D&D 5E Finally switching my campaign from 4th to 5th Edition.

[I'm A Banana]

What radditional rules support do you need exactly to enforce a longer AD, or a different encounter paradigm that the DMG doesnt give you?

Personally, I like it when there's a cost to resting. My usual way of doing this is just to use basic fiction plotting advice and making sure hostile forces have goals. It's hard to give universal advice for this, but, for instance, in my HotDQ campaign, there's a day when the flying castle leaves and after that day, the party won't be able to catch it again. The bad guys are working toward something.

You could codify this a little more strongly, even giving "lairs" of wandering monsters goals for a more hexcrawl-y setting, complete with a random roll for how close they are to achieving their goals and how long it might take 'em to do it uninterrupted! It'd be pretty neat, and give a real cost to resting.

ATM, the cost to resting is mostly in the DM's hands, so that cost can be highly variable. Flexible, but not very reliable.

 

[CapnZapp]

I find that daily/encounter XP budgets and stated guidelines are "enough" support. The game tells you what to expect, and then lets you do what you want as a DM. There's room for MORE support, but more support would tend to curtail DM flexibility, and not every DM cares if the PC's kind of steamroll a lot of of the encounters, so while I'd welcome more ideas to make the pacing easier, I don't fault the game for not making ideas like that part of the RAW. Because I find that daily/encounter XP budgets and stated guidelines are enough support for me.

But XP budgets don't give any advice on the HOW.

I understand that you make it work. What you don't seem to acknowledge that it isn't enough for many many other DMs.

Take me, for instance. I am perfectly cognizant of how "the dragon will eat the princess at midnight, hurry" would solve the problem.

But what if I consider that a trite solution? What if I consider such story-based time constraints to get old fast? What if my players immediately see through the reasons for having them, turning them into bad jokes?

And the DMG and you have offered EXACTLY ZILCH advice on how to make a travel adventure work.

Yes, you can say "use the DMG variant with slower resting", but nobody is touching the real issue: which is, that kind of pacing would then wreck the intense dungeon-clearing adventure.

The true solution would, of course, be for the DMG to let the adventure decide how often long rests can happen: in the extreme case, importing Jonathan Tweet's rule on resting, which solves the issue once and for all.

http://www.runagame.net/2015/08/the-best-solution-to-players-resting.html

What frustrates me is 1) how people like you offer "advice" without even seeing the problems 2) how people downplay the difficulties other DMs have, and 3) how people react with horror at suggesting that the rules actually solves the issue!

Regards

 

[Tallifer]

By the way, our sessions do not typically involve dungeons with room after room of traps and monsters. The party has yet to strike off into an entirely hostile region with no places to recover. I think the suggestion of a night for a short rest and a week for a long rest sound appropriate. Or some equivalent of milestones as in 4E.

With only 2 encounters per long rest, full casters can reliably drop their highest level spell slot round after round after round, barbarians are perma-raging and paladins smiting on every single attack.

Over the same period of time, your fighter gets the one action surge.

Perhaps thats OK with the groups you play in, but it would necessitate far harder encounters, (which makes that paltry 1 action surge even less remarkable and further lengthens the gap between class balance). It also makes the game one of rocket tag, and increases the chance of a TPK (expecially for the fighter!).

I cant imagine a typical dungeon where you bump just the two encounters and then fall back for a full nights rest. Not everyone plays in dungeons of course; but that is the default place where adventuring in 'dungeons and dragons' happens.



Here is a 'typical' DnD adventure design. [snip]

 

[Flamestrike]

My issue with this is that if 50% of your adventures become time based they lose the feel of being rushed and hard pressed to "just another day at the office" also it could just be me but I prefer to have more subtle penalties(for lack of a better word) taking to long etc. If I'm throwing a explicit time restriction I want it to be a race and a frantic one the sort of ill stay here and hold the line you guys go affair.

I just want to put it out there that I'm not knocking yours or anyone's play style. I know things can seem overly aggressive in text form.

It can be hard to juggle. The trick is to not be too heavy handed; while also not being too lenient. In many ways, it actually becomes self enforcing if you get it right, and you wont have to police it at all - the players do it for you.

Even simply throwing a few 'random' encounters (that arent random at all) at your PCs to hurry them along, or deplete resources. If despite your best efforts, they insist on nova-ing encounter one leaving a smoking crater and then fall back, send waves of patrolls from the BBEG to look for this adventuring party. Force repeat encounters on em.

Once theyre exhausted, nearly dead, and spamming cantrips; let em rest... with a gentle reminder that in the future perhaps keeping some of those higher level spells in reserve would be smart.

And then send another wave at them halfway through the night to reinforce the point.

 

[CapnZapp]

My usual way of doing this is just to use basic fiction plotting advice and making sure hostile forces have goals. It's hard to give universal advice for this, but, for instance, in my HotDQ campaign, there's a day when the flying castle leaves and after that day, the party won't be able to catch it again. The bad guys are working toward something.

Sure, but good DM:ing is a lot of work.

And if you try to do a short-cut, which in your example means just sticking with the "the castle leaves at noon" part, but not really fleshing out the why (why can't the castle stick around), like many a lazy adventure, then it just becomes a grating annoyance: "okay so the castle leaves basically only to ensure we don't take a long rest".

It would be nice if the DMG didn't just create the expectation, and then basically dumped the responsibility for making that happen into the DM's lap.

"Our rules expect X encounters a day, but we can't be arsed to make that happen. That's on you. If you succeed, everyone will think D&D is a great game - but if you fail, that doesn't mean our rules are at fault, instead that exposes you as a crappy DM" is what the rules speak to me.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I understand that you make it work. What you don't seem to acknowledge that it isn't enough for many many other DMs.

