Advice: A less hectic workday for my D&D characters

pming · Apr 25, 2018

Hiya!

Whoever figured that writing "X number of encounters per day" in the game rules should be flogged with a wet noodle.

HorusZA said:
"If, for whatever reason, I'd prefer a less hectic schedule of say 1-2 encounters per day, the encounters would have to be scaled up significantly in order to be sufficiently fun and challenging as the party will often be fully charged and ready to go. That might make the fights last longer than I'd like."

You know what is probably making your game boring/unchallenging or otherwise making your players feel like they are "fully charged and ready to go"? It's not the number of encounters per day... it's the fact that you and they know that there even is an assumed number of encounters per day. That's the problem.

What is more dangerous to hear from a DM:

(1) "You have to survive the Trials of Doom! You enter the dungeon, and, somewhere inside it's labyrinthine corridors lies the Gong of Enlightenment. Reach that goal, ring the gong, and you will all be champions!"

-OR-

(2) "You have to survive the Trials of Doom! You enter the dungeon, and after two encounters, reach the Gong of Enlightenment! Reach that goal, ring the gong, and you will all be champions!"

See the problem with having a set, or even a range of 'encounters per day'? THAT's the problem. THAT is why your players will, no matter what you decide, learn that "Ok. That was encounter one back there. This is encounter two. Lets take it easy because when we get to encounter three we want to be able to nova. Then we can rest". (or whatever number per day you've generally decided). By having a "set number of encounters per day", even if it's a range, you are basically telling your players how many resources to use. Kinda like playing a MMORPG where you enter some dungeon, die repeatedly, but eventually you win simply because you know the number of encounters and when to rest to get all your juice back for the end fight.

My suggestion would be to stop designing your adventures/encounters around the PC's capabilities (I've said this MANY times before on these boards). If you are writing up an adventure for the PC's, you should keep in mind only two things, really. One is the PC's average levels, and two is the number of PC's. That's about it. The focus should be on designing a "logical setting for the adventure/story/plot/whatever". You can always toss in a PC-specific thing, to be sure, but that shouldn't be the order of the day (e.g., if you know a PC Thief is really good at climbing walls, feel free to make a room where climbing walls would make it REALLY useful). If the Players, and you, actually don't know how many encounters the PC's will face in any given day, it makes the game far, Far, FAR more exciting, suspenseful, and unpredictable. It multiplies the Players sense of accomplishment ten-fold when they overcome something or succeed at their task.

When your Players don't "know" when it's time to rest, they will play better and more conservatively. This will have the effect I think you are looking for; that the PC's don't just walk all over everything...because they will be holding back, trying to use their abilities and spells when they feel they have to in order to not die a horrible, horrible death. But if they "know" that they've had three encounters, they know it's safe to rest after nova'ing on the fourth (or whatever number you tend to use).

The world shouldn't care about if the PC's live or die. The campaign world does NOT (or shouldn't, imho) revolve around the PC's themselves. By trying to stick to a set number of encounters per day, you are, imho, denying your Players the thrill of defying death. More importantly, you are making your games predictable. And in an RPG, predictability is the death knell of any game.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

CapnZapp · Apr 25, 2018

pming said:
Hiya!

Whoever figured that writing "X number of encounters per day" in the game rules should be flogged with a wet noodle.

You know what is probably making your game boring/unchallenging or otherwise making your players feel like they are "fully charged and ready to go"? It's not the number of encounters per day... it's the fact that you and they know that there even is an assumed number of encounters per day. That's the problem.

What is more dangerous to hear from a DM:

(1) "You have to survive the Trials of Doom! You enter the dungeon, and, somewhere inside it's labyrinthine corridors lies the Gong of Enlightenment. Reach that goal, ring the gong, and you will all be champions!"

-OR-

(2) "You have to survive the Trials of Doom! You enter the dungeon, and after two encounters, reach the Gong of Enlightenment! Reach that goal, ring the gong, and you will all be champions!"

