D&D General Why Exploration Is the Worst Pillar

[Fanaelialae]

But, your friend did throw up their hands and declare his campaign impossible in 5e. Which is why they choose to alter the rules so that their campaign worked.

5e gets a pass that many other games do not (well D&D in general does). And that pass is that the game gets the credit for our work. Here, your friend did work, and changed rules to enable the game they want to play, and you're giving that credit to 5e. Further, you're using your friend work to defend 5e against charges that it doesn't support that kind of play well by saying that if you do the work to take out the parts of 5e that fight against that, then 5e comes through for you and 5e does a great job of doing this kind of play. Yay 5e! It's great that it allows you to fix it, right! I mean... this is primary evidence against your point -- 5e does not support this kind of play, it actively fights against it, but the defense of the 5e system here is to point out how you can ignore the 5e system. That's you, not 5e. That's work you have to do because of 5e. 5e doesn't allow you to make houserules, you have that ability. 5e cannot stop you, just like Monopoly can't stop you from having a rule that Free Parking is a lotto for all payments to the bank to date.

That's nonsense. A small rules tweak doesn't make a game not that game. If I add a Create Food and Water spell to Forbidden Lands, it remains Forbidden Lands. If I remove a fire spell from Forbidden Lands, it remains Forbidden Lands. As "Ship of Theseus" arguments go, this amounts to asking whether it's still the same ship if you scuff the paint a little. Yeah, it's still the same ship.

 

[Ovinomancer]

That's nonsense. A small rules tweak doesn't make a game not that game. If I add a Create Food and Water spell to Forbidden Lands, it remains Forbidden Lands. If I remove a fire spell from Forbidden Lands, it remains Forbidden Lands. As "Ship of Theseus" arguments go, this amounts to asking whether it's still the same ship if you scuff the paint a little. Yeah, it's still the same ship.

So, 5e told your friend to delete spells that interfered with his planned game? 5e showed up and showed him how to do this? You started with 5e, sure, and mostly use 5e, sure, but for goodness sake, 5e does not get the credit for your friend's tweaks -- those were done to change what 5e did and make it work better for your friend. 5e doesn't get the credit for this. Stop giving 5e credit for your friend's creativity and effort.

 

[iserith]

You are not the first person to claim that is a cost. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if you yourself even tried to claim it was a cost earlier in the thread. Perception is one of the most important skills for and build and because of the way the background rules are set up to allow at least any skill choice option almost certain for most logical combos it's not even difficult. It would be very unusual for a group to only have one player with the perception skill and even then its still not really a cost to the group because of how 5e handles surplus mitigates lethality overloafs players with gas in the tank for excessive numbers of encounters and trivializes recovery.

Surprise is an individual thing, not a group thing. It doesn't matter if another PC is keeping watch for danger when I'm foraging. That doesn't help my character avoid automatic surprise if a monster tries to get the jump on the party. So that's the trade-off.

 

[robus]

But, that's presuming that the stakes in any challenge are always death.

From what I‘ve heard from my players, every combat does feel like it has the risk of death (which I’ll take as a compliment ) but really, I think, simply illustrates the information gap between DM and players and just because we think the encounter is no big deal doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel that way.

Same with social encounters, the stakes always feel higher to the players and that’s a good thing.

 

[Fanaelialae]

So, 5e told your friend to delete spells that interfered with his planned game? 5e showed up and showed him how to do this? You started with 5e, sure, and mostly use 5e, sure, but for goodness sake, 5e does not get the credit for your friend's tweaks -- those were done to change what 5e did and make it work better for your friend. 5e doesn't get the credit for this. Stop giving 5e credit for your friend's creativity and effort.

I'm not assigning "credit". Why do you (or anyone for that matter) care who gets the "credit"?

It seems to me that this is true for basically every game out there, whenever you deviate from the baseline. If I decide that the survival rules in Forbidden Lands are too harsh and tweak them to be easier, then the same applies there. I don't hear you criticizing Forbidden Lands for getting all the "credit".

