Time and Movement
Time
Time is an important aspect of adventuring. For Narrators, time serves multiple purposes and roughly outlines the flow of an adventure. Choosing which scale of time to use in any given situation is a matter of context.
The most common span of time is a round, which takes place during combat and other situations where time is of the essence. A round lasts 6 seconds.
Minutes are the second most common. Most involved actions take a length of time using minutes. For example, an adventuring party spends roughly a minute proceeding through a dungeon corridor, to find a treasure room which they investigate for 10 minutes to find a hidden chest that the rogue spends roughly a minute checking to discover the deadly poison dart booby trap cunningly hidden in the mechanism.
Hours are appropriate for exploring a city or a limited area of land. A sudden whim by a wizard to visit a particular reagent shop on the other side of the city would take hours just as it may take an hour or so for a druid to lead their party members to a defensible cave in the ominous and quickly darkening woods.
Days are generally used for long periods of time during a journey or adventure. Traveling from one city to another, getting lost in the wilderness, and a journey into the unseen depths of the world are all good examples of using days.
Movement
Adventurers come across a wide array of terrain and obstacles during their travels. For simplicity’s sake a Narrator is always free to summarize movement without determining exact distances or time frames. However, in some cases it’s important to know the general time frame (minutes, hours, days, and so on) that it takes to go from one area to another.
When it comes to determining the time frames of movement, the most important factors are the Speed or travel pace of an individual or party and the terrain being traversed.
Speed
Every creature capable of movement has a Speed, measured in feet, that it can move in a single round. Travel pace is used when it comes to longer time periods of moment that take place over minutes, hours, or days as detailed in Exploration . Of course the world is wide and vast, leading to exceptions in mounts and methods of travel...
Vehicles
Not all travel is done by foot. Vehicles and mounts are used by many adventurers to help travel the vast distances of the world.
Land-based vehicles can choose at which pace to move while water-based vehicles are restricted by the speed of the vehicle. A water-based vehicle gains no benefits from a slow pace, but has no penalties for moving at a fast pace. Depending on the vehicle and crew size, a ship can travel up to 24 hours a day.
Special Movement
Not all travel can be accomplished by simply walking from one point to another. Adventurers may be forced to climb, swim, or leap to reach their final destinations—nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Climbing, Swimming, and Crawling
Movement using these three methods is similar to traveling through difficult terrain though there are some key differences. First, it costs a creature an extra foot to move for every foot spent. Worse, if a creature is moving in actual difficult terrain, it costs two feet to move for every foot spent. Moving by climbing or swimming through normal terrain by a creature with the corresponding speed costs no additional movement.
A Narrator may apply additional checks in certain scenarios, such as climbing a particularly slippery surface or swimming in churning water.
For example, a berserker with a 30 foot movement speed only moves 15 feet on their turn while trying to climb a mountain. Should that same berserker try climbing that same mountain during a snowstorm, they would only move 7 feet, and may even need to pass an Athletics check to maintain a hold or risk falling into the roaring water below.
Jumping
The distance a creature can jump is determined both by the method attempted and their Strength score.
A long jump requires a creature to move at least 10 feet by foot immediately before making its jump and the distance covered is a number of feet up to its Strength score. Each foot covered by a jump costs the same in movement.
A Narrator can also request a DC 10 Strength (Athletics) check to clear low obstacles, which must be no taller than a quarter of the jump’s distance. A failure indicates that instead of jumping over such an obstacle, a creature crashes into it.
Landing is also a fair challenge. Should a creature land in difficult terrain, perhaps jumping over a table in the kitchen only to land on a freshly mopped floor on the other side, the creature must make an additional DC 10 Dexterity (Acrobatics) to actually land on its feet. Should it fail, it instead falls prone.
A high jump is a bit more complex. To make a running high jump, a creature must move 10 feet on foot immediately before the jump, leaping up into the air a number of feet equal to 3 + its Strength modifier (minimum of 0 feet). To make a standing high jump, a creature need not move beforehand, but only jumps half the distance it would have doing a running high jump.
When a creature’s jumping distance exceeds its Speed, it can jump up to a distance equal to twice its Speed in a single leap so long as it takes no other movement on that turn other than to jump. In either case, a creature uses up a foot of movement for every foot it covers jumping. There are a few special scenarios for high jumping though.
First, a creature can extend its arms up to half its height during a jump. Thus a creature can reach above itself equal to the height of a jump plus 1.5 times its height. In addition, the Narrator may allow a creature to make a Strength (Athletics) check to jump higher than it could otherwise.
Traveling
The majority of rules regarding exploration are in the Exploration chapter, but some extend beyond journeys and into shorter forays as well.
Marching Order
When it’s relevant to the game— during a dungeon crawl or while traveling through a forest they know is brimming with bandits — the Narrator should have the party establish who is in the lead (and therefore the most likely to be targeted if a trap is triggered) and who is in the back (the first targeted in a flanking ambush). When it isn’t an important element to what’s currently happening in the game, whichever character is taking the lead on roleplaying is assumed to be in front of their companions.
Encounters and Threats
Whether or not creatures notice a hidden threat is determined by their passive Perception scores. When players encounter other characters or creatures while traveling, both parties can choose what happens next. Either party can choose to attack, talk, flee, or wait to see what the other group does. In addition, a Narrator can decide whether or not a party is surprised by the other if combat ensues (see Chapter 8: Combat ).
Stealth
A party looking to avoid threats can choose to travel at a slow pace and employ stealth, making a group Stealth check, typically using Dexterity. A party with reasonable cover can do more than avoid ambushes — they may well surprise or sneak past their enemies.