D&D 5E 6-8 encounters/day - how common is this?

ad_hoc said:

I played through HotDQ and didn't notice that. The only chapter where I could see that happening was with certain encounters on the caravan trip.

Maybe if you gave specific examples?

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Disclosure, I think that adventure is terrible and that campaign failed before we completed it (GM got a new job in a different city and one of the players got posted to Christmas Island) but it was most obvious right at the start in the sequences of encounters in Greenest(?) whatever the town that's under assault was. At level 1 I was playing a druid standing 5 miles away from everything and using a bow, but the frontliners kept getting dumpstered and then we had a critical issue of needing to rest because we'd used all the healing spells. I was the only healer in the party - which sucked, because I didn't want to be a healbot - I think one of the guys was a paladin but he died to something amazingly dumb in session 1 I think. The result was after several of the fights e.g. the challenge vs whatever that half dragon dude was, we literally couldn't continue without a long rest because multiple dudes were on 1 HP with no way of healing at all.

This then set up precisely the mechanic I'm talking about because the wizard gets the benefit of long rests and has a ton of spells. Sleep owns.

It kept happening though, we get trashed (despite me eating like 80 points of damage in one encounter, moon druid supremacy 4 lyfe) if the wizard didn't have sleep, which meant we'd be seriously short on healing which created a desire to long rest again. Which made the wizard better, because he's getting more spells. The caravan section had the same problem as you point out because you can rest a lot.

A bunch of the players were new to 5E (I was literally the only guy who'd played 5E before) and the wizard was a 2nd ed veteran (Which was why he'd taken sleep) and everyone else was new

Ancalagon said:

This long rest every 3 sessions is a bit of ... hard to operate. It's kind of awkward because things aren't always so plan-able. Say the party finishes the quest after 2 sessions instead of 3, but are all battered and drained of healing resources. The next adventure happens in 3 weeks of in game time while the party does "between adventure stuff", shuffling along barely conscious. They start the new quest still hurt, but after 2 days on the road near the dungeon they break camp and... I don't know, make great pancakes or something (end of session 3) and tada, all better!

... wut?

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Yeah, its very not great.

The_Furious_Puffin said:

Disclosure, I think that adventure is terrible and that campaign failed before we completed it (GM got a new job in a different city and one of the players got posted to Christmas Island)

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We completed it and had a great time doing so.

but it was most obvious right at the start in the sequences of encounters in Greenest(?) whatever the town that's under assault was. At level 1 I was playing a druid standing 5 miles away from everything and using a bow, but the frontliners kept getting dumpstered and then we had a critical issue of needing to rest because we'd used all the healing spells. I was the only healer in the party - which sucked, because I didn't want to be a healbot - I think one of the guys was a paladin but he died to something amazingly dumb in session 1 I think. The result was after several of the fights e.g. the challenge vs whatever that half dragon dude was, we literally couldn't continue without a long rest because multiple dudes were on 1 HP with no way of healing at all.

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Do you know about the rule where you can get hit points back when taking a short rest?

What I am reading from your post is that the encounters you had were difficult so you wanted to long rest. You didn't really include any details about what happens in the scenarios when you actually take long rests.

Each scenario in that adventure is pretty self contained and the NPCs all have their own goals and actions that they are carrying out while you are doing your thing. If you rest then time will move forward and you will likely be failing at one or more goals.

The difficulty of the adventure is an entirely different topic, but in my experience people find that adventure to be too difficult when they just try to destroy everyone in their path. It was written on the assumption of using the 3 pillars of the game, social interaction, exploration, and combat. In HotDQ I would say they are in that order as well.

The_Furious_Puffin said:

Disclosure, I think that adventure is terrible and that campaign failed before we completed it but it was most obvious right at the start in the sequences of encounters in Greenest(?) whatever the town that's under assault was. At level 1 I was playing a druid standing 5 miles away from everything and using a bow, but the frontliners kept getting dumpstered and then we had a critical issue of needing to rest because we'd used all the healing spells. I was the only healer in the party - which sucked, because I didn't want to be a healbot - I think one of the guys was a paladin but he died to something amazingly dumb in session 1 I think. The result was after several of the fights e.g. the challenge vs whatever that half dragon dude was, we literally couldn't continue without a long rest because multiple dudes were on 1 HP with no way of healing at all.

