D&D 5E Resting and the frikkin' Elephant in the Room

[Hussar]

I think the concern was more that forcing large numbers of encounters ( 6-8 of the guideline or the slightly dubious alternative of 3 deadlies) between daily rests, would be plausible only in an implausibly dangerous world.

How? Considering that you, as a DM, by and large, use level(ish) balanced encounters for your PC's throughout the campaign, how can it be any more implausible that those encounters come in somewhat larger batches than "one"? I mean, do you routinely fire very easy encounters at your party? If you have a 10th level party, then a LOT of encounters would be very easy.

Yet, funnily enough, the majority of encounters for your 10th level PC's tend to hover somewhere in the neighbourhood of medium to difficult for a 10th level party and you almost never have Level 1 encounters, despite those obviously being far, far more common in the game world than Level 10 ones.

Some of us get really hung up on the Vtude - so much so that 4e had to die, and 5e adopt inherently imbalanced class designs - and some of us who do, also DM, so what the mechanics & guidelines imply impact, indeed dictate, world-building choices (for that sub-set).

Can you please leave the edition warring crap at the door. This thread has NOTHING to do with edition and you're just muddying the water by constantly banging this drum.

 

[Hussar]

You don't have to know these things to know that an encounter happened. How many rounds did the 53rd fight one of your PCs take? How many HPs were lost? What spells were used? Did that PC ever fail at an encounter and live?

Well, I'm a bit of an outlier here since I play on a Virtual Tabletop. Meaning I can tell you EXACTLY what the die rolls were in their 53rd fight. I have an actual log record of it.

But, in any case, everyone knows because everyone was actually there and dice were rolled and witnessed. That we might not be able to recall the exact specifics later doesn't suddenly mean it never actually happened.

Is that encounter no longer an encounter because you don't know?

Nope. It just means that my memory isn't as good as it could be. But, you CAN'T know. And that's the difference. There is no log. There is no record. There's NOTHING because IT NEVER HAPPENED. Thus, it's not an encounter.

How irrelevant to my point is, "well, they aren't dead, so they must have succeeded"? Answer: Very.

What risk of failure was there when no random chance was involved? How can XP be awarded without any chance of failure? How can you have an encounter that never actually happened.

How can non-encounters that never happened possibly affect world building?

 

[Maxperson]

Well, I'm a bit of an outlier here since I play on a Virtual Tabletop. Meaning I can tell you EXACTLY what the die rolls were in their 53rd fight. I have an actual log record of it.

Heh. I said YOUR 53rd fight. Was there even virtual gaming then? I had the impression you've been gaming for a long time.

That we might not be able to recall the exact specifics later doesn't suddenly mean it never actually happened.

Which is the same as the NPC. That I don't know the specifics doesn't mean that it never happened to the NPC.

Nope. It just means that my memory isn't as good as it could be. But, you CAN'T know. And that's the difference. There is no log. There is no record. There's NOTHING because IT NEVER HAPPENED. Thus, it's not an encounter.

I can know. At any time I can decide to play it out. It happened and it's my choice to play out that encounter or not. I typically choose not to. There's no record of 99.9% of PC encounters, either.

What risk of failure was there when no random chance was involved? How can XP be awarded without any chance of failure? How can you have an encounter that never actually happened.

The same risk of failure as any PC who would have fought the monster with the same resources, and again, the encounter did happen. And I have the same record that virtually every PC has. A level on a sheet to prove that it did and knowledge that it happened.

How can non-encounters that never happened possibly affect world building?

This has been explained in the thread repeatedly. I recommend going back and re-reading one of the myriad of examples and explanations.

 

[Hussar]

So, [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], I can come to your table with my PC having gained three levels since the last session and armed with an artifact? After all, he isn't dead, so, he must have succeeded in the encounters. He had them all in my head, so, I can play that at your table right?



This is ludicrous. You're arguing that encounters (as in the game defined term as an event with a chance of failure where we roll dice to determine success) have occurred even though they don't even exist in anyone at the table's head? I mean, you don't bother detailing all the encounters that NPC had right? So, encounters that never actually happened are now impacting your game world's design?

And you cannot see where the problem is with that?

 

[Maxperson]

So, @Maxperson, I can come to your table with my PC having gained three levels since the last session and armed with an artifact? After all, he isn't dead, so, he must have succeeded in the encounters. He had them all in my head, so, I can play that at your table right?



This is ludicrous. You're arguing that encounters (as in the game defined term as an event with a chance of failure where we roll dice to determine success) have occurred even though they don't even exist in anyone at the table's head? I mean, you don't bother detailing all the encounters that NPC had right? So, encounters that never actually happened are now impacting your game world's design?

That's not ludicrous, it's an elephant sized Strawman.

And you cannot see where the problem is with that?

Why would a Strawman of your making be a problem for my position on this topic?

