D&D 5E [+]Exploration Falls Short For Many Groups, Let’s Talk About It

[Vaalingrade]

i mentioned this earlier but as part of a larger post so it didn't really go commented on at the time, but what are people's opinions on using safe haven rules to prevent long-resting in the wilderness and shift the focus of resource management to class resources rather than the encumberance of food and clean water? using skill checks or spell slots(goodberry/create water) to sustain your party as a finite dwindling resource.

I think it might streamline things for people who buy into the logistics game, but for someone like me who doesn't replacing one thing to track or suffer penalties with another doesn't make a whole lot of difference.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

No one's talking about old-school resource management and bookkeeping. Talking about hit points and spell slots - the same things that everyone is already managing. Nothing in a "wilderness is a dungeon crawl" style requires "old-school resource management and bookkeeping." The two are not tightly intertwined.


No one's talking about spending torches. You're attacking a strawman.

I am talking about a diversity of player engagement. Just skill checks for exploration is analogous to just attack rolls for combat - it risks eliminating interesting complexity and can become rote. It's not sufficient, IMO, for a mode of play that strongly relies on an exploration element. It'll wear thin.



Again, that's a strawman. My argument is not that we must eliminate skill checks. My argument is is that part of the reason a lot of people aren't satisfied with exploration in 5e is because "make some skill checks" can be very bland in practice.

In comparison, consider the different modes of engagement that a dungeon-crawl-style approach brings:

Saving throws, triggered by environmental conditions or sudden wilderness traps, help players to feel reactive and defensive.

Choosing paths helps players to feel empowered and that their decisions affect the game in significant ways (and serve as moments of RP between party members - WHY did you choose Path A over Path B? Is it because you're a dwarf and Path A is underground?)

Attack rolls are involved in encounters that happen on the path.

Taking damage keeps a feeling of tension and consequences high.

Spending class resources (such as spell slots) helps increase that tension, to characterize what your character cares about, and to give you options for dealing with challenges

Skill checks are a part of the package, but asking them to carry the full weight is like asking attack rolls to carry the full weight in combat.



Sure. I do think, as I mentioned above, spending class resources (like spell slots) on solving exploration issues is a useful part of making exploration engaging. So my concern with adding risk to those spells is that they may become trap options or the like. But that's more about specific spells than it is about exploration in general, I believe.



The central idea with resting is really an argument about deadliness. Resting is just a way to reduce the deadliness of an area. And deadliness itself is really just a way to say "engaging consequences for failure."

So, there's a lot of space to play with there, even if the high level characters aren't threatened by HP attrition.

High-level characters have a bigger foothold in the world, which means that threatening their bonds could make more sense. The scaling of D&D tiers already plays into this - high-level characters deal with world-shaking threats. So, time becomes a resource that can threaten the PC's, or at least the things they care about. It doesn't need to be a countdown to doomsday (though that's fine, too!), it could be a countdown to it gets worse. Save yourself by resting, but take too much time, and towns start disappearing off the map, your friends start dying, etc. Traditional D&D where you get a stronghold as a class feature would have your keeps falling and your wizard towers blowing up or whatever. In 5e, it sounds like "Bastions" could play this role a bit.

That can be a little numbing if repeated often, but on the other hand high-level play is usually pretty rare, too. In practice, maybe that problem solves itself.

As long as the party has to actively do something to avoid failure (success is not guaranteed, they must take actions and make decisions to reach it), and that failure matters (character death, end of the world, the pie goes stale, you go mad, you loose hope, your wife leaves you for a younger man who plays in a band and your children end up resenting you, whatever), the stakes of exploration are high enough to be engaging.

Where a lot of approaches fall short is that (a) no one makes a choice during exploration that matters (the procedural "roll a survival check" and "point a to point b montage"), or (b) those choices don't matter (nothing will happen if we get lost, we long rest and roll again, why are we even rolling). A dungeon-crawl mindset nips those problems in the bud, but it's not the only way to do it (though it is the way D&D kind of wants you to do it out of the box, in a rather maladroit and opaque way).

I understand you don’t want to get into caster disparity. But what is adding danger to high level spells if not a direct response to caster disparity?

Let me ask you this.

Do you think that I am a liar?

