A Skill Check for Mapping?

[Warior4356]

I want to know if there is a single book president for if a character is Required or Not Required to make a skill check for mapping a dungeon, say getting accurate distances from me? This issue came up in our game and I wanted a second opinion.

[nedz]

15 Keep from getting lost or avoid natural hazards, such as quicksand.

It's a bit tangential.

[Warior4356]

Yea I mean a rule specifically for drawing a map, it would settle alot of arguments.

[torrasque666]

Yea I mean a rule specifically for drawing a map, it would settle alot of arguments.

Isn't Cartography a Craft skill?

[Curmudgeon]

Knowledge (dungeoneering) will let you understand the basics of how to get around in a dungeon, with or without a map, if you can aways make DC 15 (basic knowledge). You won't know how to get anywhere you haven't been, but you will know how to get somewhere you've already been.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I want to know if there is a single book president for if a character is Required or Not Required to make a skill check for mapping a dungeon, say getting accurate distances from me? This issue came up in our game and I wanted a second opinion.

I don't think so. You could reasonably demand Craft (Maps), Knowledge (Geography), or Profession (Cartographer), but I don't think there's an official ruling. For what it's worth, I don't think it's worth requiring a skill check, unless they're trying to map some kind of excessively weird multi-dimensional or ever-changing dungeon where getting lost is supposed to be a serious concern.

[Elkad]

I draw maps for my players. I use plain white paper and just freehand it badly. If they explore 2 sides of the dungeon, the crossing hallway won't meet in the middle. I've been known to change ink colors and draw new rooms right over the top of old ones. Sloping floors? Extradimensional spaces? Or just a bad map? They may never know.

That's on purpose. If they want a better map, they need to come up with paper and ink and measuring strings and compasses and levels (or at least see which way a ball rolls) and some knowledge checks, and spend the time to do it right.

There aren't any rules on it, but unless they put in the effort, they are lucky to get a map from me at all.


The old-school way works too.
"hallway goes 60' south, and turns right. 30' after the turn is a door on the left. Hallway continues another 20' to a T intersection. The passage to the left slopes up."
Then don't even look at what they draw. They will screw it up eventually for you, and have no idea where. Was that 5' door included in either of the hallway measurements, or did it add 5' to the length? Unless they ask, they won't know."

[Bullet06320]

Isn't Cartography a Craft skill?

yes this
combine with craft drawing and craft calligraphy to make really nice fancy maps

knowledge duneoneering or knowledge local or survival could give synergies depending on the type of map your making

knowledge architecture and engineering for getting more precise measurements to make them more accurate

dwarvin stonecunning ability could help with stone made dungeons or natural cavern mapping

[Warior4356]

The reason I have been asking is my gm has a dungeon where our group got trapped, I bough paper and pens so thats not an issue. yet he insists on giving directions in paces and he has specifically said they are inaccurate, I have argued that It should not be that hard to get relatively accurate measurements. I wanted to know if there was any rules relating to the subject that could settle this.

[sleepyphoenixx]

The reason I have been asking is my gm has a dungeon where our group got trapped, I bough paper and pens so thats not an issue. yet he insists on giving directions in paces and he has specifically said they are inaccurate, I have argued that It should not be that hard to get relatively accurate measurements. I wanted to know if there was any rules relating to the subject that could settle this.

Have you tried accurately judging distances without aids (mechanical or otherwise)? Speaking for myself, it's not that easy even with time and daylight. Doing it in a gloomy dungeon under constant threat of attack is certainly harder, so the DM not providing exact measurements isn't a stretch imo.

If you want better i'd insist on a skill check for sure. Which skill exactly is something you'll have to take up with your DM. I'd probably make it a profession check if you want to draw accurate maps (Cartography or something similar).
Survival is more about general estimates for day-to-day use to me and Knowledge:Geography is about knowing where places are.
K:Architecture & Engineering is debatable, but i'd at least make it grant a synergy bonus, especially seeing how it's one of the less useful knowledge skills.

[nyjastul69]

Have you tried accurately judging distances without aids (mechanical or otherwise)? Speaking for myself, it's not that easy even with time and daylight. Doing it in a gloomy dungeon under constant threat of attack is certainly harder, so the DM not providing exact measurements isn't a stretch imo.

If you want better i'd insist on a skill check for sure. Which skill exactly is something you'll have to take up with your DM. I'd probably make it a profession check if you want to draw accurate maps (Cartography or something similar).
Survival is more about general estimates for day-to-day use to me and Knowledge:Geography is about knowing where places are.
K:Architecture & Engineering is debatable, but i'd at least make it grant a synergy bonus, especially seeing how it's one of the less useful knowledge skills.

Pacing off your feet for measurement is remarkably easy.

[WeaselGuy]

One of my previous characters was a Halfling Druid with a Monitor Lizard animal companion. His schtick was that he was a travelling map-salesman, who got recruited from the local adventurer's guild when the group's beguiler retired (turns out going blind isn't healthy for adventuring). I never really needed to make any of the checks, it was purely for flavor reasons, but I had Knowledge (Nature), Knowledge (Geography), and Knowledge (Dungeoneering), Survival, Craft (Mapmaking), and Profession (Cartographer) all as maxed out skills. I think I also had Ride and Handle Animal, but that's not relevant to this discussion.

Anywho, with all of those glorious synergy bonuses, I actually had quite the skill check for navigation, and it allowed the DM to not worry so much about us knowing where to go, since "there's a map for that!" was basically my character's motto. I also used my skills to make a little extra money, in order to kit out Joanna with some barding and a fancy saddle. And yes, my monitor lizard's name was from Rescuer's Down Under.

edit:

Pacing off your feet for measurement is remarkably easy.

Also, yes, it really isn't that hard. In the Army, they teach us to measure distance for navigation purposes in less than a day. All you need is a stretch of known distance. First you walk the distance (pretty sure it was 100 meters), count your steps, and multiply by 10. That's how many steps it takes to go 1 kilometer while walking. Then you do the same thing while jogging/running (since you stride is longer when you run). I wanna say my numbers back then were something like 74 and 46 steps each, respectively, per 100 meters. This way, when you start somewhere and you know you have to travel 2km from point 1 to point 2 in a NNE direction, you just start walking. Somewhere around 920 steps later, you should be there. The trick is to not change your direction, since even a slight veering left or right, over that distance, can put you off course by a considerable amount. The way we did it in the Army was to start at point 1, sight down the compass at the proper heading and pick a landmark directly in front of us. Count our steps in that direction until we hit the landmark, then wash, rinse and repeat. A side note, it sucks if you have metal-framed glasses when using the cheek-palm sighting method, since it will actually throw off your heading by a few degrees. If you have glasses, I recommend the hip-wrist sighting method.

[Warior4356]

Pacing off your feet for measurement is remarkably easy.

Exactly what I am doing we are in 10 foot wide corridors so it should not be hard to measure.