6-8 Encounters a long rest is, actually, a pretty problematic idea.

As someone who has run quite a few 3E, Pathfinder, and 4E D&D games and only a handful of 5E D&D games, I have to say that running large numbers of encounters in a 'workday' is problematic for two reasons:


1) A lot of players get very disengaged by their character going 'I Fire Bolt it.' 'I Fire Bolt it.' 'I Fire Bolt it.' repeatedly because they have to budget their abilities. There are a lot of players who legit don't mind describing how they're swinging their sword after taking the Attack action ten rounds in a row, but there are a lot of players who DO in fact mind, and I think it's both projectionist and unfair how the gaming community paints the former group as Proper Roleplayers Making The Best Use Of A Limited Toolkit and the latter group as Dirty Powergaming Munchkins Who Want To Show Off All The Time.


2) If things go south and the players end up blowing a lot of their abilities in the first one or two encounters, they feel like you're picking on them as you drag their characters through the rest of the gauntlet. This is also true if the players are casual or new to the group and aren't in tune with how D&D structures workdays. They aren't going to be sympathetic to your rejoinder of 'that's just bad luck/you not getting the rhythm of the game; better budget your abilities better next time', especially if it runs up against caveat one.

I also think that 6-8 encounters does violence to the narrative of action-adventure fiction (since it's a D&D-specific trope that doesn't have genre or metafictional justification) that can only be justified as a gameplay/story tradeoff but that's a separate discussion altogether. Just speaking from a gameplay perspective, it disengages certain kinds of players and I'm getting rather tired of boards like these treating such players as powergamers or n00bs.

I think [MENTION=6857506]Harzel[/MENTION] pointed out in another thread recently, the DMG states that 6 to 8 medium to hard encounters are what the PCs can handle per adventuring day, not that they should necessarily be doing this many encounters per day.

As for the concerns presented in your points 1 and 2, I would say that comes down to how the DM presents things in my experience.

Would you be happier with the five minute workday?

Rofel Wodring said:

As someone who has run quite a few 3E, Pathfinder, and 4E D&D games and only a handful of 5E D&D games, I have to say that running large numbers of encounters in a 'workday' is problematic for two reasons:

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I thought you were going to give examples of things that actually happened in your 5e games. But it sounds like you're talking about theoretical concerns you have rather than things that happened in your games.

Is that the case? If so...why don't you play 5e and then decide if this is actually a problem or just theoretically one?

That is certainly an opinion which you can have. I'm not sure that I would characterize the gaming community as you do, but I'm also not about to deny your lived experience.

Six encounters per adventuring day can definitely get wearisome, especially if they devolve into trading at-will attacks back and forth until one side is dead. I would place the blame for that more on the HP bloat than on the encounter guidelines, though.

iserith said:

As for the concerns presented in your points 1 and 2, I would say that comes down to how the DM presents things in my experience.

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Look, I've done more than my share trying to set up situations where a player will try to use something other than Eldritch Blast or waste it with their crossbow (or at least make the experience exciting, like being graphic with the description), but all the same a lot of players realize that if their probable actions have a 1-to-1 or 1-to-2 correspondence with what's available they get bored or frustrated.

I seriously can't tell you how many times as a DM for various D&D games I've seen eyelids start to droop (especially with newer or more casual players) the 4th or so time they use their best At-Will ability in a single combat. When I was running 4E D&D games, I NEVER ran a game that started at less than level 7.

MichaelSomething said:

Would you be happier with the five minute workday?

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I'd be happier with a resource system that didn't, when it was firing on all cylinders, force people to be stingy with their most exciting abilities and default to using seriously weak beer abilities. That D&D thinks eschewing this necessarily will lead to a five-minute workday (its justification for implementing such a problematic system) reveals more about its lack of imagination than any hard dichotomy.

Mistwell said:

I thought you were going to give examples of things that actually happened in your 5e games. But it sounds like you're talking about theoretical concerns you have rather than things that happened in your games.

Is that the case? If so...why don't you play 5e and then decide if this is actually a problem or just theoretically one?

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Look, I've played a lot of 5E D&D. I like the game a lot. I played since it first came out and I play a combination of home, online, and AL games an average of 8 hours every week. I even wrote a 150-page guide for a class of it. You even gave me XP on it.

I have, however, not DMed a lot of 5E D&D. That's there for full disclosure. Though maybe I should have been more dissembling if I knew people were going to try to No True Scotsman me on this.

I would place the blame for that more on the HP bloat than on the encounter guidelines, though.

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I'd try that the other way around; the 6-8 encounter workday is what makes hit point bloat necessary. If you did that many encounters but they ended up in 1 or 2-round Rocket Launcher Tag battles, I think it'd only further reveal the schedule to be a narrative farce.

Rofel Wodring said:

As someone who has run ...only a handful of 5E D&D game

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Rofel Wodring said:

Look, I've played a lot of 5E D&D. I like the game a lot. I played since it first came out and I play a combination of home, online, and AL games an average of 8 hours every week. I even wrote a 150-page guide for a class of it. You even gave me XP on it.

I have, however, not DMed a lot of 5E D&D. That's there for full disclosure. Though maybe I should have been more dissembling if I knew people were going to try to No True Scotsman me on this.

