Level Up (A5E) Today I am working on Exploration Challenges

[Faolyn]

For the Grove and other places that can be cleansed, are you going to list any potential examples, or is that solely a DM thing?

In the "Vulnerable to Magical Fire" bit, there should be a time limit. Next roll made in the next minute/10 minutes, that sort of thing.

We do have that, but backwards. A Region contains four elements: monsters, exploration challenges, social encounters, and scenery. You can mix and match those (challenges have a CR just like monsters do, so you can treat them as a monster and add them to a monster encounter, or you can add a monster encounter to a challenge) using encounter building guidelines.

Gotcha; makes sense. Thanks!

 

[Stalker0]

The druid grove is very cool, I like the aesthetic and the options provided.

My DM brain though has to note one issue. 4 Treants means nothing for a CR 17 encountering group, its not even a speed bump. I honestly wouldn't even note creatures (afterall, that just means the party would have a combat right?...and who needs that in our exploring!). I would leave it generic, the grove attacks the party....removing X supply.

I have this idea for my next campaign that would a single point of light game, a single small settlement of refugees against a hostile world, with lots of regions. So I am really looking forward to the exploration stuff in level up, I may use it heavily!

 

[Faolyn]

My DM brain though has to note one issue. 4 Treants means nothing for a CR 17 encountering group, its not even a speed bump. I honestly wouldn't even note creatures (afterall, that just means the party would have a combat right?...and who needs that in our exploring!). I would leave it generic, the grove attacks the party....removing X supply.

Acshuallee... I just checked on Kobold Fight Club, and assuming a four-person party, four treants against four 17th-level characters is considered a Deadly encounter. Mind, against a six-person party, it becomes a Medium encounter. </pedant>

Edit: I like your Single Point of Light idea.

 

[Stalker0]

Acshuallee... I just checked on Kobold Fight Club, and assuming a four-person party, four treants against four 17th-level characters is considered a Deadly encounter. Mind, against a six-person party, it becomes a Medium encounter. </pedant>

Edit: I like your Single Point of Light idea.

Well, while I do not agree with that assessment in terms of actual user experience (I don't think 1 17th level character would consider 4 treants deadly, let alone 4), I can't argue with you using official numbers, so I withdraw my concern.

 

[Morrus]

An example of a weather event exploration challenge. So the way weather works with the exploration pillar is that each Region has a little weather table. That table just tells you what the Region's weather is like for the duration (i.e. you don't track it by day unless you really want to!). You roll 1d20, and add 5 if it's winter. Super simple. The thing with that weather though is it's all minor stuff, more about immersion than mechanics; the serious weather events like the one below are Exploration Challenges.

 

[tetrasodium]

Something that might help with some ECs is how the EC itself affects local wildlife, are they trying to flee in panic, mutating/evolving from the EC, being replaced by extraplanar invasive species wandering in across from the manifest zone/ritual site/etc type stuff when relevant

The druid grove is very cool, I like the aesthetic and the options provided.

My DM brain though has to note one issue. 4 Treants means nothing for a CR 17 encountering group, its not even a speed bump. I honestly wouldn't even note creatures (afterall, that just means the party would have a combat right?...and who needs that in our exploring!). I would leave it generic, the grove attacks the party....removing X supply.

I have this idea for my next campaign that would a single point of light game, a single small settlement of refugees against a hostile world, with lots of regions. So I am really looking forward to the exploration stuff in level up, I may use it heavily!

I'm going to agree that in o5e a treant (or even 4 of them) has not really even been a speedbump to a 17th level PC for a long time

Spoiler

Going by the xge multiple monster tables it lists cr9 creatures as something that should be 2 players:1 cr9 creature so it could be LOLdeadly, but the bard healing seems to be pretty hit die limited & I don't think we've seen cure wounds type spells or enough on rests to know how easy or hard recovery would be. Hopefully it's not so much LOLdeadly as clear & more of an immediate "oh. my. god... trynottobreathebackupveryveryslowlybob" where creativity needs to be used

 

[aco175]

I could go for some text block or bullet points to aid the DM in describing the location. I know that there has been some back and forth about read-a-loud text here, but something to help, maybe more on the higher level stuff or more exotic locations.

 

[Morrus]

I could go for some text block or bullet points to aid the DM in describing the location. I know that there has been some back and forth about read-a-loud text here, but something to help, maybe more on the higher level stuff or more exotic locations.

We have to keep them fairly small. Space is at a premium and we have 75 of the darn things!

 

[Faolyn]

Well, while I do not agree with that assessment in terms of actual user experience (I don't think 1 17th level character would consider 4 treants deadly, let alone 4), I can't argue with you using official numbers, so I withdraw my concern.

Honestly, while a treant may be CR 9, CRs are not really all that accurate and treants themselves are pretty weak--low damage attacks and fire vulnerabilities. Now, corrupted treants may have other fun abilities and an army of corrupted animated trees instead of just 1.

 

[dave2008]

This may be my lack of knowledge about exploration challenges, but Slow pace says its counts as a success, but how I don't see anywhere describing how many success are needed, I just see one check called for. Also, does slow pace allow you to avoid Acidic Spray and Dissolving Provisions? I think it would help if you are explicity about what Slow Pace applies too.

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