Exploration Guide for Dungeons and Dragons 5e

my favorite part of D&D is exploring the unknown and diving into the dark depths of every dungeon I come across well we've discussed so much about how to be an effective combatant in Dungeons and Dragons today we're gonna shift our focus and look at the fundamentals of exploration in D&D v5e [Music] greetings adventurers my name is Monty Martin and I'm Kelley McLaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes and today we're taking a look at the fundamentals of exploration in Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition exploration is one of the great three pillars of Dungeons & Dragons alongside combat and social interaction and while the lines between these three can often blur and all of them can be happening at once exploring fantastic environments is one of the most evocative and memorable and truly magical parts of playing D&D going into a fantastic world meeting amazing creatures going to places that could not or do not exist in the real world really is the stuff of adventure but there's a lot of really interesting strategies for how to explore an environment like a smart adventure that really don't get discussed a lot especially compared to how to be a great combatant and how to take them the best abilities that will deal the most damage one thing to keep in mind about the exploration in D&D is how open-ended it is with a world of possibilities and only your imagination to limit you it's easy to get lost in all of the concepts and ideas of how to be a good Explorer so we're gonna take a look at some of our tips and tricks to better explore the dungeons and wilderness that you'll be experiencing in your D&D games now player characters in Dungeons & Dragons gained tons of abilities and spells from their classes that help them explore environments effectively whether you're playing a ranger or druid and is adept at exploring wilderness environments or a rogue who's fantastic at detecting traps but the tips that we're going to be looking at today are gonna focus on just the fundamentals that are common to all adventurers regardless of your class or your abilities and our principles that you can apply to make your game better and to gain more information because the exploration phase of the game as Kelly said it's so open-ended it's it's more open-ended perhaps than even the social interaction dimension of the game because the rules here are very lightweight at the most you're often only going to be working with skill checks even when those apply and in many cases you can explore an environment without rolling a single die just like you can have a social interaction without rolling any dice at all that's because it's possible to use description and interact with the environment in really intelligent ways that focus on creatively exploring even the most dangerous environments so let's get exploring in my experience player characters don't have the well-developed sense of how to explore an environment that they generally do with combat like players can be Naturals in a battlefield but then totally lost when it comes to trying to navigate through a forest or get to the other side of the dungeon or break into a castle I think one of the beautiful things here is that a lot of people grow up playing video games they grow up with invisible walls and invisible barriers that limit you to the choices that you have what I love about D&D is that you have no barriers or walls to really hold you back if there's a hill that you want to climb you can climb it if you want to scale a wall you can scale it if you want to dig a hole in the ground you can do that the sky's the limit and you're not limited by what the rules and guidelines are going to tell you you can or cannot do the only rules and guidelines are in your imagination yeah I find there's so many video games these days that do things like have detective vision where the objects that you can interact with the environment are conveniently illuminated for you or you look for the visual detector that tells you oh this is a climb above wall or this is a wall that you can break and when you're playing those video games you kind of ignore everything and you're just solving the puzzle that the game has made for you rather than finding out a really creative way to embrace the environment and use it in a creative way this is why I like a game-like breath of the wild was so refreshing because you could interact with the environment so openly and I think that the really grasps towards just a small subset of what is actually possible in Dungeons and Dragons where that as you as you say the sky is the limit on your imagination and the game rules kind of just give you a framework of abilities and equipment and other features that you can use to navigate through this world but there's really no hard-and-fast limits so the first tip that we're gonna talk about for your exploration is packing smart now there is a huge equipment list in Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition and there's a ton more magic items on top of that and until you get a bag of holding you're not really gonna be able to bring everything with you and even if you have brought the entire magic item shop with you sometimes it's hard to think about as a player like what equipment you need in this moment we feel that there are a few bread-and-butter items that in our own adventures we're coming back to time and time again and we really feel these are the essential pieces of equipment that you can get a lot out of in common adventuring