LazarusLong42 said:
So, here's the deal. A check of 10 or higher on Wilderness Lore allows you to move overland at half your base speed without needing to carry fod or water.
There's no stipulation that I see that says you can't take 10 on this check--and if you're doing it over the course of a day, obviously you're not hurried at all, so you should be able to take 10. And you can use the skill untrained.
The notion of "taking 10" from the SRD is "When the character is not in a rush and is not being threatened or distracted." Now, I might rule that any time you are hunting in the wilderness you are yourself potentially being threatened and thus taking 10 is a no-no. Unless you want to intentionally forgo all spot and listen checks. Then you can take 10, at least as soon as I get done with the evil GM laugh.
Then there's the concept of seasons and weather. Storms make it harder to find food due to lack of visibility, reduced speed, and fewer animals about; my region gets about 100 rain days/year, or 25% of the time it's raining. Even if only half are during storms, 1 day a week you've got real problems. Winter should doubles the difficulty of finding food, at least, as plants shut down and animals begin hibernating.
Hit a desert, marsh, tundra, or just foreign terrain and it gets worse.
So... why carry rations? Hunter-gatherer mode probably nets you more food, not to mention tastier food
Right. No offense, but the eat-off-the-land tactic has never been a particularly tasty one. You eat beech nuts, squaw cabbage, wild onions, pine nuts, squirrels, rabbits, chipmunks, possum, the rare fruits & berries, and lots of boiled roots & grasses. You wont starve, but happiness is not your lot in life.
I'm not saying I wouldn't get tired of jerky, salted fish, dried fruit, granola, and crackers, but it's nice to have options.
As long as time is not of the essence, you can still get 8-10 miles a day doing this.
First problem is that half speed means half speed. Overland trips can often take weeks to months, doubling that is painful. E.g. The overland distance from the city I'm in now to the state capital is about 100 miles of slightly hilly terrain. It would take me about 2 weeks to get there with rations and a month without. Round trip we're talking 2 months. Trail rations are expensive, but rarely are players so broke that they can't afford it.
Oh sure, some metagamers will say that more road time means more random encounters. True 'nuff, but most random encounters are rather piddly things (wolves, the ocassional troll, a few bandits) compared to the core adventure itself. It seems like twice as many adventures would be more worthwhile than twice as much random encounter.
Then there's the concept of exposure. Short trips mean short exposure. If you are on the road twice as long, you have double the odds of having an incident. In reality, the odds go up more than double since a slow moving creature is more likely to draw hunter/tracker beasts like wolves. By foraging you are splitting up, making you prime victims for the pack animals. While they may not be a real threat to the party directly, watch and see the fun if they kill a few of the party's horses. Do they spend the 500gp to raise the horse (negating any and all cost savings from not buying rations), convince the wizard to start burning spells each day to conjure a Mount, or slow down even more as they overload their remaining mounts?
My party tends to rely on the cleric for supplies, but they've got a standing rule of at least 5 days supplies for everyone, including mounts. They do it for those days the cleric needs all his spells for healing, in case the cleric ever gets hit by a poison that incapacitates or kills him, and sometimes because you can beat some encounters by just giving the hungry beast food.
