I'm running a segment for my players where they have to survive a week in the woods without all the gear that they have acquired so far. I made a little system to make figuring out if their day is successful or not a little more interesting than just rolling for survival each day. Is this comprehensive? Is it too difficult? Are there things I should change?
This is what I tell them:
Short rests require food and water to be successful, and you are only allowed one Short Rest each day
Long rests require shelter, fire, food, and water to be successful
During the day, you can do whatever you want as long as you meet the day's requirements. During the night you have to sleep at least eight hours in order to get a full rest, excluding watches. (Each individual character needs eight hours)
There are wild beasts who wander in this area, and they have been given your scent. You have to keep moving in order to remain safe. Three hours of movement guarantee some safety, but six hours guarantees the most safety
The days are split into three segments. You have a list of requirements for each to successfully complete a day. If one of these segments' requirements is not successfully completed, there will be consequences.
To successfully mark off a requirement, each character must fulfill that requirement, there are no group checks. You can help and do things for other characters, so each person rolling for themselves individually is not necessary, but everyone's needs must be met. I have made handouts to help track whether or not the players are successful on each day.
Decisions for who does what or what will happen must be done in character. Any decisions/discussions out of character will automatically fail the attempted check.
This is the behind the scenes:
Water - DC9+DAY survival check
Food - One "meal" = one small creature/enough berries per person (DC9+DAY stealth/survival to find, roll for attacks as normal)
Rest
Rests require DC9+DAY survival check to find a good place to rest
Short rests require a meal and water to be successful
Long rests require shelter, fire, food, and water to be successful
Fire
To make a fire, DC9+DAY survival check
If raining, +5 to the DC
Shelter
DC9+DAY perception/investigation/survival check to find a suitable place to rest
If less than 2 of the above are met, the character gets a point of exhaustion
Movement
Need to move around/change your location for at least three hours of walking. Every three hours of walking must be supplied with one meal to keep the energy up. If not supplied, you cannot move further + get a point of exhaustion. The meal must be supplied FIRST before moving.
Encounters
No matter what, each day will have an encounter. The difficulty will be determined based on how much they moved the previous day.
Easy (light/no combat) - 6+ hours of movement
Medium (semi-challenging combat) - 3+ hours of movement
Hard (difficult combat) - No movement
I have a checklist to make sure each segment of the day (morning, afternoon, evening) has its requirements met.
A successful morning and afternoon must have successful food, water, and movement checks.
A successful evening must have successful food, water, shelter, and fire checks
Does this entire system make sense? I require roleplay between characters to help flesh out things and make it less roll after roll after roll, as well as give the characters a chance to bond since a few of my players have been mentioning that it's hard to find time to force the characters together since so many of them run off and separate. I might add some bonuses for certain really well-played scenes for motivation, like automatic successes as opposed to automatic fails when they don't roleplay.
What do you think? What should be tweaked? I want this to be fun for my characters and add some extra flair to their day-to-day life during this challenge.
Hello fellow DMs! Today, my friend and player discovered that her tiefling character, Sorin, had a mother who was a changeling disguising herself as a tiefling. Sorin's father was an actual tiefling, which means she is a changeling/tiefling hybrid. Sorin has been living as a tiefling her whole life, but now the player wants to incorporate some changeling buffs into her character, though nothing drastic.
Since Sorin isn't a full changeling and her d&d beyond character sheet has her listed as a tiefling with all the tiefling buffs, I definitely wasn't going to give her complete changeling powers. Though, I wanted to do something similar and reward my player for being the incredibly dedicated roleplayer that she is (she is coming to our first session after months in full cosplay!).
The first thought I came up with was having the ability to change their appearance once every short rest, of course being able to revert back to her "default" appearance whenever she wants. Another thought I had was being able to cast Disguise Self without consuming a spell slot twice a short rest.
Which one is better? Any other ideas for something like this? I want to keep this game balanced, but I enjoy rewarding my players for being super in character and coming up with kickass backstories for me to play with.
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I'm running a segment for my players where they have to survive a week in the woods without all the gear that they have acquired so far. I made a little system to make figuring out if their day is successful or not a little more interesting than just rolling for survival each day. Is this comprehensive? Is it too difficult? Are there things I should change?
This is what I tell them:
This is the behind the scenes:
I have a checklist to make sure each segment of the day (morning, afternoon, evening) has its requirements met.
Does this entire system make sense? I require roleplay between characters to help flesh out things and make it less roll after roll after roll, as well as give the characters a chance to bond since a few of my players have been mentioning that it's hard to find time to force the characters together since so many of them run off and separate. I might add some bonuses for certain really well-played scenes for motivation, like automatic successes as opposed to automatic fails when they don't roleplay.
What do you think? What should be tweaked? I want this to be fun for my characters and add some extra flair to their day-to-day life during this challenge.
0
Hello fellow DMs! Today, my friend and player discovered that her tiefling character, Sorin, had a mother who was a changeling disguising herself as a tiefling. Sorin's father was an actual tiefling, which means she is a changeling/tiefling hybrid. Sorin has been living as a tiefling her whole life, but now the player wants to incorporate some changeling buffs into her character, though nothing drastic.
Since Sorin isn't a full changeling and her d&d beyond character sheet has her listed as a tiefling with all the tiefling buffs, I definitely wasn't going to give her complete changeling powers. Though, I wanted to do something similar and reward my player for being the incredibly dedicated roleplayer that she is (she is coming to our first session after months in full cosplay!).
The first thought I came up with was having the ability to change their appearance once every short rest, of course being able to revert back to her "default" appearance whenever she wants. Another thought I had was being able to cast Disguise Self without consuming a spell slot twice a short rest.
Which one is better? Any other ideas for something like this? I want to keep this game balanced, but I enjoy rewarding my players for being super in character and coming up with kickass backstories for me to play with.