Level Up (A5E) Advanced Journeys &Exploration Challenges

[Micah Sweet]

And keeping it in could very well hurt the game for me and my players by dragging it down, so saying things like this doesn't really help anybody.

(There's also no reason to assume that this would be anything other than an optional rule you could easily ignore.)

Does the current Supply system drag your game down now?

 

[Faolyn]

Does the current Supply system drag your game down now?

I actually haven't had a chance to use it, since I was/am running games in other systems, and the LU game I will be running won't be for a few more months, probably. But as I mentioned:

(1) I've been in plenty of games where shopping for mundane items, either in-character or just players looking through the books, has been incredibly boring and time-wasting. Like, a couple of times the games literally ground to a halt while the players filled out their equipment lists. Admittedly, that was mostly in the pre-internet day, but D&D (and therefore LU) included pre-made equipment packs specifically so people don't have to waste time hunting through the books. Shopping has only really been fun at any table I've been at if it's for personal items and it involves roleplay, like with cool NPC shopkeepers who are selling interesting things, or or it helps to establish your character's personality or style. But buying 50 feet of rope and a ten-pack of torches rarely does either of those things. One of my players hated the idea of Supply until he found out it could be used for more than just food.

(2) In my MotW game, the Expert really enjoys his Preparedness move, which allows him to just roll to see if he has a thing, and on last Friday's game, we basically decided he could use that for anything short of a mass spectrometer (they needed to examine some ectoplasm). He was happy he didn't have to think about everything he could possibly have before hand.

As it stands, I think Morrus' new idea needs some tweaking because it can easily be abused and it might lead to severe shortages of Supply since the current journey activities don't provide a lot, but at its heart it's a really good and potentially very fun idea.

 

[Stalker0]

Morrus I’m confused, isn’t the point of posting that to garner Feedback? If enough people post saying they don’t like part of the concept…maybe that means it’s worth adjusting the concept.

Telling people to not post if they don’t like what your making…thst just creates an echo chamber.

Anyway my thoughts are:
1) I like the greater costs with the challenges. That plus the errata that removes some of the big supply replenishments I think will go a long way toward making supplies more meaningful.

2) my main issue with the extra level of abstraction is two fold:

a) a lot of the examples to me are non consumable items. I mean rope isn’t usually consumed when I use it to climb a mountain. Even face coverings can be reused. Yes it’s an abstraction but it is pushing that threshold one more step

b) the supply by cost is weird. I could maybe think that acid is 5 supply because it needs very special packaging which is bulky…ok maybe. But a lot of items that cost money are small items with little weight…it’s just hard to imagine why supply is a strength limit.

 

[xiphumor]

If I may chime in again, bow with a better understanding of what you’re hoping to accomplish, I have to say that I don’t like Exploration Challenges having a fixed cost in Supply, that you either pay or are penalized for, and for two reasons:

1. How much Supply you take with you becomes a game of “guess the magic number in the Narrator’s head as to how much we’ll need,” which for some Narrators will always be whatever it takes to exhaust the party’s Supply.

2. There’s no reward for finding a clever way to overcome a problem with the proverbial toothpick and some chewing gum. If a player finds a way to safey navigate a CR 20 Divine War by offering the goddess of a chaos a really cool rock they found in a way that makes narrative sense, they shouldn’t still be paying 20 Supply. The cost should be determined by how well you overcome the challenge, not a tax rate you pay in advance.

 

[Stalker0]

1. How much Supply you take with you becomes a game of “guess the magic number in the Narrator’s head as to how much we’ll need,” which for some Narrators will always be whatever it takes to exhaust the party’s Supply.

2. There’s no reward for finding a clever way to overcome a problem with the proverbial toothpick and some chewing gum. If a player finds a way to safey navigate a CR 20 Divine War by offering the goddess of a chaos a really cool rock they found in a way that makes narrative sense, they shouldn’t still be paying 20 Supply. The cost should be determined by how well you overcome the challenge, not a tax rate you pay in advance.

I’ll counter these points.
1) i think the assumption here is that players would always restock their supplies whenever possible. Just as you don’t normally start an adventuring day at half hp, you wouldn’t start a journey on limited supplies. Now if supplies were limited by other narrative reasons that’s fine…but players should not normally be nitpicking (hmm do I carry 10 supplies or 11).

