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Alright folks, the official launch date for this scenario is almost upon us. Please fill in your character info on these slides (also linked at the top of the page and soon to be in my GM tagline), and have your character introduce themselves in the Gameplay thread. We'll get started tomorrow (February 24th).
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Travel Speed
As it stands now, your slowest group member is between 15-25ft Speed, which means you as a group will get 1 hexploration activity per day. The Forest is difficult terrain, so it takes two Travel activities to move from one hex to another. Unless you have a way to speed that up or you decide to do a Forced March, it will take 2 days to go from one hex to another.
Exploration
If you want to explore a given hex once you arrive, you need to spend hexploration activities on the Reconnoiter activity. Again, because the forest is difficult terrain, this requires 2 activities (so 2 days) to explore a hex. However, you may be able speed this up by succeeding at Survival checks or easier Forest Lore or Scouting Lore checks to find game trails, which reduces the time to search a hex down to 1. Succeeding at this check reduces the time for your current hex and any adjacent hexes. I think to make things easiest, I'll roll these for you, but feel free to call my attention to any feats or abilities you have that you think might help.
Foraging for Food
As you can tell from the paragraphs above, running out of food could be a limiting factor here. To improve your odds there, you can try to forage for food using the Subsist general skill action (page 240 of the Core Rulebook). The DC to Subsist in the forest is 10, though trying to do so after 8 hours of travel or exploration incurs a -5 penalty on the check. Since there are 6 of you, for every 6 total successes your party has against this DC (a crit success earns you two successes, while a crit failure gives you a -2 penalty to such checks for a week), you add one day of supplies to your total. If anyone has the Forager feat, you can increase this rate. Again, I'm tempted to automate these checks for you to make this run smoothly in PbP, though I won't if anyone feels strongly about rolling their own.
I've also included a blank hex map for you to plan and track things on. Feel free to mark it however you'd like. To make this run smoothly in PbP, I'd like you to, as a group, decide the route you're going to take and mark it on that map. I'll move you along until you reach the end of your marked route, something changes, or an encounter happens. You'll then have an opportunity to adjust your plan to account for new information.
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I am happy for you to roll survival checks for subsisting and speeding us up. It should save us a lot of time. Ithuriel is +7 on survival.
Looking at the handout if we do all buy mounts and go to speed 40 we will get 2 activities per day which would seem to be sensible. We can also get an extra travel activity each time we forced march but you dont want to do so more than once per con mod. What is everyone's con mod? Ithuriel is only +1.
Do we have a preference for the route? I assume we want to cover as much ground as possible so we want to avoid backtracking on ourselves. That might suggest a spiral pattern from the outside inwards. What do people think?
Are the 40 days of trail rations 40 days each or 40 days total?
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Fangor is a frail old elf, he has a negative CON.
But being an elf he's not bad at Survival (+8).
Fangor has a wayfinder to help him navigate the wilderness.
@GM question if Fangor has a horse and the other not, with Ageless Patience is he able to get the bonus to explore?
Team,
I highly recommend we bump all of our Overland Speeds to at least 30 feet, as this will double the number of Hexploration actions we can get per day, which, when using those actions to Travel or Reconnoiter, means that we can do so through the Forest (Difficult Terrain) at a rate of 1 action per day (barring weather or other conditions).
8 gold to get a Riding Horse is an absolute steal!
GM,
Looking over the rules I noticed the Fortify Camp (Crafting) and Map the Area (Survival) activities.
Q) Like Subsist, does Fortify Camp roll at -5 if used on the same day as travel?
Q) Or, do these instead count as one Hexploration action?
Q) What value does Map Area have in terms of reporting information back to VCs?
Q) Can we suggest alternate skills to roll for Fortify Camp and Map Area? (Forest Lore?)
Finally,
It looks as though we will get a certain amount of Group Activities per day, and then, on top of that, each PC has the option to take an Individual Actions (ex. speed up Reconnoiter by rolling lore skills, roll to Subsist for party but at -5, etc). Is that a correct assessment?
Q) Is Forced March a Group or Individual action? Or both?
Q) If some PCs in the party move at 30+ feet per day, but others don't, does that increase their number of Individual Actions per day (or, remove the -5 penalty to Subsist / other activities)?
Looking forward to this Scenario!