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That first chapter was pretty messed up, it looks, in retrospect, like the poor guy who wrote it was working off earlier encounter guidelines that didn't take the number of opponents into account, so there was this series of planned & randomish encounters where you were outnumbered by kobolds and Bounded Accuracied to death, and had to decline further missions in order to rest, assuming you survived.

This then set up precisely the mechanic I'm talking about because the wizard gets the benefit of long rests and has a ton of spells. Sleep owns.

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In that particular instance, taking a long rest ends the chapter, if you rest early, the other potential encounters happen without you, and that's it, no great benefit, you just miss out on some exp - and some death.

That said, the party that was most successful in all the times I've run that scenario (and I was tapped to run 'Seek the Keep' + the Dragon flyby over and over as an intro-to-5e demo at a con that year, so more than I ever wanted to) was the one with a well-played wizard who used Sleep to tip the balance on the largest Kobold encounter, and magic missile to put them over the top and annoy the Dragon into flying off. That was a case of a 6-8 encounter scenario reduced to 2 encounters, though to fit in a short time slot, so it is illustrative - the player of the wizard knew we didnt' have time to run through multiple encounters, so he could blow his spells.

The caravan section had the same problem as you point out because you can rest a lot.

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Nod, the classic overland travel issue.

A bunch of the players were new to 5E (I was literally the only guy who'd played 5E before) and the wizard was a 2nd ed veteran (Which was why he'd taken sleep) and everyone else was new

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Are the new-to-gaming ones still playing D&D, though?

Flamestrike said:

The assumption is that long rest resources should last you through 6-8 encounters. Short rest resources should last around 2 encounters.

With some classes being short rest dependent, and others being long rest dependent (and long rest resources being much more potent than short rest ones) if youre only getting one or two 'big' fights between long rests, youre effectively removing the distinction between the two.

Compare a long rest dependent Wizard 10 with a short rest dependent Warlock 10 over 2 'big' fights per day, or a long rest dependent Paladin 10 vs a short rest dependent Fighter 10. Its not even close.

Now compare the exact same classes over an adventuring day featuring 8 encounters, with a short rest after every single encounter. It swings the other way entirely.

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Yes, 1-2 encounter days are undesirable. I'm thinking about 6-8 with 2 short rests vs 3-4 with a short rest whenever. They both have the same balance between rests. I think the latter is actually the designers' expectation for a typical day. The DMG presents 6-8 encounters as something to keep in mind when building adventures, but doesn't advocate hard restrictions on resting (and in fact there are spells clearly intended to let the players rest whenever they want). So I think their idea of the baseline 5e adventure is the DM puts 6-8 encounters together, and the players choose when to rest (probably taking a long rest somewhere in the middle) with the adventure overall being pretty easy. The typical number of encounters between long rests would therefore be closer to 3-4, not 6-8, which matches up with most responses to this thread.

Flamestrike said:

I personally use a 6/2 split as my default ballpark target.

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I think if you're into the encounter-centric approach to make the game more challenging, the obvious way to go is 3-4 deadly+ rather than 6-8 medium-hard. It's a misreading of DMG p.84 to think the game advocates 6+ encounter days as such.

The scenarios you describe seem like more of an interesting challenge for the DM to concoct than for the players to manage.

(Just my opinion though--if it works for your players carry on, of course)

ad_hoc said:

We completed it and had a great time doing so.



Do you know about the rule where you can get hit points back when taking a short rest?

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Yeah, but it's based on your hit dice. At level 1, you've got one. If you got dumpstered in the first fight, then short rested (which we did after basically every fight), then you got dumpstered in the 2nd fight you're SOL.

What I am reading from your post is that the encounters you had were difficult so you wanted to long rest. You didn't really include any details about what happens in the scenarios when you actually take long rests.

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The wizard dropped sleep and contributed a ton more than every other character. This dynamic changed a bit as we levelled up and suddenly the moon druid was rocking, because we didn't have enough healing so we short rested (so the other characters could use their hit dice) and long rested (so they could get their hit dice back) a lot, and I went into every fight with two uses of wild shape and had zero danger of dying.

Each scenario in that adventure is pretty self contained and the NPCs all have their own goals and actions that they are carrying out while you are doing your thing. If you rest then time will move forward and you will likely be failing at one or more goals.

