So I ran a 6-8 encounter day...

[Ath-kethin]

Like the jungle Ogre's ambush ability... how does that change the CR?

Well, if the ability is similar to a Doppelganger's Ambusher ability, you increase the monster's effective attack bonus by 1 when calculating its CR (per page 280 of the Dungeon Master's Guide).

I also tend to shoot from the hip when running games, but there are answers to many questions if you know where to look and find it worth the bother to do so.

 

[Uller]

I'm so sorry, I forgot to mention that they are all level 7 (edited the OP for clarity)

I don't know the difficulty level, I just eyeball things usually, and some have custom monsters. Like the jungle Ogre's ambush ability... how does that change the CR?

Probably makes it a CR 3

 

[Otterscrubber]

Yep. I usually need to allow one long rest every two days of game play.

We get around that by having a house rule that says 'for balance reasons between classes, we'll have the equivalent of 6-8 encounters with two short rests between long rests. That means sometimes in the narrative you won't always get a long rest by sleeping overnight. I'll narrate something as best as I can to keep the verisimilitude of the game, but this is necessary to ensure the most fun for everyone so I hope you understand and roll with it.'

I've gotten away from planning "X" number of short rests between Long Rests or how many Long Rests the characters take between points in the story. The story is the story, if they need to rest and can rest, then they rest. If they can't, but need to then they need to figure something out. Granted, I am a little forgiving with short rests, powers that recover on a short rest I prefer to treat more like encounter powers in 4e. Unless they are going right into the next fight then if I can assume they have had some type of break in the action I let short rest powers recover. Perhaps this is too lenient, but I find it works fairly well and keeps things moving.

 

[robus]

So yes, 6-8 encounters/day DOES help with class balance. But even after doing this, I can't help but note that this narrative structure does not work for all adventures...

Sure it doesn’t work for every day of an adventure but a good number of days in the adventure can be like this. Let’s call them “adventuring days”

Meaning if you’re going to have action encounters it’s best to bunch them up into a single adventuring day. Exploring a tomb/dungeon: easily an adventuring day. Taking a long journey? One day (or more) just sucks and has all kinds of trouble, babdits, animals, a river or a pass, etc. In the city, a day of “out of the frying pan into the fire” encounters.

 

[Satyrn]

I don't know the difficulty level, I just eyeball things usually, and some have custom monsters. Like the jungle Ogre's ambush ability... how does that change the CR?

It probably doesn't.

A monster's CR is determined by 2 parts - it's damage output and its damage input.

To figure out its damage output, you figure out its average damage/round by adding all the damage it does over 3 rounds, assuming it uses its best attacks, and that it hits every time (or its targets fail every save) and deals average damage on each strike.

Now, I don't actually know what your Ambush feature does, but if it primarily makes it more likely that the ogre actually hits in the first round, then it's not adding anything that isn't already assumed in the calculation (because we're already assuming every attack hits over 3 rounds).

I might guess that an Ambush feature also adds some damage. If that means it's +1d6 on the first round, it's adding 3 damage on the first round, whuch actually works to onky +1 damage to its average over 3 rounds. That probably won't affect its damage output rating, and certainly won't once its defense rating is averaged in.

Unless the ogre is already a strong CR 2 - like, on the verge of being CR 3 - it would probably have to be dealing somewhere around +5d6 damage before it affects the CR.

 

[Prakriti]

I really think it was a mistake to retain the short rest mechanic from 4E. The older editions functioned so much better without it.

 

[the Jester]

I just looked through my notes, and it appears that my last 6-8 encounter day was... last game, with most of the day happening the game before (well, the game before for that group, anyhow- I run multiple parties).

I run a hardcore sandbox, so I don't use the encounter building design guidelines at all. With that in mind, the party included:

Buford (fighter 9)
Windsor (wizard 8)
Karn (cleric 6)

..and, for the last two encounters:

Bast (cleric 5)

The encounters were with:

2 troglodytes

1 phantom fungus (homebrew conversion of the 3e monster)

4 troglodytes

8 troglodytes and a unique two-headed troglodyte worshiper of Demogorgon

1 ettin

1 headless (homebrewed monster, CR 5)

13 stirges

9 stirges

This is not too atypical for my game, at least when a party is dungeoneering (which is pretty common). Interestingly, the player of Karn tends to blow through all his resources (ki points, spells, whatever) very quickly no matter what character he's playing, and this holds true with Karn. This means that the later encounters are much harder on him than the earlier ones are. However, the last few games, he's actually been conserving some resources- he still had a third level slot left to cast spirit guardians against the 13 stirges.

Buford is a battlemaster, so he regains lots of tactical options on a short rest. He's not shy about spending his superiority dice, but he also doesn't use them wastefully. So a long day like this one, which I think had one or two short rests in it, serves him pretty well. Paradoxically, it also gives him more effective hit points, because he can use his second wind more due to having more short rests.

 

[Ancalagon]

I find that the 6-8 adventure day is realistic only in certain circumstances - like in this instance there was a strong "time pressure". Now - let's be honest here, the party was going to arrive in the nick of time as long as they made reasonable efforts to hurry... BUUUT if they hadn't pushed, "oh I don't have the right spell list for this let's go tomorrow" or whatever... well they would have arrived too late.

In some circumstances though, these time pressures are not realistic. There are valid adventures where there isn't a time pressure. In some dungeon (some ancient tomb you are looting)... you can leave and come back tomorrow.

In other cases, there may be a time pressure, but the number of encounters per day is not going to be that high. The party must hurry from the barony of Bla to the capital of SuchandSuch to stop an ursuper from being crowned. It's 2 day's travel. Would it be fun to have an encounter during the trip? Sure. Would there be 6-8 encounters per day on a well traveled, safe road? Probably not...

 

[aco175]

When I am planning adventures and making maps, I try to build in area for the PCs to rest. There may be a side room or secret room that they find, or even something where it sends the monsters in another direction.

My problem is when the PCs choose to rest, which is fine and they most likely should at that point, but it is how the monsters react to them and changing the other encounters to make it more real. In a module I recently finished, the PCs rested in the lair of some manticores that are only partially friendly to the monsters in the castle. The rest of the castle would have eventually seen the death and carnage of half of their forces and react somehow. I ended up having most of them pull back to the throne room and there was a big fight there, again. It seemed less fun, but more real.

 

[guachi]

My highest is a ten encounter day playing an old 1e dungeon.

I had gotten rid of short rests and everyone worked off of long rests but the results were similar. A drained party. Exceptionally fun, too.