D&D 5E Dungeon Crawl Rules

[Umbran]

So yeah, if you completely ignore that there is more than one person doing these tasks, then maybe it's a bit unfair. But that's not what happens at the table. There's a team there.

So, now you're taking up three actions to do a thing that traditionally takes one? Sheesh, finding stuff is expensive in your game.

 

[Charlaquin]

That, unfortunately, leads to needing to roll two skill checks to find a thing. And, unless you have invested high stats in both Int and Wis, and paid for proficiency in both skills, it becomes worse than "roll at disadvantage" to find anything. That doesn't sound fair.

Only if you treat successfully rolling to deduce something as a requirement to act on knowledge of it. A player who detects a draft can probably assume that it indicates the presence of a secret door. Obviously trying to verify that assumption through action is smart play, and if the outcome of that action is uncertain, the DM might call for an Intelligence (Investigation) to resolve it. But you certainly don’t need high Intelligence (Investigation) to find things.

 

[Asisreo]

That, unfortunately, leads to needing to roll two skill checks to find a thing. And, unless you have invested high stats in both Int and Wis, and paid for proficiency in both skills, it becomes worse than "roll at disadvantage" to find anything. That doesn't sound fair

Not necessarily. It could go either way with only one ability check.

For instance, finding a door that's only hidden (perhaps unintentionally) might be a perception check but opening it is as simple as opening a regular door. Maybe a door covered by overgrowth or a hatch that's the material as the dusty floor.

Or it could be the most obvious door known to man with a giant "Door here!" Sign but its been locked by some sort of mechanism that requires some brainpower to unlock.

You could combine the aspects but they aren't married to each other.

 

[iserith]

So, now you're taking up three actions to do a thing that traditionally takes one? Sheesh, finding stuff is expensive in your game.

Three tasks to find, figure out, and disable a trap. Two tasks to find and figure out a secret door. That's how the rules lay it out. It works well in my experience and when you add time to do those things against a time crunch then we really have some good exploration challenges.

 

[Charlaquin]

Three tasks to find, figure out, and disable a trap. Two tasks to find and figure out a secret door. That's how the rules lay it out. It works well in my experience and when you add time to do those things against a time crunch then we really have some good exploration challenges.

I also notice that your exploration procedure implicitly encourages divvying up these tasks rather than having one character do them all, so as to resolve the obstacle in as few 10-minute exploration “turns” as possible.

 

[iserith]

I also notice that your exploration procedure implicitly encourages divvying up these tasks rather than having one character do them all, so as to resolve the obstacle in as few 10-minute exploration “turns” as possible.

They can't actually - they are consecutive tasks, not concurrent. So you might see the cleric search for traps on the first round, then the wizard try to figure out the trap on the second round, and the rogue disabling it on the third. A given trap interaction in my game is about 30 minutes of in-game time. All of these tasks are also trade-offs against keeping watch to avoid surprise.

 

[Charlaquin]

They can't actually - they are consecutive tasks, not concurrent. So you might see the cleric search for traps on the first round, then the wizard try to figure out the trap on the second round, and the rogue disabling it on the third. A given trap interaction in my game is about 30 minutes of in-game time. All of these tasks are also trade-offs against keeping watch to avoid surprise.

Ahh, yeah, good point.