See the problem with having a set, or even a range of 'encounters per day'? THAT's the problem. THAT is why your players will, no matter what you decide, learn that "Ok. That was encounter one back there. This is encounter two. Lets take it easy because when we get to encounter three we want to be able to nova. Then we can rest". (or whatever number per day you've generally decided). By having a "set number of encounters per day", even if it's a range, you are basically telling your players how many resources to use. Kinda like playing a MMORPG where you enter some dungeon, die repeatedly, but eventually you win simply because you know the number of encounters and when to rest to get all your juice back for the end fight.

My suggestion would be to stop designing your adventures/encounters around the PC's capabilities (I've said this MANY times before on these boards). If you are writing up an adventure for the PC's, you should keep in mind only two things, really. One is the PC's average levels, and two is the number of PC's. That's about it. The focus should be on designing a "logical setting for the adventure/story/plot/whatever". You can always toss in a PC-specific thing, to be sure, but that shouldn't be the order of the day (e.g., if you know a PC Thief is really good at climbing walls, feel free to make a room where climbing walls would make it REALLY useful). If the Players, and you, actually don't know how many encounters the PC's will face in any given day, it makes the game far, Far, FAR more exciting, suspenseful, and unpredictable. It multiplies the Players sense of accomplishment ten-fold when they overcome something or succeed at their task.

When your Players don't "know" when it's time to rest, they will play better and more conservatively. This will have the effect I think you are looking for; that the PC's don't just walk all over everything...because they will be holding back, trying to use their abilities and spells when they feel they have to in order to not die a horrible, horrible death. But if they "know" that they've had three encounters, they know it's safe to rest after nova'ing on the fourth (or whatever number you tend to use).

The world shouldn't care about if the PC's live or die. The campaign world does NOT (or shouldn't, imho) revolve around the PC's themselves. By trying to stick to a set number of encounters per day, you are, imho, denying your Players the thrill of defying death. More importantly, you are making your games predictable. And in an RPG, predictability is the death knell of any game.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

All this would have made perfect sense, if it weren't for one teensy weensy detail:

The rules allow the players massive freedom in deciding their own rests.

In other words - the problem isn't what you rail against, that the DM tells you "there will be N encounters most days".

The DMG might envision some days to consist of individually simple encounters, with an heightening sense of urgency as resources dwindle.

But it is absolutely trivial to short-circuit this, take a rest, and turn the sequence of encounters into two; both now rendered utterly trivial and unchallenging as a game element.

But even this isn't the core problem.

The core problem is that a) the game offers no mechanical solutions to this issue, and b) that it's defenders can only offer one solution: apply time pressure.

As if it doesn't get very old very fast if every questgiver you meet say "please hurry - you only have N days before something bad happens".

ESPECIALLY given how this is a bluff in 90% of all published modules.

Zapp

TLDR the game SCREAMS for official mechanical limits on resting that prioritize gameplay over story.

Tony Vargas · Apr 25, 2018

Harzel said:
[MENTION=20564]So, first, the 6-8 number is associated with encounters of a particular difficulty, and the text explicitly mentions more and fewer encounters as equally viable alternatives. Per this section in the DMG, there is nothing special about 6-8 encounters. Second, this section in the DMG is not, per se, making a recommendation about how many encounters a party ought to have; rather, it is suggesting an approximate upper limit on what they can handle.

Yeah, I've heard that plenty of times, too. But, one thing that was 'promised' in the playtest was "Crystal Clear Guidance" where that semi-mythical encounters/day balance-point that'd make the classes play nice together was going to be.

It's a promise that section can be taken as delivering on, so that's how I choose to take it.

CapnZapp said:
Actually, the thing nobody seems to want to admit is:
An encounter the DMG calls medium to hard is, in reality, laughably easy.

You do run for some serious optimizers, I think that colors your perception of this issue.

A medium-hard encounter can even wipe a low-level party, if things go really wrong. And, yes, a trans-deadly encounter can be a cakewalk.

