D&D 5E Exploration Rules You'd Like To See

[Blackbrrd]

I think you should do the same thing after x failures as you do after 4-8-12 successes. You proceed on the success-tabel - or in this case Calamity table. In other words, after repeated failures you start rolling on a worse calamity table.

At the same time I really do feel it should be possible to reverse the effect of failed rolls. From my example above where one of the party kept the dwarves waiting for the players to succeed way past their normal patience.

 

[I'm A Banana]

What are the characters attempting to accomplish? <-- this is typically defined in systems I've seen
What are the characters risking? <-- this is typically undefined, nothing, or the risk is the encounter devolves into a combat in systems I've seen
How difficult is the opposition? <-- this is typically handwaved or set to "appropriate for the party level" in systems I've seen

I think you're right, here. There's a real need to define these things. If we look at exploration in general:

The players are trying to accomplish getting from Point A to Point B. They don't necessarily know where Point B is (ie: it could be a MacGuffin or a hidden lair or whatnot), but they know they gotta get there.

The players are risking...ultimately, I think, they're risking their lives. In early editions, the random encounter was potentially deadly. So were some of 3e's weather hazards. Starvation and thirst can be deadly, and you could catch diseases, or break something and be forced to ground. This has been largely de-fanged and handwaved because it's been complicated to actually account for in the systems we have, but I think this is an area where we can have a lot of improvement. It should be scary to go on a three day's journey into the wilderness, not just "time passes, and you arrive at the next combat encounter." Traps fall into the same camp -- falling into a pit should be possibly deadly, not just "lost some HP!" and a continuing on.

That's, I think, why "time" becomes an issue. Time itself isn't a problem, but if you spend more time in a hazardous environment, that's just more "actions" the environment gets against you. The more encounters you face, the more your supplies dwindle, the more you hit potentially deadly hazards.

The opposition is mostly environmental, but it can range in difficulty. Walking a well-worn path shouldn't be very risky (maybe some bandits or something), but walking into trackless wilderness should be potentially deadly for low-level characters, and things like blizzards and tornadoes should still be potentially deadly even for high-level characters. At the highest levels, they can maybe deal with supernatural weather -- acid snow or blood rains or whatever.

I think a big thing is working on that deadliness of the opposition. Random encounters haven't been scary for a while now...maybe it's time to bring back the idea of potentially dying when you go into an unexplored section of the map, not from monsters, but simply from a hostile environment.

 

[Stormonu]

I agree there should be the potential of death from certain failed challenges, but it shouldn't be the only result of a failed challenge.

One 10' kobold pit in the wilderness probably won't kill you, but with a badly failed challenge check traversing through the wilderness, encountering such a pit filled with pungi sticks and/or a tiger just might.

But failure shouldn't necessarily be automatically you fall in the pit, get impaled and then mauled/eaten.

You could fall in the pit, but miss the spikes and have a chance to get hauled out by the other PCs before the tiger catches you. Maybe you catch the edge and the other PCs need to help you up before you loose your grip or the tiger drags you in. Perhaps you manage to avoid the pit but the tiger jumps out and is very, very hungry and angry. Perhaps you not only avoid the pit, but calm the tiger and it stalks away. You might even not only circumvent the pit, but manage to befriend the tiger and it joins the party! Or perhaps you stumble across the pit as it is being dug by the kobolds, ambush them and take them prisoner - and you can try ransoming them back to their tribe.

In other words, there should be possible degrees of failure - and success as well. Perhaps even a bit of both at the same time. You don't necessarily have to wait until X number of checks pass before you apply benefits or penalties - combat encounters show us that.

 

[Zustiur]

I cannot XP KM, but would do so 10 times for even starting this thread. Post #2 is pure gold.
It may be that the skill challenge concept is the answer, but I'm not convinced.
Certainly, I agree that Succeed/Fail is not sufficient. Combat has an infinite scale of variation in outcome, from succeed with no damage and no spell use, right down to TPK. Non-combat challenges should have a similar level of variation.

How we achieve that is currently beyond me. Quickleaf has an excellent starting point, but it feels far too adventure specific. What I'm looking for is a series of mechanics which don't require the DM to sit down and spend prep time on making up random chance tables.

