Natural Environments and Travel: Difference between revisions

When designing tracts of wilderness for exploration, you might prepare a couple encounters ahead of time and present them to your party. You might also think up several different possible encounters and leave it to a die roll to determine when such encounters occur.

Note that not all encounters must be combat encounters. Having to navigate a flooded river, negotiate with a trapper, survive a blizzard, and use magic to communicate with curious forest critters could all be considered encounters. When designing a random encounter table, consider how dangerous you want a stretch of wilderness to be. If the adventurers are in a relatively safe environment, you might use a weighted table or a bell curve table to make non- threatening encounters more likely. If they are in an area rife with danger, you might use an unweighted table, or even reverse the likelihoods of dangerous and nonthreatening encounters on a weighted or bell curve table.

!d20

|A young wyvern finds you and believes you to be an easy meal.

|A giant crocodile attacks you.

|A massive sandstorm sweeps over you. There are dust devils inside it, which attack you.

|The temperature climbs well above 100 °F.

|A polar bear attacks you, but retreats once Bloodied.

|You are stuck on an open plain with no sign of shelter anywhere in sight. Night approaches quickly.

If your heroes are exploring a generic environment and you do not know how to set the DCs for skill checks, you can use the following table as an approximation. Adjust the DCs up or down based on your perception of the environment; mundane deserts, forests, and other habitats all vary wildly in terms of how survivable they are and the numbers provided are simply rough benchmarks.

Adventures often take place in “hybrid” environments. Mangrove forests, for example, are a blend of the coastal and swamp environment, and badlands would be a blend of the desert and mountains. When your heroes are in a hybrid environment, use the DCs for either base environment as you deem appropriate.

When a party travels through a wilderness environment, you may choose to track how far they progress each day. If this is not the focus of the campaign, or you only want to pay attention to POIs that your adventurers find, it is fine to ignore these rules. But if you are running a survival-intensive game or the time that it takes to travel between two points is highly relevant to the plot, then these rules will help you determine the consequences of traveling at various paces.  

The type of terrain or environment that your party is navigating might also affect their travel pace. The miles on the following table assume relatively straightforward travel conditions: little to no precipitation on flat, firm ground or shallow hills, such as those you would find in a grassland or a scrubby desert.

'''Forced March:''' Make a DC 6 END/Forced March check. The check increases by 2 for each extra hour of travel. If you fail the check, gain Fatigue.

'''Cautious Travel:''' Gain +2 on all AWR checks.

'''Encumbered:''' If you have more unwieldy items than can be carried per character, and no wagon or pack animal, you travel more slowly.

|Your pace cannot exceed 1 mile every 4 hours. Each hour, each adventurer makes DC 10 a LUCK check, becoming completely lost on a failure. -20 on AWR checks.

|Thick mist covering the surroundings, reducing visibility.

|Pellets of ice falling from the sky, causing potential injury and damage.

|Your pace cannot exceed 1 mile per hour, and every hour, each adventurer makes a DC 10 LUCK check, suffering 2d4 blunt damage on a failure.

|Travel pace halved. END checks gain +2 to the difficulty.

|Your pace cannot exceed 1 mile per hour, and every hour, each adventurer makes a LUCK check. If the party average is below 10, you run into flooding, falling debris, or conditions too difficult to travel in.

Whenever you suffer Fatigue, immediately gain +1 Death Point and become Fatigued. While Fatigued, you do not remove your Death Points when you Recoup or Take a Rest. Instead, when you Take a Rest, you remove the Fatigued condition if you eat and drink the minimum amount needed to sustain you.

When you are exposed to extremely hot temperatures for more than 2 hours, you must make an END check. Extremely hot temperatures are in excess of 100 °F, or above 85 °F with more than 75% humidity.

The DC begins at 10, and increases by 2 for every 5°F above 100 °F (or above 85 °F if humidity exceeds 75%).

If you drink at least 8 cups of water in the span of those 2 hours, reduce the DC by 5.

When you are more than 10,000 ft above sea level, you gain the Shaken condition. When you are more than 20,000 ft above sea level, you also gain the Sickened condition. For every 4 hours that you spend Sickened in this way, you must make a DC 12 END check, gaining Fatigue if you fail.

When you are deep below sea level in the ocean, the tremendous water pressure is enough to cause you serious damage. At 150 ft below sea level, you gain the Shaken condition. At 400 ft below sea level, you also gain the Sickened condition. For every hour you spend Sickened in this way, you must make a DC 16 END check, gaining Fatigue if you fail.