Who outnumbers whom can be a big part of that.

Blue · Apr 25, 2018

Harzel said:
@Blue I generally find your posts insightful and interesting; I hope you will not be offended by the directness of my comments below.

Thanks for the kind words, and no worries. We're all enjoying (and kitbashing) our hobby together, and what works at one of our tables may not be right for another.

Harzel said:
So, first, the 6-8 number is associated with encounters of a particular difficulty, and the text explicitly mentions more and fewer encounters as equally viable alternatives. Per this section in the DMG, there is nothing special about 6-8 encounters. Second, this section in the DMG is not, per se, making a recommendation about how many encounters a party ought to have; rather, it is suggesting an approximate upper limit on what they can handle.

Yes, but several years of the game being out and played really brought home those numbers as really strong.

Again, fewer encounters is workable -- it just favors features that are of limited use and more powerful. And since those aren't spread evenly between classes, with some focusing much of long-rest recovery like full casters and others with little on that, it throws off inter-class balance.

That said, no one is saying 4-5 encounters is unworkable; the farther you change from the baseline the more pronounced the difference in the recovery model comes. I would say that if some table regularly did 12 encounters we'd see a swing the other way. But I would be worried about 1-2 encounters per day.

On threads that talk about "my party has an easy time with my deadly+ encounters, my invariable first question is about the number of encounters per day the players generally expect. It's always low, and I almost always get pushback that "but I'm increasing the difficulty so it should balance".

Harzel said:
These are good points about how the number of encounters per "adventuring day" affects class balance. Except that there is no evidence to suggest that, for instance, a 1st level barbarian being able to rage in 1/4 to 1/3 of encounters is the intended or preferred balance point.

Don't think about "what's the intended power of a class", but rather "what's the balance of power between classes?"

Is there a power difference between a barbarian that rages for half the battles in a day and one that rages in all of the battles per day?

Is there a power difference between a champion fighter who makes an attack in a round, and a champion fighter who makes the exact same attack in a different round with nothing changing?

The first is "yes", the second is "no" - a cheap example how changing the number of encounters per day can change the balance between classes.

Because that's my point - not that it makes the PCs as a whole too powerful or too weak - we as DMs can always adjust that - but that it throws off the balance between the classes and makes some classes weaker or more powerful in respect to the other classes.

Harzel said:
I have considered using this variant, but the notion that you can sit around for 6 days and not recover any resources and then suddenly be made whole after day 7 is just a little too weird (for me anyway). Admittedly, it is logically no different than the miraculous 8th hour of a standard long rest, but stretching out the fictional time just makes it seem way more discomfiting to me.

What I think I really would like is a finer-grained recovery over the extended time, but I haven't thought of a way to do that that isn't way fiddly.

I'll let you know my prefered solution for my table, but it's nto something that fits every table and from your reservations it may not work at yours.

13th Age does their long-rest-recovery based on 4 encounters, not linking it to actual sleep. So a 3 week trek across the savanna with four encounters has a single "long-rest". A dungeon might have one at lunch time after an active morning.

There's more to it - give it early for touch encounters, players can take it early but suffer a "campaign loss", an idea not codified anywhere in D&D. And it uses encounter based recharge like 4e instead of short rest recharges like 5e.

The idea of recovery being based on what's going on matches a little what [MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION] was saying about tailoring the lengths of your rest, without the need for manual adjustments.

Many table, rightly so, have issues divorcing the character driven action of resting from resource recovery. This isn't a fit for everyone.

Tony Vargas · Apr 25, 2018

Blue said:
That said, no one is saying 4-5 encounters is unworkable; the farther you change from the baseline the more pronounced the difference in the recovery model comes. I would say that if some table regularly did 12 encounters we'd see a swing the other way.

While, in theory, days beyond 8 encounters will start favoring 'unlimited' use abilities, those abilities are limited by the need for you to have at least 1 hp to use 'em...