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Yeah, I think the DM was toning some of that back because as I said, a number of players were getting downed in fight 1, then we had to rest otherwise they couldn't do anything at all.

The difficulty of the adventure is an entirely different topic, but in my experience people find that adventure to be too difficult when they just try to destroy everyone in their path. It was written on the assumption of using the 3 pillars of the game, social interaction, exploration, and combat. In HotDQ I would say they are in that order as well.

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I played Phandelver with a different (and much more experienced) DM and we had a a similar problem because we were trekking around cross country which set up more rests to fights than the expectation, and again, the Sorcerer, Cleric and bard (me) pulled ahead of everyone else, and the Paladin was noticeably more effective than the sword and board fighter at basically everything.

Tony Vargas said:

That first chapter was pretty messed up, it looks, in retrospect, like the poor guy who wrote it was working off earlier encounter guidelines that didn't take the number of opponents into account, so there was this series of planned & randomish encounters where you were outnumbered by kobolds and Bounded Accuracied to death, and had to decline further missions in order to rest, assuming you survived.

In that particular instance, taking a long rest ends the chapter, if you rest early, the other potential encounters happen without you, and that's it, no great benefit, you just miss out on some exp - and some death.

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Yeah, the adventure is hot garbage and it was compounded by the fact that this was our DM's first time running a game, so he didn't have the skills to effectively adapt it on the fly - not that he should have to actually have those skills hence my distaste for the adventure. I think he gave us a long rest and let the game roll on because he didn't want to miss all the content. It's been like a year though so my memory on the exact details is a fuzzy. I'd say the problems persisted, the game wound up after the caravan.

Nod, the classic overland travel issue.

Are the new-to-gaming ones still playing D&D, though?

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No, I think mostly because the social connection of the group was with the players who moved away rather than the quality or otherwise of the adventure.

Libramarian said:

Yes, 1-2 encounter days are undesirable. I'm thinking about 6-8 with 2 short rests vs 3-4 with a short rest whenever. They both have the same balance between rests. I think the latter is actually the designers' expectation for a typical day.

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Over 3-4 encounters with 1 short rest:

Paladin 6 v Fighter (BM) 6:
Paladin heals 30 hp with lay on hands. Fighter heals 23 with second wind x 2 (adv paladin)
Paladin has a pool of 14d8 smite damage. Fighter has pool of 8d8 from sup dice (adv paladin)
Fighter has action surge x 2. Paladin has channel divinity x 2 (even)
Paladin has divine aura (+ cha to saves). Fighter has bonus feat (even)

With 6-8 encounters and 2 short rests:

Paladin 6 v Fighter (BM) 6:
Paladin heals 30 hp with lay on hands. Fighter heals 34 with second wind x 3 (even)
Paladin has a pool of 14d8 smite damage. Fighter has 12d8 from sup dice (even)
Fighter has action surge x 3. Paladin has channel divinity x 3 (even)
Paladin has divine aura (+ cha to saves). Fighter has bonus feat (even)

Over 3-4 encounters with 1 short rest:

Wizard 6 v Warlock 6:
Wizard has 4/3/4 spells. Enough to drop 1 spell each of 3rd, 2nd and 1st level per encounter (22 spell levels). Warlock has 4 x 3rds - enough to drop 1 x 3rd every encounter (12 spell levels) (plus at will invocations and a slightly better cantrip) (adv Wizard)

With 6-8 encounters and 2 short rests:

Wizard 6 v Warlock (BM) 6:
Wizard has 4/3/4 spells. Enough to drop around 2 spells per encounter (of levels 1-3) or 22 spell levels. Warlock has 6 x 3rds - enough to drop just under 1 x 3rd level spell every encounter (plus at will invocations and a slightly better cantrip) or 18 spell levels plus at will invocations (even)

There is no escaping the fact the classes balance at the 6-8/ 2 short rest spot. Reducing the number of encounters or short rests messes with this balance.

It's fine to do mind you - the occasional shorter AD is inevitable. Just make sure you push a longer one on them (with more short rests) next time to compensate (and give the Warlock a chance to shine)

The DMG presents 6-8 encounters as something to keep in mind when building adventures, but doesn't advocate hard restrictions on resting (and in fact there are spells clearly intended to let the players rest whenever they want).

