Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
hey everybody!
I'm GMing a Kingmaker campaign right now where my PCs are still level 1 and rampaging around the wilderness exploring things. I've tried to make survival an issue, simulating the need to plan for long overland journeys with horses, food, water, etc.
The pfsrd says that one day of animal feed is 10 lbs and costs 5cp. My players are incredibly, notoriously cheap... I'm sure you've seen the type. They refuse to buy rations and mostly get by via the survival skill. They refuse to buy a lot of animal feed and then about halfway through their journey realize they're about to run out of food.
I have ruled that a horse eats about 4x what a human does (by nature of it being large), and about half of that can be met by letting it graze at the end of the adventuring day, reducing the amount of food eaten by horse to 5 lbs/ day. My players are in a bit of an uproar, saying that horses should be allowed to graze for their entire meal allotment... its just grass, blah blah blah.
Has anyone devised any kind of ruling in terms of how horses are fed on overland journeys? Have you had players try to feed their horse "on the road" or with the survival skill?
Thanks everyone!
John
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When I ran Kingmaker my players asked the same questions, and we couldn't find any real answers, so I homebrewed something simple after consulting a family member who happened to be a large animal vet.
Horses IRL can acquire all of their nutrition by grazing, but it takes a large amount of their day to achieve a caloric balance. Animal feed ups the calories and nutrition and lessens the time that the animal needs to spend grazing.
So, if the group wanted their animals to graze, I required them to spend 8 hours of their waking day to do so. That usually meant 8 hours traveling, 8 hours grazing, and 8 hours sleeping.
The group initially used that 8 hours of grazing time to explore their immediate surroundings, until a [REDACTED] ate half their horses while they were gone (and a pack of [REDACTED] ate a couple more another time).
On the days that they wanted to travel for 16 hours, I required them to use one day's worth of animal feed, or have the horse go hungry.
The first day of having the horse go hungry had no negative effects, other than roleplay. After that I ruled that the horse would be fatigued. We never got past that point, but I'd imagine exhaustion and then lameness would be the next logical steps.
It worked. We were all a fan of simple rules. I'm sure you could devise something more complex for the animal geeks in your group.
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I'm not sure there are rules for this, but if players can succeed at the DC 10 check to feed themselves without rations (while moving at half speed) it seems reasonable to let horses get by with the same.
Of course, the horses don't have the survival skill, but remember that for ever 2 you beat the DC by you can provide food and water for another person. So a DC 12 allows you to provide food and water for 2 people. I'm not sure exactly how much horses or people eat in a day weight wise, but if one days feed is 10 lbs I would guess that most people consume maybe 5 lbs of food a day. So it's more like horses eat twice as much, not 4 times as much. Why do I bring this up?
Because I think a character could with a DC 14 survival check provide food for himself and his horse. Heck a DC 18 would let him provide for himself and two horses.
More importantly, while you may want a grand survival challenge it definitely sound like your players don't. This sort of book keeping rarely makes things more fun for players, so why do you really want to worry with it?
At most its a few gold for weeks of adventuring. 20 days worth of feed for 1 horse is only 1 gold. I just wouldn't make a big deal about this. The horses can haul their own feed and the expense is virtually unimportant.
If your players aren't having fun with this, I'd simply apologize and say don't worry about.
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In the wild, horses can meet their needs by grazing, but that's what they do FULL TIME.
They're also not doing the extra work of carrying a rider and gear taking up time not dedicated to survival.
A horse bearing rider or cargo needs extra calories on top of it's normal needs, and horse feed is the only option if you want a full day's work out of the animal. Grazing also depends heavily on the terrain you're going through. if the plant life isn't there in sufficient density, or the territory you're moving through is swamp, feed becomes the sole nutrition available.
And don't forget water either. Horses are many things, but camel is not one of them.
Create water handles water needs easily.
I would just have them find barn with a few hundred pounds of food in it then never worry about it again. Survival stories are rarely any fun that it why the iron rations PCs buy at first level never run out.
I would only worry about if they want to be out in the wild for more then week at a time and make no effort to plan for it. Extend then a far as month if they bring 1 supply wagon. A wagon is quite a nice plot hook if you can get the PCs to bring one with them.
Mathius wrote: Create water handles water needs easily.
I would just have them find barn with a few hundred pounds of food in it then never worry about it again. Survival stories are rarely any fun that it why the iron rations PCs buy at first level never run out.
I would only worry about if they want to be out in the wild for more then week at a time and make no effort to plan for it. Extend then a far as month if they bring 1 supply wagon. A wagon is quite a nice plot hook if you can get the PCs to bring one with them.
Unless I want to have it as a significant story element, I tend to work it similarly.
To make a fun survival based game one has to remove ability of the survival skill to meet your needs.
Food can only be gained by hunting or by finding it.
Food becomes treasure and a certain amount it consumed each day to stay alive. If you hoard it thing come to you. Take into account spoilage so that even big score does not last more then a month.
Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
I want to start off by thanking the community for the swift and helpful replies. What a great resource!
Like some posters, I'm also torn about making food/water/feed a "thing" or not. Some people here say that such bookkeeping rarely leads to players having fun, and I see the merit in that reasoning. My role-playing roots in DND/PF are certainly of the school of hard knocks variety, and maybe I'm pulling off those experiences too much in trying to create a survival mini game inside of Kingmaker.
Recently, players have been complaining that iron rations are too expensive, and they're forced to use survival to explore the wilderness. This, in turn, leads to more encounters, some of which are deadly. These same players don't blink at buying the fanciest clothing, an incredible assortment of varied weaponry, blowing 50-75 gp on potions, etc. etc.
Don't get me wrong - overall I'm very pleased with the direction of the game. My PCs have put a lot of investment into their characters' backstories, motivations and relationships with the world around them. Our intra-group relationship is pretty positive; we're all friends IRL and we don't have any major differences.
Bottom line: for some reason, handwaving the entire food needs (water is a cantrip) for a group of explorers and their mounts just irks me for some reason. Am I alone in this? Should I just let it go?
I'd say just simplify it as much as possible, but still make it relevant.
Water can be handwaved, so long as someone prepares Create Water. If someone can Take 10 on Survival to gather food I'd say that can be handwaved, so long as they allot the time for it. Same thing for grazing horses.
Deleting all thought or mention of food and water is one extreme, but extensive bookkeeping is the other.
Somewhere in the middle I'm sure your group can find a balance.
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