D&D 5E Exploration Rules You'd Like To See

[Ultimatecalibur]

No no no no no!

That sound just like SC... Blah.

Skill Challenges were a good concept with poor implementation and were often misused by 4e adventure writers and DMs. The concept of "Rules and Instructions for making Skill-based Challenges" is a very good one; the problem was the boiling down of whole encounters into a single X successes before Y failures task.

Exploration is about the big picture, it's traversing the dungeon it's moving between two cities or trekking into the wilderness.

I think you are focusing a little to much on one form of exploration. Exploration is just as much find out what is in an old closet as it is about find out what is on the next continent.

Your post mate, boil exploration into some kind of an encounter, now I'm all in favor of environmental encounters but these are not exploration.

Did you actually read his post and the one right before it that it was in reply to? Nether one was implying that exploration should be "You need X successes before you can get to the next fight."

While combat, social and environmental encounters are about the dice rolls (to varying extent) exploration is about the resource game, food, water, endurance, carrying capacity, light sources,movement rates etc.

For some people that is true. Other would rather do the Indian Jones Map transition and only zoom in on the interesting parts and would rather not track what they feel are unnecessary details. they want to focus on the things like crossing an old disused rope bridge or climbing a shear cliff and not the 3 weeks of travel over rolling hills.

It's a mode of play that should be as detailed as combat, it should get its own time keeping unit (why the hell did 3e gotten rid of turns??) it should have rules for spotting, entering or avoiding encounters, it should allow for resource attrition and some classes should be able to excell in it (I'm looking at you thieves and rangers).

You seem to me to be preaching to the choir as if they were heretics, because I doubt anyone in this thread would argue with you that exploration should have the potential to be detailed and interesting and that Rangers and Rouges should excel at preforming related tasks.

3e stopped using the word "turn" as a time measurement to avoid confusion with a character's "turn." Minutes and Hours are perfectly good time measurements and a "turn" was just 10 minutes.

And most important, players should be able to solve exploration encounters (meaning environmental encounters) by expanding resources rather than just rolling a d20.

Not everyone likes tracking resource consumption, but others love it. The rules used in 5e need to be flexible or modular enough to cover both ends of the spectrum and all of the space between.

So crossing a raging river might require one character to strip down to his lion cloth and swim to the other side with a rope (so he need to roll a swim check) tie the rope to a tree (maybe even tying several for added security) (a tie rope checks) and depends on the number of ropes or the tie rope checks resultes a balance check for each character trying to cross with penalties for encumbrance.

The players should (roughly) know in advance how many turns it would take them to cross, but other option would be trying to find a shallower place to cross (and how long that might take and would probably require some sort of a wilderness check) or maybe building a raft and using it to cross over (again using a bunch of rolls for building and stirring the raft safely to the other side without capsizing).

All of the above should cost resources; time, items, spells etc. and failure should have consequences from not being able to cross at all, losing a lot of time, being swept off by the river, losing equipment in the river, catching Hypothermia from falling into the river, to out right drowning.

Uhm, Kamikaze's post was talking about a way to mechanically handle that.

I read a great article right here in ENworld about why we like rules in our RPGs, it's a great article you should read it but the same is true about exploration, just like in combat where we want clear rules and guidelines so we can know the consequences of our actions and how many decision points we got exploration (and diplomacy) deserve the same attention.

Warder

Attempting to troll those who agree with you is often counter productive.

 

[Blackwarder]

My main problem with SC is that it tries to force situations into a rigid structure and it just did work, my point is that exploration should grow out of the environment not some sort of a (semi)rigid structure like X rolls per character for Y XP.

I understand exactly what kamikaze post was about, I just don't agree with the way...

Warder

 

[Ultimatecalibur]

My main problem with SC is that it tries to force situations into a rigid structure and it just did work, my point is that exploration should grow out of the environment not some sort of a (semi)rigid structure like X rolls per character for Y XP.

I understand exactly what kamikaze post was about, I just don't agree with the way...

