Skill Rolls While Travelling

[jamesrbrown]

The rules allow for at least 2 skills rolls a day for each player-hero on a journey. I have always found this to be pointless. Usually, they only need to make successful rolls in order to discover things along the way. There are often just a few important details they can pick up. So, with four players on a three-day journey, that's six rolls each (or a total of 24 rolls!). The chance of them succeeding with at least three successes is nearly guaranteed. It's almost pointless to have them roll.

Has anyone else experienced this? My players always roll enough successes to gain every clue. I was thinking that some of the clues should only be gained by making a severe or daunting test. This would also give the player-heroes more chances to gain advancement points.

[James Harrison]

Unless zoomed in on a specifc task (daily hunting for prisoners etc. roleplaying each day) I would surggest some alternatives:

A total number of successes needed byt the party, much like an encounter... then they are not guaranteed success... (not a great idea)

Allow two rolls per player for each Leg of the journey (so on each leg only one thing gets accomplished... or imit to one per player)

Allow one roll per player per phase of the journey - between each travel roll (every 3 days in winter, every 6 days in summer...) or once per complete cycle? (although doing more in winter than summer seems odd)

which ones do you like?

[Rich H]

Has anyone else experienced this?

I do believe the RAW suggests the amount of rolls be controlled by the LM so you're free to limit them as necessary, although it does then also state 2 per day.

My own feeling on the matter was to house-rule it straight away to 1 per day without even playing the rules as I could see the issues that you've described in your initial post. Now, I think I'd apply a reverse of the table in the LM book and go with the following as how many days a character should wait between such actions:

Winter - 6 days
Spring - 4 days
Summer - 3 days
Autumn - 5 days

... Or just apply GM fiat to what feels right at the time.

[Stormcrow]

If it's a moderate task, and if success is that likely, the Loremaster should declare it an automatic action and move on. I would have no problem with four characters who spend three days searching for goblin tracks to eventually find them without a roll.

On the other hand, you may be interested in the quality of the success. An ordinary success means they find some vague tracks. A great success means they find clear tracks they can follow. An extraordinary success means they find tracks identifiable as belonging to Grog the Goblin and his warband, heading toward a nearby settlement.

[alien270]

I view the 2 rolls per day to be a maximum.

Unless the GM has specifically set up a situation where there is a "scene" playing out and the PCs have actions to take, there's no reason to roll at all. Take searching for a bandit's tracks as an example. The 2 roll per day practical limit is so you don't have players trying something like this: I roll hunting to search this hilltop. You don't find anything here. Ok, I'll go down into the valley and search along the stream, too (rolls again). Still nothing, sorry, the TN is 16 here because of the rocky terrain, too. Hmmm, ok, I'll keep following the stream until it opens up into that marsh we saw from the hill; surely there will be tracks visible there! (rolls again).

So it establishes that while combat operates on the scale of turns lasting a minute or so, on a journey your "turn" is about a half day. A single roll, therefore, covers the entirety of your efforts during that period of time. And really, for a task like hunting or tracking it's not very realistic to say "I spend 10 minutes doing this" and then roll, because such activities inherently take a long time. Same goes for Explore, since the connection to Body heavily implies that the skill is mostly about being able to cover as much ground as efficiently as possible. Searching an acre for 15 minutes isn't "exploring," hence the half-day minimum.

[killianred]

Something I saw that (I think) goes along with this is fatigue checks when the party is using pack animals/boats. Since their fatigue won't change if they fail the roll because of the animal/boat, all they have to do is not roll an Eye of Sauron on the feat die. Unless I am reading it wrong, which is entirely possible, my group just rolled the feat die and as long as they didn't get an Eye, we just assumed the roll was successful

[Stormcrow]

Since their fatigue won't change if they fail the roll because of the animal/boat

Not correct: a character who fails a fatigue test while traveling on a boat or animal has fatigue at the end of the journey halved, rounding fractions up (Adventurer's Book, p. 155).

So a character traveling during summer on a pony who fails three fatigue tests gains ⌈3 × ½⌉ = ⌈1.5⌉ = 2 fatigue points.

[killianred]

Then I really don't get the whole point. Why only adjust fatigue at the end of the adventure, when people are moving into a fellowship phase? I am getting more frustrated all the time with this game. I can read as well as anyone, but there seems to be several interpre4tations as to when and how rules are to be followed. Only adjusting fatigue after all the action is over seems to be completely pointless

[Stormcrow]

Why only adjust fatigue at the end of the adventure, when people are moving into a fellowship phase?

Not the end of the adventure; the end of the journey and before the next scene.

Typically, you don't begin a fellowship phase after a journey; you go to another scene in the adventuring phase. If you really want to go straight to a fellowship phase after a journey, you can ignore fatigue, though you still need to make the checks to see if there are any hazards before you get there.

Also, remember that a journey may not end where the players expect it to. If you're traveling from Rivendell to the Lonely Mountain and you come across a cave-trap watched by goblins, which is a scene planted by the Loremaster, the journey is considered to have ended at the cave, and any fatigue you accumulated on the journey up to that point is applied before the scene begins. If you continue traveling after that scene, you start a new journey.

In other words, you don't apply fatigue to hazards, but you do for planned scenes that interrupt the journey.

[Rich H]

Stormcrow has laid it out for you above but what I would say is that I house-ruled into my campaign PCs applying fatigue as soon as they failed each travel roll (or anything else where fatigue was gained) without any significantly adverse impacts. My group prefers it that way as they can see it growing and being applied over time rather than at the end of a journey (whenever that occurs).