Travel System

There and Back Again

For any Travel System, two major components must be established. How should the trip to the dungeon or the next town over be broken up into smaller segments? How should each of these segments be processed?

The first question is all about the broader Journey that the party and any npcs will be taking and how many Travel Segments the Journey will be broken up. The second question is answered through defining the mechanics of each Travel Segment.

For the party to engage with these segments, certain activities will be quite long and repetitive and should thus be handled as a Travel Role. Other activities are rather more distinct and engaging occurring once every day or more. These Tasks often involve the whole party spending an hour or more to accomplish a goal.

Lastly, of course, are the Encounters or Events the party will come across. These incidents include a broad range of challenges and occurrences. The party may need to overcome a navigational obstacle, fight off an ambush by bandits, help a 'simple' old lady living in a cabin in the woods, explore a small cave, or converse with the merchant caravan heading the other direction.

Travel Segments

For Journeys focused on the details of the travel, the Travel Segments can evaluated with varying degrees of depth. Travel Segments are the mechanical and choice-based element of the Journey. Each segment involves a series of steps and decisions the players make regarding about their Journey. Before setting off, the party plans their general route assuming they have a destination in mind. Additionally, the party needs to decide their Primary and Secondary Roles during the Journey. Travel Roles will rarely change between segments baring some major event.

Once the party plans their Journey and preps their bags (and wagons), the party sets out and starts to process the first Travel Segment. Each Travel Segment involves a sequence of steps primarily focused on Navigation. For customizability, many steps are optional (OPT). A quick reference page is provided in the addendum.

Helmsman (Ocean)

(required)

Unlike with Land Travel, Ocean Travel requires everyone to be present on a water vehicle. If a traveling group is split across multiple water vehicles, focus on the group in the lead water vehicle for long term travel. Another major difference with Ocean Travel is that there is only one helmsman or pilot. There are no secondary pilots. Fortunately, difficult terrain is not a regular obstacle, though challenges near land may necessitate some skill checks. As a result, there are fewer factors increasing the Route's DC with Weather playing a much more dramatic role in Ocean Travel.

The following table presents the group's traits affecting the Navigation Check.

Navigator (Ocean)

Unlike a Cartographer, the Navigator relies more heavily upon star charts and tools to identify their location. Further, the lack of terrain features while traveling limits the usability of ordinary maps. A Navigator uses their Navigator's Tools and star charts in combination with estimates of travel rate and previously observed major terrain features to determine the relative location of their ship. Both Primary and Secondary Navigators must be proficient in Navigator's Tools and Seamanship. The Primary Navigator makes Seamanship:Navigator's Tools (Intelligence) Checks vs a DC equal to 10 + Days since encountering Identifiable Land. The effect of this check is equal to the difference between the check's result and the DC. This positive or negative effect is then applied directly to the Helmsman's Navigation Check.

Certain divination spells can be used to determine the relative location of the water vehicle, thus resetting the DC back to 10. DMs should treat the use of Divination spells as more of a riddle than an automatic success or skill check.

Scout/Lookout

Though not required, scouting on land is very beneficial since the Scout provides advanced notice of dangers including potential ambushes, road traps, or sites of interest. When scouting, the party gains a Passive Perception equal to the Scout's Perception Check. Without a Scout, each individual uses their own Passive Perception score. Additionally, regardless of skills and features, a Scout can have Pathfinder as a Secondary Role where they can provide significant assistance to the primary Pathfinder by scouting further afield.

Environments with regular cover such as Forests impose a significant -5 penalty to individual Passive Perception scores. By actively searching for threats, the Scout does not suffer from these penalties and can in fact employ stealth to avoid being detected gaining a +5 to their Perception check. The DC for Stealth is 10 in heavy cover environments and DC 15 in minimal cover environments.

Wide-open Environments generally have limited cover and terrain impediments to vision, so Passive Perception is generally unaffected and Scouting is less important.

Leader

(required with multiple NPCs)

For small groups, a Leader is generally not needed nor desired. Traveling in large groups or with multiple NPCs requires managing and directing various non-party members. Often larger groups cannot travel very quickly and make navigation harder. A Leader generally rolls either Persuasion (Charisma) or Seamanship (Charisma) depending on if traveling by land or by ship. Only one party member can serve as the secondary Leader. Leadership checks remove the penalty from traveling with larger groups and caravans.

Caravan Manager (Land)

(required with land vehicles or mounts)

Forager (Land)

A Forager will throughout the day be on the lookout for various berries, roots, nuts, and other fruits and vegetables. At times, the Forager will search the nearby surroundings for simple foods and lead any assistants in the search for food items from the environment. Note that a slow travel Pace gives advantage on Foraging Checks and a fast travel Pace gives disadvantage on Foraging Checks.

In addition to a gallon of water per day, food is critical for characters to survive and fully function. A character needs to consume 3 pounds of dense food on travel days, 2 pounds on rest days, and 5 pounds on intense days with multiple life/death situations (combat, navigational challenges like climbing). For reference, 5 pounds of dense food is equal to 5 pounds of meat, 20 pounds of roots, 2 pounds of trail rations, or 1 pound of pemmican or large nuts.

For the Forager Check, the Primary Forager rolls a Survival (Wisdom) against a range of DCs. Success against higher DCs results in more food rolls according to the following table.

Tasks

Traveling groups generally only travel for eight hours on any given day. Additionally, they rarely travel continuously, often taking short breaks or performing intervening tasks. A party has 12 Task Points (TP), which can be spent throughout or at the end of a day of travel. Some Tasks require more effort and time than others. Generally tasks are accomplished as a group where multiple members are directly involved in the effort or assisting another member to more quickly complete a task.

When travel segments are longer than one day, a party has 30 Task Points to spend throughout the entire Travel Segment.

Exploring a Site

Sites are generally small and simple locations found during travels. Often, these are small ruins, inhabited/uninhabited cabins, or small caves. These sites can be explored in an hour or less and are usually not very dangerous.

Other Tasks

Many simple activities requiring moderate effort can be performed by individual characters. Generally, these solo Tasks involve tools for crafting or repairing various items or mixing various substances together. Also, short journeys in the nearby terrain will often result in discovering local ingredients such as herbs or poisons.

Being Lost

Poor Weather

Encounters

For Narrative Travel, each travel segment should end with an Event. These special Encounters can occur at any time of the day as Travel Segments are not a specific time length. Events can either be random Encounters or Events pre-built by the DM. For Narrative Travel, these Encounters work better as more detailed, pre-defined events than simpler encounters.

For multi-day Travel Segments, most every Travel Segment should consist of at least one Encounter such that each Journey consists of 2-6 Encounters across all of its Segments.

For daily Travel Segments, the expected number of days for the Journey defines whether an Encounter occurs each day. In general, only a fraction of the days should have an Encounter and thus Random rolls will be more common. As with other Travel Segments, each Journey should generally have 2-6 Encounters. For more Sandbox/Hexcrawl style games, the heavier focus on traveling and exploration instead of specific destinations means these extended Journeys will consist of many Encounters. Often, an Encounter should occur about every 2-4 days beyond pre-planned Events/Encounters and pre-built locations.

For each Travel Segment, a DM can roll a d20 and if the number is less than 13, then no Encounter occurs. Encounters themselves can vary considerably by environment, population density, local creatures, and road/trail networks. As a result, each section of Encounters will provide lists of Encounter ideas rather than random roll tables.

Addendum

A2: Travel Reference

Forage Check