Re: A question about inhabitable planets

> Hello all,
>         In the process of constructing a new sphere I was struck with a
question
> that I couldn't see any answer in the 2e books  nor in the 3e stuff I have
> access too.  How do you tell if a celestial body (Planet, moon, cluster,
> belt, ect..) can sustain life?  I realize the roll of 'vacuum'
disqualifies
> a planet   but is there some chart or roll that I missed? Is it the
> arbitrary decision of the DM?  I know that ultimately everything is the
> whim of the Dm but if there's a method to be used to determine this I'd
> certainly like to know.  Help would be appreciated.

    Well, first things first.  Life is amazingly resilliant.  We're finding
life in places we never thought it could survive here on earth, such as
deep-ocean volcanic vents and the heart of glaciers.  :)

    Secondly, most SJ worlds sustain life.  It's actually a rarity to find
one that doesn't.  Lot is moderated by it being a magical universe that
tends towards environments at least remotely familiar with humans, even on
places like fire worlds and ocean worlds :)

    But, overall, the deciding factor of if a world has life would be the
DM's imagination on such things.  Even vacuum worlds have been known to have
life!  (Kule is an excellent example: the surface is barren, but there's all
kinds of caves inhabited by drow, illithids, and worse).  Honestly, I can't
think of any off hand that *don't* have life, in one form or another, and
most (like 90% of the non-fan-created planets I know of) can easily sustain
human life.

Adam