situations the first thing that comes to mind is you need an ability to scale vertically absolutely Dungeons & Dragons does not exist on a flat plane oftentimes there will be chasms that you have to cross cliffs that you have to scale walls that you can climb up and more and having some measure of equipment or abilities that make this easier will unlock the world in a way that you never thought possible almost every exploration package like the adventuring pack the dungeon ears pack any of those usually comes with a rope of some sort and I do think that's one of the most essential pieces of exploration is using your rope using your ability to climb and scale to think on a vertical level yeah with that you can get a climbers kit that has some iron spikes that you can drive into walls and a few more additional pieces of rigging equipment so that you could make that climb a bit safer and I think it's really important with climbing is that you really want to be thinking about the party members that have lots of equipment that they're carrying with them or that might not be athletic and what you're gonna do about those people because oftentimes the entire party might need to climb a cliff or the entire party might need to cross a broken bridge and you'll need to figure out a way that even those less athletically inclined characters can get across that gap oftentimes 50 feet of rope is not enough and you'll need to bring longer rope or more rope than that it's really surprising I think for for anyone that hasn't done any climbing or rigging or anything like that how quickly fifty feet of rope is not fifty feet of rope because just tie knots and making a secure way of tying things up is uses a lot of mic also the amount of times the players have been disappointed when it's like well I have this 50 foot of feet of rope and I have to climb down 200 feet well that's that's not gonna cut it but sometimes tying all the ropes together is a very good choice sometimes that it's not I like to just mention this for stage rigging is that in reality if you take two pieces of rope and tie them together it actually reduces the strength of the rope overall so tying a bunch of ropes together creates more knots in it then weakens the whole chain it's not as strong as a 300 foot piece of rope the other thing that a lot of people don't realize is that tying a rope around your waist is profoundly dangerous and if you were to slip and fall in the real world the tensile strength of that rope acts like a noose and can break your spine so in reality a safe way of tying rope is actually to make it like a little harness and to tie it across your entire chest so that the the whole surface area of the force when you drop is distributed across your body tie a rope around your waist is not safe at all logistics I know we don't think about these logistics but this is why things like a climber kit that have a harness and pulleys and snaps to them are good investments for adventures particularly ones that are worried about falling another thing that you want to bring with you is something that you can use to make fire now you might be lucky just be able to cast fireballs or prestidigitation and you're golden but there's so many situations where you'll need to create a light source or a heat source or light something on fire or blow something up tinderboxes torches lanterns these are all essential pieces of your exploration you don't want to go into a dark dungeon without a light source especially if you don't have dark vision on a related note you'll also want to bring along a healers kit with you this is a fundamental item that many people ignore because oh we've got a cleric in our party but you've never thought about what's gonna happen if your cleric gets injured if they're the one that goes down bring up some backup medical supplies maybe even some antitoxin I think are a fundamental of any adventuring group and they should be in your inventory yeah poison comes into play a lot and having a way to fight against that can be very helpful we all know it's really common to bring a set of these tools I think every party should have more than one set amongst them these tools have been endlessly useful even apart from when you read the description of these tools you're like this is for picking locks and stealing things but that crowbar and mirror have come into play so many times in my adventuring that mirror has been useful for combat encounters oddly enough but also just seeing what's around corners and just being able to explore a little bit easier I also think it's handy if you have someone in your party that likes breaking things bring a sledgehammer or or like a crowbar or a tool that is meant to break objects oftentimes players want to say oh I'm gonna smash that with my axe and a weapon that's meant to kill people isn't necessarily a good object to use to break down a door bring something like a sledgehammer is often a stronger option that you can use you know you don't matter if it doesn't matter if it breaks I also like to have something like a shovel with me too yeah because we all know that using a shovel is always an excellent choice or the molders can trip or something like that yes unless you kind of excavate like a mining pit can be really really useful all those tool kits are surprisingly handy and you can make you think about things in different ways like I could get a lot of use out of bringing a chisel and a few other small hand tools because maybe I can't pick the lock on that door but maybe I can pull the hinges off of it and knock