D&D 5E 6-8 encounters/day - how common is this?

[JonnyP71]

Paladin, "We are battered and bruised, those accursed creatures have drained my fortitude, I must get rest."

Cleric, " Agreed, my healing powers are drained, I must pray. And our Mage is drifting in and out of consciousness."

Wizard, "Hnnnnrrrhhh, uuuurgggggggh... *sigh*."

Bard, "Nonsense, we must press on, rules are rules, we have at least 2 more encounters to do today before we can make camp!!"

 

[meshon]

Paladin, "We are battered and bruised, those accursed creatures have drained my fortitude, I must get rest."

Cleric, " Agreed, my healing powers are drained, I must pray. And our Mage is drifting in and out of consciousness."

Wizard, "Hnnnnrrrhhh, uuuurgggggggh... *sigh*."

Bard, "Nonsense, we must press on, rules are rules, we have at least 2 more encounters to do today before we can make camp!!"

Lore bards, too darn curious for anybody's good.

 

[meshon]

Well, it's not "boy those rules don't allow me to do what I want, better go play another game"...

It's quite easy (for an experienced DM) to do any number of the following: award levels based on milestones rather than xp, hand out magic items that maintain rather than destroy the balance between long-rest and short-rest PCs, set up clear rules when and where the party can expect to rest, and so on.

But that it can be done by a good DM isn't the point. It should have been in the DMG. Just as the DMG contains tips on encounter design or what have you. The DMG is simply presenting a too-rosy picture of the players willingness to "take one more encounter" just to make the game click. The DMG is blissfully ignoring veteran jaded scheming minmaxing players that aren't above gaming the rest mechanism to their advantage.

// Just as an example: Witness the "meta contest" behind what the characters are saying in the recent "design a 6-8 encounter adventure" thread. The NPC quest giver tries to shame the players into accepting quite rigid time constraints. The players immediately recognizing this as a way to prevent long rests and try their darndest to worm out of those conditions.

At this stage I feel it's important to say noone is right and wrong here. I can certainly empathise with both DM and players. It is the game's fault that everybody lost in that thread! Not C. Not F.

In the end: the hard harsh question becomes - will you play by the DMs rules, or by the players rules. Contrast this with how easily the conflict could have been avoided entirely by stating up front "Today you'll be playing a two short-rest no long-rest scenario. You all now sit in a deserted tavern, spending the last of your copper coins on cheap ale. Suddenly a jolt of electricity shudders through the tavern and in a flash and a pop of magical energy, a figure appears as if from nowhere..."

Note how this turns the tables around entirely. Now the DM takes responsibility for his adventure, and its ability to challenge and delight, but not wilfully destroy the characters. (Assuming the basic trust is there between player C and dungeomnaster F in this case, which is a fair assumption in general even if possibly not in this particular case )The players can ease up on their otherwise strong motivation for making a good deal rest-wise (since getting rests is possibly the single most valuable commodity in 5th Edition), and simply go with the flow, demanding more traditional rewards, the kind that the DM can hand out gladly knowing that they do not work against the game's ability to challenge: gold, halved kingdoms, the hands of princesses, you know the lot. //

Some of it should even have been in the PHB. Partly to help out newbie DMs but mostly to heed of "by the book" players and wotc apologist forumists that reflexively just go "do six to eight and your issues will go away"...

I don't want to feel I'm playing the game "off center" when I can't be arsed to continously serve up ever-more tenuous reasons why the PCs should press on instead of taking the logical and prudent rest.

Adding a house rule is one thing. Taking away a rule that heavily favors the PCs that is written in stone right in the PHB is another thing entirely. So the rules shouldn't have been written in stone in the first place.

Just think of the number of discussions we could have skipped if only the PHB didn't just say "Adventurers can take short rests in the midst of an adventuring day and a long rest to end the day"... Le sigh

I want the standard RAW to go easy on the DM, and not just put the entire responsibility for keeping the game aspect of the rpg session squarely in her lap. It's lazy and it is offending, the way the DMG "assumes" this 6-8 encounter day without stepping up and making sure that is actually what a vanilla session leads to!

I guess I'm having trouble seeing what you hope to accomplish. The rules are written already (mine are on paper though) and from what I've heard about 13th Age those rules might be a better fit for people who are frustrated by the way the 6-8 adventuring day interacts with rests. If you're just wishing for different rules, well, maybe pitch an article for Unearthed Arcana and share your experience with other DMs who are having the same trouble.

Fortunately though, if you're dead set on playing D&D, you can play differently. Arguing about experienced DMs vs new DMs doesn't really help; you get experience by doing things, trying things, and learning. If you are finding that the combat encounter guidelines aren't working for you, one thing you could try is to bring the number of encounters in line with the number suggested in the rules: "To referee the rules, you need to know them" (DMG 5). As this thread (and probably others) show, some people do that, and it works for them, and they're having fun, so it must not be inherently broken.

