Traversing a wilderness, searching a dungeon, circumventing an obstacle, finding a hidden object, investigating a strange occurrence, deciphering clues, solving puzzles, and bypassing or disabling traps are all part of exploration.
Not everything in your world needs to be explored painstakingly. For instance, you might gloss over an unimportant journey by telling the players that they spend three uneventful days on the road before reaching the next point of interest.
A map can help you or your players visualize a location or region that the characters are exploring. D&D maps come in three varieties, with examples of all three found in appendix B and on the poster map:
Dungeon Maps. D&D uses the word “dungeon” loosely to describe any adventure location that has interior spaces to explore (such as a castle, tower, mansion, or subterranean complex). A dungeon map shows passages, chambers, doors, and other important features of a location.
Settlement Maps. A map of a settlement often shows terrain (cliffs, trees, streams, and so forth) in addition to buildings, bridges, and other important features.
Wilderness Maps. A wilderness map shows roads, rivers, terrain, and other features that might guide the characters on their travels or lead them astray. The area shown on a wilderness map might be as big as a continent or as small as a glade.
Often a map is intended for the DM’s eyes only. You can copy portions of a DM’s map to share with your players as a visual aid while omitting details that should remain hidden from them. Virtual tabletops often use “fog of war” and similar effects to obscure areas and features on the map that you want to keep hidden from the players.
Maps designed for use with miniatures (see “Miniatures” in this chapter) tend to be player facing, revealing nothing that would spoil the adventure.
Exploration draws adventurers into all sorts of unusual environments.
If tracking the passage of time is important during exploration, use a time scale appropriate for the situation at hand:
Rounds. In combat and other fast-paced situations, the game relies on 6-second rounds.
Minutes. In a dungeon or settlement, movement happens on a scale of minutes. In the Free City of Greyhawk, getting from the Silver Dragon Inn to the wharf takes about 10 minutes, whereas it takes about 1 minute to creep down a 200-foot-long hallway, another minute to check for traps on the door at the end of the hall, and 10 minutes to search the chamber beyond for anything interesting or valuable.
Hours. A scale of hours is often appropriate for short wilderness treks. Adventurers eager to reach the lonely tower 20 miles away, at the heart of the forest, can hurry there in 5 hours’ time.
Days. For long journeys, a scale of days works best. Following the road from Veluna City to the Free City of Greyhawk, the adventurers cover 96 miles in 4 uneventful days before a bandit ambush interrupts their journey.
The exploration rules in the Player’s Handbook give guidelines for determining travel time based on the characters’ pace. In most cases, it’s fine to estimate that time rather than calculating it down to the minute. Exceptions include situations like these:
Spell Timer. The characters might need to go somewhere or accomplish something before the duration of a spell or similar effect runs out. For example, they might use the Locate Object spell to point them in the direction of an item they seek, so you need to know how far they get in the 10 minutes the spell lasts.
Triggered Event. An event might occur at a specific time. For example, a door might remain open for 1 minute after the password to open it is spoken, or reinforcements might arrive 2d4 minutes after an alarm is sounded.
If the characters spend time working out a puzzle or talking to an NPC, you can estimate the time spent by keeping track of how much real time passes. Most combat encounters take less than 1 minute (10 rounds), but it’s fair to round up to a whole minute in most cases, assuming characters take a few seconds to pull themselves together after a fight.
Use similar principles to track the passage of hours, such as when characters disguise themselves with a Seeming spell for 8 hours to infiltrate a stronghold. In this case, it takes a lot of small tasks—or something like a Short Rest—to occupy a full hour.
Most of what characters do during exploration, aside from movement, relates to just a few actions: Search, Study, and Utilize. Characters also often use the Help action to assist each other in these actions. Other actions come up only rarely.
It’s seldom necessary to rely on the action rules during exploration, except to remember that a character can do only one thing at a time. A character who’s busy taking the Search action to look for a secret door can’t simultaneously take the Help action to assist another character who’s taking the Study action to find important information in a book.
Often, characters spread out across a room to investigate the elements of the room. (The exploration example in chapter 1 of the Player’s Handbook shows this dynamic in action.) In such situations, have the characters take turns, though it’s usually not necessary to roll Initiative as you would in a combat encounter. Resolve one character’s actions before moving to the next.
