Travel experience points

[Quasqueton]

Since I play out travel time in my game (exploration is a major part of the campaign), I'm thinking I should give xp for traveling through the wilderness. The PCs do expend resources on expeditions, and the effort is a challenge (terrain, weather, etc.).

How should wilderness travel (talking true wilderness, not traveling by road from town to town) be rated as a challenge? I was thinking maybe CR 1 per week -- that way it is worth *something*, but when the PCs get higher level and can teleport (etc.), they will be above the travel being a challenge anyway (and would receive no xp if they didn't teleport).

Wilderness encounters are separate from the travel CR, and PCs will get xp for them as well.

Quasqueton

 

[Scharlata]

[...] How should wilderness travel (talking true wilderness, not traveling by road from town to town) be rated as a challenge

Nice idea. If it wouldn't be any help to say: "Just give ad hoc XP", then what about to distribute a percentage per adventure, like 10% to 15% of the grand total XP?

Kind regards

 

[ken-ichi]

I think that if you are going to give XP for traveling in the wilderness you should avoid giving an amount per week of travel, but rather assign a CR to different situations or "wilderness encounter". I would rather get XP for surviving and conquering an obstacle than for just traveling for a week.
One "wilderness encounter could be crossing a fast river with rapids, Swim DC 15 to cross safely. You can compare skill check DCs to similar DCs of a trap and also compare the results of a failed check. So if you fail the Swim check by 5 or more you get swept downstream and underwater into some rocks taking 3d6 damage.
This encounter might be equivalent to a CR 4 trap (just guessing here, check existing traps for damage comparison and remember that failing the Swim check results in harder and harder checks until you make them or drown, and getting knocked unconcious in water is a lot worse than being knocked out on land).
So enduring a 3 day blizzard might be a CR 3 by comparing potential damage to the survival DCs to avoid the effects to that of the existing traps. If the characters can notice the weather coming (Survival check ahead of time) they can set up a camp and weather it out in much more favorable conditions, but if the initial check is failed they can be hit while on the move and not prepared. This sounds very much like a wilderness "trap" to me and you can use the traps as guidlines.