Emdi @ +0 (Untrained)
Fangor @ +8 (Trained)
Ithuriel @ +7 (Trained)
Packet @ +7 (Trained)
Ruebella/Knab @ +9 (Expert)
Toanthel @ +7 (Trained}
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Faction: Grand Archive
GM Glyphs: One to Emdi
Ally Boons ("Ruebella"): Expert Hireling, Hireling, Professional Hireling
Retired Boons: Esoteric Wayfinder, Off-Hours Study (Fluent in Cyclops)
Chronicle Boons: Cryptid Scholar (□□□), Nexian Researcher (□□□), Sand Slide (□□□)
School / Items: Field Agent / None
Additional Preparations: None
Purchases: Riding Horse (8.0gp)
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That's the other problem, if you aren't going to buy a warhorse (which Toanthel definitely cannot afford), then each time you get into combat the horse becomes frightened 4 and fleeing as long as it is frightened. You can command the animal each round to keep it from fleeing, but that requires using 1 action and making a DC 11 Nature check. Chances are you are going to lose a riding horse during the first encounter.
Then there is a matter of feeding them. Horses need to eat a lot each day. Will they have enough time to graze during our travels or will we have to buy and carry extra feed?
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Team,
I highly recommend we bump all of our Overland Speeds to at least 30 feet, as this will double the number of Hexploration actions we can get per day, which, when using those actions to Travel or Reconnoiter, means that we can do so through the Forest (Difficult Terrain) at a rate of 1 action per day (barring weather or other conditions).8 gold to get a Riding Horse is an absolute steal!
GM,
Looking over the rules I noticed the Fortify Camp (Crafting) and Map the Area (Survival) activities.Q) Like Subsist, does Fortify Camp roll at -5 if used on the same day as travel?
Q) Or, do these instead count as one Hexploration action?
Q) What value does Map Area have in terms of reporting information back to VCs?
Q) Can we suggest alternate skills to roll for Fortify Camp and Map Area? (Forest Lore?)Finally,
It looks as though we will get a certain amount of Group Activities per day, and then, on top of that, each PC has the option to take an Individual Actions (ex. speed up Reconnoiter by rolling lore skills, roll to Subsist for party but at -5, etc). Is that a correct assessment?Q) Is Forced March a Group or Individual action? Or both?
Q) If some PCs in the party move at 30+ feet per day, but others don't, does that increase their number of Individual Actions per day (or, remove the -5 penalty to Subsist / other activities)?Looking forward to this Scenario!
** spoiler omitted **
A) Fortify Camp and Map the Area are both group activities, and you would do them instead of Traveling or Reconnoitering that day; unlike Subsist (which is a downtime activity, rather than a specific Hexploration activity), you don't have the option to do them after 8 hours of travel or exploration.
A) You were specifically told by Gorm not to bother mapping on this trip.A) Forced March is a group decision, unless you want to massively split the party.
A) No, your number of activities per day is set by your slowest member.
All told, you're generally not likely to want to use Individual Activities in this case, as it would involve splitting the party. For instance, if you wanted to Map the Area, you would either all have to do that, or some of you could go off and do that while the others Reconnoiter a hex. That means you're not likely to be together if one group triggers an encounter. I'm going to recommend to you (as the scenario instructs me to do) that you stick to Travel and Reconnoiter group activities.
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@GM question if Fangor has a horse and the other not, with Ageless Patience is he able to get the bonus to explore?
I'm afraid not. Your hexploration speed is set as a group (unless you're planning to split the party, which is not recommended), and set by your slowest member.
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Thinking about speed I am fairly sure that Bear will slow us down as he cannot ride a horse. With barding on his speed is 25. If I remove the barding it is 35 which gets us to 2 actions.
If you do take a riding horse it will run off but we should be able to round them up after any encounter I would hope.
I can just afford a warhorse or I can by a riding horse and help someone else buy one.
Edit: I will buy bear a set of light barding and a riding horse for myself.
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If you do take a riding horse it will run off but we should be able to round them up after any encounter I would hope.If this is the case, I'm way more amenable to getting a horse. I thought that it would run off and be gone forever.
I'm fine with that. It's not clear one way or another, but I don't think they'd go too far.
Sounds like you want to move straight south-east from camp. I put an arrow on the map, but feel free to adjust if that's not what you had in mind. I'll move us out of camp later this evening.
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One more note for now: The way I'm running this is meant to balance player agency and a reasonable PbP pace (hence asking you to program a route and then fast-forwarding to the interesting bits). That said, this is an unusual scenario and my first time running it in PbP. I'm not tied to this particular way of running things. If you find that this style of running hexploration isn't working for you, or you have thoughts on how to improve it in PbP, don't hesitate to reach out and let me know. I want this to be a fun experience for everyone.
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Hiking up the Mountains now, Knab takes a walk through his "steel trap" mind, shaped like the cultivated cave he was born in, and through the catacombs, enters the section where a greenhouse of sorts is maintained, where mosses, ferns and algae of resplendent colors thrive by a carefully controlled climate - a place where he keeps his "forest" memories.
He uses several organic inks to carve out the anatomy of Owlbears in it's walls or low ceilings, so that when he encounters them again, he can quickly return through simple visualization, and arm himself with the factual knowledge he needs to keep himself and his allies safe.