Felltower – Loot, Exploration, and Combat, in that order?

What is Felltower about?

“Felltower is all about safety.” – Ulf

Well, that, and loot, exploration, and combat, in that order. The XP system rewards loot heavily, exploration second, and combat not at all. Combat is inherently set up in the game as an obstacle to gaining loot and exploration.

PC builds, though, are about combat, almost purely. Some of that is inherent in the game – Sean Punch made these templates combat machines for the most part. In a game where combat can end your paper man, players are incentivized to put their points into combat. That can leave a party a little less able to deal with anything that isn’t combat.

Evaluating loot? Can’t do that without surviving combat, so that’s often set aside.

Finding hidden loot? 1-5 total points in this, if that. If See Secrets and Search rolls with a couple points in the skill don’t do it, too bad, that’s what we’ve got. Seek Earth is standard.

Exploration? Cartography gets an investment, sometimes, but not always. Otherwise, exploration is treated purely as a player-facing exercise.

Other ways of interacting with the world are all tertiary to this. If a spell doesn’t kill, heal, or help you move in combat . . . it’s basically considered a wasted point in a prereq.

I think because the game system gives you so many ways to deal with combat, it’s also the way you most want to deal with the environment. Negotiation won’t always work but combat always results in combat, so again, combat power gets emphasized.

I am not sure where I am going with this, just thinking that, even if the rewards system heavily prioritizes the results of an expedition over the how, a completely non-rewarded and costly method can dominate how you get there. Phase 1: Maximize combat power. Phase 3: Profit! It’s not clear how you could go about changing the desire for combat (and the explantions, both totally correct and heavily rationalized, that drive it.) Putting XP on it sure didn’t help D&D become about loot and exploration, and taking XP away for it would likely be counterproductive and unfair, at best. So how to make sure the game spends more time on exploration to find loot instead of combat to find loot?

I still don’t know the answer to that.