I’m running a desert themed dnd campaign, where at the end of every our generally they will make Con saves for extreme heat
I don’t think it’d be fun to just make con save after con save over and over. I added random encounters every few hours but I don’t really know how else to make traveling interesting.
My PCs aren’t huge on roleplaying either so that wouldn’t be super interesting either.
Consider avoiding the saves against heat exhaustion if they travel at night, but doing so means they're more likely to encounter monsters, and they have to deal with the darkness (Darkvision only lets the characters treat darkness as dim light).
Also take into account food and water requirements in the desert, including it taking 2x the normal amount of water to avoid Exhaustion from dehydration. So traveling with large quantities of water are necessary, and if they come across a source of water like an oasis, they're more likely to utilize it. If you use the Kobold Press monster manuals, there's an Ooze-asis you can use (looks like an oasis, but the lake is an intelligent ooze)
Don't forget that other travelers can be potential threats or allies, especially if the characters are moving along a trade route.
Have you looked at the old Dark Sun setting? It was all about a post-apocalyptic waste of a desert and had pretty good, really dangerous, rules for traveling. There’s not a 5e version, but there’s 2 and 4, maybe 3.
As far as traveling, making it interesting is a challenge across all terrain types. A Druid with goodberry, a level 1 spell, can basically negate the need for food and water, depending on how you define “nourishment.” As characters advance in level, they get more and more abilities that allow them to circumvent many hazards and challenges. Eventually, you hit a point where you just hand wave the travel and skip to the new location.
Also, rolling every hour is punishingly difficult. It is statistically inevitable that at least one, probably several characters will fail multiple rolls. Maybe just do one roll per day. I’d do it in the morning, to reflect how well they were able to rest under the harsh conditions. Plus, if you do it at night, they’ll just rest and cancel out any failed rolls. Then keep it open that there may be additional tolls during the day if something unusual happens. Like there’s a fight which might tire them, or a particularly challenging area to traverse. I’d go with 2 rolls a day, 3 tops, but hourly would be something like 16 rolls per day — they’ll all end up dead from exhaustion.
I want to make it so adventurers travel 8 hours a day. Is that too much? Also I think that maybe 1 character could ride in the caravan cart and maybe ignore the saving throw?
Or another possibility I’ve been thinking is they only have to make the exhaustion save if they fight during that hour. Would that be reasonable?
A lot will depend on where you set the save DC and on party composition. A group of barbarians against a DC 10 won’t be as bad, but still, at low levels, you could expect them to fail about 20-25 % of the saves. Eight a day means you could expect an average of 2 fails per day. Resting removes one level, then they’re starting off with one level the next day, and it’s one step forward, two steps back. It’s going to add up quickly. And that’s for the guy who you expect to be very good at con saves. Maybe allow them to skip the saves if they have sufficient rations.
The big thing to make it difficult is to track encumbrance. Every gold piece they loot means less water they can carry. But if they have a cart, that kind of gets around that issue.
Another thing to consider is, they live in this world. They would know how to travel in these areas relatively safely. How do just regular commoner merchants get from place to place without dying? If the merchant can do it, why can’t the PC?
So, maybe if they’re traveling with a caravan, they don’t have to worry about exhaustion because they can be assumed to have sufficient supplies and be able to take breaks from the heat. But if they strike out on their own, that’s when they need to be prepared. But none of it should be a surprise, again, they live there, they should know what they need to do. If they do it us a different question, but they should know.
I think I’m going to use the dmg rules for it where if they have sufficient water that they automatically succeed. I’ve also made a substitute for water called Vog that gives you +2 for exhaustion saves and is much cheaper than water. Also thanks for the tips on the Dark Sun setting. That really was helpful with the hazards and stuff.
The other caution I’d offer, as someone who played a good bit of dark Sun back in the day, is it quickly becomes tedious. The amount of bookkeeping you need to do to track your supplies is not equal to the amount of fun that is added by tracking it. It sounds fun on paper, but in play, it’s likely to get annoying pretty quickly.
Yeah, in general it's best to scale back something like this for extended periods of travel. It gets tedious and if the rolls/day are numerous enough then the Law of Averages is going to take a toll, which is not a great feeling.
Agree with the above. Remember whenever considering tnew mechanics / challenges what is the "fun" aspect of it that you are adding to the game by incorporating that mechanic?
For travel in a desert campaign maybe your goal is to make the party have to plan out their travel, and the "fun" aspect is coming up with creative ways to avoid the dangers - e.g. travelling with caravans, finding routes between oasises, buying camels, finding ways (e.g. favours / quests) to get discounts on water / food, hiring a guide etc...
Remember, gaining exhaustion isn't fun, it's finding ways to avoid it that are fun.
I would make myself a table to roll on, containing all kinds of encounters, such as desert-based monsters, NPC travelers, sandstorm, sinking holes, corpse in the sand, small oasis etc...
