Wilderness Travel Skill Challenge (PEACH)

[Syrsuro]

The following was written in part because my players are about to be 'forced' to travel cross country, avoiding the roads and in part in response to a recent podcast interview with and blog post by Mike Mearls in which he commented that wandering monsters worked better mechanically in 4E than in any earlier version (due to the renewable encounter resources) and proposed tying them to skill challenges.

Thus, the following (which is intended to make wilderness travel into a challenging skill challenge) was born:

(Disclaimer: This has not yet been tested, but should be tried out this upcoming weekend. I thought I'd toss it up here and see if there were criticisms I wanted to address before using it.)

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Wilderness Travel Skill Challenge​

Travel through the wilderness involves three separate skill challenge phases, each of which requires slightly different skills and each of which needs to be attempted daily in a specific order, and an endurance check phase to determine the extent to which the exertion is wearing down the player. Each phase has differing consequences for both failure and success.
Each character will normally make one skill check each day (in addition to the endurance check that all make), attempting to earn a success in one of the three phases. Action points can be spent to make a second attempt at a failed skill check (this includes the Endurance check). Rolls of a natural 20 on a skill check result in two successes in that particular task. Old School Optional Rule: Rangers get a +2 bonus to the Nature skill when leading parties through the wilderness.

The three phases are: Finding the best route through the wilderness, Avoiding encounters and Finding an appropriate place to rest.
Note: If the party achieves no successes during the final phase (finding an appropriate place to rest) they are unable to rest comfortably and do not gain the benefits of an extended rest.

Pathfinding Phase
Primary Skills:

• Nature (DC 12- The character uses his knowledge of nature and the wilds to identify safe routes, avoid impassable terrain and otherwise find their way)
• History (DC 15 - The character uses his knowledge of the lands both recent and forgotten to find lost trails)
• Perception (DC 15 - The character looks for clearer passage and possible obstacles to travel, allowing the party to avoid delays).

Secondary Skills:

• Diplomacy/ Intimidate (DC 15 - Only useful if there are intelligent inhabitants in the area, can be used to learn of local paths and roads)
• Athletics (DC 20 - You assist the party in overcoming obstacles in your path such as chasms/gorges, steep hills which must be climbed, etc.)
• Other skills as appropriate (DC 20 - Any reasonable skill use by the player which might lead to either making travel easier or finding a better route to the destination)

The number of successes in this phase determines the difficulty of the Endurance checks in the Endurance Phase. It also determines the speed at which the party moves. For each failure, representing an occasion in which the party was slowed or had to backtrack, the effective speed of the party is reduced by one. Thus a party with a movement of 6 would normally move 15 miles per day (30/2, assuming mostly difficult terrain), but if they had one failure during this phase they would move as if their movement was 5 and thus cover only 12 1/2 (25/2) miles per day. If the party is following a road, success at the skills in this phase are automatic (although a player must still choose to attempt this task and will therefore not be available to attempt other tasks on that day).

Endurance Phase
Each character must make an endurance check, with the DC determined by the number of successes in the prior (Pathfinding) phase.
0 Successes: Endurance Check DC 20
1 Success: Endurance Check DC 15
2 Successes: Endurance Check DC 10
Each failed endurance check results in the character losing one healing surge.

Encounter Avoidance Phase
Primary Skills:

• Nature (DC 12 - by reading tracks and other animal signs the character helps the party avoid encounters along the way)
• Stealth (DC 15 - the character is not only stealthy herself, but also helps the other members of the party to move more quietly and avoid the notice of predators or enemies)
• Perception (DC 15 - The character notices potential encounters before they notice him and thus they can be avoided)

Secondary Skills:

• Other skills as deemed appropriate by the DM (DC 20).
• Diplomacy/Intimidate (DC 20) if there are inhabitants who speak the character's language present.

The number of successes determines whether or not the party has a random encounter appropriate to the regon. If the party scored no successes in this phase, a random encounter will occur on a roll of a 10 (d20). If the party had a single sccess, the random encounter will occur on a roll of 15 and if the party had two or more sucesses the encounter will occur on a roll of 20. Note - the encounter can occur at any time during the day and possibly even at night after they party has begun to rest.

Rest Phase
Primary Skills:

• Nature (DC 12 - your knowledge of nature allows you to find empty caves or construct lean-tos);
• Perception (DC 15 - your keen observation allows you to find dry and relatively comfortabe places to rest);
• History (DC 15 - you recall forgotten ruins and other structures which may still provide shelter to travelers).

