Quote:
Originally Posted by acrosome
In terrain with good topography- e.g. hills or mountains- navigation by terrain association is way easier than on terrain that lacks topography- e.g. plains.
So I might invert these. Sort of. You'd have to fit penalties for jungle and woodland in there, since you can't really see the surrounding topography well. They would probably just add a bit of penalty to the underlying topography, so that a jungle on a flat plain would be the worst.
Of course, this assumes that you are using a topographical map. (My (rather extensive) experience is in modern-day orienteering.) But if you are doing celestial navigation, well, then all that matters is how well you can see the sky, so plains might be the easiest.
|
I'd say that not only are you using a
good topographical map (and in an
AtE setting your map's likely to be widely wrong about the size and shape of woods, etc.), but you're good at relating map to ground. Alternatively, you need good local knowledge.
Watching people without these match the wrong peak to the one on the map and steadfastly refuse to change their minds until you're hours out of your way is something.
In a game where navigating is just something you want a quick roll for to see if the party makes good time or not, or possibly screws up badly and gets lost every so often (so on a critical failure), but otherwise doesn't focus on it much, I'd just say that's part of Navigation. You have a map, or someone with local knowledge (and who doesn't blow the skill roll, which I'd allow as an assist to the main Navigation roll), so you're good. You don't, you eat the penalty.
If it was a game where more detail was called for, I'd be looking for Cartography rolls, and possibly Naturalist ones as well, on top of the Navigation checks. However, I'd be looking carefully at the overall effects of these, because asking for lots of rolls tends to do odd things to the overall probabilities if you don't look out.