Warder

But there needs to be at least some mechanical structure (or structures) in order to determine appropriate difficultly and rewards(such as xp or treasure) and also advice on how to use those structures.

"X successes before Y failures" is a great structure for mechanically representing things like climbing a cliff or picking a trapped lock, but a poor structure for representing an open chase.

"Party A successes - Party B equals X(success state) or Y(failure state)" is a near perfect way of representing an open chase.

 

[Hautamaki]

Exploration rules are great, but traditionally spells have made the exploration rules out of date one by one every time the casters gain a spell level. By the time the party is at 5th level, all these pages and pages of detailed exploration rules to do with bypassing obstacles, encumbrance, food water and shelter, and so on, are made useless. The wizard simply casts fly, rope trick, or sustenance, or just plain ol teleport, and that's that.

If in 3rd edition they had pushed spells that trivialized exploration up to 10th level or higher so that PCs could get an entire 'tier's worth of use out of the exploration rules, we would probably have a lot more focus on exploration than we presently do.

 

[Zustiur]

While combat, social and environmental encounters are about the dice rolls (to varying extent) exploration is about the resource game, food, water, endurance, carrying capacity, light sources,movement rates etc.

This is what I want to see for wilderness exploration. Resources, being used up, much like hit points...
Obvious resources:
Time, money, food, water, carrying capacity, energy (fatigue), light, rope, clothing, warmth. I'm sure there are more.
I want to see players actually planning and making decisions during journeys.
"Do we go through the orc halls, or do we try to avoid them by crossing through the mountain pass?"

During dungeon exploration, similar resources would be required. Probably with a greater focus on light than on say, food and water. Depending on how big the dungeon is...
Underdark counts as 'wilderness' by the way.

City exploration might focus more on money - paying for information and directions, maybe even for transport.

 

[GnomeWorks]

"X successes before Y failures" is a great structure for mechanically representing things like climbing a cliff or picking a trapped lock, but a poor structure for representing an open chase.

It's a great baseline, but it's not enough.

If you want exploration to be equal to combat, then it has to have the same kind of mechanical framework combat has. It's not enough to have it be "X successes before Y failures," there have to be interesting mechanical decisions for the exploration-focused player to make.

In my mind, there should be some kind of resource analogous to hit points that exploration deals with - obviously not the exact same thing, but something similar. So instead of being able to make Climb checks willy-nilly, that would consume an exploration resource of some sort, with failure resulting in resource expenditure without any sort of forward progress.

This would kind of keep the SC's style of "X wins before Y fails," but more granulation, and has a more defined baseline for what happens when you fail - you're out of your exploration resource, and now you just can't deal with that exploration challenge at the moment. It also opens up more options for the explorer-types: maybe they are more efficient when it comes to exploration, able to have more "points," can recover them faster, or expend fewer when doing exploration-y type things.

Replenishing that resource should, arguably, be easier than healing hit points. Things like resting for the night, or even taking a lunch break, should replenish these "exploring points." It should be easier so as to reflect the fact that it's easier to catch your breath and such than it is to recover from getting stabbed in the leg by a goblin.

 

[Ultimatecalibur]

It's a great baseline, but it's not enough.

If you want exploration to be equal to combat, then it has to have the same kind of mechanical framework combat has. It's not enough to have it be "X successes before Y failures," there have to be interesting mechanical decisions for the exploration-focused player to make.

Combat in a nut shell is a challenge that requires one party get X successes(hits) before the other party gets Y successes(hits). Damage and hitpoints are a way of granularly measuring those successes so that not all of them are equal. The tactical dept of combat is determined more by the wide variety of viable actions available to participants than the variation in number and difficulty of the successes needed.

In my mind, there should be some kind of resource analogous to hit points that exploration deals with - obviously not the exact same thing, but something similar. So instead of being able to make Climb checks willy-nilly, that would consume an exploration resource of some sort, with failure resulting in resource expenditure without any sort of forward progress.

Does making a basic attack cost resources such as hp in combat? If not why should making a climb check cost some resource?

