Overland travel through jungle
Ok. Party has to travel over land about 96 miles thru jungle.
How long should it take, do you think? Both slower cautious travel and a faster, less cautious way?
Thanks
Posted Dec 2, 2022, 1:35 AM UTC
95
Movement rate in a Jungle is Base (turn) movement rate divided by 5, then divided by two for the harsher terrain, in miles.
So if your base movement is 90', that's 9 miles per day. If they never get lost, that's 11 days. If they force March, they can increase that to 13.5 miles per day, but must spend every other day resting.
Given the party has a 50% chance of getting lost each day, that's probably closer to 20-30 days going at normal, cautious speed.
3
Depends on their encumbrance
Unarmored- Cautious March: 24 days; Normal march 12 days; Forced march: 10 days
Light Armor or Unarmored + Treasure - Cautious March: 70 days; Normal march 35 days; Forced march: 30 days
Heavy Armor or Light Armor + T - Cautious March: 90 days; Normal march 45 days; Forced march: 35 days
Heavy Armor + Treasure - Cautious March: 110 days; Normal march 55 days; Forced march: 45 days
sounds like a crazy trip to do in any sort of armor
2
Yeah, I'd have two options depending upon how your players like to play. Plus, if you need to incorporate a chase scene or a timer, then you already have a faster option in mind and ready to go.
1
It’ll be slow. Anybody with knowledge of the area might point out usable waterways to groups which might speed things up but potentially introduce other dangers.
1
There are different types of jungle, what are we talking about?
Beyond the lightest sort the only speed of travel is slow and painful. I would just count it as rough terrain and move at half speed (or however your system accounts for that) or just hand wave the jungle and treat it as a forest, because the reality of jungle travel is probably not fun at the table for most groups.
But if you want to get gritty, a mile a day is a nice round number. Unrealistic for bushwhacking through heavy jungle, but the PCs are heroes and presumably they can find paths at least some of the time. Faster than that would probably have to be finding an ancient road or a navigable river.
If the map allows I would make the choice on travel be direct vs indirect rather than fast or slow; letting them circle around a large portion of the jungle or taking a river boat journey part of the way would give an opportunity to cut that time down while adding opportunity for different sorts of encounters.