D&D General Why Exploration Is the Worst Pillar

[Aldarc]

The 5th edition Dungeon Master's Guide is probably the single best Dungeons & Dragons reference of all editions combined. It may not be laid out the best, but its content is exceptional in comparison.

Good to know it’s getting better, but it still has a long way to go. They really need a Dungeon Apprentice’s Guide

IME, the number one DMG that gets recommended on Twitter, especially for newer GMs, is actually the 4E DMG. That DMG seems to get a LOT of love from people. I think that it really does break down the expectations of GMing quite well.

 

[turnip_farmer]

But, see, this is the problem.

Inventory resources is one of the easiest things to skip over. Food is no problem. Water is no problem. Light is no problem. Ammunition maybe? But, that's combat pillar, so, not really something we need to worry about here.

What in a typical adventurers inventory can be depleted through exploration that can't easily be replaced by a cantrip or a first level spell?

Water. That's a third level spell.

 

[Hussar]

Water. That's a third level spell.

Last time I checked, create water was 1st level. As was Goodberry. Create Food and Water is 3rd, but, Purify Food and Drink, which means you can eat and drink pretty much anything, is 1st.

 

[Yora]

But, see, this is the problem.

Inventory resources is one of the easiest things to skip over. Food is no problem. Water is no problem. Light is no problem. Ammunition maybe? But, that's combat pillar, so, not really something we need to worry about here.

What in a typical adventurers inventory can be depleted through exploration that can't easily be replaced by a cantrip or a first level spell?

5th edition can't do exploration. This is really an exercise in determining how to make rules systems that are capable of it.

I'd go so far to say that exploration is not actually a pillar of 5th edition. It's something that people think should be one, but it's not a key supporting element of the system.

 

[Hussar]

Which maybe means some of those spells and abilities that butcher exploration need to be given a long hard look.

One quick and easy fix: turn all those light-producing cantrips into first-level spells. Boom - as spell slots are a precious resource at low level, always-available magic light pretty much goes away until someone can cast Continual Light in the field.

Lanterns - I'm fine with a lantern or two in the party, but oil is a finite resource (usually) even if you bring a lot of it; and in my game oil is often weaponized: more of it goes into Molotovs than into lanterns. They're constantly running out.

Darkvision: yes, too many species have it; and to cut it back (or better, get rid of a lot of those species as PC-playable) would likely elicit howls of protest.

Another option is to rule that "darkvision" for any surface creature works like what we call ultravision - you're seeing by starlight. Great outdoors when it's clear (i.e. good for several hundred unobstructed feet), not bad outdoors when it's cloudy (half-range), but utterly useless indoors or underground. Do this and suddenly it's only the underground-dwelling species - Dwarves and Gnomes, mostly - that can see well when underground; and even then this vision doesn't work if there's a light source nearby to spoil it (which there almost certainly will be unless the rest of the party are supposed to do their exploring blind).

The Ranger's food-finding ability can easily enough be nerfed such that it only grants the Ranger the ability to always keep herself fed; being able to forage for anyone else isn't in the least bit guaranteed.

If one allows it. I long ago ruled that the Disc always follows the caster around, close enough for the caster to reach what it's carrying but impossible for the caster to board and ride; in part to specifically prevent its use as cheap flying transport for the caster. I also ruled it maintains a constant height above the ground below it equal to that of the caster's waist.

Fair enough, but, again, I thought we were talking about the game as it is written, not the game we want it to be changed to. The argument, I thought, was that exploration in the game is not terribly well supported. What you are saying here is essentially the same thing - that the game basically has a shopping list of things that let us completely bypass (or at least mostly bypass) exploration with little or no resource loss.

As far as the Disk goes, that's an easy work around. The wizard is walking with a rope tied to his waist. The barbarian is holding the rope and riding the disk. If the board gives way, oh well, we just pull up the wizard and move on. Like I said, there's a thousand ways around pretty much any exploration stuff if you want to do it. And, again, since it costs virtually nothing, why wouldn't you do it?

I guess, for me anyway, is if I have to start rewriting races, classes, spells and various other elements just to support basic elements of exploration, then, well, it's pretty fair to say that the game does not support exploration all that particularly well.

 

[turnip_farmer]

Last time I checked, create water was 1st level. As was Goodberry. Create Food and Water is 3rd, but, Purify Food and Drink, which means you can eat and drink pretty much anything, is 1st.

Fair enough, I'd actually forgotten about create and destroy water

 

[Yora]

When the spells were originally created, they existed in the context of wizards having very few spells they can cast. For clerics, every spell they prepare means they can't prepare a healing spell in that slot. And many were of considerably higher level than they were later. The effects still existed all the time, but they used to be much more expensive.

As I see it, exploration was abandoned first. The spells that helped with exploration became pretty much useless because of that, and so they were moved to lower spell levels and enabled to be cast more often or even unlimited to somehow justify their continued presence in the game. Now they are so cheap that they negate the problems they were meant to help with.