If you have actually tried that, and it didn't work, then there are other options (and I don't mean tried it just once; I made the mistake of declaring combat to be too easy after the first adventure of my current campaign, which had three encounters in it). One option would be to use the alternate rest schedule that is in the rules. And there are other options. As I mentioned earlier, I am just starting to try out using the Adjusted XP Per Day table on page 84 as a target, without regard to the number of encounters. If it seems to be working I'll have found yet another tool for combat and adventure planning. One of the great things about a thread like this is that, sometimes, people will share their different way of running the game.

You could declare the rules broken and go play a different game. Or you could share your own difficulties and ask for suggestions on what else you might do. If you have found something that works for you, share that. The reason that "D&D combats are too easy" is often answered with, "Have you tried 6-8 adventuring days?" is because that's a solution that's in the rules that not everyone has tried or is even necessarily aware of. It's not the final answer, but if you simply refuse to try it at all, that's your problem, and not an issue with the rules. If you have tried it, and the players aren't having fun, then just remember that "The success of a D&D game hinges on your ability to entertain the other players at the game table" (DMG 6) and proceed with meeting that goal.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Huh. Someday I'll have to look at these "modules" that people keep talking about.

I'm bemused by the jargon drift. Now modules are 'adventures' (or 'Adventure Paths') and variants are 'modules.'

 

[Wuzzard]

I'm bemused by the jargon drift. Now modules are 'adventures' (or 'Adventure Paths') and variants are 'modules.'

I think variant rules were only 'modules' in the prelude to 5e before the playtesting even started. None of that ever really happened in the way many people may have been imagining, for example, as a separate books/sources with different combination of rules for different typical play styles.

What we got instead were 1) a focus on evocative language/terms such as long/short rest, advantage, etc, that can reasoned about separate from actual mechanics, so in a way the game is designed to be easily adjustable in certain specific places, and 2) a few variant rules that are presented as sidebars in the PHB or small segments in the DMG that provide common alternate rules to some specific areas of the game (like facing and flanking in combat) but are not comprehensive enough to make this edition work just like some other edition or game.

Historically the term module was only used to refer to published adventures. But it makes more sense to call them adventures.

 

[The_Furious_Puffin]

It appears to be working well for the majority of groups who are using the published adventures as well as all the groups who use homebrew who requested the game to be like this.

Instead of declaring the game to be broken, you should examine how you play. Then either change how you play or change the game that you play. It doesn't sound like 5e is for you, but that doesn't mean that 5e is a bad game.

The problem is though that playing the published adventures skews the balance towards the long rest classes. I dunno about you but we noticed that straight way (well.. except moon druids, which own at low levels no matter which resource schedule you play on tbh) playing HoTDQ and mines of phandelver.

 

[meshon]

Oh, those glorious old under-30-pages monochrome cover books! To be fair the adventures in them could range from great to terrible, but they satisfy my nostalgia.

I think they were officially called "Adventure Modules" but to differentiate them from what other kind of module I don't know. Just plain "module" was almost always used to refer to them, including on the cover of said modules.

They are really interesting to look through though, and view adventure design without the lens of modern iterations of the game.

 

[The_Furious_Puffin]

Sounds like you might want to consider milestone power recharging?

2 encounters per session = a short rest at the conclusion of every session.

Every third session, the PCs advance in level and gain the benefits of a long rest.

Looks like we're reading off the same sheet of paper.

I'm not in love with this solution because it shuts down the possibility of a long rest if stuff goes south. Like, the players have a really bad fight, someone gets killed and everyone is nearly dead at the end of session 1 of a level, they have to push on and cannot go 'WELP' and then go home?

It also requires you to introduce long rest mechanics at level 4 and then take them away at level 10. Which is super weird? NOW YOU ARE POWERFUL, YOU CAN NO LONGER LONG REST.

It's breaking the simulationist parts of the system which are a draw card, so ultimately it's an unsatisfactory solution without other house rules I suspect.

 

[abirdcall]

The problem is though that playing the published adventures skews the balance towards the long rest classes. I dunno about you but we noticed that straight way (well.. except moon druids, which own at low levels no matter which resource schedule you play on tbh) playing HoTDQ and mines of phandelver.

I played through HotDQ and didn't notice that. The only chapter where I could see that happening was with certain encounters on the caravan trip.

Maybe if you gave specific examples?

 

[Ancalagon]

This long rest every 3 sessions is a bit of ... hard to operate. It's kind of awkward because things aren't always so plan-able. Say the party finishes the quest after 2 sessions instead of 3, but are all battered and drained of healing resources. The next adventure happens in 3 weeks of in game time while the party does "between adventure stuff", shuffling along barely conscious. They start the new quest still hurt, but after 2 days on the road near the dungeon they break camp and... I don't know, make great pancakes or something (end of session 3) and tada, all better!

... wut?