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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 8384298" data-attributes="member: 29398">Fair enough; and I agree that exploration challenges can be hard to manufacture given all the out-clauses 5e gives its characters.  It's a problem that long predates 5e, though 5e certainly hasn't done anything to solve it.What I'm seeing, though, is a repeated sentiment that amounts to "Because exploration has few or no challenges and-or doesn't engage with many game mechanics, it isn't important to game play".  I very much disagree that lack of challenge in a game element makes that element unimportant or irrelevant.Example: the PCs chatting with each other around the campfire.  No challenge anywhere and nary a game mechanic in sight yet this type of Social-pillar stuff is often absolutely vital for character development, and in some cases for player engagement.Well, to some extent the same goes for non-challenge freeform exploration: it's a useful means of immersion into the setting for all, and for some it provides a higher degree of engagement.Indeed; I think we mught be simply disagreeing as to where that cutoff point is.Where I'll play it out; it's a known fact of life here that there'll be times when some of the PCs (and thus players) won't be involved for a while, which if nothing else gives those not-involved players a chance to grab a beer or get some non-game chat out of their systems. (usually for something like this, were I the DM I'd take you into another room and sort out your PC's searching efforts in a bit more detail)Ah, but the way I see it is that if searching the room takes 10 minutes then after that 10 minutes you'll get a roll to see how well your searching went, and that's that.  Spending another 10 minutes - or another two hours - simply isn't going to help unless you materially change something you're doing; as your initial roll has already determined the results of your best effort.  (re-rolling is a non-starter for me)But a material change in approach means you're in effect starting over.  For example, if your initial search was done discreetly so as to not leave signs of your presence and came up dry, changing tack to "Screw it, I don't care if they know I was here" and trying again would get another roll.This points to a difference in how we perceive characters in general, perhaps.I tend to see adventurers as ordinary people who have become good at a few things but - far more importantly - are willing to take risks and endure hardships that others are not.  And sure, someone trained in investigation might be as good as real-world law enforcement; but without all the modern tech (or magic, in a game world) that might not be saying very much.Advantage and, on average, +15?  I thought 5e's bounded accuracy was supposed to eliminate that sort of thing! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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