D&D 5E Serious gamers and new CR formula

[Dausuul]

If the party is trying to take a long rest is it fair to say they have probably burned up most or at least more than 50% of their resources?

No. It is not fair to say this, because the party responds to the incentives the DM puts in front of them.

A party of experienced players will try to take a long rest at the point where they think they need it. If you, the DM, make a habit of throwing wandering monsters at them while they rest, they will respond by resting more often, not less, so they have some gas left in the tank to deal with the inevitable nighttime ambush. This is entirely rational behavior on their part.

If you want them to push their resources, a better solution is to plan adventures as a dynamic, dangerous "kill zone" with a handful of "safe spots." Any time you're in the kill zone, you're in danger. Eight hours in the kill zone will result in more encounters than the party can hope to survive, so resting there is impossible. Instead, you have to push on to the next safe spot. Because the kill zone is not static--monsters are always moving around--you can't adopt a "clear a path" strategy, either; the path you clear today will be full of monsters again tomorrow.

Alternatively, you can add an element of time pressure. This is simple to do in campaigns where a villain's actions are driving the plot; more challenging when the PCs are the motivators. Of course, as you note, rations can be a major limiting factor... as long as the party doesn't have access to spells like create food and water or goodberry (I have a whole other rant about these spells, but never mind).

There are ways to enforce "6-8 encounters per day," but I agree with CapnZapp--people shouldn't have to come to ENWorld to get guidance on this, it should be in the DMG.

 

[ad_hoc]

You can only have one per 24 period. That leaves 16 hours where the party cannot begin a long rest, although they can certainly try to hunker down and wait for 16 hours to pass. If your dungeon or wilderness is safe enough where this is commonplace and the party sees it as a viable strategy then you may want to add some more encounters or events to the area. They don't even need to be combat encounters: bad weather, animals raiding the food supply while the characters sleep, and so forth. A little imagination goes a long way. Camping for the night can become it's own adventure if done correctly.

The PCs are travelling through the Underdark. It will take them 20 days to reach their destination.

Do you throw many random encounters/events at them every day of their journey to ensure that the wilderness isn't safe? This will be beyond boring. I am a big fan of random encounters in adventures, but 100 of them between destinations is too many.

That also creates the problem where no regular characters in the setting would travel anywhere.

So do you cut the journey down? Now it only takes 2 days. Well, now it is weird that all of the settlements are very close to each other.

If you keep to having 1, sometimes 2 encounters per long rest then you are messing with the balance of the system. The party will be free to use up a lot of their resources on each encounter and the short rest classes will be punished.

It's just not a simple problem.

 

[Wolf118]

Yeah, you're not alone.

But I can't help but think this is because your players unconsciously/voluntarily play along, fulfilling the 6-8 expectation by themselves.

That's not really a solution. That's just wishful thinking. The DMG should not get away with just dropping "oh by the way, make 6-8 encounters happen, I don't know how, but good luck".


Apart from not really working (as demonstrated by the rest of the thread) this assumes a dungeon setting.

I have already identified dungeons as the only place where the 6-8 thing comes even close to working.

But what about wilderness adventures? hexcrawls? social intrigue?

Wizards most recent adventure contains (no spoilers) a wilderness trek that can take up to 36 days. The official guidelines is to roll for random encounters twice a day. There are a couple of set-piece encounters, but for perhaps 30 out of those 36 days you will end up with 0, 1 or 2 encounters daily, with absolutely no discussion on limiting long rests in between.

I can fix this. You can fix this. That is completely beside the point.

The point is: if you run D&D 5th Edition by the book, the 6-8 encounter recommendation is blown completely and utterly out of the water. There is absolutely nothing to ensure or even help the DM to make this happen.

My point isn't that you or I can't make it work. My point is that none of the actual solutions is in the DMG! Every good piece of advice has one thing in common: it's coming from you, my fellow DMs.

Not from the DMG. Not from the game itself.

You might not like hard-coding "two encounters per rest" minimums. But why isn't this discussed in the DMG?

I might not believe wandering monsters disrupt resting. But why isn't this discussed in the DMG?

Somebody else might suggest you can't long rest during long voyages, only at the beginning and at the end, forcing you to plot a course that stops at every available port/oasis/village. But why isn't this discussed in the DMG?

Why isn't this discussed in the DMG?

I think the 6-8 encounters a day thing is being blown out of proportion. Let's take a look at the actual quote (DMG, p84):

"Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day."

Note the wording; "can handle". Not "should handle". Not "must handle". The 6-8 encounters is a yardstick, not a recommendation, not a given, not a must, not requirement. The game designers are telling you that in their testing, 6-8 medium or hard encounters is about the median number of encounters for an average party.

Let's look at the next paragraph:
"In the same way you figure out the difficulty of an encounter, you can use the XP values of monsters and other opponents in an adventure as a guideline for how far the party is likely to progress."

This is a lead-in to the table on "Adventuring Day XP". Note that it says that this provides a "guideline", not a mandatory requirement. Further, the last statement before the table is: "This provides a rough estimate of the adjusted XP value for encounters the party can handle before the characters will need to take a long rest."

Again, a "rough estimate" of the amount of Adjusted XP before a long rest.

The game designers have provided guidelines and boundaries to define the space in which your adventurers can operate. It's up to you as the DM to apply your party's specifics to these guidelines. The 6-8 encounters is a starting point, not an ending point.

 

[ad_hoc]

The game designers have provided guidelines and boundaries to define the space in which your adventurers can operate. It's up to you as the DM to apply your party's specifics to these guidelines. The 6-8 encounters is a starting point, not an ending point.

