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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8376059" data-attributes="member: 6801228">I never said it did. I said it dealt with traps. And it seems like it does deal with the vast majority of them.A small victory then, but let me rephrase. You gave me no context other than the unseen servant dropped a passive stone block that cut off the passageway. Depending on the context... we might just shrug and walk away from that pillar, because if there is no indication of anything being worth our while past there, then why bother with it? And your entire "counterexample" ignores a very important point... Rogues can fail checks. Any trap that the Unseen Servant trips is a trap that the rest of the party might have tripped if they weren't using it. Meaning that every trap is something that the DM had to consider would be tripped. And if I could trigger it by accident, triggering it on purpose with no loss to the party is a victory. A positive. A boon , if you need me to use different words. And if a monster shows up... then we aren't doing exploration any more, and nothing that follows is a testament to exploration. It is combat.It is not usually a concern, no. It happens, but certainly not every dungeon. But, here is why I'm drawing the distinction. If we take the use of ritual magic to bypass exploration challenges as an exploration problem... isn't it weird to offer combat with a monster as the primary solution? If someone came to you and said they were having issues with a combat encounter being too easy because of the use of fireball... does it make sense to advocate that they put a secret bottom in the treasure chest so they get less gold? That doesn't solve the issue, it just makes a secondary challenge for the players that has nothing to do with the combat portion of the game. This is why I'm drawing the distinction, because if you are tackling exploration being solved by ritual magic by punishing the players with more combat, it is the same sort of issue as having them get fewer rewards in every fight they use fireball. You aren't addressing the concern, you are just punishing them until they stop using the tool that is solving their problems.</blockquote>

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