The lands outside of protection from city walls, guards, and armed citizens can be extremely dangerous! Starvation, thirst, and exposure to the elements can be just as deadly as weapons and magicks, so planning before travel is advised. Before embarking on a long journey, plan your route, investigate the details of the road, and gather supplies or allies to protect your party against the hazards of weather, terrain, and banditry.
1) Prepare For Your Journey:
Successful travel relies on planning— choose a destination and a means of conveyance to estimate the time your journey will require.
Pick a destination, plot your route, and estimate your journey length
After choosing a destination, you can estimate the amount of time to reach the destination based on ideal travel conditions. On foot, you can travel 15+ miles per day with good weather, ideal travel terrain, and a moderate travel pace. Many factors can affect travel time and survival difficulty, such as weather conditions, terrain conditions, pace, and type of conveyance.
Additionally, you can discuss your trip with locals to obtain maps, learn of shortcuts, or be warned of conditions to prepare for.
Gather information and supplies, then outfit your party
With your destination and route set, it’s time to get to the specifics of the trip. You may want to investigate for information about the route and destination, which could be critical to survival along the trail. How many are in your party? Do you have allies tagging along? Do you have livestock to feed and water? Check the ration requirements for your party and stock up before traveling to ensure that you have enough food and water for the trip, expecting there could be complications along the way.
Additional equipment and supplies may make your travel easier, so find out what might be available for sale at various vendors.
2) Planning a Travel Day
Considerations:
Before setting off, you should check weather conditions, food/water ration levels, terrain conditions, and your own survival conditions to determine if travel is advisable or if you need to change your travel pace.
Pack Up or Stay Put?
If conditions seem too risky, The Party can spend the day crafting, training, gathering supplies, or resting to prepare for travel under improved conditions. Even under ideal conditions, it may be beneficial to spend some time resting, healing, and resupplying during long or difficult journeys.
If The Party does end up deciding to travel, they will want to take the weather, the terrain, their roles, and their pace into consideration.
Travel Pace
Your pace will affect your Travel Role check, and can make them a breeze or force you to forgo them entirely. You will need to choose a travel pace: slow, moderate, fast, or grueling. Slower paces reduce the difficulty of Travel Role Checks and your resistance to survival conditions at the expense of time spent traveling.
To choose your pace, ask yourself: How quickly do you want to get to your next destination? How quickly do you NEED to get to your next destination? Faster paces will decrease travel time, but Travel Roll Checks will become more difficult. You should try to find a good travel balance depending on travel conditions and supplies on hand.
Characters can learn about the danger level of a region through research to help inform their journey plans—gathering rumors, reading histories, collecting maps.
Learn more about Travel Pace here.
Weather
Before setting off, you should check weather conditions, food/water ration levels, terrain conditions, and survival conditions to determine if travel is advisable. Travel through more difficult terrains and during inclement weather could be disastrous to the party! Different seasons bring different weather, and bad weather (flagged in red in the table linked below) makes travel treacherous and travel checks far more difficult.
Terrain Danger
Characters can learn about the danger level of a region through research to help inform their journey plans—gathering rumors, reading histories, collecting maps.
Learn more about Terrain Danger here.
Travel Roles
There are four travel roles to fulfill while travelling: guide, forager, scout, and lookout. Each character can only lead or assist in one role per day, and any role not fulfilled will result in an auto-fail during checks.
Each role can have only one leader, but any number of assistants. The leader performs the appropriate check for each role and additional assistance grants advantage.
Learn more about Travel Roles here.
3) The Day’s Travel
A Travel Day has four phases.
Morning
The sun rises, providing light to navigate your journey again.
Check weather: Weather can have a drastic impact on your travel plans, especially if you're not properly prepared. You may want to avoid travel completely during heavy rains, storms, and snows.
Assign roles: Decide the roles each character will play: guide, forager, scout, and lookout.
Set pace: Decide Travel Pace
Hit the trail: Start the travel day.
>>Scout check
Afternoon
The sun is at its peak, providing an ideal time to take a short break in the pace of travel.
>>Forager check
Evening
The sun is beginning to set and the party uses the last of the day’s light to continue travel.
>>Guide check
Night
The time of night creatures approaches, set up camp and rest until daylight.
Set Up Camp: Establish a campsite to facilitate Camping Activities and get some sleep.
Note: Campground DC determined by Terrain and Weather tables.
- Skills Checks: Each PC performs the following.
- Describe a way they will contribute to improving the campsite.
- Roll Skill check for contribution (one Survival Check required).
- # Failures determines Camp Activities DC.
Securing Campsite: PC serving as Lookout from travel day rolls Lookout Check.
- INT/WIS Check to determine security of camp site.
- Spells and equipment can be used to improve chances of securing campsite.
- Failure results in Surprise for Encounter (if one occurs).
Eat/Drink: Account for required food and water rations for the day, assign survival conditions for Hunger and Thirst.
Camp Activities: Each character can attempt to perform one Camp Activity.
Sleep: Go to bed to heal, regain abilities, and reduce Fatigue.
>>Lookout check
>>Campsite check