Level Up (A5E) Exploration Challenges and Encounter Budget

[Immortal Blue]

Hi First Time DM and Long Time Player,

I was wondering how the Exploration Challenges affect the Daily Encounter budget players have because in some of the text it talks about encounters but in others parts it explicitly references battles.

Obviously encounters use resources and exploration challenges are encounters so I was just wondering if anyone else thought they would be affect the encounter budget (i.e. an easy challenge would cost 0.5 Encounter Points), can anyone enlighten me.

Thanks,

 

[Waller]

Exploration challenges have Challenge Ratings just like monsters do.

 

[Stalker0]

While true, I would argue since most exploration challenges drain supplies and not hp/spells, they don't really affect a party's ability to handle a monster fight in the same way as a previous monster fight would.

On the other hand, some exploration challenges can consume spell slots and maybe do some damage....so I think it could have an impact in some cases.

 

[Immortal Blue]

Yeah that's kinda my problem with it cause some challenges seem to drain resources but not in the way say a fight would, though the ones that drain spell slots and do serious damage I feel would impact how many encounter a party could take per day.

It's just from a planning aspect I would like to know peoples thoughts on having the Exploration Challenges affect the encounter budget and vice-versa because I'm slightly torn between both sides, I just feel some challenges really don't warrant replacing a combat encounter.

 

[Stalker0]

I think I would keep it simple and say:

1) If the encounter burns HP/spell resources, count it based on its CR.
2) If it doesn't, then consider it seperate.

 

[Immortal Blue]

(challenges have a CR just like monsters do, so you can treat them as a monster and add them to a monster encounter, or you can add a monster encounter to a challenge) using encounter building guidelines.

Thanks for the help, found the answer in an old thread, above quote is from Morrus so I'll take that as the answer, thread link below:

Today I am working on Exploration Challenges