If you want 8 hours a day then have them travel in the predawn/early morning and again in the late afternoon and evening about 4 hours each with camps during the heat of the day and cold of the night. Yes , cold of the night - with no moisture or humidity to trap heat desert temps can change by very large amounts over the course of a single day. The same desert that was 120*F at 3-4 PM can be 20-40*F at 4-5 AM. Strange as it sounds you want light outer wear/cover sheets during the day to reflect as much sun as possible but dark inner clothing to radiate away as much body heat as possible. I would do only 2 checks a day if traveling as I described but you might want to do more checks for things like getting lost. Also oasis are likely to be inhabited by barbarians/gnolls etc giving the PCs opportunities for combat or negotiation as well as resupply and guides/sidekicks etc. if the party doesn’t have a ranger ( or Druid) this can be a good way to give them the help they need. Think of the trip AS an adventure not as simply something to do to get to the adventure. Plan it that way so they can play it that way.
Hour by hour travel gets tedious for voyages longer than a day. Especially if its player vs. hostile environment, also, deserts are pretty bland terrain. If the whole campaign is desert themed, i assume the PCs are mostly accustomed to the climate and know something about the preperations for, and modes of travel. (On foot, mounts, land yacht, death wheel?)
Is you desert like the Sahara or the Mojave desert? Realistic or with fantasy elements? How invested are your players from 0 to "dora the explorer" and what would appeal the most to them?
Part of our campaign took place in a desert. I was playing a Druid and Goodberry and Create/destroy water came in handy. We traveled at night to avoid exhaustion. And create/destroy water also came in clutch when dealing with desert “bandits” we encountered. The gift of plenty of water in their drying cistern helped resolve what could have been a deadly encounter.
Just make sure the party is having fun. Provide different and interesting encounters along the way
.. an Ooze-asis you can use (looks like an oasis, but the lake is an intelligent ooze) ..
But then, what makes the trees grow? oO
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
.. an Ooze-asis you can use (looks like an oasis, but the lake is an intelligent ooze) ..
But then, what makes the trees grow? oO
The full stats for the Oozasis is on Tome of Beasts pg 310, by Kobold Press.
The vegetation around the apparent lake are extensions of the intelligent ooze, and eating the fruits or drinking the "water" imposes a compulsion on the creature after the next time it sleeps, causing it to bring other creatures to the oozeasis so the ooze can have more to eat than just the one creature.
Hm. I think that's a bit too ... convenient for my liking. It's like the T1000, but then you can eat it, and that let's it control your mind.
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
As a player and DM I more or less have feelings of dislike for worrying about hour by hour travel. Way to many random encounters can happen and keep you from the meat of the adventure
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I’m running a desert themed dnd campaign, where at the end of every our generally they will make Con saves for extreme heat
I don’t think it’d be fun to just make con save after con save over and over. I added random encounters every few hours but I don’t really know how else to make traveling interesting.
My PCs aren’t huge on roleplaying either so that wouldn’t be super interesting either.
Any tips?
Consider avoiding the saves against heat exhaustion if they travel at night, but doing so means they're more likely to encounter monsters, and they have to deal with the darkness (Darkvision only lets the characters treat darkness as dim light).
Also take into account food and water requirements in the desert, including it taking 2x the normal amount of water to avoid Exhaustion from dehydration. So traveling with large quantities of water are necessary, and if they come across a source of water like an oasis, they're more likely to utilize it. If you use the Kobold Press monster manuals, there's an Ooze-asis you can use (looks like an oasis, but the lake is an intelligent ooze)
Don't forget that other travelers can be potential threats or allies, especially if the characters are moving along a trade route.
Ooze oasis 😂
my characters are gonna love it
Have you looked at the old Dark Sun setting? It was all about a post-apocalyptic waste of a desert and had pretty good, really dangerous, rules for traveling. There’s not a 5e version, but there’s 2 and 4, maybe 3.
As far as traveling, making it interesting is a challenge across all terrain types. A Druid with goodberry, a level 1 spell, can basically negate the need for food and water, depending on how you define “nourishment.” As characters advance in level, they get more and more abilities that allow them to circumvent many hazards and challenges. Eventually, you hit a point where you just hand wave the travel and skip to the new location.
Also, rolling every hour is punishingly difficult. It is statistically inevitable that at least one, probably several characters will fail multiple rolls. Maybe just do one roll per day. I’d do it in the morning, to reflect how well they were able to rest under the harsh conditions. Plus, if you do it at night, they’ll just rest and cancel out any failed rolls. Then keep it open that there may be additional tolls during the day if something unusual happens. Like there’s a fight which might tire them, or a particularly challenging area to traverse. I’d go with 2 rolls a day, 3 tops, but hourly would be something like 16 rolls per day — they’ll all end up dead from exhaustion.
I want to make it so adventurers travel 8 hours a day. Is that too much? Also I think that maybe 1 character could ride in the caravan cart and maybe ignore the saving throw?
Or another possibility I’ve been thinking is they only have to make the exhaustion save if they fight during that hour. Would that be reasonable?
