Modern Dungeon Crawling: Analysis

 

My son is gonna LOVE Minecraft Dungeons

In old school D&D, dungeon crawling is an exercise in resource management. Those resources are:

• Torches
• Time

Time is really a measurement of risk. After a certain amount of time, there is a chance of a monster appearing, which then uses up other resources:

• Hit Points
• Spell Slots

There are some secondary things that might be used up if the party is injured, such as

• Potions of Healing, which cost gold
• Hit Dice (if short rests in a dungeon are allowed)
• Rations (if they help heal), which are really just a gold tax
• Spell slots used for healing
• Scrolls 

This means that, much like overland travel, players are always pushing their luck to gain treasure at the expense of the fundamental resources of HP and Spell slots. There is a secondary game of inventory management in the form of balancing torches with carried treasure, and possibly another with rations.

D&D is ultimately and essentially, gambling. The game utilizes resource management as its primary mechanism of challenge. In board game terms, it's similar to a push-your-luck game.

My question now is, how is a dungeon crawl challenging in modern D&D? In the modern game, it’s easy to recover hit points and even hit dice to an extent.

Tracking Light Sources

Torches aren’t important, because players can cast Light as a cantrip. In Baldur’s Gate 3, 1 torch lasted an infinite amount of time. This means that we’re not going to bother tracking light as a resource. 

People assume that Darkvision solves the “problem” of torches, and that’s only half-true. From the modern (2024) rules:

Darkvision

If you have Darkvision, you can see in Dim Light within a specified range as if it were Bright Light and in Darkness within that range as if it were Dim Light. You discern colors in that Darkness only as shades of gray.

Dim Light

An area with Dim Light is Lightly Obscured.

Lightly Obscured

You have Disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks to see something in a Lightly Obscured space.

Darkness

An area of Darkness is Heavily Obscured.

Heavily Obscured

You have the Blinded condition while trying to see something in a Heavily Obscured space.

Blinded [Condition]

While you have the Blinded condition, you experience the following effects:

Can’t See. You can’t see and automatically fail any ability check that requires sight.

Attacks Affected. Attack rolls against you have Advantage, and your attack rolls have Disadvantage.

If we presume that most dungeons are bathed in Darkness, which those with Darkvision will see as Dim Light. This means I’ve been running Darkvision all wrong. Furthermore, humans are blind in total Darkness, which means they still have a light source. Because 5e’s inventory tracking system doesn’t even matter unless you carry too much stuff (reducing movement speed to 0 ala Skyrim), there’s no reason a player character couldn’t just carry a practically infinite amount of torches. Furthermore, anyone with the Light cantrip bypasses even this piddly limitation.

My conclusion: We cannot challenge the players with light, or the weight from carrying things that make light. This game design tool hereby removed from my toolbox. That only leaves us with Hit Points and Spell Slots.

Challenging Hit Points

Random encounter in dungeons are a serious contender for being our best tool in the dungeon. After all, the original 2014 version’s playtest was in a mega dungeon. It’s even in the name of the game.

If we presume that random encounter should be A). Infrequent, B). Possible to Escape From and C). Challenging, then we need to resolve a few issues:

The first is that players can just leave the dungeon when they’re tired and their resources are completed. What’s to stop them? Would we even want to stop them? Players of all types love feeling prepared for danger. 5e has the strange problem of operating best in that sweet spot when resources are low (as far as drama goes) but it’s also the most stressful for players, and the state of play they most strongly try to avoid. Baldur’s Gate taught us that you can take a Long Rest practically whenever you want, even with the “limitation” of using camp supplies. This (as well as 10 years of D&D 5e) has trained players to constantly seek Long Rests. As a DM, I don't like this. As a player, I hate not having all of my resources, especially before big encounters.

In 2014 D&D, the expectation is that parties will have 6-8 combat encounters per day. Nowhere in the 2024 edition is this expectation mentioned. I presume this is still true, since the game is mostly errata. Monsters are tougher and hit harder, so let’s assume the optimal play zone is about 7 encounters per adventuring day.

Even with my updated travel rules (lifted nearly verbatim from the excellent Land of Eem), it seems like players are mostly having one encounter in the wilderness between Long Rests. Even if Long Rests are tweaked so they’re more limited in the wilderness, this leads to a very slow attrition of spell slots and HP over time. This means that my random encounters need to be Deadly, all the time. I’ll do a little audit of some Xanathar’s encounters by tier and see how they stack up against my party (4 characters at level 3 as of this writing).

From the 1-4 Arctic Table

1 Giant Owl - Trivial

1d6 + 3 Kobolds - Even the maximum roll of 9 kobolds is an Easy encounter

1 Owl - CR 0 Owl is a Trivial encounter

2d6 Bandits - 12 bandits is a Hard encounter, but you’re more likely to get 7, which is Easy

Conclusion: This table sucks, but then the level range is pretty broad. Some of these encounters would flatten a level 1 party, and my party is at the uppermost level of what this table can offer. Let's go up a tier. 

From the 5-10 Arctic Table

2 Saber-toothed tigers - Hard

1d4 half-ogres - 2 ogres is Hard, 3 is Deadly, 4 is just cruel

1d3+1 brown bears - 3 brown bears is Hard, 4 is Deadly

1d3 polar bears - 2 is Hard, 3 is Deadly

2d4 berserkers - 2 is Hard, 3 is Deadly, any higher is cruel

1 orc eye of Gruumsh with 1d6 orogs and 2d8+6 orcs - This is a TPK.

The takeaway here is that I should only be using the 5-10 tables for random encounters at this level, but I need to feed things into the encounter builder to check for challenge. I suppose the idea here is this: Since 5e’s character gain power so quickly, we cannot rely on a static Random Encounter table for consistent challenge. Even gaining 1 level totally alters the math and challenge of the monsters I just wrote down. I know the details of this game, and it takes a careful hand to provide the kind of experience that I want my players to have.

Dungeons

Dungeons present a unique adventure environment because they provide no way of restoring resources. Unlike traveling in the wilderness, where the cadence of travel means a regular restoration of resources, the dungeon provides nothing but danger. Even getting back out and finding a safe place to rest could mean encountering an unfriendly monster, further straining party resources.

In essence, I suspect that by tweaking Long Rests as I have, I have completely fixed my issues with 5th edition D&D. Now let’s see if my suspicions stand up to my players.

Conclusion

By tweaking long rests to restore a limited number of resources in the wilderness, we have slowed resource replenishment. This means we don’t need to worry as much about those 7 encounters between long rests; a big fight might totally deplete all spell slots and class features, and a long rest is typically only bringing back 1 per day. I believe this tweak will fundamentally alter how players interact with the world.

Instead of arbitrarily declaring that long rests cannot happen in the wilderness (which I had considered) now players must make interesting decisions about where they will go, and where they will rest. I expect they will map out routes and pathways so they can optimally move across the map, resting in the best places and keeping their resources topped off. Resting in the wilderness and only getting back half of their max HP and HD, and one spell slot or class feature, will be the least appealing option.

D&D 5e is a game about attrition, but was poorly balanced by the fact that players regained their resources easily, and instantly, with one night’s rest. With my changes, the game is once again about attrition, though the kind that doesn’t require tracking torches and inventory (though we do still track rations), and doesn’t require a lot of rolling on tables to determine travel speed and weather. The Land of Eem’s overland travel rules have been such a breath of fresh air, and the Mystic Art’s suggestion for Long Rest changes have revitalized my interest in this type of game.