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No-one is saying it's a 'hard' limit mate. Its a guideline that you build encounters around (and you can frequently ignore it or intentionally tinker with it if you want). You dont cram 6-8 encounter adventuring days down your parties throats day in day out. You mix it up, limiting some adventures, leaving it in the parties hands for others, pushing shorter ADs on the party from time to time, and pushing longer ones on them from time to time.

And as for spells that allow the party safe rest (rope trick etc), they are all well and good. These spells guarantee a safe rest free from wandering monsters. Which is only one of many possible complications - all of which are in the DMs hands. These spells do absolutelty zero to help the party:

• Save the princess by (x),
• prevent the ritual from summoning the demon before (x),
• find the escape to the dungeon by time (x),
• stop the BBEG from escaping by (x).

All of which should feature in your adventure design around 50 percent of the time. Give the PCs a time limit for success (just like in the real world, you never have the luxury of having all the time in the world to do what you want).

If you as the DM spnt 5 minutes when designing your encoutners to consider the rest pacing/ 5 minute AD meta, and to insert a win/lose condition into your parties adventuring day via a time limit, then all the rope tricks in the world wont help the party.

The 'struggles' many DMs have with policing the 5 minute adventuring day almost always comes down to lazy DMing plain and simple (If we're being honest with ourselves) or to being oblivious of the problems of the 5 minute AD, or obliious to the fact that ramping up encounter difficulty is simpy contributing to the problem.

Many DMs stat up an encounter and leave it there, or simply cant be bothered with policing the 5 minute AD.

When you sit down during the week and design your adventure, spend 5 minutes structuring the encoutners together into an adventuring day. Turn your mind to the rest mechanics, enforce time limits on the party and place win/loss conditions for the party failing to meet that limit. Frame your encoutners within a desired rest paradigm, and let the players pace themselves within that framing.

Its really not that hard to do, and the rewards are totally worth it. The party will be cautious, and conserve resources. Deciding to blow that high level slot, or drop a smite or action surge become a meaningful choice (and these abilities stand out more when used sparingly and are not an automatic go to). The party will come together to decide when to rest, and when to push on. It creates a sense of urgency to your adventures and balances the classes.

There is really no reason not to ignore policing the 5 minute AD barring lazy DMing. Even if your mind cant accept 6-8 encounters between long rests (bearing in mind a long rest is an 8 hour break) the DMG presents you with other options right in the book (the longer rest variant) to suit slower games.

Run an adventure or two that conforms to the 6-8/2 short rest meta and see what Im talking about. Remember to scale your encounters back accordingly to medium-hard levels though (or you will get a TPK on your hands!).

As an example of encounter pacing, in my current home campaign (5E, set in PF's Golarion based in Falcons Hollow, using a coversion of 3E Age of Worms AP)

• Adventure 1: (D0 - Hollows last hope) Party given a quest to save Falcons hollow from the plague. Time limit: People are dying daily; the longer the party take, the more die in town. The eyes of the town are on them. If the cure can be found within 3 days Laurel (the NPC that hired them) offers extra money as reward as she will be able to save more lives.
• Adventure 2: (The whispering cairn). Party finds rumors of nearby ruin in the hills. Time limit: Rival adventuring band (Fighter, mage and rogue) are currently looting a nearby ruin, and the party are aware that once done, they'll then move to clear out the same tomb the PCs want to investigate. This rival NPC group are higher level than the party, and the party wants to claim the treasure for itself. The party reckon they have about 3 days max before the other NPCs come to investigate the tomb.
• Adventure 3: (The three faces of evil). Modified for this adventure. The party investigate a rival lumber operation outside of camp, and discover it is the front for an evil cult. After fighting the occupants above, they descend into the depths and find a main chamber with 3 rooms leading off the main hub - each room blocked by a gate. This adventure was designed with 3 x 'deadly' encounters in each room, but the party have as much time as needed to rest before tackling each room (although the cultists may be sending reinforcements once word reaches them of the parties action above, so they cant tarry too long).
• Adventure 4: (Blackwall keep) The party face a series of long drawn out skirmishes with a lizard man group seiging a castle on AD 1. Once this is resolved, they discover that the castles sorcerer has been captured by the lizard men - they have 24 hours to rescue her before she is devoured by the lizard men.
• Adventure 5: (The Lost Island of Castanamir - AD&D adventure converted to 5E). On the way to Absolom, the parties ship is attacked by a chimera. The boat is damaged in the attack, and will need 3 days to repair. Investigating the mysterious island that the creature laired on while the repairs are carried out, they enter a magical portal trapping themselves in a maze of teleportation portals and strange monsters. The party have three days to find the exit, and escape before being marooned on the island.

