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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lackhand" data-source="post: 6863971" data-attributes="member: 36160">How far away are they? Rounds, minutes, hours, days? Depending on the scale, you might just run the adventure with no special rules, it just has an overland component. The overland rules work, there's a bunch of 5 mile hexes between here and there, and you have exactly enough time to cover the space taking one short rest (or one long rest? Or do you press through the night? etc).If you did this, wrinkles include unfamiliar terrain (so: You present a picture of a mountain range to the party and ask them to mark with a vertical line where in the mountains they bear for; one of the spaces between the peaks is a high but passable valley, the other is inhabited by spiders, and the third is a slow slog over ridged terrain), patrols of unfriendlies on the plains, or a friendly-but-lonely copper dragon who will delay the party but then happily ferry two or three of them ahead at a time (and the ones who are left get the opportunity to interrogate the dragon's magic mirror or something).It doesn't sound like the party can have direct and current interaction with the villains, so if you're just trying to figure out how long the villain has, your #3 "goal point system" sounds like the best way to resolve it.Are you assuming the party is traveling as a whole, and the villain is coming along some other path? If you are, then I might just present it as a little minigame choice: "You'll need to travel 6 miles. Traveling at a slow pace will take 3 hours, 3 random encounters, but you're at advantage to go unnoticed. Normal takes 2 hours, but you risk 2 random encounters. Faster takes 1.5 hours, but also takes 1d6 damage and a DC 10 con save or acquire 1 exhaustion AND you risk 2 random encounters with disadvantage to go unnoticed". And that's that. And if you prefer real encounters to random encounters, or have some other distance or whatever, that's fine too. (assuming slow was a real option, I'd probably take it given those odds!)This version doesn't use a map -- "we follow the road to the temple, dagummit!" -- but stresses the timely nature of the journey. You can even somewhat stack the deck: "slow" won't cut it, because they have 2.5 hours before the bad guy shows up.Are you prepared for what happens in the adventure if they miss the timing event?</blockquote>

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