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The Adventuring Day XP budget makes sense when you consider it is a budget for you to stock your dungeons
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<blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 8965829" data-attributes="member: 6779196"><p>Downtime activities tend to occur during <em>downtime</em>. As in, when you’re <em>not</em> in the dungeon. Time pressure in a dungeon or other location-based adventure doesn’t conflict with downtime at all.</p><p></p><p>Well, no, it’s just design <em>you don’t like</em>. Which is perfectly fine, you’re under no obligation to design your adventures with time pressure. But it is the kind of adventure D&D 5e was built for.</p><p></p><p>I’ve never found Tiny Hut to be a problem. It’s a useful spell, sure, but in my experience it doesn’t completely eliminate the risk of resting in dangerous locations like it seems it has for some other folks.</p><p></p><p>Parties who never take short rests in my campaigns are liable to run out of steam in the midst of a dangerous location. Not generally a great plan.</p><p></p><p>I mean, I don’t think those timescales are really necessary, but yes, location-based adventures do tend to be survival-focused. That’s not really transforming the campaign, that’s once again what D&D 5e was designed for.</p><p></p><p>Yeah, most published adventures for 5e don’t work super well within 5e’s rule structure. Lost Mine of Phandelver is the standout exception. But in my opinion that’s an adventure design problem, not a problem with the core mechanical framework.</p><p></p><p>In this framework, the DM shouldn’t really be throwing encounters at PCs. The adventuring day XP budget is like a dungeon-stocking tool, it’s up to the players how much of the dungeon they want to risk exploring before retreating to the safety of town (and spending the treasure they acquired in the dungeon on downtime activities and equipment for their next expedition into the dungeon). Yes, random deaths and even random TPKs can happen. That’s the nature of the sort of roguelike game that location-based adventures are.</p><p></p><p>It’s not about punishing or rewarding player actions. It’s about setting up interesting risk/reward propositions for the players to consider, and take on what they feel comfortable taking on.</p><p></p><p>We’re still seeing these complaints because DMs are still trying to treat the adventuring day and the encounters therein as a sequence of events in a narrative, rather than as a tool for stocking locations with appropriate risk and reward to entice and challenge the players. The OP has come to the realization of what these guidelines were always meant to do, and the design of the game has clicked into place for them. Many of us have had similar experiences. People get mad at us for saying it, but there really is a particular gameplay loop 5e was designed to facilitate, and a lot of the complaints you see come up over and over again from 5e DMs come up because they’re trying to use 5e to do something other than what it was built to do.</p><p></p><p>Yeah, it’s definitely not realistic by any means. But it makes for fun gameplay.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Charlaquin, post: 8965829, member: 6779196"] Downtime activities tend to occur during [I]downtime[/I]. As in, when you’re [I]not[/I] in the dungeon. Time pressure in a dungeon or other location-based adventure doesn’t conflict with downtime at all. Well, no, it’s just design [I]you don’t like[/I]. Which is perfectly fine, you’re under no obligation to design your adventures with time pressure. But it is the kind of adventure D&D 5e was built for. I’ve never found Tiny Hut to be a problem. It’s a useful spell, sure, but in my experience it doesn’t completely eliminate the risk of resting in dangerous locations like it seems it has for some other folks. Parties who never take short rests in my campaigns are liable to run out of steam in the midst of a dangerous location. Not generally a great plan. I mean, I don’t think those timescales are really necessary, but yes, location-based adventures do tend to be survival-focused. That’s not really transforming the campaign, that’s once again what D&D 5e was designed for. Yeah, most published adventures for 5e don’t work super well within 5e’s rule structure. Lost Mine of Phandelver is the standout exception. But in my opinion that’s an adventure design problem, not a problem with the core mechanical framework. In this framework, the DM shouldn’t really be throwing encounters at PCs. The adventuring day XP budget is like a dungeon-stocking tool, it’s up to the players how much of the dungeon they want to risk exploring before retreating to the safety of town (and spending the treasure they acquired in the dungeon on downtime activities and equipment for their next expedition into the dungeon). Yes, random deaths and even random TPKs can happen. That’s the nature of the sort of roguelike game that location-based adventures are. It’s not about punishing or rewarding player actions. It’s about setting up interesting risk/reward propositions for the players to consider, and take on what they feel comfortable taking on. We’re still seeing these complaints because DMs are still trying to treat the adventuring day and the encounters therein as a sequence of events in a narrative, rather than as a tool for stocking locations with appropriate risk and reward to entice and challenge the players. The OP has come to the realization of what these guidelines were always meant to do, and the design of the game has clicked into place for them. Many of us have had similar experiences. People get mad at us for saying it, but there really is a particular gameplay loop 5e was designed to facilitate, and a lot of the complaints you see come up over and over again from 5e DMs come up because they’re trying to use 5e to do something other than what it was built to do. Yeah, it’s definitely not realistic by any means. But it makes for fun gameplay. [/QUOTE]
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The Adventuring Day XP budget makes sense when you consider it is a budget for you to stock your dungeons
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