D&D 5E Wilderness Exploration according to the core rulebooks of 5e

[iserith]

Now, from memory it plays pretty much as old school D&D (or AD&D) and it is fine for a resource tracking, old school hex crawl type of game. It does suffer from the fact that Favoured Terrain and the Outlander backgrounds Wanderer feature breaks it, or at least severely bends it, as do some other features in 5e and there rapid recharge of powers make a resource attrition game a bit of a issue in 5e as the rest of the game pushes back against it.

Regarding Favored Terrain and Outlander, my experience is that they provide nice benefits, but don't really break or bend anything when all the rules are employed. Favored Terrain only applies to certain terrain, of course, so provided the map has a variety of terrain types, it's only going to come into play sometimes. Further, Activities While Traveling all come with trade-offs and risk - if you're doing one thing, you can't do another thing and also you don't notice hidden threats and can't apply your passive Perception. That means you don't notice the trap and you are automatically surprised if a stealthy monster is indicated.

Favored Terrain allows for the ranger to both keep watch and do another task (often Navigate in my experience so the party has no chance of getting lost). Whatever task the ranger chooses comes at the cost of not doing some other task. Outlander can Forage with no chance of failure (assuming food and water are available in the area), but choosing to Forage means doing no other task and putting themselves at risk of automatic surprise. They'll have to decide if it's worth it at the time. Arguably they automatically succeed when they choose to Navigate as well, but only for places they've already been. So good at backtracking, no better than anyone else at trailblazing.

All that to say, the rules work pretty well together when they are applied, even with regard to Favored Terrain and Outlander. Now, certainly there are some spells (particularly at higher levels) that can obviate some aspects of wilderness exploration. And standard resting in the face of 1 or 2 encounters a day likely means a lot of nova'ing. But that just argues for adjusting the dials of the game to fit the kind of play experience the group is going for (e.g. variant resting, taking some spells off the table, etc.). My view is that the game is meant to be adjusted in this way for every game the DM wants to run.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Regarding Favored Terrain and Outlander, my experience is that they provide nice benefits, but don't really break or bend anything when all the rules are employed. Favored Terrain only applies to certain terrain, of course, so provided the map has a variety of terrain types, it's only going to come into play sometimes. Further, Activities While Traveling all come with trade-offs and risk - if you're doing one thing, you can't do another thing and also you don't notice hidden threats and can't apply your passive Perception. That means you don't notice the trap and you are automatically surprised if a stealthy monster is indicated.

Favored Terrain allows for the ranger to both keep watch and do another task (often Navigate in my experience so the party has no chance of getting lost). Whatever task the ranger chooses comes at the cost of not doing some other task. Outlander can Forage with no chance of failure (assuming food and water are available in the area), but choosing to Forage means doing no other task and putting themselves at risk of automatic surprise. They'll have to decide if it's worth it at the time. Arguably they automatically succeed when they choose to Navigate as well, but only for places they've already been. So good at backtracking, no better than anyone else at trailblazing.

All that to say, the rules work pretty well together when they are applied, even with regard to Favored Terrain and Outlander. Now, certainly there are some spells (particularly at higher levels) that can obviate some aspects of wilderness exploration. And standard resting in the face of 1 or 2 encounters a day likely means a lot of nova'ing. But that just argues for adjusting the dials of the game to fit the kind of play experience the group is going for (e.g. variant resting, taking some spells off the table, etc.). My view is that the game is meant to be adjusted in this way for every game the DM wants to run.

I will admit that my response was more from what I have read here than actual practise of the rules in play. I basically do not like the gameplay they produce. I am not interested in hex by hex granularity and would prefer a more skill challenge like structure that I can hang a narrative from and occasionally hang event or encounter.
I also find the "Favoured Terrain" notion to be deeply silly and prefer the Adventures in Middle Earth approach of "Knowledge of the Locality" to be preferable.

 

[Morrus]

Ahem!

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[iserith]

I will admit that my response was more from what I have read here than actual practise of the rules in play. I basically do not like the gameplay they produce. I am not interested in hex by hex granularity and would prefer a more skill challenge like structure that I can hang a narrative from and occasionally hang event or encounter.
I also find the "Favoured Terrain" notion to be deeply silly and prefer the Adventures in Middle Earth approach of "Knowledge of the Locality" to be preferable.

Sure, when I play D&D 4e (running a game now), I use skill challenges for wilderness travel. For D&D 5e, it's either glossed over or it's a hex crawl in our games. I'm running a swamp hex crawl now in D&D 5e. It employs these rules and variant resting, plus some limitations on spells. It works great for that particular play experience.

 

[Brotton Goodfellow]

Just wanted to say you’re a ripper legend for doing this and the dungeon crawling rules.

 

[FallenRX]

Ahem!

Level Up: Trials & Treasures (A5E)

[[We have sold out of this book in North America, but we have new stock on its way. If you preorder now, you will get the PDF immediately and your hardcover will arrive in April. We still have stock in the UK/Europe warehouse.]] Journeys, Treasure, and Mystery Await!This essential rulebook for...

enpublishingrpg.com

No need to compile these together because it's all there, and runs like a dream, gods work yall did morrus.

 

[Charlaquin]

One thing this and the dungeon exploration compilation reveal is that the books aren’t kidding when they say everything outside of combat and social interactions is exploration. Both wilderness travel and dungeon delving follow basically the same rules - the exploration rules. For some reason they just decided to scatter individual bits and pieces of those rules throughout the books and make DMs find them all like a scavenger hunt.

 

[FallenRX]

One thing this and the dungeon exploration compilation reveal is that the books aren’t kidding when they say everything outside of combat and social interactions is exploration. Both wilderness travel and dungeon delving follow basically the same rules - the exploration rules. For some reason they just decided to scatter individual bits and pieces of those rules throughout the books and make DMs find them all like a scavenger hunt.

Hard agreed, the fact i had to do this, and refer to playtest materials just for general reference on basic design things they tested, and kept in the game is astonishing.

 

[S'mon]

I was just going over this stuff a day or two ago.

1. The 5e authors have no idea what a 'gallop' is. 10 miles in an hour for a horse is fairly ok, but it'd be a mix of walk + canter, or maybe a trot. A gallop is much like a human sprint; you don't sprint for an hour.

2. The wilderness encounter sytem started working for me once I went over to 1 week long rests. Rolling daily encounters with overnight recovery feels pointless. If the PCs need to risk several encounters before a LR, it works.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I was just going over this stuff a day or two ago.

1. The 5e authors have no idea what a 'gallop' is. 10 miles in an hour for a horse is fairly ok, but it'd be a mix of walk + canter, or maybe a trot. A gallop is much like a human sprint; you don't sprint for an hour.

2. The wilderness encounter sytem started working for me once I went over to 1 week long rests. Rolling daily encounters with overnight recovery feels pointless. If the PCs need to risk several encounters before a LR, it works.

They have no idea what wilderness navigation means also. it has a lot more to do with topography, weather and local knowledge. Both Level Up and Adventures in Middle Earth do a better job.