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<blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 8382911" data-attributes="member: 97077">It's a cost (or rather risk or trade-off). Whether it's a high or low cost depends on the context. Also, you appear to be assuming the frequency of random encounters here. It looks like you're thinking it's one random encounter check per day. That's not necessarily the case. So one day-long attempt at foraging while traveling can mean multiple random encounter checks or random encounters, potentially more than one of which has sneaky monsters.In my current hexcrawl, for example, every hex you enter has a random encounter, guaranteed, in addition to any static encounter that might already be keyed to the given hex. So, in context, that's a minimum of 4 per day of travel or 8 if you're a ranger in favored terrain (since you can cover more hexes per day in this setup by ignoring difficult terrain). But that foraging is a day's worth of effort. That's a lot of chances to get surprised. Are all games set up that way? No. But it goes to show that your argument is based on assumptions that are not universally true. Your response also suggests to me a lack of actual play experience using these exploration rules.Also, I've seen PCs get killed before acting when they were surprised. So let's not pretend it's not a real threat. Even if they don't die, it's a potential ding to their hit points and thus hit dice which can matter in the long run. That will matter more in some games than others, but it's not nothing.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="iserith, post: 8382911, member: 97077"] It's a cost (or rather risk or trade-off). Whether it's a high or low cost depends on the context. Also, you appear to be assuming the frequency of random encounters here. It looks like you're thinking it's one random encounter check per day. That's not necessarily the case. So one day-long attempt at foraging while traveling can mean multiple random encounter checks or random encounters, potentially more than one of which has sneaky monsters. In my current hexcrawl, for example, every hex you enter has a random encounter, guaranteed, in addition to any static encounter that might already be keyed to the given hex. So, in context, that's a minimum of 4 per day of travel or 8 if you're a ranger in favored terrain (since you can cover more hexes per day in this setup by ignoring difficult terrain). But that foraging is a day's worth of effort. That's a lot of chances to get surprised. Are all games set up that way? No. But it goes to show that your argument is based on assumptions that are not universally true. Your response also suggests to me a lack of actual play experience using these exploration rules. Also, I've seen PCs get killed before acting when they were surprised. So let's not pretend it's not a real threat. Even if they don't die, it's a potential ding to their hit points and thus hit dice which can matter in the long run. That will matter more in some games than others, but it's not nothing. [/QUOTE]

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