Last time, I talked about possibly extensions to the resting mechanics for D&D 5e. Now, time to consider another important aspect of any holiday quest: cuisine.
As usual, this is being spooled off the top of my head here, so expect some pretty rough edges. There are also aspects I'm building to align with mechanics I vaguely intend in later parts of this series, so... I'm sure it will be fine.
Eating and Foraging
The Outlander feature will just make a mess of this vital aspect, which I'm not up for. It's not just that, either. According to the rules:
A character needs one pound of food per day... A character needs one gallon of water per day, or two gallons per day if the weather is hot. (PHB, p.66 in Basic Rules) and on a successful [foraging] check, a character finds 1d6+Wis modifier pounds of food, then repeat the roll for water (in gallons).
This means that on average, given that the DC for foraging will tend to be 15 in most kinds of wilderness, you can probably assume that at least one person in a party of four will roll a 15 and gain on average 4 pounds of food and water. In other words, most of the time this just isn't going to be an issue.
I think interpretation is key here. The foraging rules allow foraging when you're travelling at a normal or slow pace. Thing is, the travel rules are very vague about how pace works. They don't tie you down to committing a day, but nor does foraging take any actual time. It seems very much like you can just (by RAW) travel at normal pace for no more than an hour (assuming the DM is at least determined enough to limit you to 1-hour blocks) while foraging enough to feed you all for a day, then move fast for the rest of the day.
My version will be different.
