D&D General Why Exploration Is the Worst Pillar

[Baron Opal II]

Isn’t @Hussar and @Chaosmancer point that level 1 druids and rangers have access to goodberry, level 3 clerics and druids have access to create food and water, and level 5 wizards access to Leomund’s (the wizards without using a spell slot)?

So, it seems that “mundane” survival challenges aren’t really a challenge for characters beginning at level 5.

Actually, create food and water is a great spell but not awesome. I hope to get to that in the next couple of days.

Sorry my posts are taking so long, my free time is evaporating.

 

[Oofta]

Then those villages have no reason to exist, especially in your descriptions.

If I make an adventure, I'm not putting false interactables in the game. That's like having the players pass through a bunch of levers that do nothing and act surprised when the players wonder why they couldn't pull at least one.

Plus, if those villages exist, they might want to visit them to search for supplies on the way or ask villagers more information.

You're the DM, you don't get to decide what your players want to do.

Unless I'm missing something, the villages do serve a purpose. It tells the PCs that they're travelling through settled lands not wilderness. They aren't "false interactables", they're just adding to the fabric of the world making it something more than a cardboard cutout world. In pre-industrial times, 80% of the populace lived in little hamlets and villages like this. Small villages scattered about that you could walk to in a half day or less were the norm.

While I understand why it happens, it's always odd to me in fantasy movies/fiction/maps when you just go from wilderness to major city/outpost. Who's doing all the farming? Where is the food coming from? Where do the vast majority of people live?

If the PCs want to stop at a village they always can, but odds are the only news they have is that Olaf's cow is sick and that if they don't get rain soon the barley crop will suffer along with other local gossip. People didn't exactly have ways of spreading news other than word of mouth.

 

[Asisreo]

Isn’t @Hussar and @Chaosmancer point that level 1 druids and rangers have access to goodberry,

Well, Rangers don't get spellcasting at level 2. But putting that aside, if you want food to be rare and dangerous, you can't just have food be rare. You'll have to threaten them with other things.

For instance, Gehenna has an optional rule called Cruel Hindrance which requires a saving throw or a beneficial spell fails.

level 5 wizards access to Leomund’s (the wizards without using a spell slot)?

So, it seems that “mundane” survival challenges aren’t really a challenge for characters beginning at level 5.

This is true, but its what I mean. At level 5, you're beginning to be fantastic so your challenges should be fantastic. You still wouldn't expect a challenge with 4 kobolds against a level 5 party.

For Leomund's, again, you can use fantastic situations. If a Death Tyrant is aware of their position, taking a long rest can subject them to an eye ray, some of which threaten instant death like Petrification or Disintegration.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I'm not pivoting to dismiss what you say, I'm communicating how I perceived your response to give you the ability to address any possible misunderstandings.

Sure, sure.

This means you fall under the camp of those that "dislike how there are features or abilities that bypass these survival aspects." I did address this already and I called it a preference of play as well.

Well, that didn't last long, as here we are pivoting and dismissing by putting me in a neatly labelled box. Because this isn't true. What I showed was that 5e has a lot of interlocking rules for survival that take up page count and appear to be serious rules that require attention and effort. But, immediately, they negate that. I mean, lots of people have pointed out how the spells do it so quickly and better than can be done in the system, but even at 1st level an Outlander Ranger disables most of the rules that are presented. This isn't a matter of not liking abilities that mitigate or even eliminate survival but rather that the rule system is incoherent -- it provides rules as if this is a serious point of decision for the characters and then also provides rules that say "ignore those other rules entirely." There's a pretty big difference.

I've mentioned other games that I think do well by exploration with very few rules and those feature options that bypass or mitigate exploration challenges, they just do so as serious build choice options and they do it in very specific ways that make sense, not just "I can cast spells so mundane things are beneath me."

But, another thing that I see gets completely forgotten is that survival in a forest is easy. I could live off of a fairly lush forest if I can recognize a few edible plants and a clean water source. MacGyver could survive in a fairly barren desert for a relatively long time, so its not all that fantastic either.

What fantastic characters need aren't mundane survival challenges. They need fantastic challenges. Again, you don't have level 20 parties fight 4 kobolds and expect a challenge so why expect level 20 parties to starve in a regular forest.