2) as always that’s a dm call. The dm can always say “well the party took care of that challenge so easily nothing was lost”. The rules provide guidelines and structure but dms should always modify for good play

 

[Morrus]

Morrus I’m confused, isn’t the point of posting that to garner Feedback? If enough people post saying they don’t like part of the concept…maybe that means it’s worth adjusting the concept.

Telling people to not post if they don’t like what your making…thst just creates an echo chamber.

There's a difference between not liking part of something and not liking the entire concept or the premise. One is constructive feedback used to improve something somebody is working on; the other is just "stop doing this project, I don't like it."

 

[Morrus]

I actually haven't had a chance to use it, since I was/am running games in other systems, and the LU game I will be running won't be for a few more months, probably. But as I mentioned:

---

As it stands, I think Morrus' new idea needs some tweaking because it can easily be abused and it might lead to severe shortages of Supply since the current journey activities don't provide a lot, but at its heart it's a really good and potentially very fun idea.

I think when you use the core LU exploration rules your opinion may change on this. They are (deliberately) very lenient, and running out of Supply really isn't a danger. In the two years I've been running Level Up, it's never happened. This is (partly) intended to provide an option for those people who like Supply to be more of an issue.

 

[Morrus]

If I may chime in again, bow with a better understanding of what you’re hoping to accomplish, I have to say that I don’t like Exploration Challenges having a fixed cost in Supply, that you either pay or are penalized for, and for two reasons:

1. How much Supply you take with you becomes a game of “guess the magic number in the Narrator’s head as to how much we’ll need,” which for some Narrators will always be whatever it takes to exhaust the party’s Supply.

2. There’s no reward for finding a clever way to overcome a problem with the proverbial toothpick and some chewing gum. If a player finds a way to safey navigate a CR 20 Divine War by offering the goddess of a chaos a really cool rock they found in a way that makes narrative sense, they shouldn’t still be paying 20 Supply. The cost should be determined by how well you overcome the challenge, not a tax rate you pay in advance.

Yep, like I said it's too 'taxlike' at the moment.

Right now I'm thinking along the lines of the players being able to choose how much Supply they spend on a challenge. I don't want it to be too fiddly with modifiers though. Maybe expertise dice could play into that.

Just rambling off the top of my head, have not thought this through at all--

For skill checks during a challenge, players may spend Supply. 1 Supply grants 1 expertise die to 1 skill check. You can spend as much Supply as you want up to your expertise die max (usually d8, but some features increase that for certain checks).

That way you don't have to spend Supply, but you can.

The penalties for failure would need to be greater though, otherwise it would always be advantageous to just fail rather than spend the Supply.

 

[xiphumor]

I’ll counter these points.
1) i think the assumption here is that players would always restock their supplies whenever possible. Just as you don’t normally start an adventuring day at half hp, you wouldn’t start a journey on limited supplies. Now if supplies were limited by other narrative reasons that’s fine…but players should not normally be nitpicking (hmm do I carry 10 supplies or 11).

2) as always that’s a dm call. The dm can always say “well the party took care of that challenge so easily nothing was lost”. The rules provide guidelines and structure but dms should always modify for good play

1. HP is different because it’s very rare for the Narrator to tax it in precise units rather than according to a die roll. The Narrator doesn’t know how much damage the party will take, but under these rules, they can know exactly how much Supply the party will need and how much they have (with some measure of error on account of features that help the party restock).

2. This screws up causality. The party gets disadvantage on checks to overcome the challenge if they don’t pay the Supply tax, so when they “beat it handily” it’s probably due at least in part to the fact that they paid the tax in the first place. Alternatively, if they refused or failed to pay and still succeeded super well, then you can’t reduce the amount of Supply taxed because they didn’t pay anything to start with.

 

[xiphumor]

Yep, like I said it's too 'taxlike' at the moment.

Right now I'm thinking along the lines of the players being able to choose how much Supply they spend on a challenge. I don't want it to be too fiddly with modifiers though. Maybe expertise dice could play into that.

Just rambling off the top of my head, have not thought this through at all--

For skill checks during a challenge, players may spend Supply. 1 Supply grants 1 expertise die to 1 skill check. You can spend as much Supply as you want up to your expertise die max (usually d8, but some features increase that for certain checks).

That way you don't have to spend Supply, but you can.

The penalties for failure would need to be greater though, otherwise it would always be advantageous to just fail rather than spend the Supply.

Better, but you’ve basically now given the players potentially infinite spell scrolls of guidance at half cost that can also stack and don’t require concentration (assuming you keep 1 Supply = 5 gold).