Out of the Abyss foraging (minor spoilers)

[Falcon X]

I'm trying to work out when the players will see interesting fungi or food locations. That and we have been one in-game day in the Underdark and the players are starving so hard.
(They decided to not feed Jimjar and Ront, who are serving as scouts and won't notice the food distribution)

My quick fix:
- Do foraging rolls as normal (DC15 to find something per person looking, 1d6+Wis for how much). Everything found is considered Barrelstock, Bluecap, or a puddle of water.
- On the "how much" roll of a 6, they also roll on a homebrew chart like this (https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/3swlx3/feedback_wanted_out_of_the_abyss_foraging/) and they also find that.
- If my players continue to starve as bad as they are, I will have the group roll a 1d6 each day and check that chart on a 6.

Does this sound appropriate? Any ideas?

[ThurlRavenscrof]

Sounds like a cool system that you put some good time into. I guess my question is why isn't at least one party member an underdark ranger or have the outcast background? Did they not know that foraging would be a part of the game?

[Falcon X]

Yeah, we pretty much went the blind route. They all knew that the game would have something to do with the Underdark, but most of the players are new to Forgotten Realms and don't know what that means.
The first three players rolled up characters with NOTHING that would help down there, so I all but insisted that the 4th, a Monster Hunter fighter, took Undercommon language and Survival as a skill. He was game for it.

The problem is that even with someone with the right proficiencies, that's still only a +5 to a DC15 check, making it a 50/50 chance to find SOMETHING, let alone enough for 12 travelers.
Right now, they have 3 people foraging with 3 others using the help action. Brought in 9 servings of both food and water. So, tomorrow the scouts will be dehydrated and have a level of exhaustion.
To be fair, I want SOME of this to keep them on their toes, but not so much that they feel at death's door.

[ThurlRavenscrof]

Gotcha. There's a couple ways to handle this but one way that will effect the game the least is to use the fact that humans can go many days without food before feeling serious side effects. So maybe a player only has to eat 2/3 days and if they fail to do so, they take a level of exhaustion. I don't know if I'd want to make the challenge too much harder than that because if even one of your players had taken the outcast background, the problem would be solved

Another way to make the challenge a little easier would be to say that succeeding at foraging makes you better at foraging. Like maybe if someone succeeds at foraging twice in a row, they can no longer find nothing on a foraging trip - they find something for only themselves or they find something for themselves and others. That can help your party feel like they're succeeding at adapting to the under dark (especially since like all of out of the abyss happens down there and if the characters hate it and are starving to death that might not want to stay)

[Cespenar]

Introduce a few helpful mechanics. Something like:

-Let them make Nature checks before a Survival check. If successful, the latter is made at advantage.
-Describe some of the stuff in a fungi patch they chance upon. If they focus on the correct descriptions (the edible ones), their check gets advantage, or they get extra servings on a success.
-Go half ration at the risk of a DC 10 Con save or exhaustion.
-They can cook their enemies' corpses? Maybe make some Nature/Survival checks in the process.

[Theodoxus]

-They can cook their enemies' corpses? Maybe make some Nature/Survival checks in the process.

My first character was a cannibalistic halfing - I knew nothing of the backstory in OotA - I won't spoil anything, but I highly recommend NOT going this route...

@OP, really the easiest solution is to convince one of your players to grab a level of druid (perhaps the Cleric, if there is one?) Goodberry makes the scavenging problem history. Plus, an Underdark Druid is pretty powerful in their own right... perhaps one of the players gets a vision quest from the UD itself, promising power in exchange for dealing with the Abyss problem... Instead of a warlock patron, it ends up a druidic one...

[Mandragola]

If you want to go easy-ish on the players you can have them come across a "random" encounter with edible creatures of some kind.

Maybe make it an encounter with creatures that you wouldn't necessarily want to eat, but could if forced. Giant spiders maybe?

