6-8 Encounters a long rest is, actually, a pretty problematic idea.

[Tony Vargas]

Then you get into the territory that makes most MMOs so lifeless.

I'm sure Hasbro would be delighted to render D&D 'lifeless' enough to pull in the orders of magnitude larger player base & income stream of an MMO. But, it's really a meaningless comparison. TTRPGs and MMOs are both RPGs, but trying to paint one as better than another, when they're just different media, gets nowhere. Plus 'your RPG is an MMO' is just fight'n words since the edition war, anyway. It's like a liberal calling conservative policies fascist or a conservative calling liberal policies communist. Just a red flag waved in front of a bull.

To prevent players creating stronger or weaker characters you restrict freedom to create the characters they want. To prevent players making good or bad tactical decisions you make tactics irrelevant.

Not really. If you present many options, some of which are substantially & strictly superior to most others, you are actually restricting freedom to create the characters players want, because only some of those options are real, the rest are non-viable 'traps.' If you present fewer options that are at least arguably balanced/viable, they're at least all real options. The same goes for tactical options, if 'rest' is a tactical option with many benefits, and 'press on' is a tactical option with no benefits, then there's not much of a choice, you rest unless forced not to - the crux of the issue, really.

But the thing is, in P&P there is no need for it. A human DM can adjust the difficulty on the fly

Again, that's essentially destroying options, only, in that case, for the DM. Might the DM want to run a scenario where significant time passes between challenges? Yes. Can he, if his responsibility includes forcing balance on a party that includes classes with who derive radically different benefits from 1/24hr 'long' rests? No, because his freedom is being restricted by a need to compensate for

, and create adventures where the player who created a clumsy thief with Expertise in History and Brewing Materials turns out to be the MVP.

Can a DM make a campaign in which Brewing tool-proficiency is as plot-important as Thieves' Tool proficiency? Yes. Does it greatly restrict the kinds of scenarios he can use. Heck yes. Is that a good thing? No. But there's a way around it: don't 'charge' players as much for generally-Adventuring-useful abilities as for generally trivial ones. If Expertise in Brewing comes up twice (or even never) in the course of a normal a campaign, while Thieves' Tools come up virtually every session, you can afford to essentially let a player have the former 'for free' (or darn near it), because it's mainly window-dressing. It's worth noting, in this context, that 5e /does/ make it pretty easy to add languages & tool proficiencies without build/level-up resources, via downtime, so it's really only the insistence on layering Expertise on what is otherwise a trivial ability that's problematic.

This gets into one of my common wishes not fulfilled - less focus on "balance" more focus on "balancing" within the rule structure and the GM guidelines.

Well, the rules structure certainly doesn't focus much on balance, and leaves plenty of 'balancing' to be done by the DM - inevitably so, with so many optional modules (with even feats & MCing being optional, for instance). Guidelines are, I guess, still not there. Early in the playtest we were 'promised' (not really, Mike made no promises, per se) crystal-clear guidelines in terms of the intended balance point of encounters/day. In spite of being a don't-hold-me-to-it not-really-a-promise promise, the 6-8 encounter day guideline did deliver on it. But, yeah, beyond that, there's really not a lot of explicit 'balancing' advice...

It would be far more beneficial to my way of thinking to have a section on some benchmarks and metrics to look at for your groups to give you a sense of your "power level" vs a handful of known commodities and useful capabilities - including DPR but not just DPR. It would be much better for moderate Gm to see section on challenge vs party not in general terms of CR vs level but in more actual terms of "do they have this kind of thing yet?"

I suppose you could have a party Level calculation that's more in depth than just the average level of the PCs...? So a party that's mostly 3rd, but 'optimal' in a variety of senses, might be 7th, while a botched 8th level party could be 5th, that kinda thing...
...then the party's equivalent level could drop as the day progresses...?