 

[Hussar]

What's the problem? You are telling me that encounters occur without any dice being rolled, and any actual play occurring, so, why can't I simply tell you that my character had 10 encounters yesterday and survived them all? He's now a level up and has an artifact. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

You keep using the word "strawman". I do not believe it means what you think it means. The actual logical fallacy you are looking for is reductio ad absurdum. But, that is largely my point. You are arguing that "encounters" occur even when no narration is done, and there is no actual chance of failure.

You do realize that those little people that you are imagining in your game world don't actually have separate lives right? They are just fictional constructs.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

Prove it. How many rounds did it take? How many HP did they lose? What spells did they use? Did they ever fail an encounter? And how tautological is "well, they aren't dead, so they must have succeeded"?

That's reaching pretty bloody hard to claim that encounters were successfully resolved without a single mechanic being used. It's all pure narration. Which is fine. We all do it. But, it's not proof that mechanics influence world building when you actually aren't using any mechanics.

The debate continues...

So look, you're right, and you're wrong.

You are correct that no mechanics are used, or at least very few mechanics. But it's not about the mechanics per se. It's about probabilities.

The number of encounters per adventuring day is designed around a certain set of probabilities about how likely the party is going to survive an encounter. This is based on difficulty, but it's also based on some assumptions about how the players will handle a given encounter, even if we don't know exactly what the designers were thinking. For example, I suspect the designers think that players tend not to run away, etc. Other things that I've seen quoted one place or another are things like they expect a rogue to be able to use their sneak attack every round, that sort of thing.

The mechanics are designed in part to support those probabilities. For example, the death saving throw is set so you have about a 60% chance of survival without any additional help. That 60% probability comes up a lot in 5e.

You don't need to know how many hit points somebody lost in an encounter. If you want to maintain consistency in the world, then you ensure that the probabilities apply the same to the PCs and the NPCs. So if the probabilities mean that 60% of encounters end in success, then they can expect similar results for NPCs.

It's not always pure narration. For many of us it's narration based on the same probabilities set up for the PCs. Which means that the rules influence the world building. And that's really what we're talking about. It doesn't matter if I played through the actual combats, because statistically I know what the outcome will be. And I can create simpler mechanics if I want to to produce those probabilities for the NPCs to help develop the world and what's happening in it.

The details may be pure narration, like when you meet one in the tavern and they're telling you about their last battle against a wyvern, but the statistics, the part that directly relates to the elephant, is not.

Because it's not the mechanics that determine if the PCs survive or not. It's the probabilities behind those mechanics, combined with the actions and decisions of the players and the luck of the dice. I can make the objective decisions (or even mechanical) decisions about how the NPCs would approach combat which would provide that piece of the probability for each NPC. Just like I can look at the play style of the players and develop a pretty good guess as to how long a given PC will survive based on the probabilities at play in my campaign.

 

[Maxperson]

What's the problem? You are telling me that encounters occur without any dice being rolled, and any actual play occurring, so, why can't I simply tell you that my character had 10 encounters yesterday and survived them all? He's now a level up and has an artifact. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

If you're the DM, go for it.

You keep using the word "strawman". I do not believe it means what you think it means. The actual logical fallacy you are looking for is reductio ad absurdum. But, that is largely my point. You are arguing that "encounters" occur even when no narration is done, and there is no actual chance of failure.

Let's see. You altered my argument from its original form, into a new form that now includes players coming up with things they have no ability or right to engage in, and then argued against your new fictionalized argument.

That's a classic Strawman.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

How? Considering that you, as a DM, by and large, use level(ish) balanced encounters for your PC's throughout the campaign, how can it be any more implausible that those encounters come in somewhat larger batches than "one"? I mean, do you routinely fire very easy encounters at your party? If you have a 10th level party, then a LOT of encounters would be very easy.

The vast majority of encounters in my campaign are easy. For just about any level. But then the majority of encounters in my campaign don't end in combat either. If you're measuring encounters that result in combat, then they are probably predominantly on the hard to very hard side.

Yet, funnily enough, the majority of encounters for your 10th level PC's tend to hover somewhere in the neighbourhood of medium to difficult for a 10th level party and you almost never have Level 1 encounters, despite those obviously being far, far more common in the game world than Level 10 ones.

And funnily enough, I suspect that you don't have any actual experience with encounters at my table and have no way of knowing that you're wrong.

The majority of combats that my players with 10th level PCs get into tend to be medium to difficult, since they tend not to resort to combat when they would easily win (or the other side avoids combat, surrenders or flees), and the players tend to avoid combat when they can when they think that they are outmatched when they can, and come back later when they are better prepared.

So the combats might hover around a certain level, but that's because of what the players/characters choose to do, and not what's presented in the encounters. When discussing the consistency in the game world, it's important to look at the encounters themselves, and not only the ones that resulted in combat.

 

[Ancalagon]

I think that the random encounters tables should in part reflect how civilized/safe that area is. If you are traveling through a well settled area, you are going to encounter farmers and the like, perhaps at worse a goblin or 2 or some petty brigands. If you keep encountering giants and hordes of undead, this area isn't safe for the local population!

High level characters passing through a safe (or safe-ish) area should not expect dangerous encounters...