Hiking

Rules for Long Distance Travel

Have been sort of playing it by ear, but I have now written up my rules for hiking. Hiking is a skill not really adequately explained in the T:EPT book, here is my interpretation.

Base distances:

Sakbe Road 20 tsan/day

Paved Road 15 tsan/day

Unpaved Road 10 tsan/day

Cross country – flat 8 tsan/day

Cross country – hills/open woodland/desert 7 tsan

Cross country – dense woodland/jungle 5 tsan

Swamp 3 tsan

Success at a Hiking roll is required or persons will take damage to reflect tiredness and exhaustion – however exhaustion damage is recovered at a rate of 1 point per 3 hours of decent rest (camping and sleeping, night in a dormitory) or per 6 hours of not so decent rest (trying to have a kip in a clump of bushes) and in some really awful areas it may not be possible to get much rest at all (dozing while perched in a spiny and semi-toxic tree in the Shikel swamps being eaten alive by insects and hunted down by really peeved Hluturgu). Special facilities such as massage, bath, decent meal and so on (usually only available at a clanhouse) adds 1d10 to points recovered. I really ought to impose a minimum penalty of 1 point of proper damage per day – not even elite military supermen can march umpteen miles a day forever without a break.

Yes, marching is tiring, and unfit characters will eventually suffer so much damage they will suffer penalties and if they stomp across half of Tsolyanu they will ultimately collapse from exhaustion and require a week in bed to get over it. At the very least an inter-city march will need a day or so to recover from.

However there are lots of ways soft city dwellers can make life easier for themselves, and hardy peasants and soldiers can get to go faster.

Teamwork and planning

I haven’t been doing this properly, but you can use teamwork and planning to reflect the organisation of a caravan. This reflects adjusting loads to suit each individual member, knowing when to have a breather and mouthful of water, readjusting packs if people are having serious trouble etc. This means the unfit priests can take advantage of their porters, all of whom have Teamwork 1; with Juruthne’s planning, and added points from the priests planning skills, everyone ought to make it through an ordinary day’s march reasonably unscathed, and if you make proper stopovers at night and midday you ought to need just a good nights kip in Yi’ita before being fresh enough to go on.

Local knowledge – if you make a local knowledge roll you know the good places to stop, places to get water etc. and add +1 to the team points. When struggling through wild areas this is replaced by Wilderness Survival of the appropriate kind.

If the majority of the party are military personnel and the trip is a march, Tactics can be used to boost team points. If there is a medic in the party this skill can also be used to boost team points as the doctor attends to tired feet. Those with suitable military occupation skills can also add +1 to team pool for a successful check.

Bonuses/Penalties

Speed

Very Easy pace 50% of normal pace +2 to roll

Easy pace 75% +1 to roll

Hard pace 125% -1 roll

Very Hard pace 150% -2 roll

Forced march reduced stopover times, walking 18 hours/day, 200%, -2 roll, automatic 1 damage. Extra -1 per day cumulative this pace is maintained

Season/Weather

Raining -1, -2 if cross country

Hot -1

Very Hot -2

Midday heat extra -1

In Hot or very hot seasons, always an idea to stop over midday and march in the evening; even military units do this, or they will end up losing most of their men on the march. The extra distance ocvered by marching over midday is +10%

Night marches

On Sakbe road -1

On minor road -2

On track -3

Cross country -5

Full moon(s) +1

Load

Heavy load -2

Bearing a sedan chair -2

Bearing a palanquin -1

Military pack -1

Light load +1

Wearing armour - (armour value +1)

Attributes

Harmony Among the Five Selves +1 to recovery from exhaustion

Toughness +1 to recovery from exhaustion

Large Build +1 to Hiking roll

Stamina +2 to Hiking roll

Using a sedan chair/palanquin

It is always a good idea to bring spare bearers if you are travelling by sedan chair – the extra team points go a long way toward making sure your poor bearers don’t die of exhaustion. However the occupant of a sedan chair does not entirely escape the effects of exhaustion, he gets +3 to his own Hiking roll and in a palanquin it is +6. This reflects the shaking around the occupant gets.

