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

[ZombieRoboNinja]

I think the question then becomes: "What effect does that 10' kobold pit have?"

At the moment, the effect is largely nil. Even if you loose some HP, in 5e, you gain all that back with a night's rest, and most exploration sessions probably happen over multiple nights.

One thing I've seen people do in 4e skill challenges was have people lose healing surges with failures... coupled with a rule that only lets you take an "extended rest" when you're actually out of danger ( or have passed a couple milestones IIRC).

I could see adapting this for 5e exploration challenges. Make a rule that you can regain spells and hp but NOT hd when you're camping in a dangerous area, and then take away hd for exploration failures. Then make sure to hit the party with a couple combats once the exploration encounter is resolved so they feel the loss of those hd!

It's not as effective as losing healing surges, since a cleric can still heal a target with no hd left, but it's a start, maybe.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I've compared skill checks to attack rolls in this thread, and I think the basic comparison holds. It's not exactly a lot of fun just to roll dice until something happens.

That's why part of my criticisms of SC's above involved a lack of unique player variation, and part of what lead me to post the thread in the first place.

Think of the original playtest Fighter. He could use all the weapons and armor, and he had the biggest bonus with them. He was clearly the Best At Fighting. Yet, a big bonus and immense versatility wasn't exactly enough -- so the game added expertise dice, and It Was Good.

I think the rogue sits in the same boat, but for Exploration. Giving the rogue all the skills and giving the rogue the biggest bonus with them isn't enough. Okay, it makes them the Best At Exploring, but a big bonus and lots of options isn't enough. The game needs to add some engaging exploration rules to keep the rogue awesome, just as it needed more detailed combat elements to help out the fighter.

[sblock=Minor Rant]
For me, I believe that the kind of rogue I want to play would be a consummate spy and infiltrator. Less about rocking in combat and more about avoiding combat entirely, my ideal rogue helps her party out not really by killing goblins (mostly the fighter's job), but by sneaking by some goblins to avoid a fight, or by bluffing some goblins and get out of an ambust, or by gently removing the MacGuffin from the sleeping gobiln's pouch...

When I imagine what my thief looks like when it's being awesome, it's this:

Or this:

Or this:

The challenges they're facing aren't combat challenges. They're not darting in and out of melee, tumbling and rolling and stabbing everything as they go. They're not a Lightly Armored Quick Fighter (IMO, the fighter should be able to do that!).

And to make the challenges they ARE facing more interesting to play through, we're going to need more than just roll...roll...roll...we're gonna need options and variety and the ability for Rogues to be different than Rangers who should be distinct from Druids who don't do things the same as Barbarians who...you get the idea.
[/sblock]

 

[hbarsquared]

Okay, so I'm in the camp, too, that like the idea of skill challenges but has been unsatisfied with their implementation.

First, a digression of what makes the mechanics of combat and exploration similar and different:

1. 4E Skill Challenges and rolling skill checks is the equivalent of just attacking in combat. I roll my attack. I hit. I miss. Etc, etc. Boring in combat, boring in a skill challenge.
2. In combat you have enemies that can do additional things as additional actions. Not just "skill contests" or "opposed checks." In combat you have: player attack, result: hit or miss, and enemy attack, result: hit or miss. Four different possibilities. In 4E Skill challenges, and even the current iteration of skill checks, all you have is: player "attack" (check), result: hit (success) or miss (failure). Only two possibilities. There is no enemy reaction that's built into the rules. Therefore, less complexity.
3. Combat evolves. Depending on how the situation changes as a result of characters' hits or misses, and the enemies' hits or misses, the characters must decide what actions to take from their suite of options. 4E Skill Challenges don't have a built-in evolution, and thus seems repetitious from round to round as you roll the same skill checks over and over.

My thoughts:

Divorcing abilities from skill checks, and keeping "skills" more general and open (as in the first playtest packet) is a good way to go. If the DM simply describes the situation (guards at the door, bad weather, mountain to climb), players can be as creative as they want when describing their actions. This addresses the first point, above. Player's won't roll the same check over and over (I attack, do I hit?), but be more creative.

The DM needs to evolve the situation depending on the failure/success of the characters on a round-by-round (or something initiative dependent) basis. Not keep a tally of total successes and failures. When the situation changes in the second "round," the characters might need to change what they decide to attempt, and to roll. This, I hope, addresses points two and three. The DM has the enemies (or the weather, or the mountain) react in some fashion, perhaps rolling skills themselves, and change the situation, and evolve the challenge.