There’s no hard-and-fast rule about how long to spend on each character’s activity, but make sure no one is waiting for their turn for too long.
You can build tension in an exploration encounter by shifting focus right before a character makes an ability check or opens a chest, leaving everyone eager to hear what happens next.
When a character tries to do something during exploration, you decide whether that action requires an ability check to determine success (as described in the earlier “Resolving Outcomes” section).
Certain situations might call for a balance between ability checks and roleplaying. For example, puzzles are an opportunity for players to do some problem-solving, but players can also lean on their characters’ talents and attributes to provide direction. A character who succeeds on an Intelligence (Investigation) check might notice a clue that gives the players a hint to the puzzle’s solution.
In a courtyard full of monsters, will characters even notice that the tree has eyes
As the DM, you’re the interface between your players and the world of the game. You tell them what their characters perceive, so it’s important to make sure you’re telling them important information about their surroundings. The Perception skill and Wisdom checks made using it are key tools for you. This section offers guidance to help you use the Perception rules in the Player’s Handbook.
An important time to call for a Wisdom (Perception) check is when another creature is taking the Hide action. Noticing a hidden creature is never trivially easy or automatically impossible, so characters can always try Wisdom (Perception) checks to do so.
Using Passive Perception. Sometimes, asking players to make Wisdom (Perception) checks for their characters tips them off that there’s something they should be searching for, giving them a clue you’d rather they didn’t have. In those circumstances, use characters’ Passive Perception scores instead.
Using the Investigation Skill. The Investigation skill applies to situations where a character is using reason and deduction to arrive at a conclusion about something under examination. Investigation applies when characters are trying to figure out how a thing works—how to open a trick door, how to get into a secret compartment, and so on.
Don’t use the Investigation skill to determine if a character notices something—that’s the purview of Perception. For example, a successful Wisdom (Perception) check allows a character to find a secret door or something that betrays its presence, such as thin seams marking the edges of the door. If the secret door is locked, a successful Intelligence (Investigation) check would allow a character to figure out the trick to opening it—by turning a nearby statue so it faces the door, for example.
Secret doors, hidden compartments, concealed traps, and stashed treasures are common elements in adventures. When using such elements, if something is hidden, allow for the possibility that the characters might not find it. It’s fine to hide extra treasures or delightful surprises, but don’t hide elements that are essential to the characters’ success in places where characters might not find them.
Even if the hidden objects aren’t essential to the adventure’s success, plant hints that clue players in to the idea that there might be something hidden for them to find. Such hints can be subtle (a character hears a strange rattle when opening the desk drawer, suggesting the presence of a hidden compartment in the back or bottom of the drawer) or obvious (clear footprints lead across the room to a blank wall that is actually a secret door). These hints let players discover fun secrets without requiring them to spend extensive time searching every square foot of every room and hallway.
If the characters encounter another group of creatures and neither side is being stealthy, the two groups automatically notice each other once they are within sight or hearing range of one another. The Audible Distance table can help you determine the hearing range, and the following sections address visibility. If one group tries to hide from the other, use the rules in the Player’s Handbook.
Visibility Outdoors. When traveling outdoors, most characters can see about 2 miles in any direction on a clear day, except where obstructions block their view. That range increases to 40 miles if they are atop a mountain or a tall hill or are otherwise able to look down on the area from a height. Lightly Obscured conditions reduce visibility: rain reduces maximum visibility to 1 mile, and fog reduces it to between 100 and 300 feet.
Outdoor terrain determines the distance at which characters encounter other creatures. The Travel Terrain table (see “Travel” below) gives suggested encounter distances for different types of terrain.
Visibility at Sea. From a ship’s crow’s nest, a lookout can see things up to 10 miles away, assuming clear skies and a relatively calm sea. Overcast skies reduce that distance by half. Lightly Obscured conditions reduce visibility just as they do on land.
Visibility Underwater. Visibility underwater depends on water clarity and the available light. Use the Underwater Encounter Distance table to determine the encounter distances underwater.
The rules in the “Exploration” section in the Player’s Handbook cover the basics of travel on a scale ranging from minutes to days. The tools in this section can add excitement to a longer trek.
