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

[Zardnaar]

personally, i think fireball is only 'iconic' of wizard because they've had it for so long what with there being a good long point in time where they were the only arcane caster around to have fireball, as well as the aspect of people saying it is because of not wanting their toys taken away from their preferred classes, conciously or not.

it's much more a sorcerer or warlock spell IMO.

i'd give fireball to an evoker or elemental themed wizard, but i wouldn't put it in the base class if we were remaking spell lists.

it's a vaguely similar situation to the 'emergency crossbow' a wizard with a crossbow doesn't actually make a ton of sense thematically but because it was a fixture of the game for so long people started thinking it did, so when casters got easy infinite cantrips there was a not insignificant portion of people who went 'but what about the wizard's crossbow they won't need one anymore'

Crossbow was a very short thing. Only 3E.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Having had fireball for a long time, and having been the only one to have it for a good bit, is….part of why it’s iconic to the wizard.

It’s an iconic wizard spell.

you miss my point, i'm saying if 5e had been built up from the ground roughly as it is but it had been the first edition of DnD without all the 'classic DnD traditions' influencing it, with other classes like sorcerer and warlock around rather than just the wizard as the sole arcane caster around to recieve it, would the designers who would've been making it chosen to give the wizard fireball that time around? or would they of thought 'no i don't think this really fits this class's studious and intelectual themes'

edit: or to put it another way, which of these class premise's sounds most apropriate for the guy slinging magical explosions?
-the one who channels raw magic power from their blood
-the one who bargined with an extraplanar entity for magical power
-the one who learned power through extensive study and research

i mean, before we get to that, fireball wouldn't even be the abnormally powerful (for it's level) standout spell that it currently is without the previous editions influencing how it was designed...

 

[CreamCloud0]

Crossbow was a very short thing. Only 3E.

huh, maybe it was just because 3e had such an impact on the community for so long, i'd gotten the impression that it was a bigger thing, i was probably conflating it some with their 'emergency dagger' which i assume has been around much longer?

 

[Zardnaar]

huh, maybe it was just because 3e had such an impact on the community for so long, i'd gotten the impression that it was a bigger thing, i was probably conflating it some with their 'emergency dagger' which i assume has been around much longer?

Dagger, dart were the most optimal pre 3E.

 

[Hussar]

Ok, here's a perfect example of why I find exploration rules in 5e to be somewhat lacking. I'm running Phandelver at the moment. Loving the adventure actually. It really does deserve it's reputation. But, here's an great example of where exploration rules would actually be useful:

The party is searching for a raider camp in a large, hilly region. (Trying to avoid spoilers) To find the raider camp, this is the exact quote from the module:

Searching for hte hidden raider campe takes time. The character leading the party can attempt on DC 15 Wisdom (Perception) check or DC 10 Wisdom (Survival) check per hour to find the camp, made by the character leading the way.

That's it. That's the sum total of exploration. Now, I'll admit that the scenario is very bare bones and shouldn't take up too much time. But sheesh. That's it? No penalty for failure. Zero drama. Nothing. Roll dice until you roll high enough and then move on to the encounter. THIS is why people talk about 5e not really spending a whole lot of effort on the other two pillars.

 

[Starfox]

Late to the party and I have only read the first and last page. Some general reflections.

My group isn't very fond of logistics, and we don't really focus on this side of the game, ever. No counting of arrows or rations.

In 5E I've had great success with LevelUp's exploration rules. I bought LevelUp just for these and are not using the rest of the system. Very happy with the variety of encounters, and the wonders have been very popular with the PCs. Some acted as Big Dumb Objects - things the PCs could poke and prod and try to understand, and I had to come up with a meaning for. The supply and morale elements of LevelUp really haven't come up.

I've run hexcrawls using Pathfinder rules in Kingmaker, Wrath of the Righteous, and Mummy's Mask. In neither case was supplies even a thing, either the PCs were close to base or could provide for themselves magically. In Mummy's Mask a caster spend most of her spells for the party's comfort rather than in encounters. Still they encounter were enough to keep players riveted and these hexcrawls were pretty successful. As the encounter tables often provided too weak encounters, I often merged several random encounters into one, which led to some interesting monster vs monster action for the players to witness and sometimes intervene in. Say I roll a roc and a purple worm as random encounters, what kind of interesting scene can these two make? I like this kind of improvisational creativity under constraint.

