Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is LIVE! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
How to Think About 6-8 Encounters Per Day
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6840400" data-attributes="member: 996"><p>It's not even really a variant, the DM can just rule that resting 8 hrs in a fetid swamp means you wake up feeling worse than when you lay down, instead of giving you the benefits of a long rest - or he can rule that some checks will let you find a place in the swamp where you can rest. It's just runnin' 5e, is all. You have the power to make the game do what you need to keep your campaign fun (or whatever "creative agenda" is most important to your group).</p><p></p><p>Can't agree that that was the reason, no. 5e is more on the side of DM Empowerment than Player Entitlement. Classes that balance without regard to the pace of the campaign free up both player and DM to choose that pacing without any further wrinkles. Encounters balanced in a vacuum - like in the last edition of Gamma World, where PC's abilities hard-reset after every encounter, with sleeping something you did just because sleep was still theoretically necessary - make the choice less meaningful on the player side, though, even as they make encounter balance & encounter design very easy. </p><p></p><p>That's never been the case in D&D, itself, though: shorter days have always meant the party could handle tougher encounters. </p><p></p><p>Not that 1 hr vs 8 hrs is exactly ideal, either, but they're so easy to vary, it hardly matters. Make it a night's rest and a week's leave, make it 5 min and 6 hrs. You can map it to the campaign's expected pacing, so long as you more or less stick with that pacing. Personally, I think just 'ruling' when which rest is possible and how long it take is fine, too - even preferable, because it give the DM more freedom. </p><p></p><p>OK, now I'm flashing back the edition war... And there you have it. 4e had a mix of encounter, daily, and at-will resources, and encounter-design guidelines with an expectation of 4-6 encounters/day - fewer encounters means dailies were more powerful and encounters could be harder, but class balance wasn't impacted, because everyone has comparable daily resources - it gave DMs the freedom to use the pacing they liked, and players an incentive to rest if they thought they needed it to be able to face coming challenges (and a contrary incentive to push on to a milestone and get an action point & unlock an item-daily use or magic ring property or whatever). 5e has a mix of short- & long- rest resources and at-wills, and encounter-design guidelines with an expectation that the party will outnumber the opposition (or the difficulty is adjusted up with a multiplier) and that there will be 6-8 encounters/day with 2-3 short rests, and both encounter difficulty and class balance are affected by that, because classes mechanically differentiated by having different mixes of resources - it Empowers DMs to showcase the strengths of different characters by varying pacing, to rule whether rests are possible or how long they take to vary pacing, and to provide a range of adventuring challenges. That's not so different that one is an abomination or the other even strictly superior. </p><p></p><p></p><p>The two are hardly exclusive, indeed, they're complementary. 5e gives you encounter-design guidelines so you can balance encounters to be medium-hard, (or easy or deadly+ if you want to consider that 'imbalanced'). It's a feature 5e has retained from 3e & 4e, but an ability that experienced DMs had long since developed on their own before that.</p><p></p><p>Running a varied and interesting game, a 'living world' as we sometimes call it, is certainly something that helps when running 5e. I don't know if it's fair to say that the 6-8 encounter assumption, specifically, has anything to do with enabling that or making it necessary, though. And it certainly doesn't open up design space, though design space is a developer issue, so maybe you meant something else...</p><p></p><p>Was it every hard before? Bounded Accuracy does lend itself to simply adding more monsters to get a more challenging encounter, even when the monsters' CR is far below the party's level. It's a little tricky, because the vital multiplier is less valid in a 'wave' encounter.</p><p></p><p>Again, I question the causation you posit. DM Empowerment allows a DM to introduce a great deal of variety into his campaign, between the DM's traditional authority and the way 5e leans towards rulings over rules, he essentially has carte blanche. A 6-8 encounter guideline is no different/better than a 1-3, 3-4 or 4-6 guideline, in that regard, though - and only a little more convenient than no guideline at all (and less convenient than needing no such guideline - the very wholly-Encounter-based straw man you stacked it up against).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 6840400, member: 996"] It's not even really a variant, the DM can just rule that resting 8 hrs in a fetid swamp means you wake up feeling worse than when you lay down, instead of giving you the benefits of a long rest - or he can rule that some checks will let you find a place in the swamp where you can rest. It's just runnin' 5e, is all. You have the power to make the game do what you need to keep your campaign fun (or whatever "creative agenda" is most important to your group). Can't agree that that was the reason, no. 5e is more on the side of DM Empowerment than Player Entitlement. Classes that balance without regard to the pace of the campaign free up both player and DM to choose that pacing without any further wrinkles. Encounters balanced in a vacuum - like in the last edition of Gamma World, where PC's abilities hard-reset after every encounter, with sleeping something you did just because sleep was still theoretically necessary - make the choice less meaningful on the player side, though, even as they make encounter balance & encounter design very easy. That's never been the case in D&D, itself, though: shorter days have always meant the party could handle tougher encounters. Not that 1 hr vs 8 hrs is exactly ideal, either, but they're so easy to vary, it hardly matters. Make it a night's rest and a week's leave, make it 5 min and 6 hrs. You can map it to the campaign's expected pacing, so long as you more or less stick with that pacing. Personally, I think just 'ruling' when which rest is possible and how long it take is fine, too - even preferable, because it give the DM more freedom. OK, now I'm flashing back the edition war... And there you have it. 4e had a mix of encounter, daily, and at-will resources, and encounter-design guidelines with an expectation of 4-6 encounters/day - fewer encounters means dailies were more powerful and encounters could be harder, but class balance wasn't impacted, because everyone has comparable daily resources - it gave DMs the freedom to use the pacing they liked, and players an incentive to rest if they thought they needed it to be able to face coming challenges (and a contrary incentive to push on to a milestone and get an action point & unlock an item-daily use or magic ring property or whatever). 5e has a mix of short- & long- rest resources and at-wills, and encounter-design guidelines with an expectation that the party will outnumber the opposition (or the difficulty is adjusted up with a multiplier) and that there will be 6-8 encounters/day with 2-3 short rests, and both encounter difficulty and class balance are affected by that, because classes mechanically differentiated by having different mixes of resources - it Empowers DMs to showcase the strengths of different characters by varying pacing, to rule whether rests are possible or how long they take to vary pacing, and to provide a range of adventuring challenges. That's not so different that one is an abomination or the other even strictly superior. The two are hardly exclusive, indeed, they're complementary. 5e gives you encounter-design guidelines so you can balance encounters to be medium-hard, (or easy or deadly+ if you want to consider that 'imbalanced'). It's a feature 5e has retained from 3e & 4e, but an ability that experienced DMs had long since developed on their own before that. Running a varied and interesting game, a 'living world' as we sometimes call it, is certainly something that helps when running 5e. I don't know if it's fair to say that the 6-8 encounter assumption, specifically, has anything to do with enabling that or making it necessary, though. And it certainly doesn't open up design space, though design space is a developer issue, so maybe you meant something else... Was it every hard before? Bounded Accuracy does lend itself to simply adding more monsters to get a more challenging encounter, even when the monsters' CR is far below the party's level. It's a little tricky, because the vital multiplier is less valid in a 'wave' encounter. Again, I question the causation you posit. DM Empowerment allows a DM to introduce a great deal of variety into his campaign, between the DM's traditional authority and the way 5e leans towards rulings over rules, he essentially has carte blanche. A 6-8 encounter guideline is no different/better than a 1-3, 3-4 or 4-6 guideline, in that regard, though - and only a little more convenient than no guideline at all (and less convenient than needing no such guideline - the very wholly-Encounter-based straw man you stacked it up against). [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
How to Think About 6-8 Encounters Per Day
Top