It can be helpful to break up a journey into stages, with each stage representing anything from a few hours’ journey to ten days or so of travel. A journey might have only a single stage if the trip is a matter of following a clear path to a well-known destination. A journey consisting of three stages makes for a satisfying trek. For example, the characters might travel along a river to the forest’s edge (stage 1), follow a trail into the heart of the woods (stage 2), and then search the woods for an ancient ruin (stage 3). A long journey might involve even more stages and occupy several game sessions.
You decide how to break up the journey, though your decision can be shaped by the characters’ plan for navigating the journey. When the characters know the route they must take, the stages of the journey should correspond to the way you might give someone directions, as in the example above.
Planning the Stages. You can use the accompanying Travel Planner sheet to plan the stages of a journey. (Use multiple copies of the Travel Planner for a journey with more than three stages.)
For each stage, note where it starts and ends, the distance covered, and the predominant terrain. Choose or randomly determine the weather on that stage (see “Weather” later in this chapter). Plan one or more challenges for each stage, such as an encounter, an obstacle, a search for something hidden, or a chance of getting lost, as described under “Journey Stage Challenges.”
Journeys without Destinations
Sometimes, characters travel without a clear path to follow or a clear destination in mind. In such a case, use the grid of your map (squares or hexes) to define the stages of the journey, however many miles each square or hex might be. (This style of play is sometimes called “hex crawling.”)
In this kind of wilderness exploration, you can take one of two approaches to travel challenges:
Sandbox Approach. Your map of the area determines what characters find when they enter any particular hex on the map. You might have encounters or obstacles in place for every hex, or they could be spread farther apart.
Random Approach. Use tables to randomly determine encounters or obstacles in each hex the characters enter.
Whichever approach you use, running a journey otherwise works the same as described in the rest of the “Travel” section.
Running the Stages. For each stage of the journey, follow these steps in order:
Step 1: Set the Pace. Have the players choose their group’s travel pace for the stage: Slow, Normal, or Fast (see “Travel Pace”). Based on the length of the stage (in miles) and the group’s pace, determine how long this stage takes to complete.
Step 2: Narrate the Travel. Describe what happens as the characters complete this stage of their journey. Introduce and resolve any challenges (see “Journey Stage Challenges”).
Step 3: Track Food and Water Consumption. Each creature in the party expends the appropriate amount of food and water for the length of the stage. If the party lacks enough food or water, the characters risk dehydration and malnutrition.
Step 4: Track Progress. Track the party’s progress at the end of the stage. You might mark their position on a map of the region and note the elapsed time on the Travel Planner.
Depending on how you planned the stages, the end of a stage might mean the characters arrive at a landmark, a waystation, or an adventure location, whether or not it’s their final destination.
During each stage of the characters’ journey, you can determine what the weather is like by rolling on the Weather table, adjusting for the terrain and season as appropriate. Roll 1d20 three times to determine the temperature, the wind, and the precipitation.
Weather has no significant game effect most of the time, but see “Environmental Effects” in chapter 3 for the effects of extreme weather. Adding weather details to your descriptions of the characters’ journey can make it more memorable.
A group of characters can travel overland at a Normal, Fast, or Slow pace, as described in the Player’s Handbook. During any journey stage, the predominant terrain determines the characters’ maximum travel pace, as shown in the Maximum Pace column of the Travel Terrain table. Certain factors can affect a group’s travel pace.
Good Roads. The presence of a good road increases the group’s maximum pace by one step (from Slow to Normal or from Normal to Fast).
Slower Travelers. The group must move at a Slow pace if any group member’s Speed is reduced to half or less of normal.
Extended Travel. Characters can push themselves to travel for more than 8 hours per day, at the risk of tiring. At the end of each additional hour of travel beyond 8 hours, each character must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or gain 1 Exhaustion level. The DC is 10 plus 1 for each hour past 8 hours.
Special Movement. If a party can travel at a high Speed for an extended time, as with a spell such as Wind Walk or a magic item such as a Carpet of Flying, translate the party’s Speed into travel rates using these rules:
Miles per hour = Speed ÷ 10
Miles per day (Normal pace) = Miles per hour × number of hours traveled (typically 8)
Fast pace = Miles per day × 1⅓ (round down)
Slow pace = Miles per day × 2/3 (round down)
If the characters are flying or their special movement allows them to ignore Difficult Terrain, they can move at a Fast pace regardless of the terrain.