So, as a rough, this is what I am thinking:

Next Skill Challenges

Every character rolls "initiative" just to determine order.

• DM describes the situation
• player describes action
• DM chooses the roll to make
• success/failure result
• next player, repeat
• after initiative order, DM describes the changed situation
• players describe actions, repeat

A round can be a combat round (in the case of sneaking past the guards), a one-minute round (magic item attunement?), or even a one-day or one-week round (tracking in a forest, climbing the mountain).

Skill Challenge Complexity and XP
Easy: XP per character of Level X-1 monster
Medium: XP per character of Level X monster
Hard: XP per character of Level X+1 monster

Defining Failure
Easy: All characters fail by 10 or more on their rolls
Medium: All characters fail by 5 or more on their rolls
Hard: All characters fail their rolls.

Obviously, the math should be worked out somehow, taking into account statistics, party size, etc.

If the party fails in a round, the skill challenge is over.

Defining Success
Easy: After 2 "rounds" (maybe after 5 successes?)
Medium: After 5 "rounds" (maybe after 10 success?)
Hard: After 10 "rounds" (maybe after 15 success?)

Something to guide the narrative. Failure occurs at a discrete time. Players need to change their strategy round to round. And success is determining not by the number of correct checks listed in the challenge, but the checks that the players decide to use in the first place.

 

[GnomeWorks]

Starvation & Thirst: So, you're going on a multi-day journey to the nearest town -- did you bring enough food and water? It's something a lot of us hand-wave now, but rationing and supplies are a big part of the challenge of exploration. It's also a big part of how druids and rangers and other wilderness-types earn their keep, supplying the party with food and water when they've run out.

The level of grittiness in the game matters. If you're much higher than 5th or so in d20, the daily issue of eating and drinking stops being a concern. I've got characters in my current game that don't care about breathing, much less food or drink.

I think part of the issue here is that the penalties for not eating or drinking, and the benefits for doing so, are so miniscule that they're irrelevant. If it's made a bigger part of the game, it becomes more important.

For instance, in the system I'm working on, different foods have different effects (within reason). For instance, apples might give you a boost to skill X, while bananas give you a boost to skill Y. Likewise, eating the same food all the time might diminish its effectiveness, and not getting a "balanced diet" might lead to penalties.

Provide more options, make it interesting, and suddenly players will care. The difficulty lies in making sure those extra options don't weigh down the game with something that should be handled with at most a minute - you don't want to spend half an hour discussing lunch.

Usable Encumbrance Rules: Somewhat related to the above. Even in a game where you are required to eat and drink, it often just becomes an exercise in draining enough GP to afford a nigh-infinite supply of rations. Encumbrance is what limits that supply, but counting up poundage is a massive hassle. There's gotta be an easier way to do this. I want to see people getting pack animals because they improve carrying capacity! Don't let 5e be the next edition without a donkeyhorse!

This is an easy fix.

Get rid of measurements.

Talking about pounds and half-pounds and all that other nonsense is a massive pain in the rear, as has been noted. It doesn't help that the numbers are also rather large - when your carrying capacity is 400 lbs., you can carry a lot of stuff, and tallying all of it can be annoying unless you're using a spreadsheet.

Translating weights and carrying capacity into smaller numbers, and always rounding to the nearest half, makes this way easier. I initially started this idea by converting all weights into stones, then rounding to the nearest half. The unit is irrelevant, so long as everything in the system agrees on the system of measurement being used. So instead of a sword weighing 4 lbs., we just say it weighs 1. End of story.

Carrying capacity is then a function of Strength and Constitution scores.

For carrying things, containers like bags and chests and such have a number of slots that each are 1 unit. So a bag with Size 8 can carry up to 8 units worth of stuff, regardless of what it is.

Involve Everybody: Sneaking past the fight with the goblins is great, but what about my clumsy dwarf paladin friend with the big mouth? Like I said above, EVERYBODY should be able to be involved in overcoming obstacles.

Nope.

You want to play a clumsy dwarf paladin with a big mouth, you're not going to be able to sneak past encounters. Sorry, not going to happen - that's not the character you built.

