D&D 5E Lets speculate about the Rules for a new system for exploration.

So, in the biggest tease of the playtest yet, WotC have pulled the rules for a new system for exploration without pulling them from the packet overview, sending us on a wild goose chase in the packet.

I don't know about you but I was very excited about the idea of new exploration rules so what do you think that might be?

Encumbrance? Ten minute turns? Line of sight rules? What of you think?

Warder

My guess would be a variation on Skil Challenges to determine what exists / deal with fixed elements in an area.

Given the olde-skool feel, it's possible they're bringing back the "exploration turn." I'd be a little excited about the idea -- it's about time we have some accounting of actions when it's not combat!

I imagine there'd be a system for encumbrance at some point early in NEXT, so I could see one popping up now. Likely alongside such rules, you'd find rules for mounts/carts/hirelings.

Possibly they're gonna have rules for hexcrawl-style determination of what lies within a given space. Random encounters might make an appearance.

Elder editions really had some decent-to-awesome exploration rules, and I'm really pumped to see this return. In my games, D&D was always more about exploration than combat, and I want that to return.

An SC-like system would be light, but I'm in need of something more robust, so I hope it's not just "roll some d20's a few times until everyone wins. Rely on your DM to make this actually interesting."

Kamikaze Midget said:

Given the olde-skool feel, it's possible they're bringing back the "exploration turn." I'd be a little excited about the idea -- it's about time we have some accounting of actions when it's not combat!

I imagine there'd be a system for encumbrance at some point early in NEXT, so I could see one popping up now. Likely alongside such rules, you'd find rules for mounts/carts/hirelings.

Possibly they're gonna have rules for hexcrawl-style determination of what lies within a given space. Random encounters might make an appearance.

Elder editions really had some decent-to-awesome exploration rules, and I'm really pumped to see this return. In my games, D&D was always more about exploration than combat, and I want that to return.

An SC-like system would be light, but I'm in need of something more robust, so I hope it's not just "roll some d20's a few times until everyone wins. Rely on your DM to make this actually interesting."

Click to expand...

I really, really hope this is going to happen. I've been trying to use exploration turns in my playtest game, but it doesn't interface seamlessly with the core system (I spent way too long making spreadsheets trying to reconcile movement rates).

I want exploration to be a strategic and interesting mode of gameplay. In terms of dungeon exploration, players should be afraid to spend too long in dangerous dungeons (otherwise why not spend hours taking 20 on search checks and find every treasure and secret door?). In terms of overland travel, players should be able to make significant choices and experience the journey without advance DM preparation or simply fading to black.

Nagol said:

My guess would be a variation on Skil Challenges to determine what exists / deal with fixed elements in an area.

Click to expand...

*shudder*

I hope not.

I would like them to start from a classic D&D basis rules-wise and focus their effort on developing a clear procedural explanation of what to do and how to do it, to make it as easy as possible to run. I would like them to spend some serious design time on the character sheet.

I was looking over the character sheet the other day and I noticed that they have a box for "Prepared Spells", where presumably you are supposed to write out and then erase the entire names of the spells every day. This is a clear indication that they haven't actually designed the sheet.

"Exploration turn" sounds like it has good potential, but how is it going to work together with skill checks?

It can't be simply that you make e.g. one Search roll in an exploration turn to find ALL traps in an area, because in an adventure where at some point there are several traps, an all-or-nothing result would not feel quite right.

And also the Take20 concept doesn't exactly fit there, if you roll for traps by turn instead of one by one, or does it?

I'm a bit confused...

Where I see potential, is when 10min-turn-based exploration is used in large locales where the PCs are more wandering casually than with specific directions.

Examples could be when they are searching for something (e.g. the entrance to a dungeon, a smaller location, tracks, a person or object...) in a forest, in a swamp, in the desert etc., where it makes little sense to draw/use a map at the gaming table because everything around looks pretty much the same for miles.

You can also use the same approach for a whole town, when you don't want to slow the game down detailing exactly which street you're taking, but you still want to have some roll for figuring out if the PCs find the entrance to the sewers, the possible location of the local thieves guild, or a tiny shop that sells something they're looking for.

And with some stretch you can also use such system for a large complex such as a palace or a dungeon, provided you don't need to detail every step you take (at least until an encounter starts).

I think I would definitely use such system, because in the past I have sometimes had problem wasting too much time having the players tell me where to turn (and where to look for traps or secret things) in a cavern complex, where all tunnels look pretty much the same until you find something interesting.

The one thing I will say is that *if* the exploration rules bring back the '10 minute' exploration chunk of time... I'm going to do two things with it:

1) Call each of them a 'period' rather than a 'turn'. The word 'turn' has become part and parcel with character action within the round and I don't want to confuse the issue. "It'll take you a turn" should not bring up the question whether I mean a PC's action within a round, or a PCs action over 10 minutes. Thus, a 'round' is 6 seconds. A 'turn' is a specific PC's action within a round. A 'period' is 10 minutes.

2) Short rests will be one period (10 minutes) long. It'll just help keeping time and its bookkeeping clear. If searching a room is 10 minutes, and you can travel a certain distance in 10 minutes... I don't want to screw up the idea of '6 periods in one hour' by having these "half-periods" due to 5 minute short rests. So I'll just say "combat and it's subsequent short rest is one period" too.

It'll help greatly with clarity at my table I think.

So how it might work with skill checks. I like [MENTION=7006]DEFCON 1[/MENTION] 's idea of making 1 short rest = one 'segment' ('period' sounds too much like a monthly biological phenomenon ).

This matches up with the 3e idea of "taking 10" on a skill check. You get to pick a skill you're using during your 'segment,' and your check represents how well you perform on that skill for that segment. You basically have one 'segment action' that you can use -- it might be a skill check, it might be an automatic ability, etc.

I'm following this thread to steal ideas. I'm about to run a great deal of exploration in my 5th Edition campaign, and I want to make time management matter without really nitpicking over the minutae. There are some good ideas here.

Kamikaze; I'm not wild about 'segment', but I agree with you about 'period' being unsuitable. I'm not sure what a good term for exploration turns would be, but here are some suggestions:

A While - "My character spends a while looking around." - "DM, how long will it take me to climb up there?" "Two whiles." -
A Spelunk - "I travel forward down the tunnel for three spelunks." -
A Bladder - "My character looks around until he has to stop to relieve himself." -

I think that we should make a distinction between dungeon exploration and wilderness exploration.

when it comes to dungeon exploration I think that the two most important rules should be Turns and movement rates & encumbrance.

Turns because we need an easy way to track time and to have some sort of action economy during the exploration phase, Especialy if you are the kind of DM and players who like to run a simulationist kind of game.

Movement rates & encumbrance is somthing that need to be addressed, AFAIK in the current playtest document there are no encumbrance rules beside the -5 feet from heavy armor. I'd like to have more detailed encumbrance rules but I would also like them to be more easy to use, no need to add lbr or somthing like that, somthing like what ACKS use will be great.

I would also like to have some rules about using skill checks during a turn, for example picking a lock might take an entire turn, succeeding by more than 10 means that instead of a turn it only takes a round and failing by less than 5 means that you manage to pick the lock but it taken you two turns and caused a lot of noise.

Warder