Hex Crawlin': Trouble making resources matter

[Democratus]

I'm trying to run an old-fashioned wilderness hexcrawl.

At the core of a hexcrawl is the notion of a home base from which you make forays into the wilderness, returning to resupply and recover when needed. Encumbrance can become an issue when you must decide between carrying equipment, treasure, or food.

But in 5th edition, any character with the Outlander background can supply food and water to 6 people.

Short of banning this background (or other similar ones) does anyone have advice for keeping the resource economy aspect of a hexcrawl functioning?

[Shmaddy]

It says that "provided the land offers (it)"
Easiest way I would balance it is having the area (if they keep going to the same one areas) slowly run out of resources and it would take time for it to recover.

So it starts fine, then after a bit it takes the outlander a bit longer to find the food because they have to go further out, finally half meals for everyone (or one char brings food, everyone else lasts a bit longer off the land...) etcetc.

This strikes the balance of having an incredibly useful ability saving them space/weight and doesn't hurt the players too harshly.

[Segev]

I think that if you enforce carrying capacities and encumbrance, they'll start wanting wagons and steeds, or drovers, or hirelings to carry stuff for them. The classic hex crawl involved small caravans of support staff following the main party around. Sure, they can travel light, but they can't bring nearly as much back with them.

[GAA]

Make it necessary to have more people along. Try and encourage everyone to have a entourage of hirelings. This requires you to keep food and water for the rest of paty, as they can only give food and water for 6 people. Lewis and Clarke, Magellan, Cortes, they didn't explore alone, they had large party's helping them, much larger then 4 people. You can also get people to go back to base to keep it safe.

If you can not worry about party members creating water, that might also be a bigger concern, along with the previous comment, a lot of places wont have a lot of water, even if they do have some food. This however will encourage the party to go along rivers usually in their adventures, and only go away from watersources later in the game. This will allow you to effectively gate content and make it easy to place things out of reach.

There are also other resources you can use to limit exploration, its not just food and water. In some situations, repairs for weapons and armor and other equipment such as tents and tarps and stakes(And you need more then just skill, you need material to fix these things). Loses of equipment also happen on the trail, a climb, or river crossing often does not go perfectly, and loses of equipment happens. You could limit resting in ways that encourage going back to base to rest(You can explain it as needing the right equipment, and people, which aren't very mobile, as well as a safe environment).

That's all I can think up at the moment, but hopefully it helps.

[JoeJ]

Also, don't forget to track ammunition, and those material components that are consumed during spell casting.

Encumbrance also goes the other way. There's only so much treasure they can carry and still move. Plus, they can't spend any of that wonderful treasure in the wilderness.

[Thrudd]

The problem with the outlander background is that it does not specify the amount of time required to gather the food and water. The background doesn't say so, but based on the rules found elsewhere it implies that the outlander automatically succeeds at their survival check to forage for food. Any character can make a wisdom or survival check to forage for food and potentially find enough for several days (1d6 pounds), as long as the party is moving slow or normal pace (2-3 miles an hour, 8-10 hours a day). This requirement should also be in place for the outlander, moving at a faster pace should prevent their ability to have the time or energy for foraging. That would mean the outlander automatically succeeds at their wisdom check to find food and water, and that they are able to bring in up to six pounds of food and six gallons of water every day (the rules say each person needs one pound of food and one gallon of water a day).

The key to the wilderness adventure is the implementation of wandering monsters/random encounters on a regular time interval. The pace of movement must be relevant, or else there is no reason the party wouldn't just take as much time as they need to find all the food and water they can carry whenever they get low. For the slower pace of movement to be of consequence, perhaps make three wandering monster checks each day while in true wilderness areas, one per eight hour period.

You may also want to reduce the foraging results a bit. Maybe a successful foraging result allows a character to spend 1d8 hours finding 1d4 pounds of food. An outlander also must roll to see how long it takes them and how much food they are able to find, but their survival check is automatically successful if they are on their home/familiar terrain/climate. If the characters stay together while foraging, only one check/roll is allowed for the whole group. If they want multiple checks, they need to split up, each group of characters gets a separate survival roll, roll for number of hours and pounds of food found. If a wandering monster check occurs during the time period while the party is split, well that's a danger they will need to consider if they are low on food. The decision to stay safely together but probably find less food, vs splitting up to get more, as well as whether to slow down and spend more time foraging vs keeping up the pace to get back to town faster (covering more ground means less wandering monster checks overall).

[Democratus]

Great suggestions, all. I appreciate the thought that went into them.

I'm considering altering the Outlander rules to this:

"...you can find food and fresh water for yourself provided that the land offers berries, small game, water, and so forth. This can be done while traveling at normal speed. You can provide for 2 additional people if you travel at 1/2 overland speed or 4 additional people if you travel at 1/4 overland speed. If you do nothing other than hunting and foraging in a day you may feed 6 additional people."

This would force a choice of speed vs. resources. It reflects the ability of the character alone to eat and drink while traveling at full speed. But providing for others slows her down.

I also like the idea of encouraging an entourage that also need to be fed. A couple of mules or several porters might be fun to suggest.

[Slipperychicken]

If players' ability to make food for themselves matters to you, you might also want to glance at Goodberry and Create Food and Water.


Also, if the whole party decides to forage while moving at a normal pace, they should be able to stretch their rations considerably unless they're in a desert or something. Rules for foraging are in DMG 111.

[Democratus]

I'm okay with them using spells to feed themselves. Those are real resources. Since the party will be low level for much of the campaign burning a 1st level spell is a significant cost.

As for the foraging rules in the DMG, I'm going to rule that a foraging Survival check can only be made when moving at 1/2 speed or lower.