D&D General Why Exploration Is the Worst Pillar

[robus]

Ooh, the math there is really rough on PCs. 20 successes before 5 failures? That's going to be merry hell, even with the option to remove a failure on a 10+. This is really a rehash of the skill challenges from 4e, and could have stood to have done some more research on how those evolved over 4e -- mainly in the math. I mean, say I have an average of +10 on all relevant checks made in this challenge. The odds I get 20 successes before 5 fails is very slim -- and the only good outcomes are 20 successes before 2 failures. That's nearly impossible. And this isn't even close to the top end of the scale in challenge or difficulty!

Just no pleasing some people Darker Dungeons is supposed to be tough. There’s a lot of complaint that default 5e is too easy.

What I don’t like about 4e skill challenges is the failure count is fixed. IMO this allows more interesting setups and of course you can play with the numbers to suit your table.

 

[Mordhau]

I think puzzles are intended to be part of exploration probably. As seemed clear in the links I posted earlier, the WotC descriptions of exploration I posted a page or two back things like stealth are part of exploration.

Basically the intended pillar seems to work like this.

A: Is it a well-known D&D activity? Y go to B/N go to D
B: If Yes, is it primarily talking or Fighting Y go to D /N go to C
C: It's exploration!
D: It not exploration

I think that thinking of it in terms of the common English meaning of the word just causes confusion. Solving puzzles is something you do while moving around in a dungeon so it's exploration. Sneaking into someone's house is a sterotypically thiefy thing so it's exploration.

It's not that I think that everything that is not talking or fighting is exploration. Certain things are complex enough that they need their own separate subsystems to deal with like domain level play or mass combat so presumably would be new pillars.

I think it's called 'exploration' because WotC always goes back to the dungeon as the default activity of the game with every new edition and therefore designs all the rules around that assumption. It would probably have been better named the "dungeoneering" pillar. That helps to explain why certain stuff like wilderness survival which people tend to intuitvely associate with the term 'exploration' is largely treated in the rules as "boring stuff you skip over with class features". Obviously that's not what they have in mind.

 

[billd91]

Realism, mostly. Using the "search the room" example, if I hide somethine really well in a room - say, in a very-hard-to-detect secret compartment in the floor - and I send 100 different people (or groups) in to search for it, even if they have all day the odds of all 100 groups coming out having found it are negligible. Ideally, if my hiding job is good enough none of them find it; but it's inevitable some will just by fluke and some others will by either skill or deduction or whatever.

This is what I want the game to reflect: that even when there's no pressure you can still blow it; and that even if something's normally beyond one's capability to find sometimes you'll find it anyway by sheer luck. Hence, a roll (ONE roll, no rerolls) determines the best you'll do in this situation, instead of Take-20.

There's nothing realistic about a single random check determining how well a room can be searched given enough time. I'm in the Take 20 camp on that one - you spend the time and do the best you can possibly do. That might still not be enough to find the hidden secret if your search skills aren't good enough. But if you have the time to spend, your result should trend quite a bit higher and closer to your full ability than a single, widely variable d20.

 

[Umbran]

So you're willing to let your players cheat, then.

Mod note:
From this point on, you should make your points without accusing or insulting people.

This isn't an argument for your position - this is a statement that tells the reader that, when faced with differences from your personal preferences, you're willing to treat people very poorly indeed.

 

[Baron Opal II]

You did say that, but we are already in the situation exactly like has been commented on a dozen times now. Removing Ritual MAgic and making Leomund's Tent and changing the text of Goodberry makes all of those things no longer problems. So you have homebrewed solutions by greatly nerfing the party's abilities.

But you are removing a major design element, and a feat, by removing all ritual casting, and if you have to remove that much and then alter two other spells, then it is quite clear that the rules as written do not allow for whatever it is that will come next.

I am still interested in seeing part 3, maybe there will be something useful to glean, but like many others you've already conceded that homebrewing is an essential part of running the exploration section of the game, far beyond what the other two pillars require of the DM.

I (hopefully) never said that I made no changes. I said that I would deliver concrete examples as to how I would provide a meaningful or interesting wilderness adventures (again, hopefully). I've made changes to all the pillars, actually. And, with the exception of Ritual Magic, my changes are mostly broad but shallow. I am also an inveterate tinkerer with rule sets. Can't help myself.

An aspect of 5e that I've noticed is that there are really no long term issues. Everything is resolved in rounds. If not rounds, then an hour or two. If not an hour or two, then certainly by the next day. lt takes some effort to inflict a (level appropriate) penalty that is not resolved by the next day after a long rest. I also think that "exploration" wasn't defined by the design team as "wilderness journey" but rather "what is of interest to explore over the next hill".

 

[Ovinomancer]

Even description has the potential to include a check. "oh, hey, you guys go past Beautiful View Point on this trail, let me describe the vista, and give me a Perception check". The check is to determine whether they notice sunlight glinting off the ancient metal plinth that stands in the forest below.

Other times the description includes details that may be relevant. "oh, hey, you guys go past Beautiful View Point on this trail, let me describe the vista, which includes withered looking trees below". The trees are withered due to a foul emanation from the metal plinth, which they are likely to discover if they decide to leave the path and investigate why the trees are withered.

I mean, sure, if the description is pure fluff, with no purpose in the game whatsoever beyond perhaps establishing mood, then that's not exploration. Personally speaking, I use description with a purpose far more often than description without purpose. Do the players always discover the purpose? No. Which is fine, else there would be no challenge to the discovery.

