Thanks for all your comments. It's a bit of a challenge figuring out how to judiciously break from RAW to provide a more satisfying scenario for my players. Your insights are appreciated.
I was thinking healing potions could offset exhaustion. Not RAW, but seems plausible.
Well, the function of a
potion of vitality (which may appear in our adventure) is removing all levels of exhaustion (in addition to diseases/poison) – and that's a very rare potion compared to the common
potions of healing the party can craft. I guess I'm concerned at the precedent that house rule would set – because once I implement, say, a
potion of healing can be used to remove 1 exhaustion level instead of restoring 2d4+2 hp, then there's no going back. Then a
potion of healing could function like a missed meal, a missed night of sleep, or any number of things which involve exhaustion. I'm unsure how that would effect the rest of the game.
I'd actually appreciate if you have insights into the big picture implications of such a house rule?
I suppose limiting the expenditure of
potions of healing (for offseting exhaustion) to physical strain (i.e. forced marching or hot/cold exposure, not starvation/dehydration/sleeplessness/other sources of exhaustion) is a possibility?
I wouldn't tell the party just where they are at. just progress or status like:
A) It seems like you just might beet them there if you keep up this pace.
B) You'll probably get there near the start of the battle.
c) By the time you get there, it is certain the battle will be underway, but you still might have a chance to turn the tide.
D) You are certain by the time you get there the battle will be over, though you might be able to help if their are any survivors.
Yeah, totally, that's exactly how I'd handle it too.
I wouldn't think the challenge would be a single set of rolls/events, but rather three of four chances for the party to make progress or fall behind. So something like;
First challenge; obtaining boats; pass then A is likely. Fail then B or C
Second Challenge; navigate river. Expend exhaustion to go faster (knowing they have x number of healing potions that can rejuvenate them). Then depending upon on how they do, they could keep up, get ahead or fall behind.
3rd and 4th challenges same thing.
Hmm, well going from failing to obtain boats to navigating the river wouldn't make sense. And I can't devote pages of if-then preparation to just this one challenge. So the challenges would have to be more independent from one another, for example, merging obtaining boats/navigating the river into one of the obstacles.
So, maybe a "point" system, where succeeding at each step of the way (or over achieving?) means they earn zero points. Spending the resource (exhaustion?) means they get a negative point, and failing means they gain 1 or 2 points. Then A=0, B=1, C=2, D=3.
That way, they have multiple die rolls and multiple times they can make decisions to use up their resources. One or two of the challenges could also have individual rolls and results, so some characters are exhausted and others are not.
Maybe something like each canoe carries 2 people, only has to be paddled by 1, but then if that person doesn't spend exhaustion, then they fall behind by 1. or, something.
Gotcha. So I'd create 3 or 4 stages of the skill challenge describing specific independent obstacles the PCs must overcome to take advantage of a specific shortcut. Each one might be handled organically and/or treated like a group skill check, such that each stage the PCs pass advances them a step from worst case scenario D towards best case scenario A. In other words...
- Fail all 3 stages = scenario D
- Fail 2 stages = scenario C
- Fail 1 stages = scenario B
- Fail no stages = scenario A
And once the PCs fail a stage of the skill challenge, they have the option to each suffer a level of exhaustion to still ascend a step towards best case scenario A. Essentially, brute forcing their way through the jungle, "failing forward at a cost"?
However, the effects of this exhaustion would only accumulate and come into play at the end of the skill challenge?
And then, possibly, they can use their limited stock of
potions of healing to selectively offset some of that exhaustion?
Is that kind of what you're thinking?
I'm glad you explained what would happen with your group if they used HD in place of a level of exhaustion.
Perhaps 2 HD per level? Three levels and they are out of HD. at normal rules of half HD per long rest it's two days to get all HD back.
In my games, I do Slow Natural Healing and Gritty Realism. My players would hate to spend a HD. In one adventure, X4 Master of the Desert Nomads, the cross the hot Great Waste and I made them roll a Con check or lose an HD. I think the module originally was roll a save of some kind (Death Ray?) or lose 1d4 HP.
So given healing and your party level, I'd say 2 HD. It'd likely leave your party with some mixture of exhaustion and HD loss, and I don't think that's too bad. Two levels of exhaustion and no HD can both be fixed with two days rest. Would that be acceptable?
Well, the issue is this is a skill challenge that, potentially, leads up to a "one big fight of the day" scenario. Without those variant rules you use, Hit Dice are a daily resource (we opted to play with hardly any house rules as this was most of my players first time with 5e). Therefore, there's no reason for players to conserve HD going into this big fight. So each will use all their HD to offset as much exhaustion as possible. It's a no brainer.
In other words, their ability to mitigate exhaustion by spending HD will just reflect on how well they fared in the precious encounter (shortly after which they notice the gargoyles in flight toward the settlement Kir Sabal), and how many HD each PC has available to spend towards offsetting exhaustion.
So...it's not really presenting a meaningful choice, right?
