Blog (A5E) Level Up: Exploration Challenges, Boons, & Monster Signs

We looked at exploration in Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition in a previous article about how we’re expanding the exploration pillar of the game. In that article we talked about Supplies, Safe Havens, and we introduced the concept of Exploration Challenges. This article talks about three of the tools that GMs have available to create a rich and vibrant environment:

• Exploration Challenges
• Boons & Discoveries
• Monster Signs

Exploration as a ‘pillar’ of the game includes underground as well as the wilderness. When you’re searching a dungeon, you’re exploring. When you’re trekking across hill and shire, you’re exploring. When you’re navigating a dense fantasy city, you’re exploring. When you’re flying through an elemental plane of air, you’re exploring.

Exploration Challenges, Boons, & Monster Signs — Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition (A5E)

This article talks about three of the tools that GMs have available to create a rich and vibrant environment.

www.levelup5e.com

 

[Banesfinger]

This looks fantastic. And its great to see the Exploration pillar finally getting some love.

 

[Jeff Carpenter]

Great stuff. Glad to see random encounters be more than just 2d8 orcs attack. Hopefully this section is 700 pages of dense content.

 

[Mellekai]

That is really interesting. thank you for bringing it up.

 

[Faolyn]

I'm definitely intrigued by many of the exploration challenges. I can already imagine some interesting possibilities! I wish you had included some more sample boons, but your hints are pretty interesting as they are. I also really like the monster signs. Death knight, medusa, and bulette, right? They're definitely a good way to bring the monsters to life.

 

[Stacie GmrGrl]

I only skimmed this a bit from what I saw this looks great.

The one thing I hope gets some good focus is long travel journeys, like from Adventures in Middle-Earth/The One Ring or The Forbidden Lands; and have good rules for Exploration focused party roles.

 

[Banesfinger]

My current issues with RAW: most overland journeys will limit encounters to 1 (maybe 2) per day while traveling/exploring. This means players are free to go 'Nova' because conserving resources will not be an issue. Therefor encounter difficulty/balance is skewed.

How will Level-Up avoid this issue?

 

[Morrus]

My current issues with RAW: most overland journeys will limit encounters to 1 (maybe 2) per day while traveling/exploring. This means players are free to go 'Nova' because conserving resources will not be an issue. Therefor encounter difficulty/balance is skewed.

How will Level-Up avoid this issue?

We previewed some of the travel rules in the previous exploration article. We’re not ready to share the full thing yet though.

 

[Stacie GmrGrl]

My current issues with RAW: most overland journeys will limit encounters to 1 (maybe 2) per day while traveling/exploring. This means players are free to go 'Nova' because conserving resources will not be an issue. Therefor encounter difficulty/balance is skewed.

How will Level-Up avoid this issue?

If by RAW you mean the 5e core rules you are correct. 5e doesn't provide much, if any, guidelines/rules/tools for actual exploration and journey rules.

Adventures in Middle-Earth, which is a 5e game, has this in spades. Journey is THE Key aspect of the game. The entire games structure is based on it, including party roles, journey events, survival, and downtime.

Combat is but one of a few potential situations that can happen.

 

[Stalker0]

I like the concept of the Exploration challenge. It feels similar to old skill challenges but quicker and simpler. I think the problem with old challenges is that they had so many rolls that it removed the immersion. To me how I would probably phrase this:

"A tornado has just touched down near you all! You'll need to make an athletics check to hold your ground and not get sucked in, although if you have an alternate idea I will consider it. Oh people can also try a nature check to get some alternate ideas."


A few notes on the tornado one.

1) Those DCs seem pretty high for group checks. I would not expect half the party to be good at the suggested skills, so it will be quite quite difficult even for a higher level party.

2) Remind me how you get a critical success normally? Is it if everyone passes the group check?

3) I am concerned about the feel of losing supplies on a success. You may get into a situation where players feel like they are losing supplies "no matter what"....and therefore every encounter is just the DM punishing them with supply losses. Obviously that needs to be playtested but I can see that happening.

4) I do like the nat 1 = some terrible aspect, but I actually think it may be too infrequent. I would rather see it like "you fail the DC by 10 or more" triggers the effect.