But I would be worried about 1-2 encounters per day.
On threads that talk about "my party has an easy time with my deadly+ encounters, my invariable first question is about the number of encounters per day the players generally expect. It's always low, and I almost always get pushback that "but I'm increasing the difficulty so it should balance".

Spot-on.

13th Age does their long-rest-recovery based on 4 encounters, not linking it to actual sleep. So a 3 week trek across the savanna with four encounters has a single "long-rest". A dungeon might have one at lunch time after an active morning.
There's more to it - give it early for touch encounters, players can take it early but suffer a "campaign loss", an idea not codified anywhere in D&D. And it uses encounter based recharge like 4e instead of short rest recharges like 5e.

To be fair, the 13A encounter recharge is per encounter, the short rest is assumed with no particular time minimum or interruptions. You could all just take a deep breath before the next batch of enemies, and you're ready for the next encounter. 4e it /was/ technically a 5 min Short Rest - 5e differs only in that it doesn't use the shorthand jargon 'encounter power,' and the 'short' in Short Rest is in fact an hour.

pming · Apr 26, 2018

Hiya!

CapnZapp said:
All this would have made perfect sense, if it weren't for one teensy weensy detail:

The rules allow the players massive freedom in deciding their own rests.

I disagree. I see the rules as defining "Short rest is X" and "Long rest is Y". It doesn't seem to me to indicated that the players get to decide when/if a "rest" occurs. I think I remember reading about one Long rest per 24 hours? I don't remember anything about Short rests though. I am positive that the players don't decide that when they do rest, they are perfectly safe. In fact, IIRC, it states something about being "interrupted" for a certain length of time during a rest negates it's game effects.

In other words, "We take a short rest" pretty much means "We hang out in this room for an hour to rest, and hope nothing disturbs us"...it doesn't mean "We hang out in this room for an hour to rest, so we're safe".

CapnZapp said:
In other words - the problem isn't what you rail against, that the DM tells you "there will be N encounters most days".

The DMG might envision some days to consist of individually simple encounters, with an heightening sense of urgency as resources dwindle.

But it is absolutely trivial to short-circuit this, take a rest, and turn the sequence of encounters into two; both now rendered utterly trivial and unchallenging as a game element.

Again, I disagree. The Players don't get to decide what happens during that 1 or 8 hour "rest". If a DM is designing the adventure as I do (without much regards to the PC's specifics), he should have a nice idea of how much traffic some area gets, if there are any constantly annoying things (weather, insects, earthquakes, erupting spouts of lava, or an exhale of fiery gas from pockets under ground that are preceded by a thumping sound...and be wary of the R.O.U.S.'s!

). Point being...the world doesn't just "stop" when the PC's decide it does. A "rest" should never be an assumed thing. And, IMHO, the more dangerous an area is, the more likely the PC's are to be interrupted, thus negating their "restfulness".

CapnZapp said:
But even this isn't the core problem.

The core problem is that a) the game offers no mechanical solutions to this issue, and b) that it's defenders can only offer one solution: apply time pressure.

a) yes it does...it's called "The DM" (and Yes, I consider "the DM" to be a mechanical part of the game; without him/her, most of the game just doesn't work). b) time pressure?...oh, I see below...that is one solution I suppose (but not one I'd suggest to use all the time).

CapnZapp said:
As if it doesn't get very old very fast if every questgiver you meet say "please hurry - you only have N days before something bad happens".

ESPECIALLY given how this is a bluff in 90% of all published modules.

I AGREE!

Especially the last part. For an example of how a time-constrained adventure should go...see either the AD&D module A4: In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords (Tournament Rules)...or the "Shadows Over Bogenhoffen" adventure for Warhammer Fantasy RolePlay (1st ed). In A4, players have 2 hours of *real time* to escape...or..."BOOM!" (brutal catch?...the Players don't know this! ((but yes, they should be smart enough to realize that they need to leave NOW)) ... :evil: ). In SoB, if the players don't figure out who, what, where and when..."BOOM!"