The group I'm running it for has an underdark ranger, and to be honest that makes things a bit too easy for them. He just basically automatically knows his way around and finds food for everyone. My poor drow don't have much chance! Much more fun to have a helpless party stumbling around in the darkness. ;)

[SharkForce]

Yeah, we pretty much went the blind route. They all knew that the game would have something to do with the Underdark, but most of the players are new to Forgotten Realms and don't know what that means.
The first three players rolled up characters with NOTHING that would help down there, so I all but insisted that the 4th, a Monster Hunter fighter, took Undercommon language and Survival as a skill. He was game for it.

The problem is that even with someone with the right proficiencies, that's still only a +5 to a DC15 check, making it a 50/50 chance to find SOMETHING, let alone enough for 12 travelers.
Right now, they have 3 people foraging with 3 others using the help action. Brought in 9 servings of both food and water. So, tomorrow the scouts will be dehydrated and have a level of exhaustion.
To be fair, I want SOME of this to keep them on their toes, but not so much that they feel at death's door.

question: if there are 12 travelers, why are only 6 of them looking for food? do the other 6 have some aversion to eating and drinking enough? even if those other 6 are completely selfish, you'd think they would at least be looking for food that they don't share. you can then allow perception or investigation checks, as appropriate, to notice that someone seems to be unusually well-fed, or to notice that someone found food but didn't report it, and then redistribute the food supplies.

i would expect that the additional 6 people looking for food should help somewhat (and also, unless there are people with higher and lower bonuses, don't use help actions... imagine 2 people with +0 to survival checks, for example. one can help the other, giving advantage on the check, or both can roll separately. if we designate the die rolls as A and B, one of these 4 scenarios will happen: scenario 1, A will succeed, B will not. scenario 2, B will succeed, A will not. scenario 3, A and B will both fail. scenario 4, A and B will both succeed.

in scenarios 1-3, the outcome is identical whether one person helps the other or both roll separately, but in scenario 4, if both roll separately they get double the number of successful checks as compared to if one helps the other. now, this outcome is relatively improbable (a 9% chance for +0 modifiers if i'm doing the math right) but since it comes at no cost, you may as well take your chances :P

also, encounters with edible creatures are not strictly necessary. if you come across a group of intelligent enemies, there's a fairly decent chance that some of them are carrying supplies... food, water, whatever.

though i have to say, blind luck would usually result in someone having *something* helpful.

guidance as a cantrip to boost skill checks.
clerics and druids would have detect poison and disease (which can instantly resolve the question "is this poisonous").
clerics and druids would have "purify food and drink" as a ritual (which means if it used to be poisonous, it isn't now... while not particularly appetizing, this could probably allow you to drink your own urine more or less indefinitely).
druids would have goodberry to provide a lot of food as well as some healing.
paladins should be able to pick up purify food and drink at level 2 as needed.
rangers are inherently pretty good at gathering food and water from the wilderness, and can pick up goodberry at level 2 if so desired.
a wizard or sorcerer should probably have sleep, which can be a remarkably effective hunting spell.
a wizard can have a familiar to assist in finding food and water.
anyone with druidcraft can make a variety of plants instantly become harvestable.
anyone with a decent wisdom modifier has a better chance of finding food, of course (which makes someone else's low wisdom modifier useful for helping).

[Capt Spanner]

question: if there are 12 travelers, why are only 6 of them looking for food?

Other six could be setting camp, foraging for kindling and building the campfire, setting defences, guarding the gear left at camp, scouting the area for hostile threats to the camp, tending to wounds of injured party members, repairing wear and tear on gear, washing anything that needs to be washed.

Lots of stuff to do.

[SharkForce]

Other six could be setting camp, foraging for kindling and building the campfire, setting defences, guarding the gear left at camp, scouting the area for hostile threats to the camp, tending to wounds of injured party members, repairing wear and tear on gear, washing anything that needs to be washed.

Lots of stuff to do.

are they doing that *all day*?