D&D 5E Resting and the frikkin' Elephant in the Room

Maxperson said:

Yes, yes he did have encounters. MANY of them. That's how he gained levels. We just don't need to know what they were. If he had no encounters, he would not be 12th level.

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An NPC needn't have a level, he may have a CR. And, it would be bizarre for murder-hoboism to be the only way to acquire ability. It is, for PCs, so the game can be remotely fair, but a newly-pacted Warlock, for instance, might just start at '12th level' because that was the kind of pact he made (and, no your player would never go for it).

Maxperson said:

Only 4e said that they don't, and even 4e said that you could do it if you want to. 5e gives three methods for NPCs. For the baker who is not a threat at all, just a few abilities. For monsters, a stat block like the MM. And for NPCs with classes, class levels just like a PC. So that 12th level NPC wizard will be built just like a 12th level PC.

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So the majority of NPC's and monsters (unless you're saying NPC's with classes are the majority which then would explain away the dangerous nature of the world as without it they wouldn't have been able to gain all those levels) don't use the same mechanics as the PC's... right?

Krachek said:

My kingdom has 3 millions citizens. Here are their names, profession, level, social security number, ....

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I think there's an app for that now. There's certainly a spreadsheet...

Tony Vargas said:

An NPC needn't have a level, he may have a CR. And, it would be bizarre for murder-hoboism to be the only way to acquire ability.

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This is one place the written game rules do (and always have) fall flat: the idea of levelling without adventuring.

I've always had it that stay-at-home temple clerics or lab-study mages or fighter types in the army or street thieves can and will very slowly gain levels over time, as a reflection of their slowly getting better at what they do and in effect their ability to learn on the job.

Adventuring is, to quote a long-ago player of mine, "the church of fast-tracking level bumps". A year or two of adventuring will get you as many or more levels than 30 years of non-adventuring work in the same class...but at far greater risk! But, non-adventuring advancement allows for levelled NPCs, NPC artificers, spellcasting sages, and a bunch of other somewhat-necessary tropes that the mechanics don't otherwise support very well.

Lanefan

Maxperson said:

/snip Encounters don't have to be run in order for them to have been encounters. /snip

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What? Now we have quantum encounters? Sorry, ENCOUNTER is a game specific term. It requires certain things to happen and enough chance of failure that you can earn XP. Simply living through your life doesn't gain XP.

Or do your PC's gain XP in downtime activities? After all, that would be fair, no? If NPC's continue to gain XP while not actually adventuring, then why don't your PC's? What's the rate?

An encounter that isn't run ISN'T AN ENCOUNTER. It's narration by the DM. It's not a case where encounter mechanics inform world building.
[MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] - the problem I have with your example is, so what? Since the PC's never actually see any of this - other than maybe a throwaway line of "Well, you see more Flaming Fist on the streets than usual" - what difference does it actually make to the game? And, frankly, most players aren't even going to notice or care. You could easily narrate this as "The Flaming Fist guards aren't prepared for these threats. That's YOUR job."

And, let's be honest here, that's a pretty specific example. I've never read the module you are referring to, but, don't the increased danger encounters only apply to the PC's? So, no one else in the city would even notice the increased danger. Why would they apply more broadly.

Just because fire fighters see fires on a weekly basis doesn't mean anything to the rest of the world.

Hussar said:

Just because fire fighters see fires on a weekly basis doesn't mean anything to the rest of the world.

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It kinda does, since they respond to fires in the area, the numbers they see are a representative statistic. If an arsonist moved in and started a lot of fires, they'd see em, and it'd mean something to the folks getting their homes and businesses burned down...
...and to others in the area who'd have reason to fear...

Hussar said:

What? Now we have quantum encounters? Sorry, ENCOUNTER is a game specific term. It requires certain things to happen and enough chance of failure that you can earn XP.

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But it doesn't require anything else, other than risk.

No dice, no DM, no players, no table, nothing. And the term isn't quantum encounters, it's virtual encounters.

It's the same effect as the tree falling in the forest that nobody hears. It still fell. Some other trees nearby may have lost some branches when it fell.

Simply living through your life doesn't gain XP.

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A very different issue; please see my post (1573) immediately above the one of yours I'm quoting for discussion on that.