For an example of a good compromise, the AD&D adventure C1: Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan (Tournament Rules); PC's take a point of damage (or was it 1d10?) every hour...escape or die!

But at any rate, the whole Short/Long Rest thing isn't a given. So Players who think "we're back at camp, we can rest for 8 or 9 hours then go back and take on the Dread Lord" are fooling themselves. Disrupting the hive of the evil Dread Lord, leaving the dungeon and ruin, traveling a kilometer away, and thinking that the Dread Lord is going to just sit there and do nothing...well, that's not a mechanical thing. That's just bad DM'ing, imnsho.

But yeah, basically, if an adventure has a hook about "The ritual will be complete in three days!"...then the adventure had better damn well live up to that threat!

^_^

Paul L. Ming

Quickleaf · Apr 26, 2018

jgsugden said:
Deadly encounters are fights for survival. Your objective pretty much has to be "kill before being killed". If you're doing that for every encounter, it gets boring fast... and it makes the heroes feel less like heroes and more like town guards that can barely hold their own against typical threats. That doesn't make for great storytelling.

I'll chime in here to disagree that Deadly (using DMG parameters) = fight for survival = boring.

Here's an anecdote from my last Tomb of Annihilation session which contradicts that...

My party was effectively 7 PCs of 3rd level:

Two CR 1 tabaxi hunter guides who are effectively 3rd-level PCs in combat
Human Ranger (gloom stalker)
Lizardfolk Rogue (swashbuckler)
Tabaxi Monk (drunken master)
Grung Druid (circle of land)
Human Bard (college of lore)

I pre-rolled for random encounters, getting one encounter in the morning, two encounters in the afternoon (I use a system that deviates from ToA where a '1' is a sanctuary and a '20' indicates two-in-one encounters), and none in the evening. A stegosaurus in the morning. A yellow musk creeper with 14 yellow musk creeper zombies & 12 cannibal tribal warriors in the afternoon.

The stegosaurus had human-hand-sized claw marks over its face and flank, and was generally agitated – foreshadowing zombies.

They came to a point where following up river bank would require climbing. As they had pack dinosaurs, they opted to delve briefly into jungle, but sent Rogue & Ranger to scout ahead as they were alert to zombie presence (thanks to Ranger's Primeval Awareness). They found an elven treehouse village overrun with yellow flowers & vine-covered zombies... after reporting back, the party decided to investigate, hoping they'd find lore about the Death Curse and/or treasure among elven ruins.

I had the yellow musk creeper overgrowing the ruins of an old elven treehouse village now occupied by cannibals... outer treehouses used as sleeping quarters for couples & larger central treehouse used by elderly shaman, children, and uncoupled singles. The zombies milled about on the ground below, mostly unable to use the stairs (and deterred by anti-zombie traps). Up in the treehouses was the cannibal tribe, though they only ate zombies, preferring yellow musk zombies because they acted like cannibal wine...in essence, they treated the yellow musk creeper how a vintner might a (dangerous) grape orchard.

The encounter began when the curious PCs ascending stairs up treehouse (passing by the yellow musk creeper) failed their group Stealth check. Thus, the creeper & zombies began as hostile, but the cannibals were more afraid/curious/reclusive (initially).

It was, by the numbers, a Deadly encounter (3,450 adjusted XP – not counting tribal warriors). Yes it played out as frightening. No, it was not boring. Here's what I did...

