NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Campbell" data-source="post: 7824474" data-attributes="member: 16586">[USER=996]@Tony Vargas[/USER]Exploration mode is essentially a modern more gamified version of the 10 minute turn for dungeon exploration in classic versions of Dungeons and Dragons. The game has a number of defined activities that have the Exploration tag which means they cannot be used in encounter mode. These have a cost in terms of minutes.Most of these take 10 minutes which is the basic unit of time most of time in exploration mode. Examples include Treat Wounds use of Medicine, Refocus which allows you to regain a focus point to power your focus spells, Repairing a shield, etc. Some can take a shorter amount of time like Diplomacy's Make An Impression to adjust NPC attitude which requires a minute of conversation. Some can take much longer like Medicine's Treat Disease which requires 8 hours of care.There are a specific set of mutually exclusive defined activities meant to be used while on exploring, which basically means on the move. This includes searching, avoiding notice, scouting which grants an initiative bonus if an encounter occurs, being on the defensive which means you automatically have your shield raised if an encounter occurs, investigating which allows you to use recall knowledge against anything you see along the way with a specific skill, and follow the expert which allows you to do the same activity as someone else but benefit from their expertise. These all affect the rate at which you can move through your environmentYou can still use encounter mode activities in exploration mode and there is a lot of guidance on how to improvise things that are not covered. So far exploration mode feels really fluid in play. Often we set up standard activities for each character while on the move.The last Pathfinder Society game I was in our fighter was the trap finder and medic. Our rogue mostly skulked about. My Barbarian often used Investigate since he was trained in Arcana and Society. Our Wizard also skulked about. The Druid retained a defensive posture. We changed things out from time to time as well. These activities being mutually exclusive and having an impact on moving and the advantages that transfer to encounter mode mean things still feel relatively tense outside of encounters.So far this is my personal favorite part of Pathfinder Second Edition. It is a seriously good dungeon crawler. The amount of focus and attention paid to noncombat activities is huge in this game. This is one of the many areas where it takes a feature of classic Dungeons and Dragons and makes it more accessible to the modern audience.</blockquote>

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