 

[smbakeresq]

I played Against the Giants when it first came out. By that I mean the one with the Green Cover, where you could actually find a Hammer of Thunderbolts. Here is what it said for the Hall of the Fire Giant King, every DM should read it at least 3 times:

"Remember also that these giants are not only the toughest so far encountered but also have the best advice immediately available to them. As soon as the party strikes and then retires, the attack will be assessed and countermeasures taken. Even when the party first enters the hall, you will have to gauge the reaction of the giants if and when they learn that intruders are within. How will they react? From whence will they call in guards? Where will Snurre go? Most assuredly, he will not remain seated upon his throne when an attack is in progress! You have not ceased being a Dungeon Master by using this prepared scenario; you have simply had some details handled for you so that you can better script the more important material.

When the party retires from the hall to rest, the fire giants will lay whatever traps and ambushes they are able to prepare under the circumstances. Lights will be smothered, sentries posted, and so forth. In the original playtest, the giants who survived the first foray by the (exceptionally strong and well-played) party set several ambushes, each surprise being timed to allow them to retreat quickly behind a turn in a passage or through a set of doors, gradually falling back to the corridor to the lower level. While the characters offered no quarter and slew every giant or other creature encountered with absolute ruthlessness, their opponents fought with reckless abandon and self-sacrifice.

How you manage this conflict in your game must be based on knowledge that only you can have. The upshot of this whole series of adventures is a fight to the finish. Only the leaders and those they take with them will normally seek to move to a place of safety; the rest will stand fast and battle to the end. "

And

"If the group journeyed hence by some other method, they will have noted such a place of refuge about two miles distant from Snurre's sooty palace. This hidden site should initially prove to be safe from detection as long as the characters leave no plain trail to it and as long as they are not followed to it. There is a limit, though, to how far they can push their luck. Each time they venture forth from their refuge to raid the fire giant hall, there is a 10 percent cumulative chance that the hidey-hole will be found by the giants (a 10 percent chance after the first raid, 20 percent following the second, and so forth). "



Every time your players rest, short or long, countermeasures will be taken by any intelligent and organized opponent. An enemy smart enough to build or occupy any type of base or dungeon will have something planned. Monsters that move in like oozes and ropers, no. But almost everything else, yes. They don't have a gong on the wall to just hang there, and unless you are casting silence spells they will hear combat sounds as modified by distance. Several smaller encounters can easily escalate into one long running encounter, which is good.

A "deadly" encounter can also be an "average" encounter with half of the party's resources gone. Any BBEG uses his minions and traps to wear you down, and a Party that reaches a Endpoint Encounter with full health and resources has either played very well or something went wrong.

Too many groups expect to always have most of their resources for every encounter or every other encounter. The designers did state they did not take party endurance into account. That was an error but DM don't have to do that. Some adventures explicitly say some areas can be rested in.


As far as the Leomunds, yes its a refuge. But the party also just built their own prison. An organized enemy can find it and can take simple measures such as flooding the room its in subjecting the party to drowning when they leave or having giants cover it with boulders (I did this in SKT to my kids group.) A more advanced approach would be the enemies all readying actions to shoot whoever emerges from the dome from cover with +2 to hit since they have surely "bore-sighted" the ranged weapons they would use. An ooze can spread themselves over it. Parties should have to take regular precautions like hiding it someplace remote. A good place to hide a Leomunds is under water and then have players swim down to it.

Rope trick for short rests is fine with me, however any alarm would not be called off because an hour passed by. To me its an essential spell that Parties should have in scroll form.

 

[robus]

So do any of the AP actually push this kind of resource management model? The two I have XP with had little to make this 6-8 per long rest a reality. There would be instances where it could be an issue but in general getting a long rest in was not a problem.

(Reading through this long thread so apologies if this has been addressed already...)

It's not enforced but when I did some reverse design work on LMoP I could see that the designers did take it into account. For example the very first sequence of encounters at the Goblin hideout very neatly conformed to the adventuring day guidelines. And really there was no obvious spot to long rest so the designers assumed that this sequence would be tackled during a single adventuring day (which I think all groups probably did). This pattern continued until I got bored (after about 3 or 4 set pieces .

So while the adventuring day is not enforced it is considered when developing the published adventures. Of course there's really no way for them to enforce it unless they really want to you to run the adventure on super tight rails:

"No, you rest when the adventure says you rest. Now get back into that dungeon, you've got 3 more encounters to overcome!"

