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

[Tony Vargas]

Sandbox games work obviously, I've run a game like this in 3.5. It's really tricky to do without fudging imho because the communication of the difficulty of an encounter prior to arriving at the encounter can be imperfect, and a modest difference in party level can result in it flipping from cakewalk to TPK. Fudging is an unsatisfactory solution for drama reasons, and if you dynamically readjust the encounters based on when the PCs arrive... well you need to do all that stuff ANYWAY except now you need to do it in 3 minutes while setting up.

If anything, Bounded Accuracy should make communicating difficulty a little less of a problem. If you're outnumbered, you should be careful, if you can take the enemy in small bites, you'll at least get an idea if you should be facing them, at all.

When I say 'dynamically,' I mean in-play. Reactively rather than proactively. Scary, but it can really work, especially if you've generally kept things behind the screen.

This is compounded though in 5E because it's much harder to bake the 6-8 encounter adventuring workday into the structure of the game.

In a status-quo set-up, PCs are going to occasionally face very difficult challenges or very easy ones, so the 1-encounter and 16+ encounter days aren't as far out of bounds as they might be in the tailored style. Might there be class-balance issues? Sure, but in a status-quo game, the PCs are deciding what to take on and when to push on vs rest, it's up to them to make best use of all the PCs.

Don't get me wrong. I like combat. If I didn't want combat, I'd play another game. The only issue though is if you're publishing a combat heavy game the biggest single draw on my time in preparation is designing combats (natch). If you want me to do this, your tooling to support the DM (me!) in designing and running combat heavy adventures better work. I think 5E has some significant gaps in this tooling.

5e design tries to accommodate a wide range of styles & preferences, and it does that by being lose and customizeable, which does mean the more you need to customize to get it to where you want, the more DM effort is involved. The encounter design guidelines have some fiddly steps to them in part, ironically, because of Bounded Accuracy and other features that make the game feel 'simpler' (to the player) and play faster, and they're not terribly dependable, because PC effectiveness might vary quite a lot with optional rules in use (MCing, Feats, chargen methods, magic items, etc). Making encounter building simpler & more dependable would have been possible - it'd already been done - but it required sacrificing some those options, those fast combats and/or that classic feel.

 

[The_Furious_Puffin]

If anything, Bounded Accuracy should make communicating difficulty a little less of a problem. If you're outnumbered, you should be careful, if you can take the enemy in small bites, you'll at least get an idea if you should be facing them, at all.

When I say 'dynamically,' I mean in-play. Reactively rather than proactively. Scary, but it can really work, especially if you've generally kept things behind the screen.

It does a bit - it's not as bad as 3.5E in this regard to be sure. If you haven't figured from my thrust here based on player feedback/discussion in the games I run I keep very little behind the screen, so dynamic adjustment in play (aka fudging) is not readily concealable. Collectively the group have decided this is undesirable.

In a status-quo set-up, PCs are going to occasionally face very difficult challenges or very easy ones, so the 1-encounter and 16+ encounter days aren't as far out of bounds as they might be in the tailored style. Might there be class-balance issues? Sure, but in a status-quo game, the PCs are deciding what to take on and when to push on vs rest, it's up to them to make best use of all the PCs.

Right but this entire discussion is about using the baked in 6-8 encounter work day to solve the class balance issues. If we're going to abandon that I'm right back to 'so the basic classes in this game don't work' which is just as (more!) unsatisfactory. I am aware that your view is the GM should fix it, but that is frustrating for someone who doesn't want to slap down a huge pile of house-rules. I did that for 3.5E. I don't run 3.5E any more because of this.

The encounter design guidelines have some fiddly steps to them in part, ironically, because of Bounded Accuracy and other features that make the game feel 'simpler' (to the player) and play faster, and they're not terribly dependable, because PC effectiveness might vary quite a lot with optional rules in use (MCing, Feats, chargen methods, magic items, etc).

I feel that's only part of the problem. The fact that players level of optimisation, but should be relatively fixed (if I know my players are ahead of the curve I can drop them in hard encounters or w/e - in one of my 4E games I drop in an extra standard monster to the encounter and that solves the issue).

The problems for 5E are in the interactions of the full tool suite - monster design <-> encounter design

 

[TwoSix]

We play 5E, multiple campaigns, multiple DMs

Do any of us follow the recommended encounter ratio? NO
Does it mean some PCs get to use their class powers a little more than others? MAYBE, but we are too invested in the story and RP to notice
Would any of us care if some PCs get to use their class powers a little more than others? NO
Have we enjoyed playing the full range of classes at our tables? YES
Do our DMs strive to always provide perfectly balanced encounters? HELL NO
Do we want our DMs to do that? NO, Running away is always an option!