By all means, go ahead and try. But just like no one should be able to contribute to a fight like a fighter, no one should be able to do exploration stuff like an explorer. Participate, yes, but not outshine, and sometimes be a hindrance.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The level of grittiness in the game matters. If you're much higher than 5th or so in d20, the daily issue of eating and drinking stops being a concern. I've got characters in my current game that don't care about breathing, much less food or drink.

The question here is do we want that for every game or not?. Spells or abilities that generate nigh-infinite food and drink don't need to be hard-wired into the game, and if a spell is created that does supply food and drink, it can be done in such a way as to supplement the exploration, but not invalidate it. At the same time, there's no problem including that for folks who don't care about that, but should it take the place of something more useful for that group?

This is an easy fix.

Get rid of measurements.

Pretty genius. Conver the carrying capacity of a given STR into "1," and then do a lot of rounding. Could really work!

You want to play a clumsy dwarf paladin with a big mouth, you're not going to be able to sneak past encounters. Sorry, not going to happen - that's not the character you built.

By all means, go ahead and try. But just like no one should be able to contribute to a fight like a fighter, no one should be able to do exploration stuff like an explorer. Participate, yes, but not outshine, and sometimes be a hindrance.

I think that this clumsy dwarf loudmouth paladin might not be able to sneak, but they should be able to contribute somehow to exploration.

I mean, paladins get a mount, right? That's a boatload of extra carrying capacity, at least! They might not be sneaky, but that just means they can't bypass encounters with stealth. Maybe they can bypass encounters with their high Charisma, or their speedy flying magic super-horse, or by lecturing the bandits into changing their ways and going back to church and maybe helping their grandmas around the house a bit more.

Exploration needs to involve everyone, but "sneaking" isn't the only way to get past things. It is, however, a pretty common way.

 

[kerleth]

I think jeremy_dnd's take on the situation is solid gold. Tweak the numbers of course. The main issue is, getting a team of geniuses to write the advice on HOW to make the mountain, or castle, or whatever "take it's turns". And not just a paragraph or two with one example. I want real guidance.

 

[Manbearcat]

One thing I've seen people do in 4e skill challenges was have people lose healing surges with failures... coupled with a rule that only lets you take an "extended rest" when you're actually out of danger ( or have passed a couple milestones IIRC).

I could see adapting this for 5e exploration challenges. Make a rule that you can regain spells and hp but NOT hd when you're camping in a dangerous area, and then take away hd for exploration failures. Then make sure to hit the party with a couple combats once the exploration encounter is resolved so they feel the loss of those hd!

It's not as effective as losing healing surges, since a cleric can still heal a target with no hd left, but it's a start, maybe.

I'm not sure if you're referring to some of the Exploration Skill Challenges that I've run as I've detailed them in various threads (or if you've seen this in games yourself). I believe Dkarr has done something similar to what I've outlined. In 5e it would be more difficult with the varying resource schemes. 4e makes it simple as you can create a Condition Track whereby advancing through the track progressively takes away your ability to refresh resources (Healing Surges, Dailies, and finally Encounter Powers). However, with 5e, we have completely disparate resource schemes so it would be difficult for a Condition Track to effectively impose upon a group and provoke the requisite tension/desperation. However, the Hit Die mechanic would be functional in such a framework. Further Background Traits could be leveraged quite well to move the narrative along with an auto-success.

For instance, you have a Bounty Hunter and a Guide amidst your group and you're looking for someone of infamy (outlaw, hag, shaman, oracle) deep in a swamp or forestland. The Bounty Hunter could invoke their trait and conjure a contact...maybe a sundry/supply shop (think True Grit) on the outskirts of the forest/swamp...through which you could gain a success in the challenge and some insight into where to go to look for this party. 1 (auto) success, narrative moves forward in an interesting way. The Guide could invoke their Background trait daily to find food, shelter and avoid hazards daily and perhaps give all party members advantage on Constitution Saving Throws/Heal/Survival checks within the Condition Track to not move further along.