All they can do is to try and structure it so that it makes logical sense in the narrative for the group to keep plugging away at a set of encounters (within an adventuring day). As I said in another thread, this is where GM skill comes into play, dangling interesting morsels in front of the players so they want to keep going. Whether it's a ticking clock or a mystery or whatever. What is the driving motivation? I don't think the players need much, but they need something.

 

[smbakeresq]

As a side note, the XP amounts and encounters don't really match up for PC advancement. The PCs advance slower than what the DMG would have you believe, since the XP the PCs get is LOWER than what the encounter budget is if using multiple creatures. Its ok though, I have just had to add in some bonus XP for plot advancement or clever play.

I also give PC extra XP for pushing through to more encounters as opposed to resting all the time since I personally push the PC's until exhaustion some days myself. In my game durable is a great feat, and for healing kit I use the medicine skill instead of a flat +4 and someone always takes it.

 

[robus]

That whole conversation reminded me of an old computer game from the Pool of Radiance era. The game would let you attempt a long rest and heal anywhere, but there was always a chance of being interrupted by a random encounter.

So in one section, the party was in a collapsing tower, climbing a staircase, rocks falling from the ceiling. We were badly hurt, almost out of spells, about to face the big bad. Tense, time critical scene right? Well...not really. I just kept hitting the long rest button until we weren't interrupted by falling rocks. We probably spent weeks in that collapsing staircase.

I get the impression that certain people would allow similar shenanigans unless there was boxed text in a mod that specifically disallowed it. That, much like a computer game, encounters are not really triggered until some specific event (usually opening a door to the room with the next set of monsters) happens. Maybe not to the level of the collapsing tower, but obviously you could take out the first third of a goblin stronghold and expect no changes to behavior from the rest of the goblins while the party rests for 8 hours.

I can't imagine why anyone would think that was the best way to run a game, but to each their own. Modules, encounters per day guidelines, XP budgets, et al. are a starting point and will always need to be adjusted based on DM style, options used and the group.

I find myself somewhat in the middle between you and CapnZapp. One the one hand I think the DM absolutely is in charge of bringing the challenge to their players. If the players aren't challenged then the DM is failing at their one job. On the other hand I think the modules do a terrible job of educating DMs on how the mechanics of the system were applied while the adventure was created. For example, how about detailing the encounters within a chapter and how they were intended to interact with the mechanics? A basic, obvious piece of missing information is whether an encounter is intended to be easy, medium, hard or deadly. If that information was given it would be much easier to on the fly adjust the difficulty to challenge the players appropriately (assuming they're coming in at a level (or size) misaligned with the encounter.

So while I agree that it is impossible to please all the tables all the time, the adventure publishers could do a lot more to assist DMs in understanding the behind-the-curtain aspects and not expect us to be able to read their minds all the time on how this particular set of encounters is supposed to challenge the players.

 

[Oofta]

I find myself somewhat in the middle between you and CapnZapp. One the one hand I think the DM absolutely is in charge of bringing the challenge to their players. If the players aren't challenged then the DM is failing at their one job. On the other hand I think the modules do a terrible job of educating DMs on how the mechanics of the system were applied while the adventure was created. For example, how about detailing the encounters within a chapter and how they were intended to interact with the mechanics? A basic, obvious piece of missing information is whether an encounter is intended to be easy, medium, hard or deadly. If that information was given it would be much easier to on the fly adjust the difficulty to challenge the players appropriately (assuming they're coming in at a level (or size) misaligned with the encounter.

So while I agree that it is impossible to please all the tables all the time, the adventure publishers could do a lot more to assist DMs in understanding the behind-the-curtain aspects and not expect us to be able to read their minds all the time on how this particular set of encounters is supposed to challenge the players.

I rarely use mods, but here's my perspective. For 80% or more of the people that purchase mods, it would just be extra bloat that they don't need or ignore (even if they could use it). So for publishers it's just extra page count. Even a few extra pages can really cut into profit margin. In addition, much of the advice that could be added to modules is already in the DMG.

So a different approach is to support podcasts, blogs and other online resources where people can go to find help. This forum is one of those resources and hopefully we occasionally provide good advice. Maybe.

