December 8, 2016 – Dicehaven

Campaign News

Lots of updates on our Heroes of Arnor campaign!

Read the recap of our last adventure (Chapter Two).

I’ve added two new maps of Arnor region and Elnost locale using a cool, scrollable map technology. Click the full-screen icon on the top right on the maps page — how cool! BTW, if anyone wants to use maps like these for your campaigns, it’s a plugin I bought and installed in WordPress called Mapplic (read the docs here), or I can train you in person how to use it if you like.

Read the official rules clarifications on our questions about the Journey Rules which I got from Jon Hodgson at Cubicle 7. I also added a resource page, renamed the top menu item to ‘Middle-earth’, and organized all our new content I’m mentioning under that menu.

I’ve also reread how Skills Checks work in 5e, and earlier posted on skill checks best practices, including Tracking.

Industry News

I ran a converted adventure of The One Ring adventure ‘The Battle for Ringfort’ a few months ago. Someone recently ran this game and constructed some cool terrain — see his full set of photos on this blog post. I love it! I aspire to build terrain and have better production values in the years ahead. So cool!

Cubicle 7 has unveiled the cover to the forthcoming Adventures in Middle-earth Loremaster’s Guide by renowned fantasy artist Ralph Horsley. See below.

I’ve reread the 5e skill check rules and looked at adventure examples from the 5e Starter Set, as well as best practices folks have posted on the forums. Here’s my summary of skill check in my own words.

Investigation versus Perception

If a check relies more on reasoning than on the senses, roll Intelligence (Investigation). If the check relies more on the senses than on reasoning, roll Wisdom (Perception).

Passive and Active Checks

In the D&D Starter Set adventure, under Secret doors it lists two different DCs, one for passive and one for active (15/10).

If you’re not actively searching or on look-out, then you invoke Passive checks (which have a higher DC). If you are actively searching or on look-out (such as on watch, guarding a camp), then you roll active Perception check at a lower DC.

Tracking

Use Wisdom (Perception) to find the tracks.

If found, then use Wisdom (Survival) to follow the tracks.

Use Intelligence (Investigation) to learn information about the tracks, such as movement patterns or how and why they end.

For the full rules on Tracking, see DMG page 244.

Example from a forum:

The party needs to hunt a beast that terrorizes a village.
The group arrives to the scene, they try to find some kind of thread to follow,
Wizard starts investigating, making sure that this is an animal attack, and then proceeds to deduce where it came from and it’s motive, hunger, territorial (Investigation)
Party finds some tracks to follow (Automatic or Perception most likely)
Ranger tries to identify the beast (Knowledge Nature)
Ranger follows tracks (Survival check)
Ranger notices that the party came by this place twice (Perception Check)
The wizard tries to deduce why would the creature move in circles (Investigation Check)