Pit traps were set up around the treehouse by cannibals to catch zombies. Once players became aware of these (by narrowly succeeding a Perception check), one player used them intelligently to lure many of the Intelligence 1 zombies into pits.
If more than 2 medium-sized PCs or 3 zombies fell into a pit (yep), then the pit's floor would fall away, revealing stone ruins of an underground elven shrine.
Cannibals would not become hostile unless PCs "killed" yellow musk creeper or attacked it with fire. That happened, but PCs immediately began a sort of "confuse the cannibals" skill challenge of their own accord. It worked long enough for them to beat a hasty retreat.
Outer unoccupied/less-occupied treehouses (which some PCs decided to stealth into even while retreating) had minor treasuree & elvish runes hinting at a "waterway map" left behind for missing relatives to find them.
Central treehouse – which PCs didn't explore – had more significant clues about sanctuaries within the jungles of Chult (the "waterway map"). Also the cannibals, who at this point weren't very happy with PCs, had assembled here.
They "killed" the yellow musk creeper, but not really because it regenerates unless killed with fire radiant, or necrotic damage. Instead of having it regenerate immediately once reduced to 0 HP, I had it lose control of any zombies while it entered a dormant phase until it absorbed a day's worth of sunlight. PCs haven't realized this yet...which could make for an interesting complication next session.

It was a very tense and interesting session. Druid used most spell slots, all PCs with expendable-use powers used them a lot, and there were several times both players & I thought "so-and-so is probably a goner now," only for some fortuitous turn of the dice or clever thinking to get them out of the jam. After retreating to their camp, they made a plan to sneak into the underground elven ruins before dawn.

Overall, I was happy with how it went, and several players shared how much fun they had.

My only complaint would be that the encounter (before the delve) took about 2 hours to play through - longer than I'd intended - but if we're all having fun, who cares?

CapnZapp · Apr 26, 2018

pming said:
Hiya!

I disagree. I see the rules as defining "Short rest is X" and "Long rest is Y". It doesn't seem to me to indicated that the players get to decide when/if a "rest" occurs. I think I remember reading about one Long rest per 24 hours? I don't remember anything about Short rests though. I am positive that the players don't decide that when they do rest, they are perfectly safe. In fact, IIRC, it states something about being "interrupted" for a certain length of time during a rest negates it's game effects.

In other words, "We take a short rest" pretty much means "We hang out in this room for an hour to rest, and hope nothing disturbs us"...it doesn't mean "We hang out in this room for an hour to rest, so we're safe".

You really need to read those rules carefully.

Or maybe it's that your players have much to learn when other comes to gaming the rest rules.

The rules are exceedingly generous when it comes to rests not being interrupted by combat etc. Read it.

And with abilities like Rope Trick, Tiny Hut (and later Teleport etc) naive measures such as wandering monsters simply do not work as rest deterrent.

What I have done for my Tomb of Annihilation campaign is to ban free long rests in the jungle.

That's a good indicator on how drastically you need to change the rules to get their own encounter pace assumptions to work!

And thus, it serves well as an indicator on exactly how badly the RAW works, once your players catch onto how to really use the rules in their favor.

What I mean by this is, I would much rather that the rules were written by someone that realized how the character abilities interacted with the rest rules. As it is now, that cannot be the case given how naive and easily circumvented they are.

CapnZapp · Apr 26, 2018

pming said:
But yeah, basically, if an adventure has a hook about "The ritual will be complete in three days!"...then the adventure had better damn well live up to that threat!

We agree here... Kind of.

My main point wasn't the bluffing.

My main point is: put official rest rule variants in the PHB/DMG so that adventures don't feel they *have* to make "princess gets eaten in three days. Hurry!" plots, which they then don't dare enforce. ☺

Li Shenron · Apr 26, 2018

HorusZA said:
I've read in multiple different places that one of the core assumptions in D&D 5e is a workday of around 6 encounters (combat or some other obstacles that consume resources) per day. The rate of HP, ability and spell recovery is based around that figure. If, for whatever reason, I'd prefer a less hectic schedule of say 1-2 encounters per day, the encounters would have to be scaled up significantly in order to be sufficiently fun and challenging as the party will often be fully charged and ready to go. That might make the fights last longer than I'd like.

Any advice, be it rule tweaks or other ideas on how to handle this?

If combat duration is your concern, the simplest way to dial on that is to pick the monsters HP instead of rolling or averaging. It's not even a rules change, it's just the DM choosing to let the PC encounter specific monsters with less than average HP.

Advice: A less hectic workday for my D&D characters

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