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You're over reacting. I was not trying to No True Scotsman on you...I was responding to what you wrote rather than what you were apparently thinking (and assuming everyone knew...I am not memorizing the names of everyone here I interact with. My memory isn't that good. Sorry I didn't recall your name before).

What you wrote was you DMed a lot of prior versions of the game, but DMed this one only a handful of times - without mentioning you had played it a lot. And the rest of your post was phrased as theory rather than examples from any games. So I responded to what you said - which was advice to play it more and see if your concerns happened in practice. What I said had nothing to do with calling you somehow not a true fan or not a true player or not a true anything.

What would be helpful is if you gave concrete examples from the games you've played which describe running into this problem and whether it was dealt with in those games and the results.

Rofel Wodring said:

Look, I've done more than my share trying to set up situations where a player will try to use something other than Eldritch Blast or waste it with their crossbow (or at least make the experience exciting, like being graphic with the description), but all the same a lot of players realize that if their probable actions have a 1-to-1 or 1-to-2 correspondence with what's available they get bored or frustrated.

I seriously can't tell you how many times as a DM for various D&D games I've seen eyelids start to droop (especially with newer or more casual players) the 4th or so time they use their best At-Will ability in a single combat. When I was running 4E D&D games, I NEVER ran a game that started at less than level 7.

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Whereas I've seen players have their characters loose an arrow or cast toll the dead or some other cantrip every single turn and have a blast. My regular players perform the same grapple, prone, kick-until-dead routine almost every combat without becoming bored or frustrated. So it might be worth looking at what other DMs are doing that you or your DMs are not.

Rofel Wodring said:

As someone who has run quite a few 3E, Pathfinder, and 4E D&D games and only a handful of 5E D&D games, I have to say that running large numbers of encounters in a 'workday' is problematic for two reasons:


1) A lot of players get very disengaged by their character going 'I Fire Bolt it.' 'I Fire Bolt it.' 'I Fire Bolt it.' repeatedly because they have to budget their abilities. There are a lot of players who legit don't mind describing how they're swinging their sword after taking the Attack action ten rounds in a row, but there are a lot of players who DO in fact mind, and I think it's both projectionist and unfair how the gaming community paints the former group as Proper Roleplayers Making The Best Use Of A Limited Toolkit and the latter group as Dirty Powergaming Munchkins Who Want To Show Off All The Time.

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I would not call them DPgMWWTSOATTs, but - from your description - it does seem like they are a bit focused on mashing ability buttons. Even amongst the "standard" actions, there are things to do other than Cast a Spell and Attack (with a weapon). Improvised actions provide an effectively indefinite number of additional possibilities.

2) If things go south and the players end up blowing a lot of their abilities in the first one or two encounters,

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If that was absolutely necessary for their survival, then it seems like the challenges they are facing must be running pretty close to the edge of feasibility. If it was not necessary, well, choices have consequences.

they feel like you're picking on them as you drag their characters through the rest of the gauntlet.

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This sounds like a situation in which the PCs have very limited choices about engaging encounters and in which the stakes are strictly life-or-death. Maybe they should have the option of ending a day early at some cost other than death? Now, to be honest, I am not very good at setting up those sorts of adventures. However, I view that as my own shortcoming (that I am working on), not a problem with the system.

This is also true if the players are casual or new to the group and aren't in tune with how D&D structures workdays.

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Yes, that is something that is not covered in the PHB (I presume because it's not exactly a rule), but it is (IMO) something that players need to understand at some level. (Or at least they need to know how workdays are structured in your world.) You could be explicit about it out of game (although that can be sort of a weird conversation), or, in game, you can use foreshadowing and/or explicit intelligence about the challenges they will face.

They aren't going to be sympathetic to your rejoinder of 'that's just bad luck/you not getting the rhythm of the game; better budget your abilities better next time', especially if it runs up against caveat one.

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Perhaps if they are better informed, as mentioned above, they may be more forgiving?

I also think that 6-8 encounters does violence to the narrative of action-adventure fiction (since it's a D&D-specific trope that doesn't have genre or metafictional justification) that can only be justified as a gameplay/story tradeoff but that's a separate discussion altogether.

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As has been said, the PCs do not have to face 6-8 encounters every day; they just have to know that it is possible that they will face a series of encounters that will tap them out, and that sometimes the number may reach into the 6-8 range.

However, I actually agree somewhat with your sentiment, as I feel that even those looser requirements box me in significantly. I generally prefer a much slower pacing (lower ratio of challenging events to fictional days). While the DMG purports to give advice suitable for doing this, and there have been any number of thoughtful suggestions in threads on this board about this general topic, I have not so far come across a solution that suits me personally.

Just speaking from a gameplay perspective, it disengages certain kinds of players and I'm getting rather tired of boards like these treating such players as powergamers or n00bs.

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I think what many of us are saying is considerably more nuanced.

What exactly is your goal here? Edition warring, or you just want to have a bunch of people agree with you, what are you looking for? If you don't like 6-8 encounters/adventuring day, but still want to run 5e good news, you don't need to run 6-8 encounters/adventuring day. Even without any optional rules or tweaks, the "problems" from deviating from the "expected" are relatively minor and if you are ok with 3.x then issues like balance between classes probably isn't a huge deal anyways.

Not everybody is going to like the defaults but luckily in D&D you don't need to use them and there are usually many ways to solve the same issue.