D&D General Why Exploration Is the Worst Pillar

[iserith]

Even if the DM is utterly clueless (or simply doesn't care) about exploration, natural explorer gives expertise on a potential number of skills (certainly survival, preception and investigation) in the rangers favored terrain plus a host of other benefits (admittedly of limited use without proper exploration usage) . Cany gives one. Now the 6th and 10th level abilities are better, but still.

Canny's expertise is all the time though and Natural Explorer's Wisdom and Intelligence check bonuses must be related to the favored terrain. That's better if you're mostly in your favored terrain, but given the propensity of DMs to run city-based adventures and how much shopping and interviewing of quirky, cagey NPCs people do, best to just take Canny's expertise in Persuasion.

 

[Mort]

Canny's expertise is all the time though and Natural Explorer's Wisdom and Intelligence check bonuses must be related to the favored terrain. That's better if you're mostly in your favored terrain, but given the propensity of DMs to run city-based adventures and how much shopping and interviewing of quirky, cagey NPCs people do, best to just take Canny's expertise in Persuasion.

Woo, I can make a foppish ranger who can't tell a tree from a cactus - and gets lost walking from one end of the street to the other!

 

[iserith]

Woo, I can mage a foppish ranger who can't tell a tree from a cactus - and gets lost walking from one end of the street to the other!

Urchin background so you can get lost twice as fast!

 

[Lanefan]

Now, why on earth am I futzing about with these magic items when all I have to do is wait a bit, and bang out an Identify - heck, 10 minutes is all it takes if it's in my spellbook - and get all that information without a single risk to my character? Knowing that it's entirely possible that you have magic items that will instantly kill my PC, why on earth would I take the risk?

As part of casting Identify involves touching the item, the risk remains (though maybe reduced).

Never mind that it costs 100 g.p. per casting.

I see, though, that 5e has been generous enough to take out the 8-point Constitution drain (recoverable 1 per hour) that 1e Identify had; which is a shame, in that the Con drain acts as a formidable dissuasion to casting the spell too frequently.

Again, in 5e, after 10 minutes, I can get everything you just wrote there without expending a single resource. Why would I not do that? What is the benefit of blindly fiddling with magic items when fiddling is guaranteed to kill my character/lead to false results (as in example 6)?

At the very least it'd take you 60 minutes; unless you allow Identify to work on more than one item per casting.

This is the point that's been made all through this thread. DM's are expecting this to be this big exploration scene - fun trying out magic items. The game gives me 100% accurate, no fail means of resolving this without expending a single resource except time. And, fiddling about with the magic items will take the same time or more anyway. So, I'm not even losing time.

Field-testing magic items is far more interesting than banging in an ID, though. Round here, ID is a last resort, used only if field-testing gives no results or if there's a need to fine-tune the info (e.g. field-testing shows it's a Wand of Lightning, but how many charges does it have and is it rechargeable?).

It's very much like the Ranger thing. Yup, having the ranger means you will unerringly find your destination given enough time. Without the ranger though, you will never reach that destination because you will get lost, which will take far, far more time. What is the benefit of engaging with the exploration pillar here? If using the abilities of the character is bad and not playing the game, then what is the benefit of not using those abilities?

The problem here is that for some reason the rules end up trending toward absolutes, where it should more revolve around improvement (or not) of odds. Having a Ranger shouldn't guarantee you'll always find your destination, just greatly improve the odds. Flip side: not having a Ranger shouldn't guarantee you'll never find your destination; it should instead mean your odds of doing so are lower.

To put it another way, if you don't want me to bypass your exploration pillars, you better make it worth my time to not bypass them. I remember dealing with one DM years ago when we had to do this overland travel thing. My character, a Binder (3e) could summon a Huge monster (centipede AIR) at will for an hour. So, we hopped on the giant centipede, which had a climb speed, and set off overland at a dead run, because, well, killing the centipede didn't mean anything, I could just summon another. Meaning that we were moving at 4X speed overland and able to bypass any obstacle (within reason) because we had a mount with a climb speed. The journey that was supposed to take days took us hours instead.

That Binder ability sounds a bit broken unless the character was stupendous level, but what else would I expect from 3e?

I see the same sort of thing all the time with creative use of Fly and-or Levitate spells; and at higher levels, long-range travel spells. I've become used to it. That said, as I don't have ritual casting or at-will cantrips spells are a very limited resource; meaning every Fly they cast is one less Fireball in their arsenal for the day.

And, frankly, that's the sense that I'm getting from everyone that is so adamant about how exploration is this hugely rewarding pillar. It's not that spells and powers can bypass these challenges. They most certainly can. It's that these spells and powers are bypassing the DM's precious challenges and the DM, instead of dealing with the fact that the DM made a mistake and didn't recognize what the party could do, starts railroading the party back into line to force them to start engaging with the exploration pillar on the DM's terms.

