somewhere around the 16-minute mark.

Re-entry is another matter. Damage would likely be 12L/action, Trauma 10. It may even be Aggravated - I tend to think not (since fire does only Lethal in Scion), but it could be argued. I'm unclear how long you'd be subjected to that.

Impact, upon landing is 25 levels of Bashing or Lethal, depending on where you hit down.

A Legend-7 Demigod with Stamina 6, Epic Stamina 6 (and therefore Soak of at least 6 Aggravated, 19 Lethal, 22 Bashing) and Fortitude 1 could survive in outerspace unaided for at least 58 hours (210,000 seconds before taking any damage) and then survive re-entry and impact.

Built (and advanced) to maximize for this, including maxing out your Legend and Stamina during both Character Creation and Demigod Upgrade, plus putting all your XP into Legend, a starting character could get to that level of Soak in about 6 sessions.

The PCs in my campaign are about 20 sessions in, and thankfully nowhere near that min-maxed.