Among these set piece adventures there have been smaller 'random encounter' single adventuring days scattered about as well. But overall, the pacing has been around 6 encounters per day, and about 2 short rests per long rest as the campaign default.

Its really not hard to police and when done correctly, it enhances the narrative, provides a mechanical balance and really adds to the game as a whole.

Libramarian said:

Yes, 1-2 encounter days are undesirable. I'm thinking about 6-8 with 2 short rests vs 3-4 with a short rest whenever. They both have the same balance between rests.

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It boils down to closer to a short rest every other encounter on a 6-8 day, or after each encounter on a 3-4, but, yes, with symmetrically longer & more challenging encounters that would seem to make sense. One factor that could mess with the idea, though, is whole-encounter effects.

I think the latter is actually the designers' expectation for a typical day. The DMG presents 6-8 encounters as something to keep in mind when building adventures, but doesn't advocate hard restrictions on resting (and in fact there are spells clearly intended to let the players rest whenever they want). So I think their idea of the baseline 5e adventure is the DM puts 6-8 encounters together, and the players choose when to rest (probably taking a long rest somewhere in the middle) with the adventure overall being pretty easy.

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That makes very little sense, even as rationalizations go. OTOH, if there is an expectation of 6+ encounter days among the players, they'll conserve daily resources, and, rather than the occasional 3-4 or 1-2 encounter day being distorted by novas, it'll just end with a bunch of daily resources un-used. So it would only be telegraphing or consistently running shorter days that'd be an issue, in terms of numeric balance of resources across classes, that is.

Then there's the party composition. A party consisting of Cleric, Sorcerer, Barbarian, & Paladin (and/or Wizard and/or Bard, not so much Ranger, maybe) isn't going to have the balance among it's members much distorted by a somewhat shorter day at most levels. It's harder to envision as practical a short-rest oriented party, but some Warlocks, BMs, Monks, and Assassins might get up to something.

I think if you're into the encounter-centric approach to make the game more challenging, the obvious way to go is 3-4 deadly+ rather than 6-8 medium-hard. It's a misreading of DMG p.84 to think the game advocates 6+ encounter days as such.

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It's a natural-language interpretation, and 5e favors natural language over obscure jargon - and, I should hope, over intentionally deceiving both players & DMs.

But it is clearly presented as a guideline, not a rule (and even if it were a rule, the DM'd be free to change it). It's not that the DMG is saying that you should run 6-8 encounter days and have short rests about every other encounter, every time, it's just saying the short-rest types'll need one after 2 or so encounters, and the long-rest types will need to bed down after 6-8... Fewer encounters means less pressure on resources, so the party can handle tougher fights. But, reading between the lines, as you point out above, if you do keep the 2-3 short rest to 6-8 encounter ratio, you might not exacerbate class balance issues.

But, it's none of it set in stone. If you have a party where one PC seems to be underperforming, and his resource schedule is the odd man out, that could be a place to look for solutions, for instance. OTOH, if you have one mostly-daily character dominating and another languishing, changing encounters/day around is unlikely to help. There's a lot of ways the DM can tweak his game to keep it fun for everyone. Encounters/day is one of them, and it's one that tweaks several things at once - including intraparty class balance based on resources, and encounter difficulty - and not always conveniently in all the directions you need.

Flamestrike said:

Its really not hard to police and when done correctly, it enhances the narrative, provides a mechanical balance and really adds to the game as a whole.

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This is interesting, and I'd like to contribute, because this is how I play as well. I have far less encounters, but I use time limits constantly.

