D&D 5E Rewarding Overland Travel

[AbdulAlhazred]

I guess to bring this back to the OP, the TOR system could be converted to focus on rewards rather than just draining resources, as well as rewarding preparation by having resources give advantage and lacking them giving disadvantage on hazard checks and preliminary rolls.

The other thing I'd say is that if you want travel to be engaging and challenging, don't let the party get a full rest during a journey unless they get a reward or have a stopover in a safe place that would make a full rest make sense. Like let them spend hit dice, maybe devise a table or something for regaining some resources spent during the journey when they succeed on hazard checks or have a leg of the journey without any hazards, but they end the rest with resources spent. They end the journey with that level 1 slot for goodberry spent, and the level 2 slot for pass without trace they used to get +10 on the check to bypass the bandit camp, and the hit dice they lost due to a failed hazard check to ford the icy river, etc, all spent.

When tou combine dynamic costs with reward focused challenges, you encourage exploration because if they don't explore they can't ever get those sweet rewards that might negate whatever price they've so far paid. They might find the Great Fairy's Fountain and spend the night there, taking a full long rest and gaining water skins full of fountain water that gives them all the water and calories they need for the day on top of 2d10 thp that lasts until the next dawn, from a single sip. Or they might just find a cache of gems and a spellbook, magically preserved from a time so long past that they've no reason to thnk anyone still owns it. Or they might see something so magnificent that they all gain Inspiration. But not if they don't explore.

Seems like basically a bit more complicated version of a 4e SC with the goal being "complete the journey in good shape." What I like about the SC system is that it fits almost anywhere, you don't need a whole other different system for "social situation" or whatever (admittedly combat is its own thing).

 

[pemerton]

@doctorbadwolf

I had the same thought as @AbdulAlhazred - in broad outline it seems similar to a 4e skill challenge. The main difference I noticed is that 4e probably doesn't worry as much about the distance travelled - though it would be possible to do something like complexity equals number of days of travel if you wanted to, I guess.

It's more elaborate than merely checking for exhaustion, which has been my default in Prince Valiant.

 

[Hussar]

Yeah, I have to agree with folks here. 5e is not hard to get pretty darn lethal. You start targetting downed opponents and you can obliterate a PC PDQ. Remember, you'd auto critting that downed PC, so, automatically two failed death saves. You don't have to do it very often to make it really, really deadly.

I mean, right now I'm using 6 meanlocks in a mine (props if anyone else is running a Candlekeep Mysteries game). I am chewing the crap out of the PC's with this. Bonus action teleport (with no need for line of sight) when in low light? Everyone's huddling up around the warforged cleric who has a lantern. The first time someone got a bit ahead, he got mobbed, paralyzed, and was only barely saved from a serious beating by the combined efforts of the entire party and some serious luck.

When you have a 3D envirnment and a 30 foot teleport that recharges, you can go to town on the PC's.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

@doctorbadwolf

I had the same thought as @AbdulAlhazred - in broad outline it seems similar to a 4e skill challenge. The main difference I noticed is that 4e probably doesn't worry as much about the distance travelled - though it would be possible to do something like complexity equals number of days of travel if you wanted to, I guess.

It's more elaborate than merely checking for exhaustion, which has been my default in Prince Valiant.

I mean the 4e skill challenge is going to look a bit similar to anything that involves multiple skill checks to determine the full scope of resolution of a scene.

This also generates scenes within the journey, which I don't think is a normal part of 4e skill challenges.

 

[tetrasodium]

Yeah, I have to agree with folks here. 5e is not hard to get pretty darn lethal. You start targetting downed opponents and you can obliterate a PC PDQ. Remember, you'd auto critting that downed PC, so, automatically two failed death saves. You don't have to do it very often to make it really, really deadly.

I mean, right now I'm using 6 meanlocks in a mine (props if anyone else is running a Candlekeep Mysteries game). I am chewing the crap out of the PC's with this. Bonus action teleport (with no need for line of sight) when in low light? Everyone's huddling up around the warforged cleric who has a lantern. The first time someone got a bit ahead, he got mobbed, paralyzed, and was only barely saved from a serious beating by the combined efforts of the entire party and some serious luck.

When you have a 3D envirnment and a 30 foot teleport that recharges, you can go to town on the PC's.

