D&D General Why Exploration Is the Worst Pillar

[Vaalingrade]

I wonder when 'white room theory' will overtake 'the DM can change the rules' for worst defense of the rules.

 

[iserith]

I'm not terribly surprised by that though considering that 5e D&D was deliberately designed as an omni-edition meant to bring back fans from pre-4e editions. So is what you are describing a flaw or an intentional feature?

I don't know. It just is what it is and I adapt accordingly.

 

[Asisreo]

Why would the druid be dealing with writing on a desk or searching a rug? That's not what the druid is there for. If needed, the druid can bypass the stone door. The wizard can read anything written on the desk as well as either Mage Hand or Unseen servant to move stuff around to look under it or whatnot.

Why are you insisting that the druid, of all characters, be the one to solo this room without any input from the rest of the group? But, instead you are going down the route of "one person boss them around". Has nothing to do with that. I play D&D as a team. Which means that everyone brings something to the table that other characters don't. You want a fantastic scout? My Moon Druid is the best that there is. You want something read? Well, that's more the wizard's wheelhouse.

For reference, the rogue was going to try picking the lock to the iron door. Likely to succeed.

The cleric was going to read the notes. He would have noticed a small wooden lever on the desk. He would inform everyone that the notes talks about a forbidden ritual involving human sacrifices to become a lich.

The wizard would pull every book from the bookshelf with mage hand and read through them. They're all research textbooks but one of them is connected to a mechanism that makes an audible click, but doesn't make any apparent changes.

The barbarian would have peeked through the door and relayed that its a dark room with a strange orb in the center atop a pedestal and several corpses in the room.

So this is a team effort. I was giving you the benefit of the doubt so you, as an actual player, wouldn't be railroaded as any of these actions can be replaced by investigating the red carpet.

There's communication, but as I said, its investigation mode and there isn't anything to discuss since the basis of the room is shared with everyone already.

 

[thirdkingdom]

I think you have to consider the much narrower focus of the original game though. It really was a game about what you can carry into and out of a dungeon while weighing the risks of how deep you go. To that end, having spells and effects that destroy equipment makes a lot of sense because it puts at risk limited resources that are important to surviving the dungeon.

In D&D 5e, the game isn't focused on just that one thing. So it would make very little sense to have a fireball that always has a chance to blow up people's stuff because it wouldn't be a good fit for the subset of games where equipment isn't as important. For many groups in my experience, they pick their adventuring gear and much of it rarely sees use. It's not important to whatever it is they are spending the most time on (sitting around the tavern, shopping, interviewing quirky, cagey NPCs, for example).

If one is running a D&D 5e adventure or campaign that is focused on the classic town-to-dungeon experience, however, the DM can include monsters that destroy or degrade equipment (oozes, rust monsters, for example), traps and hazards that do the same, and simply have monsters and NPCs target objects. For instance, I mentioned having monsters attack the PCs' lantern upthread. Further, for any given ability check, a DM might say a failed check results in achieving the goal, but at the cost of a piece of equipment ("progress combined with a setback") if it follows logically.

Not only that, but everything in dungeon exploration is based on the 10-minute turn as a unit of time. Your character's exploration movement is measured in turns, and is defined as a "safe" speed to move, have a chance to notice secret doors, not set off traps, not make too much noise, etc. Thoroughly searching a 10' x 10' area takes one turn. Random encounter checks are rolled for every two turns, torches last for six turns, the adventurers need to rest every 6th turn (the idea is that dungeons are inimical to surface-life, to the point that normal rations spoil if brought into a dungeon, and the adventurers need to spend significant time resting to recuperate from the foul air, stress of slow moving, etc.).

It becomes a challenge to get in and out with as much treasure as possible while avoiding as many fights as possible (each fight also triggers a wandering monster check). I'm not super familiar with 5e, so not sure how easily the 10-minute turn would be to adapt to play (or some variant thereof).

 

[Ovinomancer]

Not only that, but everything in dungeon exploration is based on the 10-minute turn as a unit of time. Your character's exploration movement is measured in turns, and is defined as a "safe" speed to move, have a chance to notice secret doors, not set off traps, not make too much noise, etc. Thoroughly searching a 10' x 10' area takes one turn. Random encounter checks are rolled for every two turns, torches last for six turns, the adventurers need to rest every 6th turn (the idea is that dungeons are inimical to surface-life, to the point that normal rations spoil if brought into a dungeon, and the adventurers need to spend significant time resting to recuperate from the foul air, stress of slow moving, etc.).

It becomes a challenge to get in and out with as much treasure as possible while avoiding as many fights as possible (each fight also triggers a wandering monster check). I'm not super familiar with 5e, so not sure how easily the 10-minute turn would be to adapt to play (or some variant thereof).

This hasn't been true for many editions.

 

[thirdkingdom]

This hasn't been true for many editions.

That's true, but this thread is also tagged as "General D&D", not just 5e.

 

[iserith]

Not only that, but everything in dungeon exploration is based on the 10-minute turn as a unit of time. Your character's exploration movement is measured in turns, and is defined as a "safe" speed to move, have a chance to notice secret doors, not set off traps, not make too much noise, etc. Thoroughly searching a 10' x 10' area takes one turn. Random encounter checks are rolled for every two turns, torches last for six turns, the adventurers need to rest every 6th turn (the idea is that dungeons are inimical to surface-life, to the point that normal rations spoil if brought into a dungeon, and the adventurers need to spend significant time resting to recuperate from the foul air, stress of slow moving, etc.).

It becomes a challenge to get in and out with as much treasure as possible while avoiding as many fights as possible (each fight also triggers a wandering monster check). I'm not super familiar with 5e, so not sure how easily the 10-minute turn would be to adapt to play (or some variant thereof).

Ten-minute "turns" works just fine in D&D 5e and integrates well with ritual use and spell durations, plus wandering monster checks at 10, 30, or 60 minute intervals. It's the benchmark I use for most exploration tasks in a dungeon. I have the given exploration task cover 1000 square feet though (bit bigger than 30' x 30' room).

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Pathfinder 2e uses 10 minute exploration 'turns' as well, though the GM can opt to use a longer scale if it makes sense, but its the minimum time for activities in exploration mode. Which is neither here nor there I guess, but its interesting to see a very very modern system using it in such a relatively explicit way.

 

[Laurefindel]

One of our 3e games was wilderness and exploration-heavy and I developed a concept of "overland round", complete with overland actions, overland movement (and move-equivalent actions), overland free actions, overland full actions etc, and a 1-mile-trek analogue to the 5-foot-step.

It work really well as a codified abstraction of an adventuring day. It didn't translate as well to 5e because this edition is not as codified as 3e was, but we got a lot of mileage out of it (ha!) back then

 

[thirdkingdom]

One of our 3e games was wilderness and exploration-heavy and I developed a concept of "overland round", complete with overland actions, overland movement (and move-equivalent actions), overland free actions, overland full actions etc, and a 1-mile-trek analogue to the 5-foot-step.

It work really well as a codified abstraction of an adventuring day. It didn't translate as well to 5e because this edition is not as codified as 3e was, but we got a lot of mileage out of it (ha!) back then

In B/X (and I believe AD&D, as well) the distance scale automatically switches from feet to yards while the timescale remains the same. So, a character that moves 30' per round while in a dungeon moves 30 yards per round out of doors. This affects spell ranges (but not AofE), encounter distance, etc.