Level Up (A5E) Advanced Journeys &Exploration Challenges

[Morrus]

What about spending supplies to get boosts to skill checks in an exploration challenge?

The challenges focus more on fatigue/strife…and supply is more of an asset on the checks to get through the challenge

Way ahead of you... scroll back to post #48!

 

[bigfaceless]

I just want to say I'm really digging this concept. I think it can really help with both Journeying and dungeon crawling. I love the flexibility it adds without totally just hand waving away the need to prepare.
I've looked over the v2 doc and other suggestions in this thread and I plan to add the following changes for my group.

1. Once the party returns to a haven/town they will roll a d6 for each mundane item they used supply to create (so ladders, rope, prybars etc, but not consumables). Each die that comes up a six is an item consumed/destroyed. The surviving gear will be converted back into supply.

2. Extra supply can be carried by pack animals, following the str score = supply rules. Carts can additionally double the amount of supply that pack animal can carry. Personally, I'm pretty strict about taking carts anywhere but maintained roads so I don't expect this to be a huge advantage.

3. PCs can spend supply to add expertise dice to journey checks. Currently I'm thinking 2 supply per level of expertise.

I'll report back in a week or two once both of my groups have had a chance to try it out.

 

[evildmguy]

There are several ways, but most of them seem to only grant one or two Supply at most. The Hunting and Gathering journey activity gain at most 2/day spent on the activity, which means that at best, you're going to break even. And that's without using Supply for anything other than food. So I think that, 5-10 years from now when LU 2e is put out, the journey activities will need to be revisited a bit.

Realistically, a deer has about 50 pounds of usable meat on it. Even assuming no magical means of preserving the meat, a ranger or someone with a suitably hunter-esque culture or background should be able to turn that into a lot of Supply--but not by RAW. Sure, you could say that you may be hunting for several days but only bag one deer. OK, sure. But your PCs have also killed monsters that should be perfectly edible, and there's a lot more meat on an owlbear than there is on a deer. And there's only so many times you can say "no, you can't butcher that monster, it's toxic" before it starts seeming either silly (owls and bears are both edible, so owlbears should be as well) or like you're actively trying to keep PCs from getting food.

Thinking about it, it might help to divide Supply into two forms: Food and Things. They could both cost the same, but you can't turn Things into Food and vice versa. And then add another journey activity--Scrounging--which specifically lets you find more Things Supply.

As I said in another thread, a Ranger dedicated to getting supply could easily get 4 / nightly activity, sometimes more. I couldn't challenge this group on Supply as much as I tried because of this. I don't know if the errata mentioned was used and would affect this.

My group also talked about doing Food and Things as different supply types and I think it comes down to each group's own verisimilitude. We ended up not splitting them out because it's another thing to track. It did bug me but I got over it. Equally, I had to present to them times when they do need to use Supply as part of problem solving or a challenge.

This is promising as a means to give PCs more access to Supply without significantly increasing capacity. Supply is either spent (like the current daily requirements) or "risked" which gives it some chance of being lost altogether. That's a lot of fun levers for PCs to play with, potentially spending supply to avoid risking more, risking extra supply for bonuses on rolls, coming up with clever pens to decrease the total risked amount, etc.

You could also integrate the variable timer dicepools mechanic for ongoing challenges, like crossing a desert, or trying to lash things down on a ship in a storm. Each die represents a risked supply, and players are either trying to succeed at something else before the time runs out, or it could be inverted and they might be tempted to add more if they're trying to succeed at something before the pool runs dry.

I was thinking the same thing with the countdown mechanic or some die pool mechanic. What makes it interesting is that each player can state how much Supply they are willing to risk on some task. Then the die pool is rolled to see how well the obstacle was overcome or not. I also don't like this because now it's a new sub system that has been created to determine something that nothing else uses. It's trying to find how to use what already exists in the game but in a new way for a different type of challenge.