Vehicles. Characters traveling in a vehicle use the vehicle’s speed in miles per hour (as shown in chapter 6 of the Player’s Handbook) to determine their rate of travel, and they don’t choose a travel pace.
Traveling through fantastical landscapes can be a fun and interesting part of any adventure
| Terrain | Maximum Pace | Encounter Distance | Foraging DC | Navigation DC | Search DC |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arctic | Fast* |
6d6 × 10 feet |
20 | 10 | 10 |
| Coastal | Normal | 2d10 × 10 feet |
10 | 5 | 15 |
| Desert | Normal | 6d6 × 10 feet |
20 | 10 | 10 |
| Forest | Normal | 2d8 × 10 feet |
10 | 15 | 15 |
| Grassland | Fast | 6d6 × 10 feet |
15 | 5 | 15 |
| Hill | Normal | 2d10 × 10 feet |
15 | 10 | 15 |
| Mountain | Slow | 4d10 × 10 feet |
20 | 15 | 20 |
| Swamp | Slow | 2d8 × 10 feet |
10 | 15 | 20 |
| Underdark | Normal | 2d6 × 10 feet |
20 | 10 | 20 |
| Urban | Normal | 2d6 × 10 feet |
20 | 15 | 15 |
| Waterborne | Special† |
6d6 × 10 feet |
15 | 10 | 15 |
*Appropriate equipment (such as skis) is necessary to keep up a Fast pace in Arctic terrain.
†Characters’ rate of travel while waterborne depends on the vehicle carrying them; see “Vehicles.”
Just as movies use travel montages to convey long and arduous journeys in a matter of seconds, you can use a few sentences of descriptive text to paint a picture of a journey in your players’ minds before moving on. Describe the journey as vividly as you like, but keep momentum by focusing on the most notable details that reinforce the desired mood.
Visual aids can help set the scene for the characters’ travels. Image searches on the internet can lead you to breathtaking landscapes (in fact, that’s a good phrase to search for). You can spice up your descriptions with truly fantastical elements. For example, a forest might be home to tiny dragonets instead of birds, or its trees might be festooned with giant webs or have eerie green, glowing sap. A single fantastic element within an otherwise realistic and memorable landscape is enough.
Use the landscape to set the mood and tone for your adventure. In one forest, close-set trees might shroud all light and seem to watch the adventurers as they pass. In another, sunlight streams through the leaves above, and flower-laden vines twine up every trunk. Signs of corruption—rotting wood, foul-smelling water, and rocks covered with slimy moss—can be a signal that the adventurers are drawing close to the site of evil power that is their destination or can provide clues to the nature of the threats to be found there.
Do Players Need to Track Rations?
You might decide that tracking Rations is unnecessary in your game. Even if the characters are in a desert, you can assume that a character with proficiency in the Survival skill can find enough food and water to sustain the party. Make sure you work that into your narration of the journey so the player feels good about choosing that skill proficiency. You can also assume the characters can load their mounts with enough Rations for their journey, or they can use magic (such as the Create Food and Water spell) to sustain them.
On the other hand, having players track Rations seems appropriate for a more realistic campaign. Characters in such a campaign should approach a long wilderness journey as a challenge in logistics: how many pack animals do they need to carry the food for the journey, and how do they feed the animals?
As always, communicate your expectations about these rules to the players ahead of time. If you don’t plan on tracking Rations, tell your players that before they spend an hour purchasing supplies for their journey.
Challenges that adventurers might face during a journey stage include the following, which are discussed in the sections that follow:
Encounters with Other Creatures. The Encounter Distance column in the Travel Terrain table gives the range at which creatures might become aware of each other while journeying through the wilderness. When staging an encounter, consider these possibilities:
Ambush. Monsters set up an ambush along a route they expect travelers to follow.
Attack from Above. Flying monsters swoop down to attack the characters.
Distant Sighting. The characters and monsters spot each other from a distance in open terrain.
Found by Chance. The characters happen upon monsters that are camping, eating, hunting, basking in the sun, walking along the same trail, or engaged in some other activity.
Pursuit. The characters are tracking monsters, or the monsters are tracking them. The encounter begins when the two groups get close enough to interact.