it over I think the general rule of thumb here is a lot of players when they get their Explorers pack or their dungeon ears pack they don't often read what's in those packs they just say cool I have this I hope it's useful a lot of those come with some really cool items that can be endlessly useful if put in the right circumstances so always be aware of what is in your pack and what you might be able to use to change a certain situation or benefit the entire party during exploration yeah and always prepare for harsh weather bring an extra cloak an extra bed rule and never forget to bring a knife and a towel alongside all this with your equipment you want to make sure that you're prepared to camp smart when you're exploring an environment particularly a dungeon I think it's really important to always be thinking about ok where's our safe point where can we retreat to safely if we get into trouble where's the meeting point in the emergency and then also how are we gonna safeguard that location if we need to take a rest here whether it's a short rest or a long rest overnight a lot of players don't take into account the dangerous situations that they might find themselves in if they just set up camp in the middle of a jungle they might get eaten by any sort of monster doing that you always want to look for an advantageous place to set up camp they didn't set up camp just in the middle of the woods all the time they waited until they got to Weathertop in Lord of the Rings to set up a defendable camp so it's finding those advantageous positions and places you can set up a good camp or you can keep watch where you have an eye on your surroundings and are able to defend it if it comes to that similarly depending on the environment that you're exploring you might not be in an environment where you can find a warm or cool enough place to make camp you might not be able to find a place where you can get clean drinking water toom of annihilation exploring the jungles of child is great for this because it talks about how many parasites live in the water and how many insects exist in the environment so having a camp site that has insect netting and insect repellent is really essential to being successful in that adventure so just the problems of getting around having the supplies can be an adventure all in themselves not every group is gonna really worry about all these details some groups can find this a little bit tedious but I do find that even for an experienced group that isn't too worried about the details of do you have enough rations in your supplies just knowing oh our adventuring site actually doesn't have any fresh water around it can help you avoid awful surprises even if you're not one for tracking rations keeping in mind what sort of things they might find if they are foraging because it might not all be food I'm about to run out of the abyss and amongst the many mushrooms that are edible that they might find in the Underdark they can also find very poisonous ones or ones that have strange side effects they might not know what these do until they try them once you've brought all your equipment and you've figured out you're a safe point where you're gonna retreat back to after you've actually explore the dungeon the next big step is just staying alert of your surroundings in Dungeons & Dragons the dungeon master is your eyes and ears as a player character and learning how to work with the dungeon master to understand what your character can see in here is a skill that you can actually work on and develop make sure to ask questions the dungeon master will give you information and will never really give you more than what your surroundings are what you can see smell hear but asking those questions what do I see what do I smell what do I hear if you haven't already gathered that information the dungeon master filling in these gaps will give you a better idea of your surroundings especially asking questions about your senses that aren't sight I find that this is true even for experienced your new dungeon masters your DM might be someone that gives tons and tons and tons of great description but not every dungeon master does that or is used to doing it or provides all the details that actually exist in an environment and you might be wondering oh well what is on the ceiling what is illuminating this room what can I smell what can i what's the temperature of the room like asking these questions can give you a lot of information or clues about what you might be encountering in the next room or the next bit of the environment that's said remember that the dungeon master only needs to provide you with the facts of what you can perceive it's up to you as a player to draw conclusions about that and so while asking a question like do I feel like the ceiling might collapse in on me you can ask that question but the dungeon master might reply to you and say well you can see cracks in the ceiling and you've got dwarven stone cunning so you know that this is an indicator of a possible collapse but it's really up to you as a player to draw that final conclusion the dungeon master isn't responsible for making those decisions for you that's up to you to draw the conclusions as a player it's good to get under the idea that you're asking questions like what do I sense not what would the outcome be if or what is the possible outcome if these kind of questions are not ones that the dungeon master will probably be able to answer do you think I could clear this gap if I jumped well there's one way to find out try jumping over it the other