Example 1: The supply column

Tirrikamu Achan has a party of five medium infantry to escort ten bearers across 20 tsan of forest tracks and then 20 more tsan of jungle. How long will it take and what kind of state will his men be in?

All his party have Teamwork 1, giving 15 TPs, Achan's planning 1 gives another 3TP, his staff officer roll succeeeds for +1TP, his native guide leading the bearers knows the area giving +1TP and three of his men succeed in Occupation: Legionary rolls +3TP Total 22TP.

Achan and all his soldiers have Hiking 1 (military) and 6 willpower for success 8, the bearers Hiking 1, Willpower 4 and Stamina 2 for success 7.

Achan sets a hard pace, hoping to cover 10 x 1.25 = 12.5 tsan, and the weather is hot. He stops at midday, so the total penalty is -2 for pace, -1 for weather, -1 for load for toal -4. Success is down to 4 for the troops, 3 for the bearers

How much exhaustion? Achan -1, his troops -6, -3, -1; the bearers -2, -5, -5, -7, -3, -7, -7, -3: a total of 50 damage. 22 is dealt with by TP, but 28 must be shared out between the 16 men; everyone has a decent nights sleep, recovering 2 points and are OK to carry on the next day.

Achan keeps the hard pace up the next day, but after 7.5 tsan he hits jungle and has his troops put on their medium armour and transfers their packs to the porters giving them a heavy load. If all goes well they will cover 7.5 tsan on road plus 5 x1.25 x.6 = 3.75 tsan of the jungle. However the load has reduced his mens COS to 1, the porters to 2. He will also have to readjust the TP as his guide's local knowledge no longer applies, and he must use his Wilderness survival instead. New TP total is 21.

Achan and his men take a total of 20 damage, the porters 33, total 53! Even so with 21TP only 32 damage is left to share out; everyone gets a good nights rest recovering 2 points and is OK.

At this rate they will cover 6.25 tsan of jungle a day and it will be 3 days or more to their destination - Achan would like to make it in two days, so he ups the pace to Very Hard. the Troops have success 0, the porters 1 - it is not going to be easy. The troops have a good days march with 10 damage total, the porters 23 damage - lots of clearings, no trips or falls, and the party are all making the pace.

The last day, the troops take 36 damage, the porters 43 for a total of 79. 21 of this is dealth with by TP, leaving 58 between 16 men. Achan decided the porters have had to lug some of the troopers weapons and have all lost 3 HP in exhaustion, his troops have lost two. The march is over, but it was beginning to take its toll.

Example 2: The Pilgrims

Three middle-ranking priests of Thumis (Will 4) are on their way from Chene Ho to Paya Gupa, an epic march of 450 tsan along the sakbe road. They set off at a very easy pace, using their leaders Planning 1 Int 6 and Knowledge Nemedlu Province 1 skills to create a team pool - total TP 5. Weather is normal and the priests are frugal and have a normal load. However with no hiking skill they start with a -4 penalty, and only get +2 for taking it easy for a COS of 2. They take 0, 7 and 5 damage. This is reduced by 5 through use of TP. They have covered 10 tsan and even after camping for the night two of them have taken 2 exhaustion damage - at this rate they will be fit to collapse in 20 days, barely half way there, and would be well advised to stop in a town for a few days to recover at some point in their already very long trip.

They hire a caravan foreman and two porters. This adds 3 TP for teamwork, plus (Planning 1 Caravans, Int 5) +3TP for the caravan foreman's planning. Scholar priest Hursai invests in some healing salve and bandages for sore feet (Medical skill 1, Int 6) +5 TP. They now have 16TP, and the priests transfer their packs to the porters to give them another +1 for light load for COS 3. The porters all have Hiking 1 and +2 for stamina, will 4 and thus success 9. Life is much easier - the priests take 4, 5 and 0 damage, the porters 1 damage, all easily dealt with out of the team pool, and the preists recover points lost the previous day.

Emboldened the preists decide to up the pace to normal; damage for the next day at COS 1 is 10, for the porters at COS 7 it is 3 - well within their TP. With the help of porters they will make it to Paya Gupa in half the time and without any lasting exhaustion.