Help me houserule Forced March rules

[StreamOfTheSky]

I haven't DM'd much and it never case up as something to think about till recently, but I noticed that the Forced March rules are an utter joke.

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Forced March

In a day of normal walking, a character walks for 8 hours. The rest of the daylight time is spent making and breaking camp, resting, and eating.

A character can walk for more than 8 hours in a day by making a forced march. For each hour of marching beyond 8 hours, a Constitution check (DC 10, +2 per extra hour) is required. If the check fails, the character takes 1d6 points of nonlethal damage. A character who takes any nonlethal damage from a forced march becomes fatigued. Eliminating the nonlethal damage also eliminates the fatigue. It’s possible for a character to march into unconsciousness by pushing himself too hard.

The DC starts low and scales gradually, that's cool.  The damage doesn't ramp up at all with each failure...I might change that.  The damage causes fatigue and is vague if it stacks to exhaustion (I think it should).  It mentions marching into unconsciousness but provides no rules for that.      But most annoyingly...basic freaking healing removes all the bad stuff.

I want it to be more severe.  I would prefer if it doesn't outright incapacitate a character for a long, long time, but I do want the penalties to be hard or impossible to remove w/o rest and I want them to be more harsh.  And preferably hurt casters, too ("Oh, I took a str penalty and can't charge?  Oh...darn...").  Has anyone ever tried houseruling forced marches?

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Coming up in the not too distant future, the party is going to be pursued by a small army (big enough to TPK them if they try to stand and fight more than a brief round or 2) and have to flee for a solid day to 1 1/2 days without rest, at least if I follow the module, before reaching allied territory and a small army of their own to hold back the enemy's.  I want it to be actually suspenseful and them feel really in danger; of course the NPCs will also be facing these penalties...that's why when confronted with another large force they back the hell off, they'll be in no condition to fight at that point, either.  One of the PCs is a Warblade w/ IHS so he will be able to shrug off anything I come up with, but the others will have to deal with it, and he might end up having to carry someone.
If it matters, party will be about level 7 when this happens.  Fighter/Barb/Warblade/Dervish, "Swift and Deadly Hunter" Druid / Holt Warden (no wildshape), Wildshape Ranger / Master of Many Forms, Bard w/ healing song and min-maxed inspire courage, Shaper Psion / Constructor, and possibly an NPC Crusader/Cleric they've been controlling as a 6th PC

[wotmaniac]

1) the default for fatigue is that it does stack
2) you go unconscious as per the non-lethal damage rules
3) basic healing doesn't remove all the bad stuff (not without some serious character-building resources invested -- at which point, who cares?).  magical healing does, though -- but it's friggin' magic.

Here's the deal: mundane stuff is meant to effect mundane characters.  Once you go past 6th level, mundane threats aren't meant to be actual threats anymore.
As someone who spent 7 years humping my ruck with the infantry, I've always felt that the forced march rules were really quite solid as written.

[StreamOfTheSky]

1. Cool, I figured it would, but wanted to make sure.  Still, fatigue/exhaustion doesn't hurt casters much at all, you'd think being tired would affect mind as well as body.  I suppose that's a problem I've been having with status conditions in general, though...
2. So, past level 2 or so...basically will never happen.
3. Sorry, by basic I meant "cheap wands," yeah.  I don't really care that "it's magic!"  That's the lamest excuse ever to just trivialize something, especially when it's extremely low level magic...

As written, well before even level 6, a person with a CLW wand could march 3+ days straight w/o rest and have nothing ill to show for it.  That's crazy.  Maybe the forced march rules work ok for just a few extra hours, but it scales really poorly.

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In any case...I'd rather do it when the PCs are lower level, but that's just not how things are timed in the module, they won't be going there until then...  I really did like the idea of it, the escape plays into something else, but I just don't want it to seem trivial/easy.  I get that level 6 is when they start becoming super-human, but it's not like an off-on switch from level 5 to 6....it happens gradually.  Is it really asking so much for them to be inconvenienced by "realism" a bit just 1-2 levels into this new quartile of play?

Is it really so much to ask that it even mimics more like starvation/thirst, where after a while, you can't just heal it away with magic?

Characters who have taken nonlethal damage from lack of food or water are fatigued. Nonlethal damage from thirst or starvation cannot be recovered until the character gets food or water, as needed—not even magic that restores hit points heals this damage.