But the other side of that is that there is no science, no set of instructions that will work for everyone. Adding in advice and alternatives would probably take significant effort for relatively little gain. Getting the feel for encounter building and balance simply takes experience with plenty of trial and error. I don't think there are shortcuts for that. Groups, styles and implementations are so varied I don't think there could be a lot added. Mods are the outline, it's always going to a DM to adjust based on what happens and what will work for their group.

Maybe I just have too much sympathy for mod writers - if anyone reading this has written mods for publication wants to chime in please do!

 

[Tony Vargas]

For 80% or more of the people that purchase mods, it would just be extra bloat that they don't need or ignore (even if they could use it). So for publishers it's just extra page count. Even a few extra pages can really cut into profit margin.

A fair chunk of what he's asking for could be done in one line, not even a column inch (just: difficulty for x PCs of y level, XP to award). Making it clear that a series of encounters should be taken on in one day could also be little more than how it's presented. It might not increase page count, at all. And, heck, if you need to cut an illo or two, or some superfluous world-building background, it'd be worth it.

But the other side of that is that there is no science, no set of instructions that will work for everyone. Adding in advice and alternatives would probably take significant effort for relatively little gain. Getting the feel for encounter building and balance simply takes experience with plenty of trial and error.

There is a set of encounter guidelines in 5e. While I agree that DMing experience is better than depending on it, alone, seeing how they're used (or deviated from advisedly) in designing the adventure's encounters could only help.

And, just, in general "Ack! Bloat! XOMG! Page count!" is a little too facile and frequent an objection. Yes, 5e errs on the slide of a slow pace of release and a paucity of options, in general. No, that does not mean wanting a bit more in this or that area is automatically bad.

As a side note, the XP amounts and encounters don't really match up for PC advancement. The PCs advance slower than what the DMG would have you believe, since the XP the PCs get is LOWER than what the encounter budget is if using multiple creatures.

I'm pretty sure the XP you actually get - and the budget - are /before/ the multiple creature modifiers. So you can throw 6-8 medium-hard encounters pretty easily w/in a day's budget.

I'm really unsure about the logic of the multiplier, though. Yes, numbers clearly tell heavily thanks to BA so it makes sense for determining difficulty, but how it relates to the budget and XP gain could've gone either way (several ways?). :shrug:

Full disclosure: I end up not using the guidelines, myself, just throwing down whatever seems appropriate, and tweaking it on the fly...

 

[robus]

I rarely use mods, but here's my perspective. For 80% or more of the people that purchase mods, it would just be extra bloat that they don't need or ignore (even if they could use it). So for publishers it's just extra page count. Even a few extra pages can really cut into profit margin. In addition, much of the advice that could be added to modules is already in the DMG.

Well a difficulty icon wouldn't add much to the page count and a side bar indicating that encounters A, B, C, D and E are intended to be run within a single adventuring day. I think the adventure writers fall too much in love with their story and forget that DMs need mechanical support if they are to run it well (without a bunch of extra work which is why we bought bought the adventure in the first place!)

It amazes me that these two basic mechanics are unreferenced in the adventures when 5e has supposedly been designed around them.

 

[robus]

I'm pretty sure the XP you actually get - and the budget - are /before/ the multiple creature modifiers. So you can throw 6-8 medium-hard encounters pretty easily w/in a day's budget.

I'm really unsure about the logic of the multiplier, though. Yes, numbers clearly tell heavily thanks to BA, but how it relates to the budget and XP gain could've gone either way (several ways?). :shrug:

Oh and that's the other bit that's not documented in the adventures - the amount of XP to award from the encounter? Why do we have to do the math again?! (Perhaps it's because the XP math actually doesn't add up...?!)

 

[Tony Vargas]

Oh and that's the other bit that's not documented in the adventures - the amount of XP to award from the encounter? Why do we have to do the math again?! (Perhaps it's because the XP math actually doesn't add up...?!)

Well, it doesn't 'add up' in that any encounter with more than one monster and/or any party with more/fewer than 5 PCs changes the /difficulty/ calculation. But the XP awarded for the encounter is just the total value of the creatures involved.

It certainly can't be that an adventure left out XP because the handful of characters would've 'bloated' the module or rendered it unprofitable to produce!