This would kind of keep the SC's style of "X wins before Y fails," but more granulation, and has a more defined baseline for what happens when you fail - you're out of your exploration resource, and now you just can't deal with that exploration challenge at the moment. It also opens up more options for the explorer-types: maybe they are more efficient when it comes to exploration, able to have more "points," can recover them faster, or expend fewer when doing exploration-y type things.

Replenishing that resource should, arguably, be easier than healing hit points. Things like resting for the night, or even taking a lunch break, should replenish these "exploring points." It should be easier so as to reflect the fact that it's easier to catch your breath and such than it is to recover from getting stabbed in the leg by a goblin.

These resource points you are describing are a factor that would limit exploration more than it would increase the dept of the system.

Things that would actually increase dept of a skill based exploration system:

• Limited abilities that allow rerolls.
• Limited abilities that grant automatic successes of a certain level. (The Knock spell in the recent playtest packet is a good example)
• Granulated success levels.
• Abilities that give bonuses to checks. (The Mighty Exertion and Skill Mastery maneuvers are good examples of this)
• Limited abilities that allow one character to roll in place of another.

 

[Manbearcat]

Exploration Challenge - True Grit's "Find the Outlaw While Navigating/Surviving Hostile Territory"

There are many sorts of exploration challenges but, to my mind, this one captures one of the best.

In that Exploration Challenge, we've got:

Classes - a Fighter (Bounty Hunter Background), a Ranger (Guide Background), and a Commoner.

Deployed Resources - Balance, Bluff, Climb, Gather Rumors, Handle Animal, Heal, Intimidate, Knowledge, Listen, Perform, Persuade, Ride, Sense Motive, Sneak, Spot, Survival, Track. Heck, you even have Use Rope. You've got both the Bounty Hunter and Guide trait leveraged.


This is so perfectly in play for a Skill Challenge. In fact, I used this exact movie trope as inspiration for an extended one. It went off perfectly...including the fail forward hijinx and the morale boosting perform/heal over the campfire when things were going poorly. However, its clear that many are not enamoured of Skill Challenges. So how do you pull this classic exploration challenge off in 5e - replete with interesting, dynamic success with complication and failing forwards? What do you need bare minimum?

- You need well established stakes.
- You need non-binary outcomes.
- You need conditions for ultimate success or ultimate failure.
- You need hard-coded PC build resources that clearly interface with the mechanical resolution framework.

Those are the minimum prerequisites to pull this off. Things that would improve it:

- Advantages, Bennies or Fate Points or something to incentivize players to play to theme/genre expectations rather than always play to optimal resource deployment.
- These Advantages, Bennies or Fate Points can be used later in the exploration challenge to affect success (depending on the system this can be any number of things).
- GMs gain Threat or Complication dice that they can spend during resolution to threaten or complicate (shocker, eh?) the challenge or a single resolution step.

Overall, I like:

- Dice pool for task resolution with non-binary outcomes (mostly advantage complications and threats). Attribute leveraged can be used to affect either total dice or, my preference, dice outcomes.
- Either an Exploration Track (where PCs start in the middle and getting to the end is a succes and going back to beginning is a failure) or HPs for the challenge, HPs for the group and some attrition (damage dice) used during each resolution step.

 

[Ultimatecalibur]

Exploration Challenge - True Grit's "Find the Outlaw While Navigating/Surviving Hostile Territory"

There are many sorts of exploration challenges but, to my mind, this one captures one of the best.

In that Exploration Challenge, we've got:

Classes - a Fighter (Bounty Hunter Background), a Ranger (Guide Background), and a Commoner.

Deployed Resources - Balance, Bluff, Climb, Gather Rumors, Handle Animal, Heal, Intimidate, Knowledge, Listen, Perform, Persuade, Ride, Sense Motive, Sneak, Spot, Survival, Track. Heck, you even have Use Rope. You've got both the Bounty Hunter and Guide trait leveraged.


