We looked at exploration in a previous article about how we’re expanding the exploration pillar of the game. In that article we talked about Supplies, Safe Havens, and we introduced the concept of Exploration Challenges. This article talks about three of the tools that GMs have available to create a rich and vibrant environment:

• Exploration Challenges

• Boons & Discoveries

• Monster Signs

Exploration as a ‘pillar’ of the game includes underground as well as the wilderness. When you’re searching a dungeon, you’re exploring. When you’re trekking across hill and shire, you’re exploring. When you’re navigating a dense fantasy city, you’re exploring. When you’re flying through an elemental plane of air, you’re exploring.

You’re probably already familiar with the idea of an encounter table. While we make it clear that it’s up to the GM what encounters and challenges the adventurers face on a journey, we also provide random tables to help them, divided by tier and terrain. Those tables include all three of the types of encounter discussed in this article.

Exploration Challenges

The list of Exploration Challenges below is not a full list, but it gives a broad overview of the types of things you can expect. The final book will have around 75 Exploration Challenges ready to be inserted into your adventures, as well as guidelines on how to create your own. We’re still working on some awesome Tier 4 Exploration Challenges, such as the Hellish Pyroclasm!

It’s also an area of design space that we imagine fans and third party publishers might enjoy expanding. You can never have too many Exploration Challenges to choose (or roll) from!

Tier 2

Cloud of Fog

Cursed Temple

Enchanted Windmill

Faerie Ring

Fire-Breathing Statue

Green Lake

Lethal Outgassing

Living Land

Magical Overgrowth

Marsh Gas

Poison Needle

Rolling Sphere

Rope Bridge

Swinging Blade

Thundering Stampede

Voracious Pests

Wild Magic Zone

Tier 3

Caught in the Crossfire

Cursed Lake

Endless Pit

Fey Glade

Perilous Bridge

Perilous Path

Poison Needle

Primordial Tornado

Sphere of Annihilation

Sunspots

The White Elk

Tornado

Tier 1

Acidic Splash

Collapsing Roof 

Counterfeit Goods

End of Hibernation

Hail Storm

Haze

Falling Net

Flash Flood!

Flood

Labyrinthine Ravines

Landslide

Lifeless Desolation

Lost Item

Magical Overgrowth

Mushroom Ring

Pit Trap

Pests

Private Property

Public Ceremony

Quicksand

Sinkhole

Stampede

Stone Bridge

Urban Blaze

Urban Quake

Tier 4

Corrupted Druid Grove

Hallowed Ground

Killing Cloud of Flesh-Eating Poison

Malfunctioning Planar Portal

God Corpse

Now, let’s take a look at another Exploration Challenge in more detail (we outlined two others in a previous article). As always, this is an early draft and is subject to change before the final book.

Tornado

3rd tier exploration challenge (weather event)

Challenge 10 (5,900)

Stormy skies above quickly mass together as the wind picks up. In a matter of minutes the gusts are strong enough to knock creatures over and a cyclone touches down onto the nearby ground!

When a creature rolls a natural 1 on an ability check against the tornado, it makes a DC 18 Strength saving throw or is thrown 200 feet, taking 35 (10d6) bludgeoning damage. A creature suffers an injury when it takes 20 or more damage from being thrown by the tornado.

With a DC 25 Nature check an adventurer knows how to stay safe in a tornado (sighting funnel clouds that will develop into new twisters, avoiding trees, protecting one’s head, crouching to avoid the wind, using ditches and gullies) and the party has advantage on Athletics checks made against this exploration challenge.

Suggested Solutions

• With a DC 20 group Athletics check the party can stand its ground against the tornado and trudge forward.

• Finding shelter along the way to take cover requires a group DC 24 Survival check and takes one day while the party waits for the storm to pass. 

• Success on a group DC 22 Nature check allows the party to avoid the tornado altogether; this costs them one day. 

• A casting of control weather immediately ends the tornado and counts as a Critical Success.

Critical Failure: Suffer one level of fatigue, lose half of your supplies, and one day of travel.

Failure: Suffer one level of fatigue and lose 1d4 supplies.

Success: Lose 1d4 supplies.

Critical Success: No supplies lost.

Boons & Discoveries

One possible reward from an Exploration Challenge (or indeed after exploring any new area) is a boon or a discovery. The GM is able to choose a boon or a discovery, or roll for one on a random table.

For example, the party might find a cave which they can use as a safe haven (a location where a long rest allows the recovery of fatigue and strife), or an ancient gravestone with a rusted sword stuck in the ground, or even the ghost of a fallen adventurer. Perhaps they find an abandoned wagon with supplies they can use on their journey, warning signs of a danger, or an enchanted spring.

Boons and discoveries, like Exploration Challenges, are divided by tier. Higher tier examples might include an ancient prophecy etched into stone, a friendly air elemental, or a rare flower with powerful healing properties.

Other Encounters

Of course, Exploration Challenges aren’t the only things you might come across on a journey. We also have monsters! And as you’ve seen in a previous article, when you meet a monster, what you might initially come across are the signs of its presence — in the Monstrous Menagerie we have random monster sign tables for each monster for your convenience!

Again, these are very early drafts, but you might be able to guess which monsters these are. And if you can’t, there’s always the monster lore tables with each monster to help your character interpret the clues.

Signs

1 Wraiths scout or deliver threatening ultimatums

2 Hundreds of skulls on spikes

3 The prints of many marching boots and skeletal feet

4 An aura of dread; chill winds and a pale, dim sun

5 Skeletal griffins circle overhead

6 Skeletons claw their way out of old graves and begin marching towards some distant rallying point

And here’s another example!

Signs

1 Toppled statue of a griffon with one leg missing

2 Statue of a basilisk with shoulder and tail missing

3 Nest containing stone birds

4 Big lizard footprints

5 Statue of a knight with sword raised

6 Heaped stone flagstones sheltering large eggs

7 A life-sized stone head lying on the floor

8 Stone rat statues sitting in a circle

And for fun, here’s a third!

Signs

1 Disturbed earth and a tree lying on its side

2 A path of turned-up earth; if you walk on it, you may fall in a sinkhole

3 A dead and partially-eaten beast; nearby are the signs of recent tunneling

4 DC 12 Perception check: a faint scraping in the ground, like something tunneling; it moves when you move and stops when you stop, as if tracking you

5 The entrance of a rough earthen tunnel

6 A wall is rumbling as if a digging creature is about to burst through

7 Quiet rumbling like a distant rock fall

8 A single steely scale

Of course, spotting the signs of a monster are often only the start of an encounter…