Adventure 01: Strict Time Limit - PCs hired by son of an adventurer who is dying of a curse. If they don't hurry, his father will die.
Adventure 02: Soft Time Limit - First, the PCs have to find outlaws who are killing allies before too many allies die. Then they have access to the "dungeon" (manor) for a limited time to discover why everyone went mad there.
Adventure 03: Soft Time Limit - An ally has been abducted, and he could die any time.
Adventure 04: Strict Time Limits - This adventure was FIVE plot lines, all occurring simultaneously, all under strict and conflicting timetables. Too long to go into, but one of the most fun games of D&D I've ever run.
Adventure 05: No Resting Point - Escort mission through a one way portal into a dwarven city that (surprise!) was taken over by goblinoids. Getting out was the adventure.
Adventure 06: Lackadaisical - Finally no strict time table! They proceeded at their leisure.
Adventure 07: Lackadaisical - Plot driven 100% by PC goals, so they proceeded at their own pace again.
Adventure 08: Strict Time Limit - PCs were helping NPCs who were on a strict timetable themselves to uncover an enemy both groups had. Time limit by proxy.
Adventure 09: Soft Time Limit - Pure hexcrawl, but time limit of one month to find the biggest baddest trophy and win the contest. PCs lost.
Adventure 10: No Resting Point - Plot driven 100% by PC goals, but they were very driven. No rest taken.
Adventure 11: Lackadaisical - Mostly plot based adventure, not very dangerous anyway.
Adventure 12: Soft Time Limit - PCs traveling through the Nine Hells hounded by demons and dragons. The longer they took the worse things got.
Adventure 13: Soft Time Limit - Continuation of Adventure 12, but now they have to go back this time, escorting a clan of dwarves across the Nine Hells.
Adventure 14: Strict Time Limit - PC's temple leader very adamant that the PCs make contact with a potential ally within 24 hours. Very.
Adventure 15: Strict Time Limits - Imminent attack against an ally. The PCs have to stop the enemy before the attack can happen within 48 hours. At the same time another PC has to make contact with a thief within 24 hours.
Adventure 16: No Resting Point - Fairly humdrum meeting with minor lord in the City of Brass turns into getting out of the City of Brass NOW.
Adventure 17: Lackadaisical - Plot driven 100% by PC goals, no time limit.
Adventure 18: Strict Time Limit - PC's father wanted for murder and on the run. Have to find him, keep him away from authorities (whoops! Another PC is the authorities!) and prove he didn't do it before he's discovered!
Adventure 19: No Resting Point - Have to meet a potential ally that day, then sudden escort mission to keep an ally safe from assassins.

So, out of 19 adventures, only three left the PCs completely in control of their own timetables, and six had hard and measured time limits where if they went over, they would fail in their goals, while four had consequences for being slow.

I think my games are fairly informed by the Dresden Files novel series, actually, being an urban fantasy campaign they kind of mirror that format. Adventuring life is hard, and it isn't convenient. People need things done right now, and you may go for months with nothing happening, then all of a sudden three organizations come up to you and tell you that they need you to do X, Y, and Z, and you have 24 hours to get this done or else something bad will happen. And, maybe you'd say no, but people are in danger. Often innocent people are in danger. So, you suck it up, agree to do this thing you absolutely do not want to do, and as these hooks unfold around you, you suddenly realize you're in the middle of some serious stuff. Other times, an assassin comes after you, and you start to wonder what you could have done to warrant that, and why now of all times just when you took this innocuous job that couldn't be... oh... but they... and they... Crap. And, now you've got to save yourself.

Anyway, this is to say that I love strict time limits, and I think they enhance the game tremendously. I don't see them as any kind of "gotcha" from the DM. They make for the best gameplay.

ThirdWizard said:

Anyway, this is to say that I love strict time limits, and I think they enhance the game tremendously. I don't see them as any kind of "gotcha" from the DM. They make for the best gameplay.

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The only way you could construe a time limit as a gotcha is if the players were earnestly interested in accomplishing the mission, but were given no information about the time frame in which to complete it. If you know Liverpool is 5 days away, and there's a terrible disease that you have been given the cure for and more people are dying every day, you get the idea that the sooner you get there the better and the longer it takes the more people die.

Alternatively if you were only informed that you need to take a magic vial to Liverpool and given no reason why, so you take your time, explore a tomb on your way there (because the trip without distractions would be pointless), maybe do some side quests and get there in two weeks only to find everyone dead and the be narfed-out for not getting there fast enough, yeah I could see that as a gotcha.

The party should have reasonable information about whatever they're doing, that includes time frames. There are always known knows, known unknowns and unknown unknowns. What they're doing may be a good known unknown (delivering an unidentified package), knowing who they're delivering it to may be a good unknown unknown (they were told to take it to the Dark Forest and place it inside the Forbidden Tree). But when should typically be known to them, even if it is more fluid like "By the last light of the full moon on a winter's eve."