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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8379512" data-attributes="member: 6801228">Many of your comments have come across as incredibly dismissive. Even here, you are insisting that it must be my understanding of the rules that is at fault. My presentation of the game. My preparations of the game. My implementation of the rules of the game. It must be me that is the problem, because that is the only thing that makes sense to you. And when I go, as I'm about to do, and point out how this really doesn't apply... you will say I am dismissing your advice and how that makes it even more my fault, after all, what was it you said? "But obviously, if something doesn't work perfectly right away, you should give up immediately. It's like the old saying goes, "If at first you don't succeed, give up and blame everyone and everything but yourself." "Yeah, that wasn't rudely disimissive of someone who has spent years struggling with this, to imply they did it once then when it wasn't perfect gave up and blamed everyone and everything around them like a child.Yes, a forced march can cause exhaustion. First, this requires your characters actually travel 9 or more hours. If you are on foot that is 27 miles, if you are horseback it could be much further, same if you are in a wagon. Which offers a few different questions. But, let us stick with 9 hours of marching. Secondly, after 9 hours they all make a DC 11 con save. This is not a terrible hard save, most people will make it. If they happen to fail though they get a single level of exhaustion. A single level of exhaustion is removed by a single long rest, per the rules, so this is a non-consequence. If you march enough to get a single level of exhaustion, then camp, you have suffered no penalties. So, you probably need to march 30 miles, for 10 hours, to make a second check at DC 12 which is slightly more likely that at least one person will fail, maybe two, to have exhaustion be an actual factor from forced marching. But, now let us turn back and look at why the forced march. Because, in general, the players could stop and rest after 6 or 7 hours of travel, with no penalty. So, firstly, there has to be some sort of pressure to make you want to get as far as possible as quickly as possible. Because if your group just decided to travel from one city to another just to see the city (you know, exploring for the sake of exploring) then there is no reason to push and no reason to risk exhaustion. But also, you said "there was no safe place to long rest" So, what do you mean by that? What are the situations that make it a safe place to long rest? Because generally, our group long rests by making a camp on the side of the road and posting a watch. There are also ritual spells like alarm or Leomund's Tiny Hut to increase the security of the camp. Per some pretty contentious rules, being attacked in the middle of the night may not even break the long rest. So, how does this work? How did the group determine that there was no safe place to rest, and therefore skip a long rest? Why did they not find a place to rest somewhere between hours 6 and 9, a distance of 12 miles of terrain, nearly half the journey?I'm not dismissive of using time occasionally. It can be a great spice to add into an adventure. However, it is incredibly difficult to realistically have it for every single aspect of the adventure. You can't have every journey to a distant location be a clock, followed by every exploration of that location being a clock, with then every confrontation being a race against time to turn around and have a journey to a new location against the clock. That sort of rapid pacing doesn't always work. And, you seem to misunderstand why I'm seperating the pillars. I'm not doing it because they don't work well together. I'm doing it to highlight the tools we have. If the greatest tool for the exploration pillar is combat, to the near exclusion of any other tool, then I see that as a problem, and constantly using the threat of combat to scourge your players and prevent them from using their tools and resources doesn't mean that those tools and resources don't cause issues when actually allowed to be used.So, the only threat the weather gave was making combat more difficult. It was no challenge in and of itself. Also, ticking clock meant that you couldn't simply wait out the weather, and had to journey into it and risk combat. Remove the combat, no challenge.Again, this isn't about the fact that my peas can't touch my potatoes, this is looking at the tools we have. Is sneaking past the monster an exploration challenge? Maybe. What's the consequence of failing that challenge? Combat. What challenge does it provide if there is no combat... none. It doesn't work. The entire threat of the monster is combat but removing combat from the equation highlights that and makes me question "what other than combat can I do?" or to phrase another way "is combat the only viable challenge for the party?" Following tracks can be a challenge, I'll give you that, but in the context of the story it might be just as effective to stake a location out, because the goal is to engage in combat. Why is moving at a fast pace and losing stealth and passive perception a problem if you are being pursued? Because you might be ambushed and pulled into combat. What happens if we remove combat as the threat though? Nothing. There is no longer a threat and a reason that increasing your pace is risky. It becomes all benefits. You are correct, combat and monsters can add to the challenge, mixing your peas and potatoes can be good. My issue is the more I look and the more I ask... the only thing making the potatoes palatable is the fact that everyone is stuffing peas into them, and without the peas, you don't have something good.So, you needed to find an alternative entry to avoid combat. If there was no risk of combat, there would have been no need for that exploration at all. It sounds like the main "challenge"  was the icy paths and potentially falling, during which you took some damage, that would likely be easily healed. But spell slots had to be saved... because you were breaking into a monster's lair and expecting combat. Which made your hp damage actually meaningful.</blockquote>

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