Exploration mechanic - taking damage from travel

[jjordan]

I'm exploring the idea of an exploration/travel mechanic. The idea is to put a skill/ability check into place which has an effect upon the success of the players traveling.

Players are travelling through a jungle. They state they want to move at a normal pace, they've got a ranger who has jungle as a favored terrain and a local guide. Each player rolls and group and individual success is determined. This helps to determine how matters went for the day. Did they encounter a mosquito swarm and take some minor damage (and possibly some longer term disease damage)? Did they have a hostile random encounter? An ambush encounter? Did someone sprain a limb and slow them down?

I'm looking for something in between an hour by hour checks and general hand-waving of travel. I want it to be consistent and I want the players to be able to exercise a lot of control over this by preparing.

Anyone aware of some good model for this before I hare off trying to build this mechanism?

[Composer99]

If memory serves the PHB describes different tasks adventurers can undertake as part of exploration, while the DMG discusses... not getting lost and maybe tracking?

You could use those as a framework, where players can choose which task they will attempt (if their travel pace permits undertaking it), and some benefits for success and/or penalties for failure.

Those tasks could be scalable on an hourly or daily basis.

Something like that?

[Garfunion]

I have been working with a similar system when it comes to social encounters, treating the encounter as if it was a monster. For example;

The Ballroom
•Creatures entering the ballroom must make a wisdom saving throw or become frightened.
•The ballroom attacks with open-bar/buffet
•Dance enthusiast, someone comes up to you trying to get you to dance
•etc

Each of these effects will actually do damage to the creature. The object is to either do enough damage to the ballroom or survive 10 “rounds”(these rounds do not follow the standard timeline as an actual combat encounter)

As for your exploration monster(jungle) it may be easier to implement if you were using some variant form of short/long rest. For example resting for 8 hours is a short rest and a long rest is 24 hours. This way you can have your jungle encounter happen on one day while the next day a monster encounter can happen.