I ask because I have said many times in the past and at least once in this thread that I make Spellcasting weird and support limiting it in terms of slots per day and such but not power of each spell, for reasons completely divorced from exploration in the sense of survival challenges and the like.

I do it because High Magic should be dramatically different from lesser magics, especially in terms of just how weird things are, how difficult it is to use, how much of an opportunity with risk of consequence dynamic should be present, and even what is required to regain the use of them.

I like how D&D magic works just fine until about 5th leve spellsl, and it starts to annoy me around 6th level spells. If a spell can be described by someone reading the spell for the first time and not elicit any sort of widening eyes or “it does what??” or the like, it shouldn’t be higher than 5th level. Full stop. Any spell that is just damage, drop it down or fold it into a lower level spell as an “at higher levels” upgrade. Any spell that is just an improved version of a lower level spell, fold it into that spell.

Every spell above 4th, and some spells as low as 3rd, level should require a roll. The best structure would be similar to Star Wars Saga Editoon Force Powers. In that, you make a Use The Force check (making it only 1 skill was a wild choice IMO) and the power tells you the baseline effect, and what happens if you hit certain higher numbers. So Battlestrike (egregiously bad name) adds I think +1 to attack and damage, and if you hit dc 10 you add 1d6 damage, and then another 1d6 every 5 up the DC chain you go, up to like 5 or soemthing, and then you can spend a force point to juice it a little more and add like 2d6. (This is from memory after years not playing it)

I’d make all spells work like that, and upcasting would add to the roll, but if that doesn’t appeal when casting Shield, at least make it required to cast Magnificent Mansion, determining how large, comfortable, and safe, the mansion is.

It’s not like this is some big secret. The biggest problem with exploration is spells.

No, the biggest problem is insisting on attrition as the only way to make exploration engaging.

And there is a problem with making spells unreliable and it’s why DnD has moved away from it. Either the spell is too risky and no one uses it in which case it might as well not exist. Or it’s too much of a PITA for the dm who doesn’t want to interrupt the session with a largely extraneous encounter and ignores the unreliable element. Simply skips over the monster in the closet.

But in any case I do think we agree that the core issue is spells.

For a given section of the playstyle spectrum, spells are a major issue, sure.

 

[Hussar]

The ubiquity and pervasiveness of magic? Absolutely. Not necessarily the power.

Fair enough. Yeah. That's actually exactly what I meant.

Go back to something like Basic/Expert rules. Your casters had a choice of like 12 spells per level. Less probably. And they needed to memorize specific spells instead of free casting.

Imagine how something like Isle of Dread would look if you took a 5-7th level 5e party through it today. A very different experience.

 

[Hussar]

I like how D&D magic works just fine until about 5th leve spellsl, and it starts to annoy me around 6th level spells. If a spell can be described by someone reading the spell for the first time and not elicit any sort of widening eyes or “it does what??” or the like, it shouldn’t be higher than 5th level. Full stop. Any spell that is just damage, drop it down or fold it into a lower level spell as an “at higher levels” upgrade. Any spell that is just an improved version of a lower level spell, fold it into that spell.

See, to me, that just makes high level play nearly unplayable. If I, as the DM, have to deal with "weird effects" for every caster, every time they cast a 6th level spell, I'm simply never going to play those levels. That's far too much of a headache.

But, this is also way outside the scope of this thread as well, so, sorry for the derail. That totally wasn't my intention.

And, I think I do agree that attrition should not be the only way to do exploration. That I do agree with.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I want to call this out because in far too many pre-published exploration encounters, the idea “taking damage keeps a feeling of tension and consequences high” is assumed even in cases where it doesn’t apply.

Generally speaking, in exploration encounters in overland travel, there just simply aren’t enough encounters that taking damage has any impact on the tension of the adventure.

I'm in agreement, essentially.

I think this goes up to the idea of when do we use exploration mechanics? Point A to Point B travel over a known (but perhaps monster-studded!) path isn't a great place to use them, because there's little chance of discovery or surprise or meaningful choice. Roll a random encounter if you want, describe the scenery, and move on with your life.

This means that an easy, no-tension montage travel sequence can be intended. Maybe they didn't want to spend a lot of time on what it takes to get through the Serpent Jungle to the Ruins of the Snake God. That's a valid choice, and while it might de-emphasize exploration, not every adventure needs to highlight exploration. And maybe most published adventures just don't value exploration! I'd say that this is the case, personally!

