small gripe i have with the tracking rules

[Negative Zero]

i was reading through AU and in the playingthe game section i came accross this line: "Creatures following the PCs trail, of cours, always close with them." on page 144 which reminded me on somethingthat always seemed to bug me about the way tracking works.

to track a foe, you have to move at half speed or suffer penalties. penalties that very likely will make it very easy to never catch your prey anyway. enemy NPCs however always just seem to be able to catch PCs at will.

they always seem to be able to move faster than the PCs while tracking. they don't really seem to get tired. they're never fatigued when they finally catch up to the party. what gives? have all my GMs just been unfair and evil? or does everyone play this way?

do you use the same rules for having NPCs follow that party that PCs have to? coz it seems to me that the way they're written, it's really hard to actually catch anyone in a tracking chase.

~NegZ

 

[BrooklynKnight]

Its just the way the universe works.
Look at movies and stories.

If the bad guys cant find you, there cant be a conflict.

 

[paulewaug]

as a Dm I don't do it that way, I do it by the book.

Because as a player I have had it done that way and it's pretty lame-
Couple levels of Ranger could hardly track anything for very far,
but the bad guys tracked us down quick and found us on rocky terrain after hiding our tracks, eh whatever. They found their Death is all!!!

bwahaha!!

 

[Negative Zero]

yep that's exactly what i'm talking about. (or trying to at least ) and i certainly don't agree with the underlying point in Arthur's statement. sure you need conflict, but artificially forced conflit isn't fun.

~NegZ

 

[alsih2o]

in a campaign i was in recently the same skills oyu track wiht determined oyur ability to hide oyur tracks.

i agree that it seems silly for the bad guys to always track and catch the good guys, but they surely don't follow the same stronghold building rules either. they always have the cool well-defended pad

it almost has to be part of the game. i agree that the optimum isn't artificially forced conflict but that is what the vast majority of in game conflict is, just like usually fighting appropriately powerful monsters.

perchance the best is to take the question over to the rules forum where one of the local gurus will share a tracking ability that lets you actually catch somehting as a pc

 

[Rashak Mani]

Well 3.5 allows you to track at normal speed at -5 to your check... and surprise... just checked this:

Double your normal speed tracking at -20 !

Well in real life you can speed up tracking by having fellow trackers move ahead and try to find tracks further ahead. 2 trackers should speed things up a bit.

 

[Dakkareth]

So Aragorn is an epic level character. Mmhh. Sure doesn't look lit it ...

 

[Rashak Mani]

Well Tracking a group of 100 orcs must certainly give a lot of bonuses... especially if some Uruk Hai are in a big hurry.

 

[Steverooo]

Well 3.5 allows you to track at normal speed at -5 to your check... and surprise... just checked this:

Double your normal speed tracking at -20 !

And from 8th level on, Rangers can track at full speed with no penalty, or at up to twice that with only a -10!

 

[Greybar]

Intersting side note. If you're using the Scent ability you get a +2DC/hour old penalty, but tracking by visual clues (i.e. normal tracking rules) is only +1DC/day.

Makes sense, but is something to watch for if you (like me) have a scent-tracking ranger in your party, or if the supposed bad-guys with hounds mentioned above have scent. If you can get a few hours on them and they're relying on scent, you'll do fine.

john