Any MATH minded, lore people here able to help with D&D distance, travel time?

[Odessa333]

Hi people!

You must be REALLY brave to enter a math topic like this. I know I'm little help here lol.


Anywho, in writing a backstory, I'm trying to figure out how one would get from Neverwinter to the Dalelands. By my best guess, it's a good 2,500 miles by foot using SOME of the roads (like walking south to Baldur's gate first, though I have no idea how optimized my path is) which would put it roughly at 104 days to walk to. There's a LOT of mountains, rivers, and other natural obstacles in the way, and I'm thinking of various paths of where it would be safer to take a road, a ship, and so on. It's hardly game breaking to know EXACT numbers, but trying to wrap my head around where my character's been, what she would have seen, and how long it took to do it all.

I'm very much open to ideas and different routes, interpretations, etc. My math skills are not great, my knowledge of lore is only so-so, etc, so I'd love to hear from those a bit more knowledgeable than I in these matters, if possible. Thank you for your time, and happy gaming out there!

[Angelmaker]

While adhering to versimilitude is usually commendble, i don't think this is a math peoblem at all.
Mi think this is a narrative problem. A) does the travel time matter? (Does something need to be done in exactly that time) b) do your players do everything within their power to make it in time? c) is somebody interposing this travel scheme?

If you're looking for pure travel times: small mounted companies travel around 50 to 100 kilometers a day, so if you focus on eating miles, you could in theory travel this distance in 25 days - of course the question is more a question of endurance now.

A loaded march (soldiers carrying gear) during roman times is described as something about 30kilometers over 5 hours. I remeber during my military training as a recruit to have a pack of 20kilograms and i had to hike either 20 or 30 kilometers in 6 hours. After doing that I was kind of done with the world,mbut i guess a trained soldier or adventurer could do this daily.

So 30kilometers per day mean ~84 days of non forced marching with your gear. If you are also carrying weapons and armor, this is going to get taxing very quickly. If you assume your adventurers have a superhuman enduracen that allows them to travel all day log wihtout worrying about exhaustion, then that's 60km per day, so 42 days only. That's akin to a slow-ish jog for an entire ten hours, with gear, waapons, armor, adventurer's kit, etc. - so a con of 20 or higher woiuld be highly recommendable. I don't know if there are tules for exhaustion during forced marching in d&d 5e.

Then you also need to consider the time and energy needed to maintain your gear, set up a camp, cook, pray for spells and memorize, keeping watch, etc.

All this assumes you also do no foraging, but you either have ample supplies (which you do not have to carry) or can easily resupply at the route.

If you have to included foraging, this comes down to "how available is food in my current area, how good are our survival skills?"

If someone gets sick (dysentry, diarrhea, fever,etc.) you also have to include resting days. I'd also plan in a week or two for the various aggresive tribes, monsters and dire animals.

When it comes to the lore of forgotten realm I am of no big use. So i cannot tell if there are things like permanent teleportation circles or where there would be the greatest danger of being attacked by ice trolls. :)

Have safe travels!

[Zhorn]

If we're looking at safety or convenience; travel the same way traders would

Neverwinter; charter a coastal ship to Baldur's Gate.
Badlur's Gate; take a river barge up River Chionthar to Iriaebor
Iriaebor; hire a wagon to transport you east along the main road to Westgate
Westgate; take a ferry across the Sea of Fallen Stars to Selgaunt
Selgaunt; ride up the main trade road to the north and enter The Dalelands

[Fable Wright]

So 30kilometers per day mean ~84 days of non forced marching with your gear. If you are also carrying weapons and armor, this is going to get taxing very quickly. If you assume your adventurers have a superhuman enduracen that allows them to travel all day log wihtout worrying about exhaustion, then that's 60km per day, so 42 days only. That's akin to a slow-ish jog for an entire ten hours, with gear, waapons, armor, adventurer's kit, etc. - so a con of 20 or higher woiuld be highly recommendable. I don't know if there are tules for exhaustion during forced marching in d&d 5e.

Small correction—you're not converting between miles and kilometers. Thirty kilometers per day would mean about 134 days of legion march, which makes for a reasonable base number of days.

Odessa333:

Because this is a backstory thing, I'm assuming you made this trip in the past? Were they part of a merchant caravan, or were they living off the land? Assuming they were in a caravan, traveling by land...

...Players' handbook approximates it to 24 miles per day at a base rate; 18 miles per day at a slow rate. A Slow rate is enough to use stealth, live off the land, and deal with bad terrain in a non-disastrous manner. Using a slow rate, this puts our travel at around 138 days, which is close to the legion march approach. I'm liking this ballpark figure.
...Each time they came to a river with a ferry, they can move at triple speed down the coast. This is offset by spending a few days resting at inns, restocking supplies, and so on that go with a long journey; we can assume that they'll cancel out.
...They probably set out mid-summer, when food is moderately plentiful, and travel through the tail end of summer and all of autumn. This ensures that there would be enough food to feed you over the journey. Along the way, you'll get to see the turning of the leaves.

If you're willing to pay for passage, the journey is actually fairly simple. Sail from Neverwinter down to Baldur's Gate, which is about 1000 miles at about 72 miles per day. So about two weeks by boat. Then take the River Chionthar all the way down past Berdusk to Ireabor, finishing up the river segment of the journey for another 700 miles, or another tenday. From there, take the road to Proskur. That's 150 miles at around 25 miles per day, so about a week of walking and resupplying. From Proskur, take the river to the Lake of Dragons, which you can sail to the Sea of Fallen Stars. From there, sail past Yhaunn, and take that river into the Dalelands proper. That's another 1300 miles, or 18 days. You've made the trip in just 48 days.

Sea travel is quite a bit quicker than hoofing it, if you've got the coin!

[Yora]

In the case of Forgotten Realms, I think getting teleportation from Neverwinter to Cormyr should not be a problem. The wizard's fee would probably be very steep, but likely still be considerably cheaper than spending four month on the road. Passengers only with only personal luggage would be much more affordable than bulk transport of wagonloads of goods, and merchant caravans would also be doing a lot of business on the way.

Probably wouldn't do that with most settings, but in Forgotten Realms this seems very appropriate for people with money such as PCs.

[Laserlight]

Travel time varies more widely than you might think, because you have to account for things like rain, flood, accidents, contrary winds if sailing, the fact that you arrived at Townname during their annual Market Fair and there are four times as many people crowding the streets as usual, the barbarian got into a fight in Tacky Tavern and needed an extra day to recuperate / evade the Watch, or the warlock fell crazy in love, or something like that, with that half elf stripper and refused to leave town until he ran out of money.