You really just need a fully functional Condition Track system that interfaces well with the disparate resource schemes of 5e. You also need much better advice on how to create narrative dynamism (Failing Forward, Success with Complications, Fortune in the Middle, Fiction First Task Resolution) and how to better the technique/chemistry of the users. If it feels like its just "an exercise in dice rolling" then your group doesn't have chemistry for it (which it can develop) or your collective technique hasn't been groomed fully (which it can be) or you just don't care for the conflict resolution mechanical framework of Skill Challenges. Loosing the Initiative Count mental framework is a good place to start. Its a Narrative Conflict Resolution tool that is not sequenced by micromanaging one moment to the next. Initiative is a poor-man's abstraction to simulate the task resolution of multiple parties "acting in real time" at the frequency of a combat. No such thing needs to take place at the Skill Challenge level...especially over the course of a multi-hour/day Exploration Challenge.

Whatever comes to pass, it will require some sort of "multiple successes versus multiple failures format" otherwise player cost/benefit analysis will narrow the possible scope of approaches (and corresponding outcomes) to the most optimized for success and/or it will be anti-climactic as it will be over too quickly (with no chance for tension to be cultivated and thus victory exalted). The best way to handle it is to have a mechanical incentive that is more than just "winning by way of the least resource expenditure or death avoidance" (the D&D combat credo). Milestones/APs/Bennies, XP by way of narrative/roleplay effort or contribution...these sorts of things.

 

[GnomeWorks]

The question here is do we want that for every game or not?. Spells or abilities that generate nigh-infinite food and drink don't need to be hard-wired into the game, and if a spell is created that does supply food and drink, it can be done in such a way as to supplement the exploration, but not invalidate it. At the same time, there's no problem including that for folks who don't care about that, but should it take the place of something more useful for that group?

There are all kinds of implementations of it. For instance, if foods give you bonuses, you could give someone the ability to create food and water, but have it give no bonuses - it's crap, but it gets the job done (avoiding penalties from starvation/dehydration).

The problem is that once you get the ability to create food and water, eating and drinking is no longer a concern. It's not something you can really do in gradients - either it's enough, or it's not. It's like teleport: once the group has it, the issue of getting from point A to point B is only very rarely a concern.

I think that this clumsy dwarf loudmouth paladin might not be able to sneak, but they should be able to contribute somehow to exploration.

Mkay, I may have misunderstood your original intent.

Personally, I'd prefer it if the default assumption was that nobody can do anything, and then buy their way (through whatever game mechanic you like, classes, skills, etc) into being able to do things. Anybody may be able to pick up a sword, anybody can try to pick a path through a dense forest, but that doesn't mean they're any good at it.

I prefer that approach because I prefer the idea of the party having a reasonable composition. If you're going into the wilderness, you'd best have a guy who can handle all that stuff - just like if you're going into combats, you'd best have a guy who can fight.

For your example, maybe the paladin has a few skills or abilities or what-not that pertain to exploration. That's fine, but that needs to come at the expense of combat ability, or spell ability, or something: but it absolutely cannot be free. If you want to put exploration on equal footing with everything else, then the "points" that go into those silos all need to come from the same place, else you're demoting one somewhere.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=162]GnomeWorks[/MENTION] Radiance RPG deals with encumbrance is a slick "slots" way, where your strength score equals the number of inventory slots you have. Tiny items dont take up slots whereas heavy armor could take up 2 or 3 IIRC.
[MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] You mentioned creating incentive to keep exploring within one day. I remember a blog which posted a "monster lair" system for 4e which attempted to do this. If you backed out of the dungeon/area before reaching some critical condition (i think it was a combo of #/level of encounters and plot stuff), then the dungeon restocked and adapted...
Anyone recall the blog I'm thinking of?

 

[Balesir]

One thing I've seen people do in 4e skill challenges was have people lose healing surges with failures... coupled with a rule that only lets you take an "extended rest" when you're actually out of danger ( or have passed a couple milestones IIRC).

Just to add to this, something I have been doing in my 4E game is introducing the idea of "quality" of extended rest. Basically, a "full" rest gives all powers and healing surges back, but rests under adverse circumstances (on inimical other planes, in caves or other harsh wilderness, and so on) have lower "quality ratings". This translates to a d6 roll (a little bit like the monsters' "recharge" rolls) to successfully get back powers and abilities. So, with a pretty poor rest, characters get half of their expended healing surges back and need to roll 4, 5 or 6 to get expended daily powers and abilities back. This makes even using daily abilities (spells or whatever) a serious depletion when used to overcome a trap or "trivial" encounter in a dangerous place.