This is so perfectly in play for a Skill Challenge. In fact, I used this exact movie trope as inspiration for an extended one. It went off perfectly...including the fail forward hijinx and the morale boosting perform/heal over the campfire when things were going poorly. However, its clear that many are not enamoured of Skill Challenges. So how do you pull this classic exploration challenge off in 5e - replete with interesting, dynamic success with complication and failing forwards? What do you need bare minimum?

- You need well established stakes.
- You need non-binary outcomes.
- You need conditions for ultimate success or ultimate failure.
- You need hard-coded PC build resources that clearly interface with the mechanical resolution framework.

Those are the minimum prerequisites to pull this off. Things that would improve it:

- Advantages, Bennies or Fate Points or something to incentivize players to play to theme/genre expectations rather than always play to optimal resource deployment.
- These Advantages, Bennies or Fate Points can be used later in the exploration challenge to affect success (depending on the system this can be any number of things).
- GMs gain Threat or Complication dice that they can spend during resolution to threaten or complicate (shocker, eh?) the challenge or a single resolution step.

Overall, I like:

- Dice pool for task resolution with non-binary outcomes (mostly advantage complications and threats). Attribute leveraged can be used to affect either total dice or, my preference, dice outcomes.
- Either an Exploration Track (where PCs start in the middle and getting to the end is a succes and going back to beginning is a failure) or HPs for the challenge, HPs for the group and some attrition (damage dice) used during each resolution step.

What you have there is a Skill-based adventure not just a skill-based challenge or encounter.

There is a difference in my mind between a skill challenge and skill-based encounter and a skill-based adventure.

A Skill-based Adventure would be something like Climbing a Mountain. It would have multiple skill-based encounters such as cliff climbs, avoiding avalanches and surviving blizzards.

A Skill-based Encounter would be something like a Cliff that the party needs to climb over in order to continue onto their destination. There are multiple tasks or "Challenges" that need to be completed in order to succeed.

A Skill Challenge is a task in which a character needs to use his skills in order to succeed. They can range from simple (pop a rusty padlock) to complex (disarm a bomb with multiple trigger methods).

 

[Tony Vargas]

Skill challenges FTW!

However, there's some significant problems with the skill challenge rules that need to be addressed. I think it's an excellent skeleton, but it needs a lot of meat put on it's bones to make it more than a dice rolling fest (by one person).

Well, a dice-rolling fest by one person is what D&D's limited skill systems aspired to before skill challenges. A Skill Challenge at least theoretically involved everyone, not just the one character with the best check in one skill. SCs use multiple skills so more characters can be involved...

In the right hands, a skill challenge ought to play out like combat. Characters take turns deciding on and then preforming an action. The environment reacts to the character's action. The result of that action/die roll propels them toward or away from their goal and updates the environment.

Simply having everyone roll before the same character can make another roll gets that started. The biggest problem is keeping everyone relevant. While 4e did a great job making every class contributing in combat, it didn't put the same effort into SCs. Classes still tended to have out-of-combat areas of expertise, as if they were supposed to be taking turns 'shining' instead of working as a team. So the Ranger stands by while the wizard figures out a portal and the wizard stands by while the Ranger tracks and they both stand by while the Rogue finds & disarms a trap, and the fighter just stands by. The SC attempt to change that was balked by the classes not being designed to change it.

Of course, the Skill Challenge is a 4e idea, so including it in 5e is problematic at best. The idea of keeping everyone engaged also got pushed in 4e, even if it was only in combat and with AEDU, so 5e is pendulum-swinging back towards taking turns being bored out of (or perhaps even in) combat, rather than engaging the whole party. It'll be an uphill battle to get anything decent for Exploration as far as group involvement goes. More likely, Exploration will be the time for the Rogue or Ranger to 'shine' by making a few skill checks (or being boned), or for a caster to shine by having the right spell on tap at the right time (and automatically succeeding).


To have a shot, WotC would have to take a development philosophy of balancing classes "within" each 'pillar.' So every class would have to be contributing in Exploration. Meaning, at a minimum, more skills for skill-poor classes, and probably, to work well, also new exploration-related class features, 'silo'd' from other features (not just a few spells added to the list that either don't get taken in favor of combat spells, for instance).