Level Up (A5E) Advanced Journeys &Exploration Challenges

[Morrus]

I wrote this in summer 2023, and then it languished on my PC while other publishing stuff got in the way. It may or may not appear in GPG or another book at some point. Feedback welcome.

[Update 24 Feb to v2]

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[Pedantic]

This is super interesting, and gets at my biggest issue with the Journey rules. Supply is simply too plentiful and effects that drain it too scarce. Working it in explicitly to the exploration challenge structure helps alleviate that significantly, though I'm a little leery of the scaling, given that total party supply tends to be pretty static.

 

[Morrus]

This is super interesting, and gets at my biggest issue with the Journey rules. Supply is simply too plentiful and effects that drain it too scarce. Working it in explicitly to the exploration challenge structure helps alleviate that significantly, though I'm a little leery of the scaling, given that total party supply tends to be pretty static.

Yep, the scaling is definitely off at present. I have a couple of alternate ideas, but a simple flat figure of 1 Supply per PC might work well. It feels a little flat to me though.

My other concern is that this could just feel like a Supply tax. You buy Supply, the GM takes it away. That’s the hurdle I ran up against.

 

[Zaukrie]

Yep, the scaling is definitely off at present. I have a couple of alternate ideas, but a simple flat figure of 1 Supply per PC might work well. It feels a little flat to me though.

My other concern is that this could just feel like a Supply tax. You buy Supply, the GM takes it away. That’s the hurdle I ran up against.

ya, that last part....can't quite figure out how to make it feel not like that.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

could make it so a success lowers the supply cost, a critical success removes it, and a critical failure doubles it (in addition to whatever else happens for those results). or make it so a critical success lowers the cost and a success leaves it alone.

also - is the supply cost per character, or for the whole party?

edit: as for scaling, maybe each adventurer has to pay supply equal to the challenge's tier, and the whole party also has to pay supply equal to the difference between the CR of the challenge and the average party level (minimum 0, if the party's average level is higher then the challenge's CR)? that might be too challenging or complicated, but it's a thought...

 

[Pedantic]

Yep, the scaling is definitely off at present. I have a couple of alternate ideas, but a simple flat figure of 1 Supply per PC might work well. It feels a little flat to me though.

My other concern is that this could just feel like a Supply tax. You buy Supply, the GM takes it away. That’s the hurdle I ran up against.

It's a bigger content generation challenge, but what if you worked the supply cost to resolve problems into the proposed solutions more explicitly? That is, if you establish Supply as a currency to buy things like rope and masks and so on, you could make the cost diegetic, and potentially reward particularly good PC suggestions. I can imagine a Supply cost line worked into the "possible solutions" section in the standard exploration challenge format.

 

[xiphumor]

I agree with the Supply just being a tax critique, and honestly, I have to say that combining most mundane equipment into a single grab-bag is not attractive to me.

I agree that Supply needs to be made more important, but after thinking about it for a while, I think the real problem is that it’s too easy to have a ton of, because it’s never a cost you’re seriously concerned about.

I think a better direction to go would be to leave how Supply works alone but change how much you can have with you. I’ve been convinced that PF2e does carrying capacity really well with a slot based system. If each of your supply took up a slot in your inventory, and you had to make choices between carrying more Supply or perhaps a larger weapon, it would suddenly become very impactful. While we’re at it, reducing the inventory of characters in general would mean having less bookkeeping to do overall, especially if you could not have to add up the weights of everything you carry.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

I agree with the Supply just being a tax critique, and honestly, I have to say that combining most mundane equipment into a single grab-bag is not attractive to me.

I agree that Supply needs to be made more important, but after thinking about it for a while, I think the real problem is that it’s too easy to have a ton of, because it’s never a cost you’re seriously concerned about.

I think a better direction to go would be to leave how Supply works alone but change how much you can have with you. I’ve been convinced that PF2e does carrying capacity really well with a slot based system. If each of your supply took up a slot in your inventory, and you had to make choices between carrying more Supply or perhaps a larger weapon, it would suddenly become very impactful. While we’re at it, reducing the inventory of characters in general would mean having less bookkeeping to do overall, especially if you could not have to add up the weights of everything you carry.

maybe you can carry prof bonus (or some multiple thereof) amount of supply as a bulky item? that'd also help with scaling.

 

[Morrus]

I agree with the Supply just being a tax critique, and honestly, I have to say that combining most mundane equipment into a single grab-bag is not attractive to me.

I agree that Supply needs to be made more important, but after thinking about it for a while, I think the real problem is that it’s too easy to have a ton of, because it’s never a cost you’re seriously concerned about.

I think a better direction to go would be to leave how Supply works alone but change how much you can have with you. I’ve been convinced that PF2e does carrying capacity really well with a slot based system. If each of your supply took up a slot in your inventory, and you had to make choices between carrying more Supply or perhaps a larger weapon, it would suddenly become very impactful. While we’re at it, reducing the inventory of characters in general would mean having less bookkeeping to do overall, especially if you could not have to add up the weights of everything you carry.

That sounds like a very different article.

The Supply as mundane equipment is definitely something I plan to pursue. Having seen such concepts in other games, I find it works really well. YMMV of course.

 

[Selganor]

Tools should also be kept out of Supply. Otherwise you could go from super cheap (for not that heavy but costly ones) to costly (for heavy ones that you completely use up with use).

Maybe allow Supply to "recharge" some kits with a limited number of uses.