Secondary Skills:

• Dipomacy/ Intimdate (DC 15 - only if there are creatures capable of communication with the player; you cajole or coerce others into providing you shelter)
• Other skills as the DM and Player feel appropriate (DC 20)

If the party fails to achieve a single success in this phase, they are unable to gain the benefits of an extended rest and thus does not regain healing surges or expended daily benefits. Note: Every two days without an extended rest is equivalent to a milestone and earns an action point. If the party achieves one or more successes, they have found an appropriate place to rest and can take an extended rest and regain all healing surges and daily powers.

Experience: I am still not entirely sure about how much experience to grant. Possibly I will give experience as if it were a Skill Challenge of complexity equal to <number of days>. But I really dunno yet.

Note: The group for which this is intended is all third level. I am using the non-errata table, but without the footnote and thus wherever you see a DC of 15, that should be read as a Moderate DC, A DC of 20 would be a hard DC, etc. (scaled for higher levels as appropriate). If I find that the party is failing too often during testing, I will lower the DCs appropriately.

Carl

 

[77IM]

This looks pretty good. I would expect a typical 3rd-level party, in which at least 1 person is trained in Nature, to easily get a success or two per phase. Two suggestions:

1. Use Streetwise instead of Diplomacy/Intimidate. That's what it's for. Looking for roads? Use the skill that is literally called "street wise." Allow Diplomacy/Intimidate to Aid Another with the Streetwise check.

2. For an occasional adventure interlude, this seems like a fine challenge. If your campaign features regular overland travel, though, this seems like an awful lot of dice rolling just to get from point A to point B.

-- 77IM

 

[Syrsuro]

This looks pretty good. I would expect a typical 3rd-level party, in which at least 1 person is trained in Nature, to easily get a success or two per phase. Two suggestions:

1. Use Streetwise instead of Diplomacy/Intimidate. That's what it's for. Looking for roads? Use the skill that is literally called "street wise." Allow Diplomacy/Intimidate to Aid Another with the Streetwise check.

2. For an occasional adventure interlude, this seems like a fine challenge. If your campaign features regular overland travel, though, this seems like an awful lot of dice rolling just to get from point A to point B.

-- 77IM

Thanks for the input.

1. I actually had/have streetwise on my own notes for the approach, but I left it off - treating it as "Other skills". Streetwise is specific to rural areas (towns, villages, etc.) - and despite its name isn't really a skill aimed at 'looking for streets'. It would most likely allow it while actually passing through/near towns, but its application would be situational (even more so than Diplomacy/Intimidation).

2. This is my main concern. I am going to go with it more or less as written in this first use to see how the approach works. But I suspect, upon consideration, that a set of rolls per day is perhaps too frequent.

Another concern is that it will become routine. I.e. each character making more or less the same set of rolls each time they travel so that, rather than interesting and varied, it becomes boring the third or fourth time they travel.

But on the other hand, I wanted to end up with a mechanic that a) put some 'control' into their hands with regards to pace and encounters and b) avoided making every single encounter on the road the only encounter for the day. By using this approach there is some potential attrition and loss of healing surges/powers from encounter to encounter (giving them reason not to just unload their daily on their first (and likely only) encounter for the day. And if I extend the scope of each round of 'phases' to be more than one day, its less clear why they haven't been able to rest in that (longer than a single day) time.

And I liked the decision making that goes into deciding which of the three phases will get the most attention - "Do we want to find the fastest/best route, avoid encounters or make sure we have a place to rest tonight?"

An alternate approach would be to break up the phases into varying durations. I.e. the Pathfinding phase happens first and based on its level of success they party can travel for N days without losing its way, while encounter/hazard avoidance and resting occur occasionally (perhaps in response to scripted events or random rolls by DM.). But I'll see how the above plays out first.

Carl

 

[Alex319]

One major problem that I see with this system is that the movement speed penalty is tied to the number of failures in the pathfinding phase. This means that if a party chooses not to attempt any checks in the pathfinding phase, they have no chance of getting a movement penalty! (The only penalty for doing this is that they will have a reasonably hard DC for the check, but losing one healing surge is not really a big deal when they have a very good chance of being able to rest at the end of the day, after only one encounter.)

Incidentally, I'm currently working on a a full-fledged "randomly generated adventure" system which will include rules for wilderness travel. Essentially, the way it works is that travel is divided into a series of "adventure turns" where you roll a d20 on a special chart and get results like "encounter a wandering monster" or "make endurance checks or lose a healing surge". Progress is measured by "progress points" which are gained by rolling certain numbers on the d20 or by making certain skill checks (for example a result might be "gain a progress point if you succeed on a nature check".) I'll post it up when I'm done with it, and you might be able to adapt it for your own use.