The boon/bane yes/yes but/no but/no idea has a lot of merit too.
I feel that does a good job of approximating it's combat equivalent - damage.

Failure without consequence should rarely be an option. e.g. a rogue picking a lock. In 2e - a failure means you can't succeed until you've levelled up. That lock has defeated you. Failure in 3 & 4 just means you try again. If this happens outside of combat, then time is not an issue, in which case, why roll?
No, there needs to be consequences. Fail by X = the lock is jammed and cannot be picked, nor opened with the key. Fail by Y = the lock has outsmarted you, you'll need to change the circumstances before trying again (different picks, go up a level, whatever). Fail by z = you've broken a pick.
Succeed by x, you open the lock but break a pick. Succeed by Y, you open the lock, but it took 10 minutes, not 6 seconds. Succeed by Z, you open the lock quickly and quietly.
These are just a few examples of an infinitely sliding scale.

Another sliding scale - Time
To pick a lock takes 5 minutes. The roll compared with the DC determines how many fewer or extra minutes it took. Failure is only an option with really bad rolls.

Sticking with the pick lock example, you could also say that during combat, the rogue picks one tumbler per attempt. A sufficiently bad fail means having to start again. While outside of combat (and other time sensitive situations), you simplify this to a single roll and use that roll to determine time taken.

That's how I see things working for individual skill uses. What I want is an extrapolation of that which governs the entire exploration pillar.

 

[I'm A Banana]

One 10' kobold pit in the wilderness probably won't kill you, but with a badly failed challenge check traversing through the wilderness, encountering such a pit filled with pungi sticks and/or a tiger just might.

I think the question then becomes: "What effect does that 10' kobold pit have?"

At the moment, the effect is largely nil. Even if you loose some HP, in 5e, you gain all that back with a night's rest, and most exploration sessions probably happen over multiple nights.

So now what we kind of need is an "exploration" equivalent of HP: something that you can lose by dropping down into a kobold pit that doesn't come back when you take a full night's rest -- that only comes back when you're back in town, out of "exploration" mode. Something that, when you run out, you still die. Falling down one kobold pit probably won't kill you, but if you fall down enough of them, you're probably going to break something important.

The alternative to this extra point pool is to make HP do this duty, too, much like they did in old school D&D, but if we're tethered to the idea of HP returning with a night's rest, that's not going to be viable.

One possibility might be an "injury track" similar to 4e's disease track. Fall into a kobold pit, maybe you have full HP still, but now you have a Broken Leg, or a Skull Wound or something that continues to affect you no matter your HP. These injuries can get worse with time (infections, etc.) or better, but HP healing doesn't undo them, and the problems they give you last between extended rests.

That's a little fiddly, but it might not be a bad starting point...

 

[Nagol]

I think you're right, here. There's a real need to define these things. If we look at exploration in general:

The players are trying to accomplish getting from Point A to Point B. They don't necessarily know where Point B is (ie: it could be a MacGuffin or a hidden lair or whatnot), but they know they gotta get there.

The players are risking...ultimately, I think, they're risking their lives. In early editions, the random encounter was potentially deadly. So were some of 3e's weather hazards. Starvation and thirst can be deadly, and you could catch diseases, or break something and be forced to ground. This has been largely de-fanged and handwaved because it's been complicated to actually account for in the systems we have, but I think this is an area where we can have a lot of improvement. It should be scary to go on a three day's journey into the wilderness, not just "time passes, and you arrive at the next combat encounter." Traps fall into the same camp -- falling into a pit should be possibly deadly, not just "lost some HP!" and a continuing on.

That's, I think, why "time" becomes an issue. Time itself isn't a problem, but if you spend more time in a hazardous environment, that's just more "actions" the environment gets against you. The more encounters you face, the more your supplies dwindle, the more you hit potentially deadly hazards.

The opposition is mostly environmental, but it can range in difficulty. Walking a well-worn path shouldn't be very risky (maybe some bandits or something), but walking into trackless wilderness should be potentially deadly for low-level characters, and things like blizzards and tornadoes should still be potentially deadly even for high-level characters. At the highest levels, they can maybe deal with supernatural weather -- acid snow or blood rains or whatever.

