Trail cutting/Wilderness Movement.

[PalladiumBrony]

Posted here as it covers a topic that could be reasonably applied to any Rifts game, but this felt like the setting where it's most commonly applicable - on Rift's Earth you could just use any number of heavy machines or massive guns to un-exist any forest in your way. I was reading in the After the Bomb supplement Mutants of the Yucatan, about the "Weapon Proficiency: Machete" skill, and it brings up an interesting notion; With this WP specifically, and no other melee weapon or other skill, you can reduce the penalties for movement through overgrown terrain to 1/3 of what they would usually be. Come to think of it, are there any examples (or does anyone have any house rules they use, I hate the "mile every 5 hours" rule in MotY, and that's with a machete!) of how different terrains - waist high grass, head high grass, jungle, thick forest etc - impact movement speed without some way to cut through? I'd love some RL perspective on this, as I don't believe you need a special WP where that's really the only benefit, so a couple of questions if anyone would be able to offer advice?

> Should any sword (or axe or even decently sized dagger) capable of hewing/chopping be able to be used in the manner of a machete? Obviously swords that can only slash or thrust would be completely useless, and I don't know if there's something about a machete that makes it especially resistant to that kind of damage where any other sword would quickly have its cutting edge destroyed beyond all use.
> Does a 60% reduction in movement penalty sound reasonable, if the main cause of the penalty is undergrowth/trees and not ice/snow etc?
> Once a trail has been cut through the wilderness, how long should it stay navigable for? Days? Weeks? Months? I know it's going to be a matter of simplification from the real world, as most things are in RPGs.

[drewkitty ~..~]

Trail Blazing....

WP Machete....(This would of been easier to comment on if you had provided location details [book-page] of what you asked about. WP Machete & Moving through wilderness penalties)

Comments
<1>Short Swords can be used as Machetes....because machetes are short swords.
<1a>Axes, daggers, and long swords are ether have blades that are ether too long or too short to be used to tile blaze through a jungle. Mostly vines and small branches to be cleared.
<1b>All blades will need to be resharpened every night or every 4 hours.
<2> For jungle trail blazing the Machete penalty reduction seams to be okay.
<2a> For trail blazing through snow ......not sure but this might of been covered in the Northern Hinterlands PF book.
<3> How long does a trial stay after it's been cut depends on where it's been Blazed?....this depends on what terrain it is cut through.
--Jungle...hours or days
--leafy tree forest (eastern NA): days to months.
--Pine forests: weeks to months.
--plains: days to years (depending on traffic)