Blog (A5E) Let’s Look At Exploration in Level Up

One of our primary goals with Level Up is to expand and fully flesh out the game’s exploration pillar. There are various ways we’re doing that: we’re giving all characters exploration knacks themed to their character class, we’re making a few tweaks here and there to spells and abilities which interact with that pillar, and we’re writing new journey rules.

Let’s Look At Exploration — Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition (A5E)

One of our primary goals with Level Up is to expand and fully flesh out the game’s exploration pillar.

www.levelup5e.com

 

[Morrus]

One thing that's important about those exploration challenges is that they're player-led. The GM doesn't present a list of options and solutions to the players for them to choose from. Instead, they're just presented with the situation. The suggested solutions are there to help the GM, not the players. Players are encouraged to devise solutions to problems, and the GM adjudicates them, and at no point are the players given a list of possible skill checks. It's all very organic.

 

[ART!]

This approach to supplies seems like a great opportunity for new magic storage items, magic rations, etc. I just got a new crown put on a tooth in a very cold dentist's office, otherwise I'd probably have an idea or two there.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm glad to see the that the encounter challenges here don't stop the party from progressing. It's "you take X penalty if you fail your athletics check to cross the rickety bridge" not "you fail to cross the bridge". The latter method can grind a session to a halt, while the way you did this keeps it moving in an interesting direction. Much more 5e in design.

I'd like to see spells like Goodberry and Tiny Hut not loose too much of their usefulness in service to keeping the exploration pillar interesting. Sleeping under a Tiny Hut should still count as a Haven, for instance. Maybe to mitigate, we could have these kinds of spells use Supplies as a material component?

I don't know about that. As soon as you can create your own haven, a big part of the exploration challenge goes away, it seems to me.

 

[Minigiant]

I don't know about that. As soon as you can create your own haven, a big part of the exploration challenge goes away, it seems to me.

I think the point is that havens won't be close to your destination. Even if your ranger or druid can summon a haven, the party still has to leave it to get to the dungeon or dragon cave. Then they are hit by a demonstorm or walk into a feylord's garden.

 

[Augreth]

I‘m loving this so far!

One thing I missed apparently is fatigue and resolve. How is it defined in A5e?

 

[Morrus]

I‘m loving this so far!

One thing I missed apparently is fatigue and resolve. How is it defined in A5e?

We’ll talk about that later. But I can tell you that they replace exhaustion, and for the latter think Frodo.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

And, inconveniently, food spoils in extra-dimensional spaces, so that bag of holding can carry treasure, but it can’t carry supplies.

Yay!

Critical Failure
Failure
Success
Critical Success
I love the variations of success. I think this could be built out even more, but maybe not in this game...

 

[Augreth]

We’ll talk about that later. But I can tell you that they replace exhaustion, and for the latter think Frodo.

I assumed as much. Exhaustion is one of the rules I use too rarely for my taste, mostly because it is only loosely tied to other rules. So I’m looking forward to a new system here, especially if connected to the safe house rules!

And for resolve rules, I’m excited to see these

 

[rules.mechanic]

I love the variations of success. I think this could be built out even more, but maybe not in this game...

Agree Had a go at this on this thread: Level Up (A5E) - Degree of Success/Failure - esp for Skill Checks, although agree it's the kind of option that may never fit in a core rules book. Expanded it as part of Nebelun’s Pandect of Possibilities (external link), which I've tried to keep A5E compatible since I'm planning to make the switch.

 

[Aoirorentsu]

Love the support for the Exploration pillar, and the encouragement for DMs to think in degrees of success. A couple points, if I may.

First, I'm curious what you're assuming adventurers are doing when they're using these rules. If it's traveling between towns (as in most of the examples), that's not really exploration (i.e., mapping new areas or making discoveries); it's logistics. Which, at least for me, is less engaging even if it's punctuated by interesting challenges. Maybe I just need to look forward to hearing more about those journey rules, in due time.

Second, How many supplies would you expect a typical well-prepared adventuring party to have when, say, they're starting off on a journey? I ask because the "Pests" challenge says on a failure you lose 1d4 supplies, and on a Critical Failure you lose half of your remaining supplies. This can create two weird outcomes. In the first, if I have two supplies when the pests descend upon them, then three quarters of possible Failure rolls (2, 3, and 4 on a d4) are worse than a Critical Failure. That seems wonky narratively and mathematically. In the second weird case, it means a Critical Failure is worse the better provisioned you are for the trip. Like, if my party brings 40 supply, they lose 20. If they bring 4 supply, they lose 2. If supply is sort of "exploration hitpoints," that's analogous to an attack that deals more damage the more hitpoints you have. Some spells work sort of like this, but they're usually wrapped in flavor I don't see here.

Maybe these are both intentional? Just curious what the thinking is.