Well, I think you're vastly overestimating your ability to survive, and certainly overstating exactly how much of your time would be pinned to survival rather than anything else. And that's assuming you have some nice modern accessories to aid you (like a reliable hatchet or a sleeping bag and tarp). But, I actually agree -- I don't want to bother with mundane survival, I want fantastic survival. However, the 5e rules give us mundane survival and then turn it off quickly, and they give us nothing at all about fantastic survival. I certainly don't expect level 20 parties to starve in the woods, but I would expect them to have difficulty in the domain of the Dark God of the Wood, which could be an extraplanar pocket that's entirely shaped by a hostile nature god. And the only thing 5e provides for this kind of things is mundane survival, tools for obviating mundane survival that also tend to act to obviate fantastic survival (I mean, create food and water and tiny hut are great in this situation, obviating any need to deal with the plane's survival problems), and "You're on your own here, GMs!"

You've tried to put me in a box that you can easily close by saying I don't want rules that bypass mundane survival challenges and then providing rather banal examples as if they're my positions while telling me they're silly. I mean, it's not far from what I expected. It's also a pretty bad take.

 

[Asisreo]

What I showed was that 5e has a lot of interlocking rules for survival that take up page count and appear to be serious rules that require attention and effort. But, immediately, they negate that. I mean, lots of people have pointed out how the spells do it so quickly and better than can be done in the system, but even at 1st level an Outlander Ranger disables most of the rules that are presented. This isn't a matter of not liking abilities that mitigate or even eliminate survival but rather that the rule system is incoherent -- it provides rules as if this is a serious point of decision for the characters and then also provides rules that say "ignore those other rules entirely."

I didn't say you disliked the abilities. I said you disliked how the features bypass the survival aspects. I don't think you want to get rid of the spells like goodberry or fly, I think you want survival aspects which can't be bypassed.

However, the 5e rules give us mundane survival and then turn it off quickly, and they give us nothing at all about fantastic survival. I certainly don't expect level 20 parties to starve in the woods, but I would expect them to have difficulty in the domain of the Dark God of the Wood, which could be an extraplanar pocket that's entirely shaped by a hostile nature god.

But we do have these things in the form of Regional Effects and Spells and Planar effects. Its funny, because the most integral challenges for exploration are in the same book as the most integral challenges for combat. Heck, even social.

Water sources near black dragons are fouled. Solars cast Control Weather. Major Image can be used to set permanent illusions. Glyph of Warding. Forbiddance. Antimagic zones. Wildmagic zones. Planar effects.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. They all exist in the book and they're all free for the DM to use. We have fantastic stuff, we just have to use them.

 

[Maxperson]

Example One: You say the guards decide to take you to the king, you arrive in the throne room. Has any exploration taken place?

Maybe. If they have been to the throne room before, then no. They have learned nothing new about the area and have been nowhere new. If they have not been to the throne room before, then they've learned, involuntarily, the route there, what it looks like(presumably), and other information. Going somewhere new is exploration.

Exploration doesn't always require player input.

Example Two: You say the guards take you to the king. You pass through the heavy golden gates of the palace into the courtyard, where dozens of soldiers in enchanted armor train and keep watch. The halls, as you pass through them, as line with statuary and banners of fallen insurgents. Finally, you arrive in the throne room, the carpet is blood red as all eyes turn towards you. Has any exploration taken place?

As above, but with more detail.

All I did was describe more. Which is a good thing, don't mistake that, but I moved from one social encounter to the other, and that was accomplished equally by both examples. You could say that "but the players could interrupt you and go explore the palace, and therefore your description counts as exploration" but by that same token, the players could have jumped the guard and killed him, and therefore my description was combat.

So, I think we are left with three models.

Model 1: Every description of anything for any reason is exploration. Describing the town is exploration, describing a sword is exploration, all of it is exploration.

Model 2: Exploration is passively engaged in. Every time you are not actively in combat or social encounters, you default to being in exploration.

Model 3: There are other parts of the game, perhaps other pillars, that have gone unnamed for the sake of ease and focus. Description may be a tool, but not one associated with any particular pillar, and there are aspects of the game that don't fit in any of the pillars well.


Personally, I think Model 3 is more accurate and best explains our issues. While it seems you are engaging in Model 2.

I agree that model 3 is more accurate, as I stated earlier in the thread. There are things that fall outside the 3 pillars.

 

[FrozenNorth]

For instance, Gehenna has an optional rule called Cruel Hindrance which requires a saving throw or a beneficial spell fails.