 

[Asisreo]

Let's take the "tracking light sources" thing for a moment and pick it apart.

Now, first off, half the party probably doesn't even need a light source - they have darkvision - so, even at first level, the exploration pillar element only applies to half the party. Then, we get into mundane light sources. A torch, sure, lasts for 1 hour. You're going to need quite a lot of those. But, by 2nd level you can afford a lantern pretty easily. Now, you have 6 hours of light per pint bottle. 4 bottles a day if you really want to keep that lantern going all the time. Let's say 3. How long is the group actually going to spend in the dungeon? Two days? Three at the absolute outside? I mean, a 2nd level party probably isn't even up to camping in the dungeon if they can avoid it, but, sure, 3 days.

A gallon of oil to power a lantern for three solid days. Not exactly hard to carry.

Now, let's add magic into the mix. Let's see, cantrips: Light, Dancing Lights, Produce Flame, so, every caster save Warlocks can completely bypass the need for tracking light sources.

This was the point made much earlier in the thread. The reason that exploration in D&D is largely ignored is because it is ridiculously easy to bypass. To the point where it can be pretty much assumed that the party will have the means to bypass nearly all the elements of exploration. Need to scout - well, we've got this flying familiar that can UAV all around all day long. Makes getting lost pretty hard. Need to sneak? There are a shopping list of spells that put rogues to shame. So on and so forth.

The problem with the 5e DMG is that it in no way actually accounts for this. They talk about setting up "interesting encounters" in the wilderness, (DMG p 106), and talk about setting a "marching order". But, absolutely no advice on how to deal with the mountain of resources that your party very likely has to bypass any challenge you want to set out. Oh, noes, there is a narrow, rickety bridge. One Tenser's Floating Disk Ritual later and poof, we're across the bridge with no problems.

The 5e DMG is written with the idea that the group will never actually use any of the renewable resources it will have available. For some bizarre reason, all the advice seems to be grounded in the assumption that groups will consist of 3 fighters and a rogue.

Survival is not exploration. Resource tracking is mostly survival, making discoveries is mostly exploration.

For light, it specifically notes that having a light source of any kind draws the attention of certain creatures, and it does! A creature with darkvision may have not seen the adventurers until they were within 30-60ft of them, but now the adventurers can be seen from miles away and an ambush is more likely. Turn off the lights and you're less likely to have that problem.

Tenser's doesn't really "solve" the bridge problem since the caster themselves don't benefit from it. They'd either have to physically cross the bridge themselves somehow or fly across, using resources. If the wizard falls off, the disk does as well and everyone begins to fall to their death. Its a risk that may or may nor succeed, not an instawin.

If the entire party is getting on the disk, its likely they'll exceed the 500lb weight limit. The least we can expect is that 3 people by themselves will weight around 300lbs and its likely between the gold and equipment they have that you could have a bit more than an extra 200lbs.

 

[Nefermandias]

As a huge 4e fan, I disagree that 4e's tools include any exploration tools. A Skill Challenge is an obstacle, not exploration. I've tried to do exploration in 4e and it is a lot trickier than in ye olde editions, or even 5e.

I wasn't even thinking of Skill Challenges to be honest.
4e had lots of books describing fantastic environments and the way they were written really sparkled the DM's imagination. Healing Surges were the perfect resource for the DM to enforce consequences without too much complication. Martial Practices and Rituals had a whole category dedicated to exploration. The fact that those "spells" were completely separated from the combat stuff made it really easy to balance adventures.

 

[Fanaelialae]

5e allows for mundane resource management, but isn't really oriented towards it. Which, IMO, is a good thing because I've met plenty of folks over the years who consider that the most uninteresting aspect of traditional D&D. If you like mundane resource management, then something like Five Torches Deep is designed for that experience (5e-based 3p RPG).

That said, I played plenty of BECMI and 2e and it wasn't that significant by around level 3 (IIRC) even back then. I'm pretty sure Continual Light was a 2nd level spell, which obviated the need for light sources as anything more than a back up in case of anti-magic zones. Goodberry was 1st level and removed the need for food and water, I believe. Before you say that casters had less slots back then, that's true, but we still used such spells regularly. There were also plenty of classic magic items that removed the need to track mundane resources (Murlynd's Spoon, Endless Decanter, Radiant Sword). It was better than having to waste game time on mundane resource tracking.

Using familiars to scout was also done back then. Admittedly, I think most familiars could only communicate empathically, but you could do a lot with that, even if it was more of a PITA than just talking (basically, it was 20 questions). While, theoretically, there was greater risk if a familiar died, I've never known anyone who was enough of an RBDM to do that to a familiar while it was flying around scouting.

This isn't anything new. If you wanted to enforce resource management back then, you could deal with it, and even today you can deal with it. The first thing my friend did when he ran his desert campaign was to say that spells like goodberry, create water, and create food and water don't function on that dying world. But he also made it a major focus of that setting. Food and water were exorbitantly expensive and hard to come by, and the first few levels involved us adventuring just to have enough to eat and drink to survive.