Deepsea Travel

Deep sea travel is exceedingly dangerous and it requires preparation, a skilled crew, and a fair deal of luck.

Part One: Speed
Checks done daily to determine distance traveled.

Plot Course: Knowledge (Geography) DC 16-28 based on how well known the region is to the Navigator. This represents the navigator avoiding timely obstacles and finding useful currents.

Lead Crew: DC 20 (modified by moral) Intimidate or Profession sailor check. The GM rolls 1-100 to determine things like prevailing wind, helpful currents, and the like. The ship's total distance traveled for the day is modified by the number rolled. The number rolled is modified as follows: +5 for each of the above checks that succeeded, -5 for each that failed. +1 per point the the above checks succeeded, -1 per point that each of the above checks failed.
 * This check can be aided by other PC’s strength, use rope, and climb checks, as well as crew quality and the ship’s maneuverability rating.

Distance Traveled
0 - Crippling Incompetence: 25% distance traveled

1-15 - Poor Sailing: 50% distance traveled.

16-25 - Some Delays - 60% distance traveled

26-35 - Minor Inconveniences - 80% distance traveled

36-75 - Acceptable Progress - no modifier

76-90 - A Good Day - 20% boost to distance traveled.

91-100 - Splendid Sailing - 40% boost to distance traveled

101+ - Expert Leadership - 75% boost to distance traveled.

Part Two: Avoid Hazards
Expire every six days and they unable to be repeated until that time.

Craft Wards - Make a Spellcraft check to place wards against the Deep Gods. DC 20, scaling up in certain regions. Success allows the avoidance of one encounter. The PC is only entitled to know the encounter type, nothing more, before choosing to avoid. Some events automatically bypass and other automatically expand these wards.

Maintain Divinations - Make a DC 20 Knowledge (Religion or Arcana) check to read the divinations of the voyage. A divination is randomly expended one time to forewarn a coming encounter, with the odds of it being expended increasing as the encounter increases in severity. In certain circumstances a Divination can be used to help with an encounter or may be expended to no effect.

Part Three: Mitigate Travails
Done daily to determine the circumstances of the day.

Make a Moral Check(Diplomacy or Perform) to ease the crew’s homesickness. If successful, the crew loses 1 morale instead of two for that day. For more information, see below.

Assign Watches. Two 12-hour shifts must be assigned in the crow’s nest (if applicable). While not applicable every single day, it his highly recommended that this be attended to if the explorer wishes to discover islands by sight, instead of feel.

Determine Daily Encounter
1-2: Crazy Weather

3-4: From Beneath

5-6: From Sea Level

7-9: From Happenstance

10: Of Boredom

In regions prone to bad weather, angry kraken, popular sea lanes, or weird happenstances the 10 may be replaced to reflect prevailing conditions.

Morale
Moral is lost at a rate of 2 points per day. This can be mitigated by making a moral (diplomacy or perform) check–with success reducing the moral loss to one. The base DC is 16, but is modified as follows: Note - many of the above will also result in immediate moral loss. In addition, whenever a ship loses a crew member, it immediately loses 2 moral. Whenever a ship loses an officer, it immediately loses 4 moral.
 * -2: if is well provisioned, is on a well-charted route, the crew has been paid recently
 * -4: if the ship is heading home, if the ship is not traveling the deep sea that day.
 * +2: if the ship is low on supplies, the ship is not in a port region, the ship is under crewed, the crew has not been paid since the last port-of-call.
 * +4: If the ship is in a known treacherous region, the ship is low on supplies and not heading home, the crew has not been paid and know the captain has made good money, the crew is pulling 16 hour shifts.
 * +6: If the ship is in an exceedingly dangerous region, the ship is starving, the crew is pulling 17+ hour shifts.
 * +8: If the captain is following a seemingly insane course.

Moral on a standard ship is 100. As moral sinks it affects rolls in the following ways.

Crew Population
A certain number of crew are required to work the oars and/or rigging. A ship has a given number of crew required to accomplish this. The penalty for under-manning these positions are as follows:

75% - the ship takes -3 to maneuverability. This is the standard crew set for traveling.

50% - the ship suffers -6 to maneuverability and -30 to rolls on the Distance Travelled table.

25% - the ship can only take one turn action every 3 rounds. They ship halves its distance traveled. The ship automatically fails any maneuver tests.

Less than 25% - the ship can travel in a straight line only. It takes -70 to rolls on the distance traveled table.

In addition, a crew working longer than 14 hour shifts is fatigued after the first 2 days. A fatigued crew inflicts a -2 penalty on maneuverability and moral checks. A crew working 17 hour or longer shifts become exhausted after 1 day. An exhausted crew inflicts a -4 penalty to maneuverability and moral checks. In addition, such conditions require a DC 14 +(1 per previous save made) fortitude save by each member of the crew for every day after the 3rd, with failure indicating that the crew member has collapsed from exhaustion and is comatose for 1 day.