Foraging. Characters without water and Rations can stave off dehydration and malnutrition by gathering food and water as they travel. A foraging character makes a Wisdom (Survival) check once per journey stage (or once per day if a stage is shorter than a day). The DC is determined by the abundance of food and water in the region, as shown in the Foraging DC column of the Travel Terrain table. If multiple characters forage, each character makes a separate check.
A foraging character finds nothing on a failed check. On a successful check, roll 1d6 and add the character’s Wisdom modifier to determine how much food (in pounds) the character finds per day of the journey stage, then repeat the roll for water (in gallons).
Navigation. If the characters aren’t following an established path or traveling with a landmark in sight, they risk getting lost. Here are some circumstances that can cause a group to lose its way:
Let the players know when the characters are at risk of getting lost, then have the characters choose one of their number to make a Wisdom (Survival) check against a DC appropriate to the terrain, as shown in the Navigation DC column of the Travel Terrain table. Another member of the group can take the Help action to assist this check as normal.
If the check fails, the party goes off course. You decide what this looks like: they might follow the wrong branch of a river, orient themselves to the wrong mountain peak on the horizon, or get turned around in the forest. As a baseline, assume that getting lost extends the length of the current journey stage by 1d6 × 10 percent. It might also affect subsequent stages of the journey.
Obstacles. An obstacle is terrain or weather that obstructs the characters’ path. Examples include a cliff, a blizzard, or a forest fire. To get past the obstacle, characters might need to backtrack and find an alternate route, or they might need to take shelter until the obstacle goes away. Let the players spend time thinking about a solution, then be generous in adjudicating whether their plan works.
In addition to the chance of a delay (adding a few hours, a day, or a couple of days to the current stage of the journey), here are some other consequences you can impose if characters fail to overcome or bypass an obstacle:
Combat Encounter. The characters encounter one or more Hostile creatures. For example, marching through a burning forest instead of circling around it might prompt an encounter with raging fire elementals.
Damage. The characters take damage. For example, a character who tumbles over a waterfall might take Bludgeoning damage. See “Improvising Damage” in this chapter for guidelines on determining how much damage is appropriate.
Exhaustion. The obstacle fatigues the characters, causing them to gain Exhaustion levels. For example, marching through a blizzard instead of taking shelter might cause each character to gain 1d4 Exhaustion levels.
Another Condition. The obstacle imposes another condition on the characters. For example, wading through a fetid swamp rather than skirting around it might impose the Poisoned condition, which lasts until removed by magic.
Searches. This challenge often comes up in the last stage of a journey: the characters have to find their destination, which might be an island, an old mine, an ancient ruin, a magical pool, a hag’s cottage, or some other feature.
The Search DC column of the Travel Terrain table suggests DCs for Wisdom (Perception) checks made to find something in different types of terrain. You can adjust these DCs based on the specific terrain features and the nature of what the characters are trying to find, using the guidelines for setting DCs earlier in this chapter.
Tracking. A specific instance of searching on a journey is when adventurers choose their path by following the tracks of other creatures. To track, one or more trackers must succeed on a Wisdom (Survival) check. You might require trackers to make a new check in any of the following circumstances:
Resting. The trackers resume tracking after finishing a Short or Long Rest.
Shifting Weather or Terrain. The weather or terrain changes in a way that makes tracking harder.
Terrain Obstacle. The trail crosses a river or similar obstacle that allows no tracks.
The DC for the check depends on how well the ground shows signs of a creature’s passage. No roll is necessary in situations where the tracks are obvious, such as following an army along a muddy road. Spotting tracks on bare rock is more challenging unless the creature being tracked leaves a distinct trail. Additionally, the passage of time often makes tracks harder to follow. In a situation where there is no trail to follow, you can rule that tracking is impossible.
Use the Search DC column of the Travel Terrain table as a starting point for setting the DC for tracking. If you prefer, you can choose a DC based on your assessment of the difficulty—higher if days have elapsed since the creature passed, lower if the creature is leaving an obvious trail such as blood. You can also grant Advantage on the check if there’s more than one set of tracks to follow or Disadvantage if the trail passes through a busy area.
On a failed check, the character loses the trail but can attempt to find it again by carefully searching the area. It takes 10 minutes to find a trail in a confined area, such as a series of caverns, or 1 hour outdoors.
A river presents an obstacle to characters traveling through the wilderness.