Also, Zurai: I realized that I should probably give Thane ranks in Knowledge (Nature) to represent his knowledge of the forest (I totally forgot there were knowledge skills besides wizardy stuff ). Mind if I shuffle a few ranks around to do that (I'd probably just drop a rank each from Handle Animal and both Craft skills to put 3 in it).
...
I wouldn't mind switching out Ride for something else, like Search. I had no clue at creation horses would be so rare, and the odd of owning one a foregone conclusion.
Horses aren't
that rare. You could have bought one at character creation. Sure, they cost 75g, but most of you started with more than that. There are horse herders in the village. Your wolf will also eventually grow large enough for you to ride, if you choose to upgrade him to a Dire Wolf.
Anyway, yes, go ahead and swap skills - but after this once, forever hold your peace!
If we travel 8 hours, and our total rest time is no more than 2, that leaves us with 14 hours of downtime. And during downtime, regardless of whether we're sleeping or not, watches must be posted. We can't all be running around, doing our own thing, someone needs to be on guard, preferably 2 someones. So we have 14 hours to split between the bunch of us. There should be enough time there for each one of us to get a full 8 hours sleep. In a staggered way. We don't all have to sleep at the same time. Ryon will patrol around the party during rest stops.
8 hours' travel is 8 hours of actual movement interspersed with short 10 or 15 minutes of rest and the occasional 30 minute food stop. No one can get any significant rest during the time you spend traveling unless you had something like a wagon for them to sleep in. Time between breaking camp in the morning and setting up camp in the evening will be roughly 12 hours if you choose to travel for 8 hours a day. So, you have 12 hours to play with, although my math with Artemisia was still messed up (it'll be four three-hour shifts, three of which are double, one of which is single, if you go by her method).
Sleep seems like a generically useful hunting spell (120ft range, they don't notice an arrow), but Bless is more useful for a group. Any thoughts?
Per the rules, the act of casting a spell is unmistakable, barring a feat, class feature, or skill trick that says otherwise. If it has a somatic component, everyone that can see you knows you're casting a spell. If it has a verbal component, everyone that can hear you knows you're casting a spell. The rules specifically disallow whispering the words to a spell to 'keep it quiet'. That, combined with
sleep's 1 round cast time, pretty much ensures that it's useless as a hunting aid.
Also, if you choose to hunt, your movement is going to be 0.75 miles per hour spent walking, or 1.5 miles per hour spent hustling. You've got a base speed of 30' a round, assuming you can redistribute weight such that no one's got a medium or heavy load, which is 3 mph. Divide that by two for trackless forest, and divide by two again for hunting while traveling. The net result is 6 miles travelled per entire day, assuming you don't hustle and you only travel for 8 hours a day. You don't know exactly how far away the mountain is, but it's at least farther than 100 miles, so over two weeks of travel at this speed.
). Mind if I shuffle a few ranks around to do that (I'd probably just drop a rank each from Handle Animal and both Craft skills to put 3 in it).