There's also the other edge of adventures that might want to be about exploration in a meaningful way, but flub it by not designing it well. Skill check montage. Have a fight if you fail a check. These aren't strong exploration mechanics. They're useful for flavor, but they don't involve things like risk of failure or a need to make choices or a fog of war where you don't know the results of your actions.

The combination of the above two points gives us our perceived lack of exploration in 5e. Not enough published stuff taking it seriously or flubbing the rules when it tries to.

“The rope bridge snaps under your weight, dumping you 50’ into the ravine, you take 5d6 bludgeoning damage”
“Ok, we take a short rest and I spend 3 HD. Anything else happen today?”

Even in a dungeon context, exploration encounters that cost hit points (often traps) only create tension if the resource expended is non-trivial, and recovery of the resource is non-trivial.

Yes! Which is why, when you want to take exploration seriously, the answer to the question "Anything else happen today?" is, "The next room in the dungeon, buddy." Or to put it in active play terms:

Me: "Anything else happen today?"
DM: (rolls for a random encounter during the short rest, gets nothing) "You spend the next 3 hours following the deer trail before encountering the corpse of a deer, studded with needle-like spikes, laying in a clearing. What do you do?"

(in dungeon-metaphor terms, they moved say 90 feet down the hallway and entered the room with the manticore encounter)

A wilderness with one ravine isn't much of a wilderness! A dungeon isn't just one trap, after all! Assuming we don't tweak anything with the RAW, the way you'd ensure that attrition happens and the threat is felt even if the party can long rest is through spending more than half of the party's HD between each long rest (since a long rest only heals up to half of your HD). So, same wilderness zone, one ravine might be fine for a single day up to about level 5. We could say:

Me: (I am level 3 and have spent all my HD) "Anything else happen today?"
DM: (rolls for random encounters, gets nothing) "No, you can take a long rest and recover two HD. The next day, you follow the deer trail for 3 hours before encountering the corpse of a deer, studded with needle-like spikes, laying in a clearing. What do you do?"
Me, mentally: Wait if this keeps happening, I'm only going to last three days out here, and this isolated little hamlet I'm trying to get to is six days away, I might have to think about how to bypass some of these encounters....
Me, out loud: "Give it a wide berth and try to stealthily move past it."

That density is often missing from exploration. If one takes exploration seriously and wants it to be a significant part of the game, it needs to be deeper than one threat! There are unexpected threats just out of sight!

Random encounter rolls help with this vibe, and are essentially the D&D-native way to keep rests risky. There's definitely better mechanics out there (I'm not a fan of the "encounter as prod" personally, but it has its place!).

Spending class resources isn’t enough. Goodberry to avoid foraging is spending a class resource, but as early as 5th level, it’s not a resource that you will miss.

Yeah, basic D&D sez "starvation isn't a threat." That's in line with D&D's exploration mode being dungeon crawls. Starvation is kind of something you check a box to avoid. It's not the active threat. Starvation in the wilderness is like running out of arrows in a fight. Not something most parties need to concern themselves with most of the time. Maybe possible if you're big on granular detail, but ignored at most tables.

The thing that D&D wants to threaten you with is traps and encounters. The terrain and the creatures that live there.

I've never seen a character starve to death or run out of arrows in D&D.

But opening a door that explodes? Or dropping down a 50 foot ravine? Yeah, sure!

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Sure. I do think, as I mentioned above, spending class resources (like spell slots) on solving exploration issues is a useful part of making exploration engaging. So my concern with adding risk to those spells is that they may become trap options or the like. But that's more about specific spells than it is about exploration in general, I believe.

Yes. For sure. High level magic in 5e can get kinda boring once you have seen most spells in play, unless the DM allows a lot of improv, and IMO it’s not because of the spell effects, it’s because they aren’t meaningfully different from low level spells.

The central idea with resting is really an argument about deadliness. Resting is just a way to reduce the deadliness of an area. And deadliness itself is really just a way to say "engaging consequences for failure."

So, there's a lot of space to play with there, even if the high level characters aren't threatened by HP attrition.