As an aside, I don't like that a 6 on a d6 means something is broken. In a system where rolling higher is better, I would prefer that a 1 means it was broken or lost.

Looking at the Choking Smoke challenge, it could go like this. It's a 3rd tier challenge and there are four characters, so they need four successes. They are each carrying max Supply at the start so let's say 48. Let's say a 5+ on a d6 is a success. Now the group has to decide how many Supply to use. Each Supply allocated to the challenge is a d6 in the pool. I think the math works out, but don't quote me, that having four times the needed successes of dice in the pool means it will pass. The party knows there will be more challenges but don't want to risk fatigue or strife this early. They put 12d into the pool. Any 6s rolled means that Supply isn't used up.

Now, I just created a Shadowrun challenge more than an LU challenge. I get that. I want to look at the concepts. The idea is risk/reward. The more Supply they use on a challenge, the more likely it will succeed but they run the risk of running out of Supply. They could use so much Supply as to make it trivial or for some reason so little as to make it impossible.

Think about this in LU, it's a group check. Using no Supply confers disadvantage. Using 1 Supply is a normal check. Using 2 Supply gives prof bonus, if not skilled, or increase/add expertise die if skilled. Each Supply after that increases expertise die. Max Supply used on a challenge is equal to its tier (+1 to account for tier 0?). My thinking here is Supply is showing how much a character might have to compensate for something out of their skill area. The Ranger only needs to use 1 Supply for a Survival challenge, the Wizard only needs to use 1 Supply for an Arcana challenge.

This assumes that Supply can overcome the challenge but I think that's fair to assume in this abstracted travel system. In a group of Rangers, they know how to Survive. In the Choking Smoke example, the Rangers know not to breathe as often or always use their face coverings when they do breathe. In the Quicksand challenge, the Rangers know to test their weight before each step. That's reflected in having proficiency with the skill. A group of wizards might come up with an idea but have a lot of waste to make it work, reflected in no proficiency in Survival but they can use Supply to overcome that.

I like that. Using Tier + 1 max Supply used means that in the Tier one challenges where a character isn't proficient in the skill can still gain them proficiency bonus at a Supply cost. Of course, now that's making me wonder, when a challenge is done, do all characters roll the same skill? Some challenges allow for more than one, such as the quicksand challenge. Does the group have to pick one skill to use for it? I'm asking because the rules also suggest allowing players to come up with inventive solutions. If they always get to roll at least a skill they have proficiency, does that make a challenge too easy?

Okay, this is just a wall of text. Maybe it gave someone ideas.

 

[Pedantic]

I was thinking the same thing with the countdown mechanic or some die pool mechanic. What makes it interesting is that each player can state how much Supply they are willing to risk on some task. Then the die pool is rolled to see how well the obstacle was overcome or not. I also don't like this because now it's a new sub system that has been created to determine something that nothing else uses. It's trying to find how to use what already exists in the game but in a new way for a different type of challenge.

To be clear, I was proposing using the current mechanic alongside normal skill checks to overcome a challenge, or as an ongoing timer tied to something like crossing a dangerous region. So, you'd roll a pool of the party's supply before they attempted a check, or deployed a spell or whatever their plan is, and on failure, they'd simply have to roll that pool again before making their next check.

The exploration challenge might have a line entry like "Risk: 3 Supply/character" or "Risk: 60% of party Supply" etc. Then you can add "roll the Risk pool" as an item in the failure section, and add lines like "players may risk an additional Supply to gain expertise on this check" or even "players may spend X Supply to satiate the ravenous insects" as an alternative to rolling.

 

[evildmguy]

@Pedantic My apologies if I said things you didn't mean. As I said, that wall of text was word salad with me spouting things out. I didn't mean to misrepresent you.

 

[Distracted DM]

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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Btw I do want to say that I love the spirit of open design that originated this post. I'd enjoy seeing more of this type of thing, from you and other a5e designers!