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Approaching a Scene of Interest

It's a common scenario... a group wandering along through a wide-open forest, cavern, mountain, set of hills, etc, and they come across a scene of interest... the broken down wagon, a burnt down, house, a cave, a sinkhole, a camp of thieves.  How do you know how close your party is when they spot it?

First pick a DC for the thing you're trying to notice.  For example, a thieves camp might be a DC 5 at night.  Then apply modifiers for the scenario: -2 because there is moonlight.

Then have your party place their characters in a small grid assuming a travel direction.  Then have them roll perception.  The distance to detect is given by:

distance = perception -(DC to notice + modifiers) * 10 feet

Compare this across your characters and their relative positions to determine which character detects first.

For example, our thieves camp is detected by a ranger out front with a perception of 17.  He detects at range of 17-(5-2) = 140 feet.
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