High-level characters have a bigger foothold in the world, which means that threatening their bonds could make more sense. The scaling of D&D tiers already plays into this - high-level characters deal with world-shaking threats. So, time becomes a resource that can threaten the PC's, or at least the things they care about. It doesn't need to be a countdown to doomsday (though that's fine, too!), it could be a countdown to it gets worse. Save yourself by resting, but take too much time, and towns start disappearing off the map, your friends start dying, etc. Traditional D&D where you get a stronghold as a class feature would have your keeps falling and your wizard towers blowing up or whatever. In 5e, it sounds like "Bastions" could play this role a bit.

That can be a little numbing if repeated often, but on the other hand high-level play is usually pretty rare, too. In practice, maybe that problem solves itself.

As long as the party has to actively do something to avoid failure (success is not guaranteed, they must take actions and make decisions to reach it), and that failure matters (character death, end of the world, the pie goes stale, you go mad, you loose hope, your wife leaves you for a younger man who plays in a band and your children end up resenting you, whatever), the stakes of exploration are high enough to be engaging.

Yep, though I will add that you don’t always need to present a danger to something as the inciting incident to go into the wild(space). Sometimes enticement makes for very exciting adventuring, whether that’s an opportunity to be the first people to step foot in Metrol City since the Day of Mourning, or a king’s ransom if you can find a route through the wilds to a place that currently requires months of sea travel, or rumors of the location a legendary sword that your rogue has wanted since day one, or dominion of an ancient ruin that you know houses doorways to other worlds, if you can take it and keep it, etc.

Opportunity, with consequences for failure.

 

[I'm A Banana]

No, the biggest problem is insisting on attrition as the only way to make exploration engaging.

Yep, though I will add that you don’t always need to present a danger to something as the inciting incident to go into the wild(space). Sometimes enticement makes for very exciting adventuring, whether that’s an opportunity to be the first people to step foot in Metrol City since the Day of Mourning, or a king’s ransom if you can find a route through the wilds to a place that currently requires months of sea travel, or rumors of the location a legendary sword that your rogue has wanted since day one, or dominion of an ancient ruin that you know houses doorways to other worlds, if you can take it and keep it, etc.

Opportunity, with consequences for failure.

+ thread-style: what are some other meaningful consequences for failure we could bake in? How can we trigger loss aversion in the players? What will they potentially give up by exploring?

Out of the box, D&D says hp, HD, character death, those are the things we can really threaten the player with, mechanically. Kind of, spell slots, too.

Traditionally, there's also threats to things that aren't characters, which gets more relevant at higher levels. The world is ending. The war is coming. Has limits, but is also very classic.

Time has been mentioned and works, but definitely has similar limits, too. Not something you can always use.

I think the loss of the goal like you describe works pretty well. In the dungeon metaphor, there's a McGuffin in the dungeon, and if you fail to find it, well, you don't find the McGuffin. If you fail to get the objective in the wilderness, you return to civilization broken and defeated and without having been the first person to the North Pole.

D&D also has a bit of a checkered tradition with risking magic items. Not sure that would be great to bring back, but it's there.

If not those things, then what are the PC's going to lose when they rest? And what can we take from them when they take the wrong path?

 

[Hussar]

There is an apropos OOTS comic from years back that has always stuck in my mind:

 

[I'm A Banana]

There is an apropos OOTS comic from years back that has always stuck in my mind:

Hahaha, yeah, it encapsulates the issue quite well. Montage travel!

I think that if you want to take exploration seriously, it needs to be part of the main plot. @doctorbadwolf 's examples are things linked to the story (or maybe side-quests). Reasons to go into the wilderness. Reasons it's treacherous to do so.

And that means giving it space, time, and attention. Letting it be something the party can fail at, that challenges them. Not just a bump in the road that the Daily-rationed characters steamroll.

Because a dungeon isn't something you just do one encounter in before moving onto the treasure, either!

 

[Hussar]

I think that the solution to this is to introduce a separate resource to be honest. Something that isn't really directly tied to the characters. Maybe a group resource - like time or whatever. You only have so many actions per time period, you can use those actions to negate some or all of the potential encounters (which may be good, bad or neutral) but, it will always be a balancing act between having enough Exploration Points (yeah, sucky name, I suck at naming stuff) for the party and being able to continue exploring.

That way, we bypass party makeup, and even party size really. And it gives everyone something to do.