You're an active participant in an excessively long thread about the issue. ;P
Sorry....poorly worded. I don't find them to be that problematic in my game. Short rests aren't always possible, and my players know that, and I'm willing to alter rest mechanics as circumstances dictate. They work pretty well, overall. Sure, it's not a perfect mechanic.
The class designs are such that some will necessarily be favored by shorter days, yes. That's an inevitable consequence of designing them with different mixes of resources. Some classes have few resources, some many, some that recharge mainly on short rests, others long, others both - some classes resources are inflexible, others extremely versatile. That's a lot of complexity to balance, and the tight-rope the designers chose to walk is secured by the 6-8 encounter/2-3 short rest guideline.
As DMs, we deal with the consequences. Some of us are content to walk that tightrope, others put up a net, or just never get on it in the first place.
Sure, some classes will have more at their disposal if numerous short rests are allowed, others will benefit if there are a small number of encounters per day. But like I said earlier, I find that varying it up is the key. Let some characters shine one day, and others shine another day, and your players unsure what kind of day it's going to be, so they don't expend all resources because they know there will only be one fight, or whatever.
Sure, there are consequences and we deal with them. I'm just saying that we can influence how much of an impact these things may have on a specific game.
Complaints & how they're perceived are, of course, subjective. There's a segment of the fan-base that couldn't care less about balance among classes or estimating encounter difficulty, so, of course, see no problem when deviating from a guideline that's meant to help with both. (There's another segment that cares, in the sense that they loathe class balance, of course - the guideline is thus a sort of compromise.)
Resolving and minimizing those issues is possible, but the point of this thread is that, while the guideline for doing it in a fairly straightforward manner is provided, it's not so well-supported by the mechanics (my point, above), system artifacts (spells like Rope Trick et al), or APs (Zapp's main point, IIRC).
Sure, but that's why we talk it out, no? I mean, I know that Zapp is big on "official" answers to problems he finds with the game, but most of us seem to just want a workable solution for issues we find, and are not so concerned about the source of the solutions or in laying blame for the problems.
Well, if your point is that you don't have to do anything, I suppose you're correct. If you tell the players there's just no there there, then... well... okay, but why talk about anything in game then?
My point wasn't that you don't have to do anything. My point is that, in the post I quoted by you, you said for those DMs who choose to have encounters in an area that has been established to be trivially dangerous to the PCs at their current level, it can be an issue. My point is that such DMs are choosing to create the issue.
Others choose to avoid the issue. This is not by saying there's nothing in the forest....
As I've said, it appears we don't actually disagree in how we play, and you seem okay with agreeing with Tony when he says the same thing I did (and when he diesnt, so, grain of salt). The only point really appears that your of the adamant opinion nothing has to happen in order to play the game. I can't disagree, it's just a strange absolute endpoint that essentially justifies anything as a choice. Not super helpful, but also not wrong.
Nothing has to happen? Not following how you drew that conclusion, but that's not what I've been saying.
As you say, I do think we likely play very similarly. What we disagree on is the severity and/or certainty that you insist happens on the game world when shifting from 6 to 8 normal encounters to 3 deadly. I think that the impact can be minimal or nil.
Not sure that you can go from "not a problem for me" to "the problem is exaggerated" without a healthy dose of superiority. You're been DMing a bit, and seem to have a good handle on your game. Me, too. But I distinctly recall a point I wasn't, and resting was an issue I had back in 3.x. maybe you've been good the whole time, but not everyone is awesome at it yet or gas had the realizations you've had. Or, the could just be playing in a more player focused story where the DM has less decision power on resting. Still, not your problem doesn't mean others are making it up or exaggerating their problems
That's true. I didn't mean to imply that anyone who cites a problem is making it up or exaggerating. But I've noticed that trend at times, espcially when discussing theory. We often resort to increasingly extreme examples to support an argument. I am guilty of it at times as well.
I am not disagreeing with the way anyone plays.....plenty of folks have cited examples they use, and they're all interesting even if I'd never play that way myself. Or never again, in some cases. I used to be big on XP and encounters and budgets and all of that. This was more a result of teh 3E era material being so quantified. I became frustrated with a lot of it over time, and only when I abandoned it did I start to enjoy DMing again.
So I am probably a bit biased in that regard. And 5E's shift in focus was a well timed one, for me. Plenty of folks love the maths and honestly, that's fine, more power to them. But I needed the math to die. Or most of it anyway. And maybe there are other DMs or possible DMs out there that need to hear you don't need a table and a die roll to decide things. You don't need to have a set number of encounters, or budget for XP. The game doesn't necessarily fall apart if you don't follow the guidelines.
The Forest doesn't just "switch off", thugh, when the PCs ping to a particular level; it's not as black and white as that. Rather, at low PC level any encounter in the Forest will probably be a deadly (and they'll fill their quota of 3 per day within the hour if they keep going); at mid PC level the encounters in there are a mix - some easy, some deadly, lots in between; while at high PC level even the worst of encounters might get a step or two above easy but never reach deadly level.
That's one way to do it, sure. It really depends on what you're going for. You don't need to have the creatures in a given area be a threat for the PCs over their entire career. You can, if you want. But if you don't want to, then you can simply have the danger in that area be so insignificant to the PCs that you don't focus on it any more. I find a lot of travel play....days on the road, rolling for random encounters....to be kind of monotonous. So do my players. They lose interest. So I've lessened that in our game unless there's a reason. So skipping the trip through the goblin infested woods and just explaining what happened is a game saver.
Also keep in mind that in 5e - as in 1e - even an 'easy' encounter isn't always, given the vagaries of dice, luck, and player mistakes.
Sure, this is true. But is the chance for some unexpected outcome worth the risk of playing out some combat encounter that's almost assuredly going to be boring as hell?
