A method for doing somethingorother in caves.

Lets try making a table for a very common action underground.

“I would like to explore for an hour/find a specific place/path.”

One person is the leader for this action. That player rolls and their stats count.

Roll a d20. Count down the stats, the first failure is true.

Stat	Fail
CON	All further failures are cumulative
STR	Tired. Act as 1 level lower till you rest & eat.
DEX	Group separated by traverse (even) or pitch (odd)
INT	You don’t know how to go forward.
WIS	You can’t find your way back.
CHA	Lowest CHA PC got separated.

(Optional rule; also roll a d100. The result on the d20 is the percentage chance of an encounter. So if the d100 is lower than the d20 then you get an encounter as well as whatever happened on the table.)

The way this would work is that the only way you don’t find the thing you are looking for is if you either fail the INT test and nothing else or fail the CON and INT test.

CON is always more important than anything else. In every table CON comes first and passing CON limits the horrible things that can happen. If you pass CON only one bad thing can happen. You then go to encounter time until they solve the problem. If they don’t fuck up too badly then they find the thing.

This means you generally find the thing. Sometimes you don’t  but usually you do.

This is modular with the weird stat/encumbrance system I created earlier. So you can simply roll straight without even thinking about that. Or if you want to you can take account of your stuff and if you have maxed out a row then you must fail for that stat.

It’s also one roll. Make the roll, look at the table, count down and the DM creates the encounter depending on which things went wrong. This takes time but it is time in which the table is finding stuff out.

Bad things; could get very cryptic if I produce tables for lots of different kinds of terrain or problem.

Although this could give a quick and easy way to differentiate different areas and situations and the problems they can create.

Movement is a group activity and this measures the stats for only one person, the lead. It could lead to people gaming the system, but it might be in an interesting way. Maybe they have to argue over who leads the group, maybe they get to argue about who leads the group.

Let’s try for an alternative situation.

“We want to follow the course of this river.”

Roll a single d20, try to get under the stat. Cont down and apply the first fail.

Stat	Fail
CON	All further results are cumulative
DEX	Fall. You fall in the river.
WIS	Separated. Any who passed WIS are on the other bank.
STR	Swept. You cannot resist the rivers flow.
INT	Tied. Any who failed INT are tied to you by rope.
CHA	You fuck up, lose the respect of the group and cannot lead the next roll.

Ok this one is nowhere near as good. Falling in is a binary state and does not stack naturally with other problems. Could try it another way round. Lets make some alterations.

Stat	Fail
CON	All further results are cumulative
CHA	Lowest CHA PC separated, ignore them on lower rows.
WIS	Separated. Any who passed WIS are on the other bank.
INT	Tangle. Any who failed INT are tangled up with your ropes.
DEX	Fall. You have fallen in. With anyone tied to you.
STR	Swept. You cannot resist the rivers flow.

Hmmm. It might  work.