Feel free to tell me what is inaccurate about what I said is likely the case with your games. I already ascertained correctly that time doesn't often matter which immediately reduces difficulty in your exploration challenges.
And how does time not often mattering reduce the difficulty of my combat challenges or social challeges? Or is exploration the only pillar where you are required to have a ticking clock?
You lost time. You made noise. You lost the unseen servant and creating another one will cost more time. You still have to deal with the trap. As I've already explained, whether this is positive depends on how you ask the dramatic question.
But again, since time doesn't often matter much in your games (so you say), this is no big deal, which makes rituals like unseen servant better than in a game where time does often matter.
Right, so if you don't have a ticking clock then the only downside is making noise... which is the exact same downside that we would have if the rogue failed. Something you still have not addressed.
I'll refer to my earlier question. In a pure exploration challenge, with no combat or social, other than having a death trap that will kill the players if they don't finish in X time, how do you make any of this matter? If we are just exploring for the sake of exploring, do you force a time crunch on the party? Or is this not supposed to be a challenge to explore for the sake of exploration?
It's only a versatile and powerful tool because of how you run your games.
Or because I read the text of the spell. For example, I realized that it says that you summon it within 60 ft... So by looking through a window you can summon it inside a building and use it to unlock the doors to get in. Since it is formless, then it squeezing through an inch crack is entirely possible.
Wandering monsters make the exploration challenge more difficulty by adding an element with which the players must contend when making decisions. The difficulty is in the decision making. It's not "How do I locate the trap?" It's "How do I locate the trap quickly and without drawing attention to the party?" That's a harder question to answer, made harder when resources are low. So, difficulty increased. In your games, when time doesn't matter, the answer is easier - cast a ritual that costs me no resources and take all the time I want. Perhaps you can see why your objections ring a bit hollow to people who run their games differently.
No, because my objection is that "fight a monster" isn't an exploration challenge, it is a combat challenge. So, your go to solution for exploration getting to easy is to turn to combat. I don't understand how you can't see why that is a problem for the exploration pillar.
You don't make combat challenges more difficult by adding secret doors to the room. You don't make social challenges more difficult by giving players a block puzzle. You are just switching to a different pillar.
And one can absolutely have time pressure every time and that form of pressure can take a lot of different forms or be applied in more than one way. In earlier versions of the game, it was baked right into the design. And it works great in D&D 5e, too. The DMG advocates for random encounters, tracking time, and event-based adventures. You certainly can play it where time doesn't matter, too, but it should be obvious by now what some of the trade-offs are when it comes to exploration challenges.
The trade off being that with no time pressure and no monsters to fight, you are saying there is no challenge. Or at least a greatly reduced challenge. Which leads us right into problems with exploration, it doesn't contain the tools to solve the problems it has.