Exploration in dungeons and exploration in the wild are different, but not that different. Hexcrawls generally separate into travel time quickly resolved with die rolls and some narration and encounters, which are not so different from dungeon encounters. I am blessed with players that rarely "cheat" past the exploration bits using magic, and when they do they have fun doing so. In 3.5 there was a spell named Benign Transposition that allowed two creatures to switch places - this was really popular applied to tiny creatures.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I liked 1e-style combat. HP and damage were lowered, and just about everything was more dangerous.

Then why are you playing a 5e style game. It is not like there are not a plethora of games that strive towards that style?

 

[M_Natas]

Ok, here's a perfect example of why I find exploration rules in 5e to be somewhat lacking. I'm running Phandelver at the moment. Loving the adventure actually. It really does deserve it's reputation. But, here's an great example of where exploration rules would actually be useful:

The party is searching for a raider camp in a large, hilly region. (Trying to avoid spoilers) To find the raider camp, this is the exact quote from the module:



That's it. That's the sum total of exploration. Now, I'll admit that the scenario is very bare bones and shouldn't take up too much time. But sheesh. That's it? No penalty for failure. Zero drama. Nothing. Roll dice until you roll high enough and then move on to the encounter. THIS is why people talk about 5e not really spending a whole lot of effort on the other two pillars.

That is super bad adventure design. If a failure doesn't do anything, why even roll several times?
Like, I designed an adventure (not published yet) where the party has to find a Goblin hideout in the forest.
They also have to do one! survival check. The survival check determines 2 things: the amount of time they need to find the Hideout and the number of random but adventure related encounters on the way to the hideout.
And the amount of time they need to find the hideout will also change what they will find there. So the time matters.

And that not even this simple things - that I would consider the minimal amount of adventure design necessary- are done in an published WotC adventure is really sad.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Dunno. We played most of the modules in 1e - all the common ones anyway. Played for years and years. Combat was never particularly dangerous in 1e. It wasn't until 3e that combat (outside of save or die, which is a separate element) was actually dangerous after the first couple of levels.

Sure, you could make combat dangerous by piling on dozens of enemies. But, that's the point. It took a 3 or 4 to 1 advantage for the monsters to even begin challenging 1e PC's. Look at Keep on the Borderlands. There's encounters there with a couple of dozen orcs and that's a basic, not even really challenging encounter for a 1st level party. In 3e or later, that would be an instant TPK for a 3rd level party. Convert the encounters 1:1 and Keep on the Borderlands is meant for a 4th or 5th level party for 3e or later. Certainly not 1st. Same with pretty much all the AD&D modules.

Indeed!

The deadliness of AD&D combat oftentimes would come down to whether or not there was AoE effects available for the party at the time of the encounter. A "difficult" encounter made by the DM using lots of less-powerful monsters with lower HP could be removed quite easily through the use of a single Sleep spell or heaven-forbid a Fireball a few levels later. If that M-U rolled high enough on Initiative and could cast those spells out there at the top of the combat, a huge swathe of the supposed difficulty would be removed immediately and now the rest of the party could clean up the rest. Thus an encounter meant to be difficult due to disproportional numbers no longer was.

But if you didn't have a caster able to do that and the party instead had to repeatedly face swarms of enemies using just melee... the feeling for the players would of course be different. They might think most combats were hard as hell.

Neither side is right or wrong on this... it all comes down to how players approached their games and how DMs chose to run them. And the only way to see if there was any "proof" that certain problems existed for most tables is to see what TSR and WotC designers attempted to "fix" with each subsequent edition. If something got changed when the new book came out... that's an indicator that perhaps the designers were aware of an issue hitting a lot of the playerbase and their hope to rectify it.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

In my view hit points should be lowered across the board anyway.

You probably know this but might as well say it for anyone new to DMing here.

5e monsters, in WotC and in 3pp books, are presented with an average HP total as well as the HD+CON that gets us there. If a DM wants to lower (or raise) HP within the guidelines, just use a number at the lower (or higher) end.

For example: The basic Ogre in the Monster Manual has 59 HP, which is the average total of 7d10 + 21. Want lower HP according to the designers' intent? Present your Ogres with as little as 28 HP. Want higher? Math it up.