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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sword of Spirit" data-source="post: 6124282" data-attributes="member: 6677017">How do the rules actually work? (If this isn't too far off topic.)This is what I wrote in my playtest survey:"-Exploration Rules. Great start, and thanks for making such rules. There are a few serious problems.-Travel Pace for daily travel isn't working right. "Rushed" shouldn't be the designation for normal overland speed, but that's how it's currently designated. "Rushed" should be a forced march, and move further. Note the interaction with surprise rules. As far as I can tell, a party travelling at normal (ie, rushed) daily speed will automatically be surprised by any bandit ambush (since you can't keep watch). What this means is that players who use the exploration rules for overland travel will always end up traveling slower than those who skip the rules. This isn't desirable. Using a module for exploration should have a standard that matches not using the module—ie, characters traveling overland with or without the module should have the same basic rate of travel. The exploration module should allow them to slow it down or speed it up.I'm also not convinced that you need 4 categories of pace. I think 3 would work better.-Wandering monsters. There needs to be a way of determining in a more objective manner how many encounters are appropriate in a given time frame. Obviously, the intention is that if you are on an hourly scale instead of a daily scale, you are in an infested area where encounters are highly likely. But it needs to say that, and to aid simple conversion, the chance of random encounters on the table needs to be lower on the hourly scale and higher on the daily scale. Same thing goes with the dungeon, although dungeons are usually expected to be infested to a proper time scale, so it's not as glaring of an issue. What we don't want to have to deal with is the party switching to hourly mode to look for something, in an area where their shouldn't suddenly be a lot more monsters, but now they have 12 times the chance of encounters, just because they switched the level of abstraction. Please address this with numerical changes as well as DM guidance. Otherwise I guarantee it will become an at the table argument where the DM simply switches to hourly rolls for encounters whenever they players slow down to search for something, regardless of whether their slowing down has anything to do with a higher rate of monster infestations, and players will point this out, and DMs will say that's what it says, and rules lawyers and simulationists will have philosophical debates about how paying more attention to your surroundings makes it more likely for monsters to take notice, etc, etc. Please address it.-Surprise Rules. Thanks for making these. However, there are some things that still aren't clear and are important.Clear: If someone keeping watch spots anyone on the opposing side, no one in his party is surprised.Unclear: Does a watcher automatically spot anyone who isn't sneaking.Clear: If no one is watching or sneaking on either side, each creature rolls against readiness to determine if he is surprised or not.Assumed: Regardless of whether the character is surprised or not, he then rolls Wis to see which sneaking opponents (if any) he spots.Unclear: If everyone one side is sneaking, and no one on the opposing side is keeping watch, everyone on the non-sneaking side is automatically surprised.Also unclear, but seemingly called for: If a sneaking character isn't keeping watch (or warned by someone on his side who is), the sneaking character still needs to roll readiness to determine if he is surprised by the other side.Baffling: If two groups are entirely sneaking and no one on either side is watching…then what happens?Problematic: If it is intended that when everyone on one side is sneaking and no one on the opposing side is keeping watch, everyone on the non-sneaking side is automatically surprised, that means that PCs doing normal travel down the road are *always* surprised by normal bandit ambushes, since the bandits are all sneaking and the PCs aren't allowed to keep a watch at normal daily travel (since it is considered "rushed"). This is a major problem, since surprising an entire party has such a major effect on travel. It has the consequence of meaning that under exploration rules PCs won't travel at normal speed, while without exploration rules they will assume someone is allowed a Wis check to avoid an ambush.Also Problematic: I'll assume the alertness Readiness DCs work equally well for any stationary group, including PCs?  If not, that has to be addressed, since PCs do camp overnight, and there should be a roll for random monsters. Otherwise camping in the wilderness isn't risky, which diminishes fun and immersion. But if you simply use the table as listed, it means that camping PCs might be less likely to spot foes, since their isn't any sort of "keeping watch" option that would allow them to automatically spot non-sneakers. Also, without hard rules as to what is required for what level of alertness, PCs would just always say they are vigilant (or paranoid if they aren't into role-playing much). There need to be rules for keeping watch and hiding when stationary (camping and ambushing), and objective rules to determine alertness DCs. And the same rules should apply to PCs and NPCs.-The chance of getting lost seems awfully high."So if anyone here would like to take a stab at my questions (particularly concerning surprise), feel free. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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