What you describe isn't really about exploration, but about gating information behind a check. There's no action from the PC to be resolved here except that the GM declares the action for the PC and then gates information behind a die roll. There's nothing at all for the PC to do to alter this check -- it's essentially a random roll to see if the GM tells you more things. In this way, this moment is like Candyland, which isn't a game but rather just finding out what story the random deck has arranged for you this time. No choices exist.

 

[Oofta]

There's nothing realistic about a single random check determining how well a room can be searched given enough time. I'm in the Take 20 camp on that one - you spend the time and do the best you can possibly do. That might still not be enough to find the hidden secret if your search skills aren't good enough. But if you have the time to spend, your result should trend quite a bit higher and closer to your full ability than a single, widely variable d20.

I ask people how much time they want to spend and how thorough they want to be. A quick search might be at disadvantage and a higher DC. They probably won't find anything but they might be lucky. Depending on how much time they have and how thoroughly they search it may mean advantage on a check with a minimum of their passive, a "take 20" or just automatic success.

There are times when I'll "zoom in", same as when exploring an area. So if they're searching the ruined castle, I don't map out the whole castle, I'll just cut to the chase on the interesting room and area. Same with searching, there will be something unusual about the wardrobe and then they go from there.

The act of searching is not particularly engaging or interesting. It can, in fact be quite boring. The moment of discovery, even if that discovery is just something unusual, is what is interesting to me. So I just skip over the boring stuff and move on the the interesting stuff.

 

[Asisreo]

What you describe isn't really about exploration, but about gating information behind a check. There's no action from the PC to be resolved here except that the GM declares the action for the PC and then gates information behind a die roll. There's nothing at all for the PC to do to alter this check -- it's essentially a random roll to see if the GM tells you more things. In this way, this moment is like Candyland, which isn't a game but rather just finding out what story the random deck has arranged for you this time. No choices exist

I think this type of thinking misses that there can be a mixture between dice rolls and roleplay that both changes how the outcome occurs.

For example, I have a box and the box has a hole in it. The players can roleplay with the box, describing different actions they do. These actions then fuel the DM's decision for dice rolls, possibly changing the modifier, advantage, or even the DC.

One player suggests putting their ear to the box to listen to it. Well, they hear nothing. One player wants to look into the box to see what's inside. The box is in Darkness but the player has darkvision, they make a perception check with disadvantage. They fail and can't make out the contents. One player picks it up and shakes it, making a Strength check, revealing its a heavy and metallic item. Finally, one player says "screw it" and opens the box, its Demonic Armor.

Each player did something different and the results were different. Some of them relied on rolls, others passed/failed automatically.

 

[Fanaelialae]

What you describe isn't really about exploration, but about gating information behind a check. There's no action from the PC to be resolved here except that the GM declares the action for the PC and then gates information behind a die roll. There's nothing at all for the PC to do to alter this check -- it's essentially a random roll to see if the GM tells you more things. In this way, this moment is like Candyland, which isn't a game but rather just finding out what story the random deck has arranged for you this time. No choices exist.

Choices may or may not open up depending on the result of the check, which I don't think excludes it from exploration. If my passive check is insufficient, it might preclude me from automatically detecting a trap, but since I'm exploring the dungeon that this trap is in, I think it's solidly part of exploration, irrespective of choice. To be clear, I do believe that choice is very important. It just isn't necessary at every micro-step of exploration resolution. I don't think that we suddenly shunt out of exploration when the DM calls for a roll, and then shunt back immediately thereafter if the result presents the player with a choice.

You're also ignoring my second paragraph wherein there was no check. It simply presents the PCs with information. They can either act on that information or ignore it, which most certainly is a choice.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Just no pleasing some people Darker Dungeons is supposed to be tough. There’s a lot of complaint that default 5e is too easy.

What I don’t like about 4e skill challenges is the failure count is fixed. IMO this allows more interesting setups and of course you can play with the numbers to suit your table.

No, I get it, but there's a difference, to me at least, between hard and impossible. The math in the Trial rules is terribly stacked against the PCs and there's nothing at all in those rules to let you know this so you can pick reasonable challenges. This is despite the fact that it provides a chart of success % for various skill levels against the DCs, because this is not the story of repeated checks. If you naively set a Detailed Hard trial, you're handing certain defeat to your players. The DC 20 is going to result in numerous failures, and only expert skilled characters have reasonable chances of success (a skilled PC with max stat in a skill is still only +11 at level 17+). Most people are not familiar with this stuff because it's not intuitively obvious that having a 70% chance of success means that you're still extremely likely to fail 5 times over 20 rolls (it's around a 60% chance!). The subtracting failures on 10+ successes moderates this, but not enough. And this is talking about ONLY experts attempting this task and ONLY looking at outright fails by accumulating 5 failures. You put this to a normal party, expecting it to work, and you're going to see it burn to the ground almost every single time.

The initial math on 4e skill challenges wasn't anywhere close to this brutal and it had to be dialed back hard with revisions to bring it into line. Granted, that was aimed at creating more successes at the challenge than failures, so a different approach might find the original math better suited, but this? This approach (and, don't get me wrong, I very much like the concept here, it's the math I don't like) will generate failure, and bad failure, most of the time it's used!