thing that is often something that players underestimate the impact of but has affected my descriptions in the past is simply changing your perspective getting higher or lower or looking at a room from a different angle can often reveal new information and so be ready to move a little bit throughout a space or an environment and try to get a different perspective on the area if you can get a high vantage point that will reveal a different amount of information about the environment than when you're just standing on the ground finally don't assume that all the information can be revealed through sight alone worst of all don't walk into a room or a new environment and say I make a perception check and expect to get all the information about the environment it's on you as a player to describe how you interact with the environment and it's on you to make your own conclusions asking good questions might prompt you to make a perception check to gain more information but don't count on everything just being given to you about an environment sometimes the only way to find out information about an object is to pick it up or touch it or push the button just one thing be careful about what your character tries to taste and be smart about what you touch a pickup don't put it in your mouth now being aware goes hand in hand with scoping out the environment properly when you arrive at a new location sometimes the main entrance you see is not the only entrance and in some cases it's more beneficial for you to walk around the environment find out what entrances exits or other obstacles you might encounter could be there find out all the information you can before proceeding with your exploration countless old school dungeons had more than one way to get into them oftentimes players wouldn't discover these until they had ventured deeply into them only to discover that Oh had they looked behind the waterfall just up the river there was another entrance there or over in that group of trees there was a ruined Tower that was connected to the basement of that ancient church there are plenty of awesome dungeon design principles that really emphasize creating more than one way to get into or out of a dungeon or other environment even just with buildings if you're exploring an urban environment virtually every building has more than one door leading into it and a window is a form of entrance so coming up on the second story of a building or a castle climbing over the walls even breaking in through the top of the roof or coming up through the sewers there's a lot of ways to get into a simple urban building and these thoughts can be applied to any environment even if it's a dungeon even annex they're extra plane or fortress might have another way to get into it and keep in mind that any wall that you encounter is just one good explosion away from being a door players underestimate how much impact that you can have on the environment you can move objects around you can rearrange the furniture in a room you can break down those doors it's not like in a video game where you have to press X to jump over that pit you might be able to bring over some planks or ropes or build something makeshift in the dungeon a team style to rig up something that helps you navigate through the environment so don't forget about the ways that your equipment but also the things that you find can aid getting around also with any environment you might come across Scouts or patrols being able to watch and observe these scouts and patrols could give you a lot of insight into the environment and a lot of clues as to ways in or out especially in the dungeon that is occupied by humanoids like goblins or cultists or bandits they might need to use entrances commonly just to come and go to bring in supplies is it possible that you could ambush one of those patrols and steal their outfits and sneak in that way is it possible that you could capture somebody and interrogate them and find out more about the defenses inside many times player click characters just kick in the door and run in guns blazing into a dungeon without spending a little bit more time to observe the outside environment and surroundings this little moment can make the difference in knowledge between going and completely unaware and walking into an obvious trap versus stealthily infiltrating an environment and getting out of there completely unnoticed and of course one of the other great tools you have at your disposal is using magic if you have any great divination spells arcane eyes familiars or any other sort of magic that might help out this can really expand on the exploration and getting intel on a location before you proceed it's very easy to turn your familiar invisible and send them in to scout through a location even having a familiar that's a spider or might be enough in one of our campaigns the party was trying to infiltrate a fortress in the middle of the forest so the druid turned into a squirrel and scouted out the entire castle as a squirrel which was completely innocuous none of the guards had any reason to suspect that the squirrel was spying on them and the party had the complete blueprint of the fortress before they attacked just watch out for turning into a rat because of course goblins and orcs are known to eat rats so you might not want to infiltrate on your own and only they end up as goblin breakfast that's always the really mean thing to do as a DM is if your party decides I'm going to turn into a squirrel and infiltrate this castle and it just so happens that one of the guards it's