Hexploration Activities (HA)
You get a number of HAs according to the speed of the slowest member.
| Speed | HA |
|---|---|
| 15+ | 2 |
| 30+ | 4 |
| 45+ | 6 |
| 60+ | 8 |
| ^SpeedTable |
Travelling by horse (with carriage) will allow you to travel at a speed of 40 (ft./round) as long as you are travelling along roads, plains, or otherwise not difficult terrain.
Exploration Activities
In most cases (such as while Travelling) it is entirely reasonable to perform a Exploration Activity during a Hexploration Activity. When doing such an activity would mention your movement speed being halved, the Hexploration Activity cost is doubled.
Activities include but are not limited to:
Spending HA
Most of Sythian’s maps are hexes with 10 km diameters (1 myriameter or 6 miles).
| Terrain | HA cost |
|---|---|
| Normal Terrain (including roads) | 1 |
| Difficult Terrain | 2 |
| Very diff. Terrain | 3 |
| ^TerrainTable |
Travel
Travelling costs a number of Hexploration Activities (HA) equal to the Terrain Difficulty. The difficulty of the terrain is decided by the environment (e.g. Forests are difficult terrain, Mountains could be very difficult). Moving along a road moves it down 1 degree of difficulty, having bad conditions (like weather) could move it up 1 or 2.
Travelling through an area will require a Sense Direction1 check unless you’re following a road or some other “obvious” direction. When the scenario changes significantly or for another reason, multiple checks might be required or a different action like a Track check2.
Reconnoiter
Reconnoitering a hex will reveal it on the hex-map3 (effectively mapping it, which will earn you 10 sp/p with Prof. Eratosthenes). It costs a number of Hexploration Activities (HA) equal to the Terrain Difficulty, possibly made 1 or 2 steps more difficult by circumstances such as weather.
Fortify Camp
You can spend time fortifying your camp for defence with a successful Crafting check (typically at a trained (15) or expert (20) DC). Anyone keeping watch or defending the camp gains a +2 circumstance bonus to initiative rolls and Perception checks to Seek creatures attempting to sneak up on the camp.
Subsist
You try to provide food and shelter for yourself, and possibly others as well, with a standard of living described on page 295 (Player Core). The GM determines the DC based on the nature of the place where you’re trying to Subsist. You might need a minimum proficiency rank to Subsist in particularly strange environments. Unlike most downtime activities, you can Subsist after 8 hours or less of exploration, but if you do, you take a –5 penalty.
Untrained lush forest with calm weather or large city with plentiful resources
Trained typical hillside or village
Expert typical mountains or insular hamlet
Master typical desert or city under siege
Legendary barren wasteland or city of undead
Food, Shelter, & Encounters
Rations
You start each session from The Void, they provide with a weeks rations to survive from. Each day you do not subsist or foresee provisions, a day of these rations is subtracted. Allowing you to travel for a maximum of 7 days.
Every time a settlement where food can be bought is visited this supply can be replenished for 5 sp/p. Effectively resetting the timer to 7 days.
Shelter
The campsite must be made in a favourable location. When not sleeping in a comfortable location, such as an inn, you only restore half the Hit Points you would normally (Constitution modifier (min 1) * level ⇒ halved, round up).
As per usual, sleeping in armor or not sleeping/resting for 16 hours will cause your character to become fatigued.
Watches and Surprise Attacks
Sleeping in the wild means watches needs to be taken and ambushes in the night can happen. Below are a few tables for typical scenarios; How many and how long each watch is. And the chance of a random encounter happening during camping.
If you are scared of being ambushed, be sure to [[#[Fortify Camp]( https //2e.aonprd.com/Actions.aspx?ID=478 )|Fortify your camp]].
| Group Size | Total Time | Duration of Each Watch |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | 16 hours | 8 hours |
| 3 | 12 hours | 4 hours |
| 4 | 10 hours, 40 minutes | 2 hours, 40 minutes |
| 5 | 10 hours | 2 hours |
| 6 | 9 hours, 36 minutes | 1 hour, 36 minutes |
| Terrain Type | Flat Check DC4 |
|---|---|
| Aquatic | 17 |
| Arctic | 17 |
| Desert | 17 |
| Forest | 14 |
| Mountain | 16 |
| Plains | 12 |
| Swamp | 14 |
Footnotes
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Take note that travelling without a compass imparts a -2 item penalty. ↩
-
Tracking is a Exploration Activity that would halve your speed and thus double the HA cost ↩
-
The DC of any check to navigate that hex is reduced by 2. ↩
-
On a road or river, decrease the DC by 2. If PCs are flying, increase the DC by 3, but choose a hazard or monster that is relevant to flying PCs. ↩