I don't think anyone is saying that every day must be 6-8 encounters.

I would recommend using different pacing models. It keeps things fresh.

It also helps different characters shine.

The problem is when every day is 1-2 encounters. There are no room for short rests and powers that recharge on a long rest become too good.

I don't even bother trying to hit 6-8 encounters per long rest, I am happy to get in 3-5 most of the time.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Yeah, you're not alone.

But I can't help but think this is because your players unconsciously/voluntarily play along, fulfilling the 6-8 expectation by themselves.

I'll mention in passing that there isn't really a "6-8 expectation" unless you're restricting encounters to Easy combats. Maybe 6-8 was typical before they flipped difficulties thresholds from ceilings to floors in Basic Rules 0.2, but nowadays 5-6 Medium Combats is about all you can expect to get before you hit your daily difficulty budget limit (which is still a ceiling).

E.g. at 11th level, to choose one at random, each PC would get 11,500 XP of difficulty, where Easy is 800-1599, Medium is 1600-2399, Hard is 2400-3599, and Deadly is 3600+. Three Hard encounters is all you get, or six bare-Mediums. Getting eight requires you to dip into Easies and keep the rest Medium.

 

[CapnZapp]

The PCs are travelling through the Underdark. It will take them 20 days to reach their destination.

Do you throw many random encounters/events at them every day of their journey to ensure that the wilderness isn't safe? This will be beyond boring. I am a big fan of random encounters in adventures, but 100 of them between destinations is too many.

That also creates the problem where no regular characters in the setting would travel anywhere.

So do you cut the journey down? Now it only takes 2 days. Well, now it is weird that all of the settlements are very close to each other.

If you keep to having 1, sometimes 2 encounters per long rest then you are messing with the balance of the system. The party will be free to use up a lot of their resources on each encounter and the short rest classes will be punished.

It's just not a simple problem.

Not to make a dig at you or to single out your post, but I think it is telling that the (to me) obvious solution is not in there...

Travel 20 days but get only, say, 3 long rests.

For example, let's say you can only take a rest at coaching inns or at an oasis or when you call to port. NPC travellers always choose the circuitous route, prolonging the journey to 30 days, but ensuring a long rest every 5 days, say.

Player Characters, otoh, can choose (or are forced) to take the direct route, connecting the first and last inns/oases/ports with the promise of a mythical stop-over in the middle. If they find it, they can long-rest half way through what otherwise becomes a grueling 12 day trek.

This way, even if you only have one encounter per day, this still amounts to 5 encounters per long rest minimum, and an exciting 12 encounter per long rest maximum.

Voila - now the game gets its needs and wants. Not just the world and the story, but the game too.

Around day 5-7 of that cross-country trek, there is real tension, not only because the DMG guidelines are fully served, but "will we ever find that truck stop??" too.

It is a shame that probably half of you reading this is foaming at the mouth by now, for me suggesting the unthinkable: to remove the sacred cow of "long rest each night no questions asked"... le sigh...

 

[ad_hoc]

Not to make a dig at you or to single out your post, but I think it is telling that the (to me) obvious solution is not in there...

Travel 20 days but get only, say, 3 long rests.

...

It is a shame that probably half of you reading this is foaming at the mouth by now, for me suggesting the unthinkable: to remove the sacred cow of "long rest each night no questions asked"... le sigh...

Actually, that is exactly my solution. As far as I can see it is the only solution.

My post was a response to someone else who said the solution is to make wilderness harder by throwing more encounters at them. I was showing all the reasons why that doesn't work.

One of the great benefits of the short rest mechanic is that it can allow for a rest to have a mechanical benefit without completely resetting the tension.

 

[CapnZapp]

I'll mention in passing that there isn't really a "6-8 expectation" unless you're restricting encounters to Easy combats. Maybe 6-8 was typical before they flipped difficulties thresholds from ceilings to floors in Basic Rules 0.2, but nowadays 5-6 Medium Combats is about all you can expect to get before you hit your daily difficulty budget limit (which is still a ceiling).

E.g. at 11th level, to choose one at random, each PC would get 11,500 XP of difficulty, where Easy is 800-1599, Medium is 1600-2399, Hard is 2400-3599, and Deadly is 3600+. Three Hard encounters is all you get, or six bare-Mediums. Getting eight requires you to dip into Easies and keep the rest Medium.

Thanks.

The elephant in the room, however, is: am I the only DM whose players would be bored out of their skulls by several medium encounters in a row?

What D&D calls "medium" we call "laughably easy".

I know there's a dedicated thread on this; I just wanted it to be said that my kind of game is more like double the difficulty but half the experience.






(And yes, that means that xp awards must be divided by four. You're welcome.)

 

[iserith]

Thanks.

The elephant in the room, however, is: am I the only DM whose players would be bored out of their skulls by several medium encounters in a row?

What D&D calls "medium" we call "laughably easy".

I would say there's more to making a challenge entertaining and engaging than difficulty via CR/XP budget. Though some level of difficulty is, of course, part of creating a satisfying challenge.

Try making a challenge with CR 0 monsters sometime. It's awesome.

 

[Uller]

Around day 5-7 of that cross-country trek, there is real tension, not only because the DMG guidelines are fully served, but "will we ever find that truck stop??" too.

It is a shame that probably half of you reading this is foaming at the mouth by now, for me suggesting the unthinkable: to remove the sacred cow of "long rest each night no questions asked"... le sigh...

Yes. If the adventure is the wilderness then you almost have to bend the resting and healing rules in some fashion. A long rest must be a vitally important strategic resouce akin to a supply route in an operational level wargame.