It's not simply that 5e can't be made deadly, your targeting an argument that wasn't really put forward in isolation of the relevant bits. The gm can deliberately execute characters(something they could do before) is very different from past editions were more lethal and as a result there is less room for the GM to provide players with cool toys that mitigate lethality... 5e is still far lower risk of death even if execution is still effective. Using 5e's oversimplified to the extreme ruleset torun the grindiest of grindfests with 8 encounter days as the norm will fix a lot of problems stemming from the 5e designers targeting an absurd 6-8 encounters to force things during normal play towards something akin to ye old 5mwd as well, but pushing players towards the end of the encounter budget was possible in old editions & doesn't change the fact that o5e is unquestionably less deadly than older editions.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

@doctorbadwolf

I had the same thought as @AbdulAlhazred - in broad outline it seems similar to a 4e skill challenge. The main difference I noticed is that 4e probably doesn't worry as much about the distance travelled - though it would be possible to do something like complexity equals number of days of travel if you wanted to, I guess.

It's more elaborate than merely checking for exhaustion, which has been my default in Prince Valiant.

Right, a 4e SC would more likely focus on the greatest obstacles, with perhaps things like sheer distance, hostile terrain as a general problem, and the environment generally, treated as specific instances of challenge. So, you'd have a check to endure forced marching for 200 miles, and maybe a nature check to find adequate shelter either from a specific nasty environmental problem, or maybe from the environment generally. If you survive the snowstorm, you manage the rest of the environment as well. If you find enough water, you're OK, etc. Honestly, with an SC I would probably include some more dynamic element, like you are trying to avoid being tracked, or you are trying to navigate to a specific location, etc.

So, an SC might differ a bit from 'general sequence of survival-type checks' in that they generally work much better when there is a specific discrete goal and evolving plot along the way, vs just a long sequence of similar days of trudging along. In 4e's suggested techniques the trudging part should be elided (though as I say not without a check if you need it). James Wyatt did after all write something about "skipping to the action." OTOH DMG1 P24 also talks about pacing and build up, etc.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I mean the 4e skill challenge is going to look a bit similar to anything that involves multiple skill checks to determine the full scope of resolution of a scene.

This also generates scenes within the journey, which I don't think is a normal part of 4e skill challenges.

I think that is the HALLMARK of good SCs! If your SCs are just the PCs standing around in one place doing the same stuff for a bunch of checks in a row, then don't bother! Every check in an SC may not be an entirely different scene, but it should AT LEAST address a unique situation.

So, an SC covering a journey in my book would definitely have multiple scenes. You'd encounter some sort of terrain challenge, then maybe an environmental challenge, and then maybe address a specific instance of potentially getting lost, etc. So it would almost definitionally be a bunch of scenes. What would, IME, be missing would be the sort of 'daily routine'.

Now, if, for some reason, there was a strong desire to portray a journey in terms of the plodding, grinding routine of crossing distances on foot, then you probably would not use an SC for the whole thing. Instead specific scenes would be SCs. In this case maybe a random generator would work, but I would think a list of SCs/encounters could simply be followed in order too, the effect is not really different...

You could also have a large scale 'controlling SC' for the whole journey who's 'checks' were individual encounters. I think there's a brief mention of this sort of possibility in one of the DMGs, but I could be remembering other discussions of the possibility.

 

[Faolyn]

the norm will fix a lot of problems stemming from the 5e designers targeting an absurd 6-8 encounters to force things during normal play towards something akin to ye old 5mwd as well, but pushing players towards the end of the encounter budget was possible in old editions & doesn't change the fact that o5e is unquestionably less deadly than older editions.

The designers didn't design 6-8 encounters in a day. This is a misreading of the actual text, which says that a typical party can handle 6-8 encounters before they run out of resources (with more or fewer encounters if they're easier or harder than the norm). There was never any expectation that DMs "have" to have that many encounters between long rests.

 

[tetrasodium]

The designers didn't design 6-8 encounters in a day. This is a misreading of the actual text, which says that a typical party can handle 6-8 encounters before they run out of resources (with more or fewer encounters if they're easier or harder than the norm). There was never any expectation that DMs "have" to have that many encounters between long rests.

Actually they did. The entire section from the bottom of dmg81 to 84 is about combat encounter experience before continuing on into things like encounter difficulty & such from 85 on.

Spoiler

If you fit that many encounters into the adventuring day* it will begin to tax PC rest based resources enough to make them regret being reckless or even find themselves without those resources they feel in need of as the number climbs towards 8 or more. If you have less it moves the game towards the trivializing end of things where the 5 minute work day exists. That is the design.

Unfortunately that design exacerbates other bad design elements like the ones that fail to provide the gm much room for magic items & cool toys with mechanical impact. Yes you can reduce that number by having fewer harder encounters, but that screws a lot of things as many abilities go from a sometimes thing to an always thing and it amplifies the impact of the bad design on PHB197 to once again limit the GM's ability to actually provide magic items & other cool toys with mechanical impact.

*or whatever value of time for that adventuring day you want to use.

 

[Yora]

It's only when resources become scarce enough to consider managing them that the game becomes interesting. Before that the game just wastes everyone's time.