That said, I don't think it really matters. What matters is what you can do with the rules and how easy it is to do. In my friend's case it was barring a few spells and magic items (he didn't even list them individually, just broadly said that magic that creates or summons food/water doesn't work on that world). He also made rations and water quite expensive. It doubt it took him more than five minutes to come up with the changes and write them down.

You go ahead and assign the "credit" however you please. I'm going to continue discussing what can be done and how one can go about it.

 

[Hussar]

From what I‘ve heard from my players, every combat does feel like it has the risk of death (which I’ll take as a compliment ) but really, I think, simply illustrates the information gap between DM and players and just because we think the encounter is no big deal doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel that way.

Same with social encounters, the stakes always feel higher to the players and that’s a good thing.

Fair enough. I can get behind this.

 

[Imaro]

Nope. And you know why? Because my NPC's aren't there to screw over the players by "making challenges" and generally being blindingly stupid. And, because my players know that my NPC's won't be used this way, let's call it the Walking Dead NPC, where the NPC will blunder into danger after danger, expecting the players to bail them out, they actually engage NPC's and spend time with them. NPC's are no longer an albatross around their neck but an actual resource and possible source of information and exposition.

So, no, my NPC's don't try to make friendly with the zombies. My NPC's don't wander off from the group in dangerous areas. My NPC's hit the floor when the midden hits the windmill and my players know that.

But, again, can we please stop with the Oberoni stuff? Howzabout a little good faith arguing and trying to actually engage instead of making massive presumptions about how my game is run? Just for a change.

How is creating challenges for the players... "screwing them over". I am being serious when I say I don't understand this. The point of the game is to overcome challenges and be rewarded... if creating challenges is screwing over the players... why are they playing the game?

 

[Hussar]

I'm not assigning "credit". Why do you (or anyone for that matter) care who gets the "credit"?

It seems to me that this is true for basically every game out there, whenever you deviate from the baseline. If I decide that the survival rules in Forbidden Lands are too harsh and tweak them to be easier, then the same applies there. I don't hear you criticizing Forbidden Lands for getting all the "credit".

That said, I don't think it really matters. What matters is what you can do with the rules and how easy it is to do. In my friend's case it was barring a few spells and magic items (he didn't even list them individually, just broadly said that magic that creates or summons food/water doesn't work on that world). He also made rations and water quite expensive. It doubt it took him more than five minutes to come up with the changes and write them down.

You go ahead and assign the "credit" however you please. I'm going to continue discussing what can be done and how one can go about it.

I think you're missing the point though. @Ovinomancer is pointing out that the changes that your DM made were done by the DM, and the verbiage surrounding D&D Exploration Pillar basically was zero help. And, the reason the DM made these changes is because of what the DM realized needed changing in order to make the campaign work better. Just like we should not credit games for being rules absent, we can't really credit games for helping your make these changes when the wording of the game doesn't actually tell you to make these changes.

IOW, it is not a strength of the system that these changes can be made. It's that your DM was a bright enough spark to recognize, probably through play experience, that these baseline elements in the game are going to play silly buggers with the campaign he (sorry, presuming he) wanted to run.

AFAIK, there aren't any rules options in 5e that say, "Hey, the following spells/powers/class abilities are going to play merry hell with your campaign if you what to do X. These are the main culprits you're going to want to strip out of the game before play starts."

 

[Imaro]

I'm really tired of people insinuating that anyone that doesn't like the type of challenges they like or the lethality level they like or simply play someone who has more survival instinct than Walt Disney allowed a lemming is boring or off genre.

Maybe I don't like a burden placed on me by an NPC. Maybe my characters need actual motivation to act and maybe they also would rather not die. And maybe I don't want to generate a new character every other session.

This entire discussion is about... challenges and how to increase, better present, create them for the exploration tier...

 

[Hussar]

How is creating challenges for the players... "screwing them over". I am being serious when I say I don't understand this. The point of the game is to overcome challenges and be rewarded... if creating challenges is screwing over the players... why are they playing the game?

@Imaro - I've explained it as well as I can. I'm sorry, I don't know what else to say. If you cannot see the difference here, I cannot help you.