I think a big thing is working on that deadliness of the opposition. Random encounters haven't been scary for a while now...maybe it's time to bring back the idea of potentially dying when you go into an unexplored section of the map, not from monsters, but simply from a hostile environment.

Thinking about the game systems I turn to when I want an exploration game, I find that I lean towards games with long or unpredictable refresh rates for player abilities with the most reliance on games where part of the reason to explore is finding refreshes (like consumable magic items).

It's not so much that the characters are risking little; there is little impetus to push into the next cave. There is little to no attrition or sense or dwindling opportunity to adventuring stuations.

 

[Ferghis]

One of the main things that is coming into focus is the need to determine some kind of scaling penalty appropriate for for failure. Skimming through the thread, several have been proposed.

Death - extreme, but appropriate as a determination of ultimate failure.
Delay - only a penalty if time is of the essence, and therefore needs to be defined by the adventure.
Injury - needs special rules to make any real impact. Could be measured in surges or HD, but only if they are problematic to recover.
Disease - needs special rules to make any real impact. There is a nice 4e framework for this, so it's less laborious.
Loss of property - this is an easy to implement, but anything more than money and fungible goods (possibly including consumables) is scorned in 4e. If magic items are less "incorporated" into a character, this would be more acceptable.
Loss of assistance - henchmen, companions, whatever they might be. Same as loss of property.
Loss of plot-advantage - such as the direct path to the McGuffin, this can only be defined in a given adventure.

 

[Ferghis]

Mirroring the penalties, there is a reward issue. I've always found that one of the more exhilarating moments of play is when a player manages to have an impact on the adventure in an unforeseen manner. While the DM and adventure author's jobs are to put obstacles in front of the PCs, the PCs should also be able to come up with ways to shortcut towards their ultimate goal without skipping their entire adventure. Successful implementation of both scripted and unscripted efforts might yield the following rewards:

Item or McGuffin - could be recovering lost property, this need not be the ultimate goal of the adventure, but should be useful to some degree, whether to further the plot or boost the party's capabilities.
Shortcut - the opposite of a delay, this success should give the characters some breathing room when time is of the essence.
Healing - these are the remedies for injury, disease, and possibly death.
Social Advantage - could be recovering the assistant lost as a penalty, making a new contact, or earning a favor. This need not be immediately useful: I've seen DMs use this kind of thing as an excuse to provide the party with a mysterious ace up their sleeve should a particular encounter go badly.

There is a core problem that posters above have highlighted: this shouldn't be JUST a series of skill rolls. Thought and choices should affect the implementation of these rules, and I've rarely seen the DM simply implement a series of rolls. They almost always tell players to explain the goal of a particular roll, and the announced result is in line with the implementation. But I'm not sure how to formalize rules expressing this.

 

[Stormonu]

There is a core problem that posters above have highlighted: this shouldn't be JUST a series of skill rolls. Thought and choices should affect the implementation of these rules, and I've rarely seen the DM simply implement a series of rolls. They almost always tell players to explain the goal of a particular roll, and the announced result is in line with the implementation. But I'm not sure how to formalize rules expressing this.

From my experiences with what I've written before (especially the social system I wrote up), I think formal rules would be a mistake. We do need good guidelines, brief but elegent skill rules and a framework that inspires and promotes building interesting challenges (4E comes closest, but doesn't quite make it over the hump).

I think one of the challenges D&D faces is that skills are a relative latecomer to the game, and they have never been as well defined as say, the combat rules. With such inequality between the two systems (and in essence attacks are skill rolls, where AC is the DC - likewise for saves), I think we will be harded pressed to codify something that's flexible, elegant and enjoyable until the two "sides" are brought more into line and given the same value at the table by players and DMs alike.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=1544]Zustiur[/MENTION] My mad experiment with the skill challenge was going off the premise: what would the monster analogue be for exploration? If the DM bought the Exploration Manual, and turned to a page what might they see?

It sounds, however, that folks are more interested in fundamental systems of D&D which impact exploration - HP, rest and recovery, skills, diseases, tracking rations/water, etc.