like yeah I feel like eating squirrel today that's that's just bad luck yeah it is but it can happen that's why I like using a spell like arcane I or scrying especially as you get into higher-level environments these these can really make the difference knowledge is power so seize on any opportunity you find to gain more information about the location you're heading into as one of our final notes on exploration it's very important that as an adventurer you take risks adventuring is not for the faint of heart and there will always be some measure of unknown information or incomplete facts and it's important that when you are exploring an environment not to hesitate so much that it paralyzes your group from acting decisively if you do end up exploring an entire environment before heading in and you realize that you haven't found a second entrance and you're nervous about going in the front entrance if you don't have any other options presented to you and you're running out of ideas it's okay to be that risk-taker and say you know what guys we've tried let's just run in the front door also be aware that if you're spending lots of time scouting an environment hours maybe even days it's possible that the conditions could change and your adventure might be on a timeline so that's why it's important to think smart about what are the ways that you can get the most information about the environment the quickest what are the things that you can do in a time fashion because it's possible that yes there are scouts and patrols around the dungeon but in three days time an entire group of reinforcements is going to show up at which point the conditions are going to be completely different it's possible that the ritual that the evil lich is working on is going to be finished in 24 hours so you might not have necessarily the time to thoroughly scout the location be smart about this don't hesitate and understand that there is going to be some measure of risk and unknown involved speaking of the risks involved there's always a chance of there being traps and hidden dangers that you don't immediately see when you first enter an environment this is a great opportunity for you to start exploring and using other options for finding traps as we said earlier it's wrong to assume that you can determine everything about an environment with a visual perception check canny dungeon builders like dwarves and Lich's know how to build traps that will evade casual or even a thorough visual inspection this is why it's necessary to use a little bit of your logic and thinking about would you put a trap here get into the mindset of those who built the environment is this a defensible location is this somewhere that would benefit from some sort of hidden trick or trap then there might very well be something there if there's a hallway that looks like it should have a trap in it there might be and this is a great opportunity not to go running full steam down that hallway but instead maybe send in some livestock or a summonable creature or throw rocks down the hallway or if need be send in your heartiest and stupidest player-character yeah I'm an expendable player character like the fighter of our Burien can probably take the damage and if they die well that's what a resurrection spell is for bear in mind with that though that some really can eat rot builders can build traps that are only set to activate under a certain amount of weight I've heard of goblins building counterweight traps that only fire when a hundred pounds of weight our law leveraged on them that way the goblins can scurry across them without triggering the traps so think about those things as you're exploring the environment think logically think creatively about ways that you can both gather information and then use that information to your advantage and that's really the basic tip about exploring smart take a little bit more time to consider all the possibilities about the environment and don't get into that one-track mind that you only have to proceed in a linear fashion through an environment because in Dungeons & Dragons it's simply not true so this has been a look at the fundamentals of exploration in Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition we hope that you're ready to delve into your next dungeon now of course these are only some of our first and most basic tips for exploration and we would love to hear your strategies and suggestions for cool ways that you've used your class abilities or even just smart ideas to help explore the environments and dungeons that you've encountered and of course if you want to see us explore some really cool environments you can check out our live play dungeons of dragon hime which airs Tuesday nights at 6 p.m. Eastern Time on twitch.tv slash dungeon underscore dudes the videos are later uploaded to our youtube on friday and of course if you are enjoying our show and want to help support the channel consider becoming a patron of dungeon dudes by checking out our patreon in the links below or by going to patreon.com of course there's a lot of rules in D&D and we have a lot of videos explaining those rules on our playlist right up over here and if you're looking for some cool ways to apply this creativity in combat check out our video on creative combat tactics right up over here please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 167,791

Rating: 4.9394069 out of 5

Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book

Id: kY8E5uVJ2lk

Length: 28min 28sec (1708 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 21 2019