This is true, but its what I mean. At level 5, you're beginning to be fantastic so your challenges should be fantastic. You still wouldn't expect a challenge with 4 kobolds against a level 5 party.

For Leomund's, again, you can use fantastic situations. If a Death Tyrant is aware of their position, taking a long rest can subject them to an eye ray, some of which threaten instant death like Petrification or Disintegration.

A couple of points to this.

1) If we are talking about 5th level characters (which we were), saying “yes, but on the plane of Gehanna…” or “yes, but Death Tyrants…” doesn’t really show that exploration challenges are on the same footing. On the contrary, (though I realize this isn’t your intention), it makes it seem like you have to invent contrived examples to provide an exploration challenge to 5th level characters.

2) At 5th level, the party is absolutely still facing mundane social and combat challenges. They can (and on occasion should) face fantastical social and combat challenges, but a bandit captain supported by guards is a good 5th level combat challenge, as are cult fanatics with cultists. Same thing for social challenges. My 7th level party has spent the past few sessions in a city interacting with various NPCs, and there has been virtually no change in the social challenge aspect of the game.

Which I think goes back to the initial point. If mundane exploration challenges are virtually negated at low levels due to common and widespread abilities and spells, it’s normal that DMs find the exploration pillar more frustrating to deal with than the social or the combat pillar.

 

[J.Quondam]

The flip-side to this, of course, is that some DMs might also get frustrated because, whenever they employ the very few methods that are available, they're met with howls of derision from self-assuredly very smart players, who cry how "cliche" it is that this vulnerable NPC wandered away; or how "unfair" it is that their backpack floated away in a flood; or how "adversarial" it is that this bridge was washed out; or how "restrictive" it is to be begged to help a town afflicted by plague.

It tough enough DMing around holey rules with little official guidance, without all this other irrelevant complaining about plotting and tropes and playstyles. Seriously, the most tired cliche in this thread is the cliche of the tyrannical and/or clueless DM whose sole raison d'etre is to persecute players.

 

[iserith]

Which I think goes back to the initial point. If mundane exploration challenges are virtually negated at low levels due to common and widespread abilities and spells, it’s normal that DMs find the exploration pillar more frustrating to deal with than the social or the combat pillar.

I don't understand why the DM should care at all about this. A challenge is there to be overcome (and sometimes they are and sometimes they aren't). The difficulty of the challenge is going to go up or down depending on what decisions the players make given the context of the situation and what resources they're willing to spend on it. So what do I care if the challenge of getting lost, for example, is overcome by a ranger in favored terrain? This should not be frustrating to the DM in my view, no more than successful navigation, resolved by a Wisdom (Survival) check that hits the DC, to overcome the challenge of getting lost would be frustrating.

Also, I will reiterate something that's been said before in this thread: The people who are criticizing the rules for exploration or challenges that employ these rules are very often just assuming that the party has the right composition of classes to overcome the challenge, that they have the right spells and equipment and class features (or, with ranger, are always in their favored terrain), that they have plenty of spell slots, and that there is no risk or trade-off to anything they do. (And to top it off, if they don't, then it's because the DM is adversarial or railroading.) That has never been true in any game I've ever played. Sometimes they have the right tools and solutions; sometimes they don't. If it is true that the party just has everything they need all the time with no risk or trade-off in every game that these posters have played, then we really need to look at what content is being presented in the game and how they adjudicate the PCs' actions in the context of the rules, not the rules themselves.

 

[TheSword]

While I haven't kept up with all of this thread, thinking about what I've read has lead me to the exact opposite conclusion. The three pillars concept is of net negative value. It provides nothing, and only obfuscates and confuses.

The strength of 5e is in its move to universal resolution mechanics, and I think it would aid understanding a lot and help people plan games if they were encouraged to think of things this way, and not separate encounters into arbitrary categories.

I’ve always thought that the three pillars concept was less about trying to be prescriptive and put things in boxes, and more about encouraging us to balanc all three elements for rich satisfying games.

Opportunities to roleplay your interactions with other creatures is satisfying and would be missed if every situation had to be resolved with combat.

Combat can spice up a session and give PCs chance to flex their muscles

Opportunities to interact and explore the world around you adds depth to everything else in the game.

A game with only one or two of these elements would be very dull to my mind. I totally support the DMG pointing all three out to us as a reminder.