A lot will depend on where you set the save DC and on party composition. A group of barbarians against a DC 10 won’t be as bad, but still, at low levels, you could expect them to fail about 20-25 % of the saves. Eight a day means you could expect an average of 2 fails per day. Resting removes one level, then they’re starting off with one level the next day, and it’s one step forward, two steps back. It’s going to add up quickly. And that’s for the guy who you expect to be very good at con saves. Maybe allow them to skip the saves if they have sufficient rations.
The big thing to make it difficult is to track encumbrance. Every gold piece they loot means less water they can carry. But if they have a cart, that kind of gets around that issue.
Another thing to consider is, they live in this world. They would know how to travel in these areas relatively safely. How do just regular commoner merchants get from place to place without dying? If the merchant can do it, why can’t the PC?
So, maybe if they’re traveling with a caravan, they don’t have to worry about exhaustion because they can be assumed to have sufficient supplies and be able to take breaks from the heat. But if they strike out on their own, that’s when they need to be prepared. But none of it should be a surprise, again, they live there, they should know what they need to do. If they do it us a different question, but they should know.
I think I’m going to use the dmg rules for it where if they have sufficient water that they automatically succeed. I’ve also made a substitute for water called Vog that gives you +2 for exhaustion saves and is much cheaper than water.
Also thanks for the tips on the Dark Sun setting. That really was helpful with the hazards and stuff.
The other caution I’d offer, as someone who played a good bit of dark Sun back in the day, is it quickly becomes tedious. The amount of bookkeeping you need to do to track your supplies is not equal to the amount of fun that is added by tracking it. It sounds fun on paper, but in play, it’s likely to get annoying pretty quickly.
Yeah, in general it's best to scale back something like this for extended periods of travel. It gets tedious and if the rolls/day are numerous enough then the Law of Averages is going to take a toll, which is not a great feeling.
Agree with the above. Remember whenever considering tnew mechanics / challenges what is the "fun" aspect of it that you are adding to the game by incorporating that mechanic?
For travel in a desert campaign maybe your goal is to make the party have to plan out their travel, and the "fun" aspect is coming up with creative ways to avoid the dangers - e.g. travelling with caravans, finding routes between oasises, buying camels, finding ways (e.g. favours / quests) to get discounts on water / food, hiring a guide etc...
Remember, gaining exhaustion isn't fun, it's finding ways to avoid it that are fun.
I would make myself a table to roll on, containing all kinds of encounters, such as desert-based monsters, NPC travelers, sandstorm, sinking holes, corpse in the sand, small oasis etc...
I found XGE has a good encounter table for the environment and I’m adding a few additional tables depending on the area and time
@Agilemind , I do think that is a great idea to let the players plan how to maneuver different areas and obstacles. Thanks for the tip!
If you want 8 hours a day then have them travel in the predawn/early morning and again in the late afternoon and evening about 4 hours each with camps during the heat of the day and cold of the night. Yes , cold of the night - with no moisture or humidity to trap heat desert temps can change by very large amounts over the course of a single day. The same desert that was 120*F at 3-4 PM can be 20-40*F at 4-5 AM. Strange as it sounds you want light outer wear/cover sheets during the day to reflect as much sun as possible but dark inner clothing to radiate away as much body heat as possible. I would do only 2 checks a day if traveling as I described but you might want to do more checks for things like getting lost. Also oasis are likely to be inhabited by barbarians/gnolls etc giving the PCs opportunities for combat or negotiation as well as resupply and guides/sidekicks etc. if the party doesn’t have a ranger ( or Druid) this can be a good way to give them the help they need. Think of the trip AS an adventure not as simply something to do to get to the adventure. Plan it that way so they can play it that way.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Hour by hour travel gets tedious for voyages longer than a day. Especially if its player vs. hostile environment, also, deserts are pretty bland terrain. If the whole campaign is desert themed, i assume the PCs are mostly accustomed to the climate and know something about the preperations for, and modes of travel. (On foot, mounts, land yacht, death wheel?)
Is you desert like the Sahara or the Mojave desert? Realistic or with fantasy elements? How invested are your players from 0 to "dora the explorer" and what would appeal the most to them?
Part of our campaign took place in a desert. I was playing a Druid and Goodberry and Create/destroy water came in handy. We traveled at night to avoid exhaustion. And create/destroy water also came in clutch when dealing with desert “bandits” we encountered. The gift of plenty of water in their drying cistern helped resolve what could have been a deadly encounter.
Just make sure the party is having fun. Provide different and interesting encounters along the way
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
But then, what makes the trees grow? oO
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
They're part of the ooze too.
The full stats for the Oozasis is on Tome of Beasts pg 310, by Kobold Press.
The vegetation around the apparent lake are extensions of the intelligent ooze, and eating the fruits or drinking the "water" imposes a compulsion on the creature after the next time it sleeps, causing it to bring other creatures to the oozeasis so the ooze can have more to eat than just the one creature.
Hm. I think that's a bit too ... convenient for my liking. It's like the T1000, but then you can eat it, and that let's it control your mind.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Sorry, did not read the rest of the input.
As a player and DM I more or less have feelings of dislike for worrying about hour by hour travel. Way to many random encounters can happen and keep you from the meat of the adventure