How come that's allowed to thwart healing magic, but marching for days on end is not?

[Stratovarius]

Sounds like that's all you need to really have it work - just make healing not apply to it, and only a good night's rest lets them recover. And probably speed up the rate at which the damage and fatigue are applied.

[wotmaniac]

The first question I have is: how is it that you've allowed them to just have CLW wands to throw around all willy-nilly?  You did say they're only like level 5-6, right?  I mean, sure, they're relatively cheap; you have to make them need to conserve their resources.
Also, while, yes, 1 person can go that long with liberal application of a CLW wand; but you have to divide that by the # of party members.

How come that's allowed to thwart healing magic, but marching for days on end is not?

The damage caused by a forced march is no different than getting repeatedly punched; starvation/thirst affects you at a metabolic level -- there's a fundamental difference.

One thing you could do is (given that resource conservation is a concern) increase food/water needs based on activity level. 
Also (speaking of affecting you at the metabolic level), I think you would be perfectly justified saying that the fatigue isn't removed until you get a full night's sleep. 
If you really want to, you can reeealy turn things up with ability damage at some point .... 

[Keldar]

In 3.0 you needed a 4 hour stop to recover from the subdual damage.  But you weren't fatigued.  Because they really didn't have that as a condition.

And if you are worried about casters, make the ability penalty apply to Int/Wis also.  If they bitch, run a marathon game and see how alert they are after being up 24 hours.   

[brujon]

Elite special ops forces are expected to be able to go for LONG periods of time, with almost no rest, with exceedingly heavy loads, and still be in capable enough conditions to fight if the circumstances allow it. From Wikipedia, i think i've garned the most extreme recent example of one such situation:

"The most famous yomp of recent times was during the 1982 Falklands War. After disembarking from ships at San Carlos on East Falkland, on 21 May 1982, Royal Marines and members of the Parachute Regiment yomped (and tabbed) with their equipment across the islands, covering 56 miles (90 km)[1] in three days carrying 80 pounds (36 kg)[2] loads."

So, there you have it, a forced march for three straight days with an 80 pound load.

also: "Chapter 21 The Bridgehead and Beyond: "There were two considerations. First, the distance between Stanley and San Carlos was some 56 miles and given the problems posed by the terrain it would take at least eight days to cover the ground. Movement would be 'under constant enemy fire from the air, in an area without cover, wood, drinking water or means of subsistence'. When his men arrived, worn out by the long trek, they would have to go into immediate action against an enemy well prepared and supported by field artillery." - Lawrence Freedman, Signals of War, The Falklands Conflict of 1982, 1990, Faber and Faber-London, ISBN 0-571-14116-1"

If you take that as the utmost extreme for a very well fit (con 14+?) and strong (str 14+?) character (special ops), you can from there derive some DC's for tests. You see they were really on forced march, they didn't stop for rest, they didn't stop for anything, they survived on the bare minimum and paced ground on a (relatively) rapid pace.

[LordBlades]

By level 5-6 d&d characters are approaching the upper end of what's humanly possible (and in some cases go beyond that), so if it's humanly possible odds are a 5-6th lebel character can do it without significant trouble. Also, keep in mind most adventuring characters are waaay beyond average fitness-wise (assuming it's measured by your Con score). 14-16 con probably puts you around special forces or professional athletes levels of fitness.

[brujon]

By level 5-6 d&d characters are approaching the upper end of what's humanly possible (and in some cases go beyond that), so if it's humanly possible odds are a 5-6th lebel character can do it without significant trouble.

That's quite exactly my point. The 56-mile march on a 80 pound load in three days is nothing short of amazing. But i have some gripes about the way D&D rules carrying weight, though.

By the table, 80lbs is medium load starting at STR 12.

Have you ever tried walking around with 36kg of stuff strapped on your back? I mean, most fit, tall and really strong athletic man are on the neighborhood of 90 to 110kgs. That's more than a third of his body weight.

Regardless. Let's get to brass tackles.

In D&D, having a medium load puts you at 20ft tactical walking speed if you're human, meaning you do 2 miles per hour when you're on a forced march. Now let's try and apply that to our example.

The men marched 56 miles in three days. Let's assume it was a medium load for them (not a light load).