I don't have too much of an issue with spells and powers bypassing exploration, truth be told, except at very low level; though as noted above, I'd never want to see these things give auto-success, just improve the odds. My bigger issue is with spells and powers that make Thieves and Rogues redundant.

 

[Hussar]

Sure, if that's why the DM is doing it, that's arguably bad DMing.

However, that is NOT the only possible reason. Maybe the DM had already established in his notes that this river floods during the rainy season. He didn't know whether the PCs would even be out that way, but they happen to head that way during rainy season, and sure enough the river is flooded.

Just because something inconvenient happens doesn't mean the DM is out to get you.

And, yet, funnily enough, these things ONLY happen when the DM wants the players to do something. And, also, funnily enough, it's ALWAYS "rainy season" whenever we're travelling.

 

[Hussar]

If you have the time, of course. In my experience, the players wait until they can take a rest--and then, most often a long rest--before they start casting spells like identify. Which means they either have to use the items (and potentially get cursed) or not use the items (and potentially lose out on a useful ability). I've never had any of my players decide to just stop what they were doing to cast identify.

Why? It's 10 minutes. You never take a short rest? The party takes a short rest, the wizard shock doesn't and you now have identified all 6 items without any risk to yourself.

Also, one of the things about cursed items is that the spell won't tell you an item is cursed (unless the item's description specifically says that). A legend lore might, but that's a heck of a lot more powerful a spell.

Plus: 100 gp pearl required as a material component, which yeah, you can likely buy at any city but maybe not at a village or town, and you can't definitely buy out in the middle of nowhere. Hopefully you can find one in a pile of treasure, but that's not a given.

You really need to stop quoting rules. Spell components are only used if the spell states that it's used. So, why am I buying pearls in the middle of nowhere again?

So... if the DM includes exploration encounters and hazards, then the only possible explanation is railroading? Not that the DM is trying to include travel as part of the game? I mean, if you're dungeon crawling, you don't just teleport from one room to another; you have to walk down the hallways and open the doors, and those hallways and doors are as much part of the adventure as the rooms are.

Yup, when the DM includes elements that deliberately nerf character abilities for the sole purpose of presevering their precious encounter, then, yup, it's railroading. These "floods" and "forest fires" only seem to be included when the party has a ranger. And, if we're only including these elements once in a while, all that means is that the ranger is bypassing the challenge most of the time and, once in a while, when the DM decides to force it, the ranger isn't.

 

[Lanefan]

And, yet, funnily enough, these things ONLY happen when the DM wants the players to do something. And, also, funnily enough, it's ALWAYS "rainy season" whenever we're travelling.

Your DM doesn't use a weather table?

That said, sometimes placing an adventure in a harsh environment (arctic, desert, jungle, etc.) can act as a good change of scenery while also forcing at least a modicum of adaptation from the PCs.

 

[Lanefan]

You really need to stop quoting rules. Spell components are only used if the spell states that it's used.

Sigh. I re-read the spell write-up but didn't check the blanket rulings.

And here I was giving 5e credit for at least keeping that cost per casting.

 

[Laurefindel]

Great. So the only difference between a ranger walking through a forest to get somewhere they know, and a ranger walking through a forest to get somewhere they don't know is time.

Yes. But given enough time, everyone can reach a destination (assuming it’s not obfuscated by magic). The ranger might do it in 2 weeks whereas a “normal“ guide would take 2 months, or do in 10 years what an non-ranger explorer can do in a lifetime. The ranger‘s ability to not-get-lost is good, but it’s not omniscience.

 

[Laurefindel]

Then why all the opposition to what's being said about Rangers? Rangers don't get lost. Full stop. That means that if they have a known destination, they will get there, and they will get there faster than anyone else. If it's an unknown destination, they will still be able to search faster than anyone else. IOW, having a ranger in the party will either bypass or greatly reduce the challenge of an overland exploration challenge.

I mean, I saw it in our Curse of Strahd game. The Ranger had Forest as favored terrain. Guess what? 99% of Barovia is forested. It made overland travel between points in the campaign pretty much automatic. Few levels later, add in Mountains, and you've got the entire campaign covered. Easy peasy. So, this whole "it's hard to get around thing" part of exploration became a moot point with the addition of a single character.

Now, as a DM, you have a choice - either lean into it and accept that this particular challenge isn't really a challenge for this group, or, as so many in this thread have suggested, you start screwing over the ranger player and nerfing his or her abilities to justify your adventure.

I know which option I prefer.

I was about to say that “surely, there must be a middle ground”, but I’m forced to admit that it is a very narrow middle ground, if there is any.

that’s my beef with the exploration pilar and ranger abilities; exploration is not developed enough in 5e to allow the ranger to be better than anyone else because it feels like it’s an all or nothing situation. Either the ranger makes exploration moot (and the player doesn’t get to enjoy their character‘s ability) or the player feels singularly challenged (and doesn’t get to enjoy their character‘s abilities).

ok, that’s a bit of an hyperbole. But you get my drift.