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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 8379331" data-attributes="member: 29398">I think the issue with providing decent exploration challenge might lie in the 5e rules themselves:Disease:Am I right in remembering that one of you said disease in 5e can only be caught through combat?  So much for that challenge.Time was, disease was an environmental hazard, a known risk if exploring (or even just staying too long in) particularly dirty or corrupted areas; and while mid-high level groups can usually deal with this easily, low-level parties could not.  This has at times led to some very nasty choices as to whether or not to race back to town before the sick character dies, where doing so could mean failure in the mission; or to keep going and hopefully succeed at the mission while consigning the sick character to - maybe - die.Attrition:The main type of challenge in exploration almost revolves around some form of medium-to-long-term attrition: attrition of hit points, of resources, of equipment, of spells, in some cases of in-game time, or some combination of these; with the idea being that you lose more than you can recover over a given period of time.Of these, attrition of hit points (which is where traps, environmental hazards, and wandering monsters come in) has been nullfied by 5e's overly-generous resting and recovery rates.  Attrition of spells has been almost completely nullified by at-will cantrips and ritual casting.  Attrition of resources and equipment has been nullified by encouraged laxity in tracking rations, ammo, etc., and by easier access to spells and abilities that replace or replenish said resources.Attrition of in-game time (the "ticking clock") is the only one to remain largely unchanged through the editions.  This is probably why it keeps coming up in the thread as an example of a challenge: it's one of the very few that are left.Navigation:This one covers getting lost, on various scales.  Being lost isn't a direct challenge in itself, but it can greatly enhance the threat of some attrition challenges noted above.Once, the standard was that if the party (i.e. the players) didn't make a map or otherwise mark their trail they'd automatically become lost on trying to retrace their steps out of a dungeon.  Sadly, at-table mapmaking fell out of favour, and so did the associated challenge in dungeon-crawling.Outdoors, time was when a party - even with a Ranger - might sometimes get so badly lost they couldn't even find the adventure!  But now that a 5e Ranger can (much of the time) simply not get lost eases the challenge considerably, for parties that have a Ranger along; and even parties without a Ranger have other options and abilities to help.  The only real way to get characters lost now is if they're at sea beyond sight of land and somehow mess up their navigation or get shunted off course by current or storm.Summary: 5e has gone to considerable lengths to make the game easy* on its characters and its players; and this shows through most clearly on the exploration side.  To make exploration challenging again probably means porting in some ideas from older editions.* - relative to older versions of the game.</blockquote>

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