I never said that it was or should be enough for everyone, so I guess you can chill out about that.

I imagine it's enough for most of the people the WotC team playtested it on. I don't think it was a bad decision to err in favor of DM flexibility. It fits with the overall "DM Required" vibe of 5e, and shows that you can play the game in whatever way you want. I think it was a solid initial decision. That doesn't mean it works for everyone or that there's nothing you can do to make it better.

Take me, for instance. I am perfectly cognizant of how "the dragon will eat the princess at midnight, hurry" would solve the problem.

But what if I consider that a trite solution? What if I consider such story-based time constraints to get old fast? What if my players immediately see through the reasons for having them, turning them into bad jokes?

I find that most of the time when I answer the question: "What to the antagonists WANT," a time constraint of some sort materializes as they move toward what they want continually (this actually parallels the advice in 13th Age, but from a slightly different perspective).

And the DMG and you have offered EXACTLY ZILCH advice on how to make a travel adventure work.

Yes, you can say "use the DMG variant with slower resting", but nobody is touching the real issue: which is, that kind of pacing would then wreck the intense dungeon-clearing adventure.

Criticizing me for not offering what you haven't asked me for is part of that hostility I was talking about. Are you asking?

The true solution would, of course, be for the DMG to let the adventure decide how often long rests can happen: in the extreme case, importing Jonathan Tweet's rule on resting, which solves the issue once and for all.

http://www.runagame.net/2015/08/the-best-solution-to-players-resting.html

What frustrates me is 1) how people like you offer "advice" without even seeing the problems 2) how people downplay the difficulties other DMs have, and 3) how people react with horror at suggesting that the rules actually solves the issue!

I'm not downplaying anything, and I haven't been asked for advice, so I haven't really been offering any, and I've no problem with the rules helping people solve the issue, so relax, man.

It would be nice if the DMG didn't just create the expectation, and then basically dumped the responsibility for making that happen into the DM's lap.

I imagine the situation is that balanced encounters and days just aren't all that functionally critical in a game centered around storytelling. I don't care if the heroes are pushed to their limit every day. As long as they are at the climax (when there's the big lead-up that can drain resources), everyone's still happy. Yaaay.

 

[Flamestrike]

What frustrates me is 1) how people like you offer "advice" without even seeing the problems 2) how people downplay the difficulties other DMs have, and 3) how people react with horror at suggesting that the rules actually solves the issue!

Regards

This whole thread is a new DM to the game seeking advice mate. The point of it is offer him that advice based on difficulties other DMs have had.

A common one I have seen is that many DM's dont get the rest pacing meta.

Which does add weight to your argument that the DMG could have been a lot more explicit with this aspect of the game.

 

[Azurewraith]

Even simply throwing a few 'random' encounters (that arent random at all) at your PCs to hurry them along, or deplete resources. If despite your best efforts, they insist on nova-ing encounter one leaving a smoking crater and then fall back, send waves of patrolls from the BBEG to look for this adventuring party. Force repeat encounters on em.

They don't Nova they know that more of the same is coming so they conserve there resources anyway. Random encounter tables are my children so there's plenty of random encounters in fact most of my encounters are random patrols etc

Once theyre exhausted, nearly dead, and spamming cantrips

They end up doing that anyway as each fights is tooth n claw. I hate cuddly games where death is no option

 

[Flamestrike]

They end up doing that anyway as each fights is tooth n claw. I hate cuddly games where death is no option

Its your game mate, but 5E is more a game of longer term resource management. Gradual attrition over a longer adventuring day, with 2 short rests given out every 2 or so encounters.

The Dungeon masters guide says the following about adventuring days:

The Adventuring Day
Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day. If the adventure has more easy encounters, then the party can get through more; if it has more deadly encounters, they can handle fewer.

Although you can never be certain when players will choose to take a short or long rest, you can build in natural break points to guide the flow of the adventure. Let’s say you’re designing a dungeon and would like a resting point for the players before they move from the first level down to the second. You can stock the first level of the dungeon with encounters of the right challenge so that, around the time they finish exploring that level, the characters’ resources are depleted to the point where they need a long rest. Thus, the adventuring day would naturally end at around the time the party finishes exploring the first level of the dungeon.

A 'medium' encounter is one the PCs are expected to win, expending only a few resources (a spell slot or two, some hit dice, maybe a rage):

Medium:
The encounter presents some difficulty, but in the end the adventurers should emerge victorious. Medium encounters might require the characters to expend some resources or heal up a bit after the fight.

A 'hard' encounter might (small chance) kill a PC if they are already weakened, and the PCs have bad luck:

Hard:
A hard encounter is tough, and it could potentially go very badly for the adventurers with a few unlucky die rolls or bad circumstances. Weaker characters might get taken out of the fight, leaving a few adventurers to deal with the threat. Hard encounters have a small chance of killing PCs if things go awry.

Remember - in a standard AD, your PCs are expect to encounter (and defeat) 6-8 encounters like this (getting about 2 short rests in after every 2 or so encounters) before long resting.

This should be your default AD (for around 50 percent of your adventuring days).

If the'yre getting less encounters or less short rests, youre punishing Warlocks, Fighters and Monks, and significantly buffing full casters, Paladins and Barbarians. You also encourage nova tactics, meaning you have to increase the difficulty of your encounter even more (further adding to the problem of throwing class balance away, encouraging nova tactics rather than dissuading it, and increasing the chances of a TPK).

 

[Azurewraith]

That opens a can of worms as imo the numbers for difficulty are way off and a hard encounter is more like an easy encounter and deadly is medium etc. For my group atleast