Means 18,6... miles per day. Applying the table to the situation, means the men, were they in the world of D&D, would only needed to have marched 9 hours and 20 minutes per day to reach their goal. Again, that's assuming 12 strength. With D&D, we see that 80 pounds starts being a medium load on 12 str for a biped, anything less than 12 and it's a heavy load, and starts being a light load on 17 str.

What that means? According to the rules of D&D, they would've had to make exactly 2 checks at DC 14, one for the first hour and the other for the second (incomplete) hour.

Well. If they have 12 str, doesn't hurt to assume they have 12 con too, right? Let's also assume that they didn't fail a single check, because they had to be fit for combat as soon as they got where they're going.

What consists of a Spec Ops super-badass dude? Certainly not first level. Let's take the warrior and assume a 4th level character, just shy of breaking the barrier of "common dude" and entering "hero" territory. Let's pick Warrior as our class.

At 4th level a warrior has +4 to fortitude. Adds the +1 to Con. We get to +5. So they need to roll a 9 or above, giving them a 60% chance of beating the save. Since it's three days, they have to make, total, 6 checks, each at a 60% chance.

That's 4,6656% chance of getting there, without failing a single one of the six saves they were to make.

But these guys, IMO, these SpecOPs super badass dudes, i don't see them at 12 str. 12str is 1 or 2 points removed from a normal, simple commoner. I don't see them as 12 con, either. This thing they did? The 3 day forced march? That's kind of a common occurrency in armies, even now, and even MORE so way back in  medieval times.

I don't see them succeeding only 4% of the time. If they really are to be elite SpecOps super badasses, they'd have to get that to an 80% chance at least, which means 4 more points in fortitude coming either from levels or from even numbers in Con. Hell, if they're that super badass, an Elite Array is enough to really represent them? The cream of the crop of the military all over the world? Or should they get at least a 25pb?

I think after this thought exercise, the rules on forced march may even be rough compared to what real world soldiers have to go through, both in boot camp and in active duty. I leave my findings here for the discussion to continue. I'll return later and see what we can come up with, collectively.

[Frogman55]

When comparing the Falklands example with D&D rules, don't forget that a large portion of the British's forced march was almost certainly over difficult terrain. I don't have any way of figuring out the fractions, but that almost certainly pushes it over 9.3 hours of marching daily.

If it was entirely difficult terrain, then that means 18.6 hours of daily marching (which also means 5.4 hours for sleep, breaks, etc.).

At this point, it's worth remembering that there are penalties for going without sleep, too.

[wotmaniac]

The 56-mile march on a 80 pound load in three days

With having 7 years of being an infantry medic under my belt, I can attest to the fact that this is actually common fare.  And depending on your position in the platoon, you're ruck will weigh 70-120 pounds (30-55kg) (though, I did once carry ~180lbs for about 5 miles; but that's a pretty wild outlier).
Field training aside, we would have periodical "qualification" on foot marches (in full battle rattle):
- 1/month: 12 miles in under 3 hours, *total time
- annually: 25 miles in under 12 hours (we often finished in 9-10) *total time
- some units did 100 miles in 4 days (25 miles/day)
And this is just stock-and-standard light infantry battalions. (keep in mind that the above "qualifications" would be done on dirt, gravel, and/or paved roads, with only moderate elevation changes)
There were plenty of field exercises were we would cover 15+ miles/day over all manner of terrain, and still do other training type stuff.
On the flip side of that coin, there were also times that the terrain would be so severe that we couldn't physically cover more than 5 miles/day; so it all depends.
Eating was often done on the march, and sleeping would happen whenever you could fit it in.
And as a platoon medic, when everyone else was taking a rest (and changing their socks, and filling their canteens, and etc, etc, ), I got the great pleasure of missing those breaks because I was too busy with tending injuries (mostly taping joints, fixing blister, pressure-infusing IVs, handing out pain meds, etc)

And, on average, you'd have about 2-5% falling-out; usually either dehydration, simple physical exhaustion, or extreme-level over-use injuries.

In all fairness, the average infantry soldier probably has STR and CON of 12-15, and the endurance feat.

SpecOps does go a little more extreme than that; but the extreme-ness is more a matter of sustained operations, as opposed to any particular task being harder.

That's just my 2cp to kind of give you a gauge on RW comparisons.