Activities during Travel

Since travel is such a prolonged ordeal, it is natural to spend your hours traveling performing other activities. Some activities and notes on them are listed below.

Foraging deserves a special note and consideration. For many travelers in medieval times, carrying large amounts of food on themselves or foraging for food was largely unnecessary. Most routes were well-traveled and had plenty of inns along the route that provided ample shelter, food, and rest. For these reasons, foraging is mostly only important for those on especially lonely roads. I am making this a special note, because knowing how to handle food in your campaign can be confusing. Carrying a month's worth of food seems unrealistic for a party - that's because it is.

Often, parties will chose exclusively to navigate and keep watch. DMs (especially new ones) can often find these kinds of checks confusing. Consider letting your group either chose a leader, who will lead perception checks with the occasional dose of advantage if a party member choses to help. If this approach is unfavorable, consider making the perception check a group check, where the whole party rolls and the lowest and highest perceptions will balance out. I personally opt for the first option. It feels like a slight suspension of disbelief, but also leaves the rest of the party free to do other things in their downtime.

Finally, consider adding your own activities. Consider whether the activity would benefit more from a slow, normal, or fast pace, and assign an activity as either disadvantage or impossible at other paces, and either a straight roll or advantage at the preferred pace. Activities that could be done trivially camping but require a check for doing it at a pace should be given advantage at a slow pace. Otherwise, they are likely a straight roll at their preferred pace.

Terrain

Terrain can, in many situations, significantly slow travel pace. A table is included that describes relevant changes.

The speed is given as a percentage of the original pace. For especially long journeys with only small amounts of difficult terrain, this is probably an unnecessary step that will only confuse your players. Use this rule optionally, and with care.

Mounts

Mounts, for most travelers, are important for traveling easily and safely. A mount is given a set of 3 basic stats, each involving the physicality of the mount. The three stats are Speed, Fortitude, and Dexterity. The Speed of a mount determines how quickly it travels unencumbered. The Fortitude of a mount determines its Constitution modifier, Strength modifier, and size class. The Dexterity of a mount primarily serves to determine how stealthy it is, but also how easily it traverses difficult terrain and how hard it is to hit. These scores are determined on a scale of 1-10. How the scores affect the horses stat block are below. Remember that a stat of 5-6 is considered an "average" stat for a horse. These stats will change for non-horse mounts, and will have to be manually adapted by the DM.

For many travelers, Fortitude is the most important stat for a mount. Especially large party members, such as goliaths, may require a Huge size class horse (of Fortitude 8+) to avoid encumbering their mount. It's important to remember to account for the equipment weight when calculating whether a mount can carry a party member. A Wizard goliath may be able to comfortably fit on a Fortitude 5 horse, but an armored Fighter goliath may weigh too much for an average-sized horse.

Speed reductions go down in increments of 25%, down to a minimum of 0%. For mounts moving 0% speed, consider having them accidentally injure themselves attempting to traverse the dangerous terrain. Although this stat may seem useless at first, recall that it will directly affect the armor class of your mount - making it an easy target. For extremely undexterous mounts, consider barding (following the rules per the PHB)

Appendix

Below are several mounted stat blocks. These are intended for DMs to quickly plug and play mounts. Many of these are derived from u/SamuraiNazoSan, as mentioned in the introduction. These are also useful to provide an idea of what different kinds of mount stat block should look like.