Iserith... Seem to mostly agree tho in this case its a "gotcha" for advantage - and neither of us it seems would do that.
Gardens and Goblins If i may ask a question...
Lashing down.. Check. Tied down has benfits and drawbacks.
Team up... Check. Basic rules.
Not saying they take steps tp protect and how... Well... Why would a player ever not want to say that or not give you a note about "when drinking i always..." written on their character sheet? Obviously a character might be a type who doesnt care about being robbed so "roleplaying", so there is that.
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I'll be watching this topic closely, because it's a subject of internal debate as I prepare to launch a new campaign.
I don't like passive perception except for in-initiative hiding. For overland travel, I would prefer to establish some standard operating procedures, including automated stealth and perception checks when entering or travelling through a new area, if the travelling speed allows. Enter a new area, make a check, describe the results and interact with stuff, rinse and repeat. I'll also assume a default marching order and formation defined by the party unless they specifically state otherwise. For overland travel, I assume they deploy their most competent scout 50 feet or more ahead. Stealth and perception checks are made between each encounter even when there's nothing to sneak around or detect. The purpose is to create uncertainty, but also to disable gotchas.
The scout presumably makes first contact with anything interesting. If he fails his stealth check, someone detects him. If he fails the perception check, he overlooks the interesting thing. Or the interesting thing might be a trap and he falls into it. If he succeeds on his stealth check, he might encounter an unhidden obstacle without being detected. If he succeeds on his perception check, he notices an interesting thing, which may or may not also be the thing he's sneaking around.
The group also makes a stealth and perception check separately from the scout. If the scout's activities didn't change the nature of the possible encounter, their group check succeeds when at least half or more pass.
It's basically the same process for interior settings, but segmented by corridors and rooms.
A couple notes. I'm going to be running this on roll20, so I have the luxury of macros to make this a quick and painless process. Also, I don't treat this approach as one-size-fits-all for handling encounters and travel. There will be situations where it doesn't make sense to apply this handling. Again, this is just standard operating procedure.
It's hardly a gotcha for anything.
Rolling a check to determine the perception during a travel leg sounds just fine, if you don't like passive. I would, however, not assuming how the players arrange themselves. I have mine tell me what their 'default' is, and, unless they change it, that's what it is, not because I've assumed it but because they've told me.
I made a 'travel' map page on Roll20 that lets the party both organize their marching order but also assign themselves jobs (the map is a set of boxes and labels with their tokens on it so they can drag themselves wherever they want to be). This takes a few moments at the start of a travel/exploration leg and really helps me by putting all of the decisions into the player hands in a way that I just have to read off at the end and ask for relevant checks for each leg.
Further, I'd also recommend breaking out the 'jobs' a bit more than just having everything on the scout. The decision tradeoffs between watching for hazardous terrain versus watching for foes vs sneaking around makes those important and meaningful decisions, and I've found it adds a great deal to overland travel. I would not use it for a more plot based game where travel is to and from plot points, but in sandboxes or games that focus on the exploration leg, adding meaningful decisions to the actual exploration is very nice. It also lets those abilities that otherwise kind of fall away (like Ranger favored terrain, Outlander backgrounds, etc) really get a nice punch up and spotlight time in the game by allowing them either advantage on jobs or the ability to do more than one job at a time. A ranger in their favored terrain, for instance, can Be Alert for Danger and Navigate while also either and sneaking, trailblazing, or (super) foraging at the same time. That's pretty cool. Might not mean they're the best lead scout, though, and might mean they take a place a little further back in the marching order. But it does make them absolute assets in their favored terrain(s)!
Awesome.[MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]
It remains to be determined how prevalent overland travel will feature as a meaningful obstacle in this campaign. Session 0 is coming up in January and it's something we'll look at. We're presumably doing a points of light, dark fantasy setting (my homebrew), so overland travel will inevitably come up. Whether it's something that would even benefit from a detailed system of roll automation is what I'm in the process of examining.
Nothing is set in stone, but a sandbox or exploration themed game isn't what I had in mind. The presence of a ranger will definitely have an influence on how I approach travel as a meaningful obstacle, whatever the plot structure ends up being. Rangers are special little snowflakes.
For a little additional clarity, a different sort of "My character always..." would be something like "My character is always looking for easy marks in a crowd whose purses look light where there aren't obvious guard about..." as say a description of active "downtime" activity or the like or even "my character is always looking for opportunities for "finding lost items" or "an extra bit of bling" as we go through our adventure and will "keep it safe" as a character deciding to try and increase their share of loot - with an obvious chance of consequence for such actions.
Not (to me) the same as the "if they state that..." kind of thing described in the rule above and that got me to post the thread in the first place.