Having encounters off-screen can and does gain xp for those who were there; it's the cumulative assumption of there having been many of these over time that allows the 9th-level NPC Fighter to walk into the room and ask to join the party.

Or do your PC's gain XP in downtime activities? After all, that would be fair, no? If NPC's continue to gain XP while not actually adventuring, then why don't your PC's? What's the rate?

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Personally I think they should, but the rate of gain would be slow enough that unless they took half a year off most PCs might not even notice.

An encounter that isn't run ISN'T AN ENCOUNTER. It's narration by the DM.

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And that narration is, in theory, based on said DM's best guess of the range of how the mechanics would have played out had they been played out, and then putting the narration somewhere within that range.

100 knights leave for the mountain pass and 17 return? If the DM looks at the situation and decides a reasonable range for how many would return from that trip is somewhere between 0 and 40 then sure, 17 works just fine. The mechanics and the narration suit each other, so what's the problem?

A much bigger issue would arise if it was later discovered that a reasonable return range would have been 65-95 out of 100 based on what's up there for them to meet. Now the DM's dug herself a hole in that her narration clashed with what the mechanics could be reasonably expected to produce.

Lan-"these poor knights"-efan

But, remember, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], we're talking about how encounter mechanics do or don't shape the game world. If those knights met something(s) that ate 83 of them, and then the PC's go down the same road and don't lose a single PC, then you have exactly the same problem. Why were those knights so weak? Are our PC's so powerful that they can roll over something that can curb stomp such a large force?

Or, do we simply lampshade the whole thing and not worry about it too much?

The point is, those elite knights never had a single encounter, either before they were killed or including when they were killed. They had no actual mechanical existence. The DM simply eyeballed it and picked a number that sounds good. So, how do mechanics, in this case random encounter mechanics, or the guidelines that say PC's should hit 3+ encounters per adventuring day, enter into things?

I mean, this whole tangent went off because there were claims that if we baseline encounters for the PC's at 3/day (or more, since, well, 3/day is pretty predictable and not very interesting) then EVERY SINGLE NPC MUST have 3 encounters/day.

Heck, your knights didn't. They had 1 encounter (presumably) and got munched. When the PC's travel down that same road, instead of having that one honking big encounter (since large groups travel pretty slowly, that gave the bad guys time to mass up and attack), they have a series of smaller encounters that grind down their resources and everyone's happy.

So, in what way are encounter design guidelines impacting world building?

Hussar said:

What? Now we have quantum encounters? Sorry, ENCOUNTER is a game specific term. It requires certain things to happen and enough chance of failure that you can earn XP.

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No. They are having real encounters that had a chance of failure and that yielded xp when they beat the failure chance. It just wasn't rolled out.

Simply living through your life doesn't gain XP.

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Hey! What do you know. We finally agree on something.

Or do your PC's gain XP in downtime activities? After all, that would be fair, no? If NPC's continue to gain XP while not actually adventuring, then why don't your PC's? What's the rate?

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You argue against things that people don't actually say, a lot. Is it pathological?

An encounter that isn't run ISN'T AN ENCOUNTER. It's narration by the DM. It's not a case where encounter mechanics inform world building.

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Yes it is. Those NPCs had encounters off screen, succeeded, and gained levels from the xp.

[MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] - the problem I have with your example is, so what? Since the PC's never actually see any of this - other than maybe a throwaway line of "Well, you see more Flaming Fist on the streets than usual" - what difference does it actually make to the game? And, frankly, most players aren't even going to notice or care. You could easily narrate this as "The Flaming Fist guards aren't prepared for these threats. That's YOUR job."

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You think extra mercenary cops on the streets isn't going to impact a thieve's guild game? You think they won't break up fights and arrest PCs more? There are tons of scenarios where the increase will be more than a throw away line.

Maxperson said:

No. They are having real encounters that had a chance of failure and that yielded xp when they beat the failure chance. It just wasn't rolled out.
/snip

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So, how exactly did they beat that failure chance?

Hussar said:

So, how exactly did they beat that failure chance?

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Through their abilities. During those fights, they used resources, hit and missed, and did damage, just like PCs. Had they not beat the failure chance, they would be corpses.