D&D General Is power creep bad?

[Snarf Zagyg]

Doesn't seem so hard to defeat.

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[Ondath]

They give the players a chance to opt out of the annoying and arduous parts of it, which is a lot of DM's favorite part.

This is an extremely one-sided way of viewing the situation. Does the exploration pillar have the potential to be dull and boring? Yes, though that's mostly down to the play style (if you're running D&D as a game of smart resource use where going over the details of supply and logistics is the whole challenge, then this is not annoying and arduous, on the contrary it's the whole fun!). If all you want to get to is the "fun part" where you can use your flashy abilities and fight setpiece encounters, exploration is supremely boring. Admittedly, modern D&D has gone quite far away from old-school exploration style, where things like spell slots and use limits to abilities were mostly about resource management, they're now about having cool setpiece battles. But these vestigial rules still exist, and there's a (fun!) reason for them to exist, if you run your game accordingly. All the "annoying and arduous" bits of 5E's rule system, such as managing your inventory, picking minor adventuring gear, checking for random encounters every 20 minutes etc. is part of the core gameplay loop of OSR games, and these games seem to take essentially the same rules as 5E and make them much more interesting. So I think calling exploration annoying and arduous and only something the DM enjoys is unfair.

However, the DMG doesn't teach you how to run exploration as a challenge of logistics, and most people's sensibilities run counter to that now. So Exploration is either this weird timesink that the DMs have a hard time running (because nobody told them how to do it), or you just want to skip over the details ("You make it to the next town where the quest continues..."). The problem that @Micah Sweet has pointed out is that Ranger and Outlander backgrounds imply in the game's fiction that you're a master of these challenges. Logically, people who enjoy the part about surviving in the forest or arduously tracking an enemy would pick these options. But these specific options that cater to the exploration fantasy are the same ones that nullify that pillar - a party with a ranger never gets lost, and an outlander always finds enough food. So there's a massive mismatch between the kind of people who'd like the specific option's fantasy (people who want to run exploration in the old way, or something close to it) and what the option does (make exploration completely obselete).

I think it's very much possible to have an exploration pillar in 5E that isn't annoying and arduous, it's just that WotC doesn't bother catering to that audience anymore. Which is a shame, because completely ignoring that pillar makes some of the design choices that were holdovers from earlier editions even weirder, when these choices could be developed in a way that's fun for everyone.

 

[James Gasik]

As to how Natural Explorer is "power creep", it's the same as calling the ability for Wizards to wear heavy armor power creep- it's not within the same iteration of D&D, but it is power creep if you look at the game as a whole since it's conception.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Let's take a look at Natural Explorer:

Natural Explorer​

Also at 1st level, you are particularly familiar with one type of natural environment and are adept at traveling and surviving in such regions. Choose one type of favored terrain: arctic, coast, desert, forest, grassland, mountain, swamp, or the Underdark. When you make an Intelligence or Wisdom check related to your favored terrain, your proficiency bonus is doubled if you are using a skill that you’re proficient in.

While traveling for an hour or more in your favored terrain, you gain the following benefits:

• Difficult terrain doesn’t slow your group’s travel.
• Your group can’t become lost except by magical means.
• Even when you are engaged in another activity while traveling (such as foraging, navigating, or tracking), you remain alert to danger.
• If you are traveling alone, you can move stealthily at a normal pace.
• When you forage, you find twice as much food as you normally would.
• While tracking other creatures, you also learn their exact number, their sizes, and how long ago they passed through the area.

So if you happen to end up in your favored terrain, you have expertise on all Int and Wis checks, you acquire double food, and can't get lost. That pretty much means the Ranger says "nope, no problems here", and it's only a "ribbon" ability. So the DM could be like "you spend a week to cross the hills" and the players are like "oh we have a Ranger, so we ignore the hilly terrain, so it's only 3 days right?"

So basically, the best feat.

 

[James Gasik]

So basically, the best feat.

Not even a Feat, Rangers get that at level 1!

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm not sure I follow. How have the PHB ranger and the Outlander background "ruined" exploration? And how is either one an example of "power creep"?

Serious questions, not trolling.

That class and that background have features that trivialize exploration challenges to the point where you might as well just say, "After traveling uneventfully for a little while, you arrive at where ever you were going".

 

[Vaalingrade]

Not even a Feat, Rangers get that at level 1!

Should be a feat so anyone can escape logistics without needing the otherwise dead weight of a ranger.

 

[Ondath]

That class and that background have features that trivialize exploration challenges to the point where you might as well just say, "After traveling uneventfully for a little while, you arrive at where ever you were going".

To be fair to the others, since these options were in the PHB from the start, I wouldn't call this power creep but rather bad design. The pillar was already destroyed by the time things like newer backgrounds and spells made it even more trivialised for other class and backgrounds as well.

 

[CleverNickName]

They give the players a chance to opt out of the annoying and arduous parts of it, which is a lot of DM's favorite part.

That's so weird. From what I can tell, the Outlander background gives you proficiency in two skills, a musical instrument, and a language. You get an Origin feature, which is basically a distant land that you visited...no mechanical bonus. You also get the Wanderer feature, that lets you find food and water in the wilderness assuming there are any food and water to be found. And you get the standard PIBF personality traits. I really don't see how any of that "ruins" the exploration tier of the game. Or even how they can be considered "power creep." If the whole exploration tier of the game depends on the party's food supply (and not letting the cleric or paladin cast "create food and water"), your play style is very different from my own.

The ranger class in the PHB is one of the most lackluster classes written, so this feels a bit like picking an easy target, but here goes. Rangers get a Favored Enemy, which gives them a language and advantage on tracking a creature. They get the Natural Explorer feature, which lets you pick one type of terrain and within that terrain, you can't get lost or be slowed down and you find twice as much food (again, assuming there is food to be found...two times zero is still zero.) Eventually the ranger gets 3 different monsters and 3 types of terrain. And again, I don't see how either of these abilities "ruin" the exploration tier. They make travel and wilderness survival easier, for sure--that's the whole point of the ranger--but ruin it? No way. How is it any worse than the wizard's magical mansions and teleport spells?

I'm gonna have to disagree with ya'll.

 

[Reynard]

As to how Natural Explorer is "power creep", it's the same as calling the ability for Wizards to wear heavy armor power creep- it's not within the same iteration of D&D, but it is power creep if you look at the game as a whole since it's conception.

But it is not a "game as a whole" -- they are different games. Calling it power creep shoots wide of the point and suggests a kind of continuity of experience and expectations that just doesn't exist.