Does ignoring the recommendations make them poor DMs - NO IT MOST DEFINITELY DOES NOT.

Provide a meaty story, engage your players in the plot, and nobody will really care if X gets to blast a bit harder than Y.

I like people who run unbalanced games. It lets me play the strongest classes and builds guilt-free.

 

[Tony Vargas]

. If you haven't figured from my thrust here based on player feedback/discussion in the games I run I keep very little behind the screen, so dynamic adjustment in play (aka fudging) is not readily concealable.

That'd make it harder. I do feel that 5e is one of those games that works better with more kept behind the screen. It facilitates making rulings and adjustments without players becoming frustrated from 'seeing the wires,' or second-guessing you.

Right but this entire discussion is about using the baked in 6-8 encounter work day to solve the class balance issues.

It's a guideline, not so much 'baked in,' but, yes, one way of minimizing class balance issues would be to just stick to around 6-8 encounters between long rests, and about 2 between short rests. It'd also help with encounter difficulty. But it's not the only way.

I think we've hammered out in this or a related thread, that 3-4 harder encounters between long rests, with a short rest after each should be very nearly as 'safe' for class balance/encounter difficulty.

Of course, that's not no issues, that's just minimizing issues from the classes having different resource schemes, and keeping encounters at all challenging.

If we're going to abandon that I'm right back to 'so the basic classes in this game don't work' which is just as (more!) unsatisfactory.

They don't balance on mechanics, alone, no. They do work, though, they're not unplayable. It's just that, in some situations, one class will outshine another. The trick isn't house-ruling them into mechanical balance (a prohibitive effort, it'd likely be easier to design a game from scratch), but just giving each PC a chance to shine now and then. In a sandbox, you have to hope that emerges as a result of what the individual PCs try to do, and you can always nudge things in one direction or another. In a more directive campaign, you can outright engineer it.

I feel that's only part of the problem. The fact that players level of optimisation, but should be relatively fixed (if I know my players are ahead of the curve I can drop them in hard encounters or w/e - in one of my 4E games I drop in an extra standard monster to the encounter and that solves the issue).

The problems for 5E are in the interactions of the full tool suite - monster design <-> encounter design

I've yet to really delve into official monster design. I'll run a monster 'off the cuff,' without stats, rather than build one ahead of time, for instance.

 

[The_Furious_Puffin]

That'd make it harder. I do feel that 5e is one of those games that works better with more kept behind the screen. It facilitates making rulings and adjustments without players becoming frustrated from 'seeing the wires,' or second-guessing you.

Right, but this makes play slower. Swings and roundabouts.

It's a guideline, not so much 'baked in,' but, yes, one way of minimizing class balance issues would be to just stick to around 6-8 encounters between long rests, and about 2 between short rests. It'd also help with encounter difficulty. But it's not the only way.

I think we've hammered out in this or a related thread, that 3-4 harder encounters between long rests, with a short rest after each should be very nearly as 'safe' for class balance/encounter difficulty.

Of course, that's not no issues, that's just minimizing issues from the classes having different resource schemes, and keeping encounters at all challenging.

Yeah, I think if you have moon druids this doesn't work super well either (because a moon druid is impossible to threaten in 1 encounter per short rest metric without damage levels that threaten the rest of the party with death every time). I suspect that the moon druid class design is bad though. Bottom line, imho, the game should:

A) Pick something
B) Tell me what I need to adjust if I'm not doing that.

This vaguely recommend something, do something else in the published modules and provide no advice to guide me doesn't cut it from a DM POV imho. Spotlight time is an interesting issue - but another discussion. I disagree with your that you can manage this through spotlight management via encounter design though. Given combat is such a huge part of the game (50% of my sessions roughly by weight), everyone needs to do something cool and contributing - a big spotlight moment - in every combat imho.

I've yet to really delve into official monster design. I'll run a monster 'off the cuff,' without stats, rather than build one ahead of time, for instance.

To me it's one of the biggest DM quality of life losses from 4E. In 4E it's very fast to go ''here is a monster that does something I want mechanically but it's at the wrong level and flavour' plug in the correct numbers, retheme it on the fly and go.

5E is more painful with regards to this because of a confluence of factors: It's much harder to relevel a monster, there are less published monsters and a large tranche of the published monsters are rather dull multiattacking HP sacs. The result is that the pool of designed monsters with interesting effects available a given CR is very shallow.

Related DM quality of life beef: the MM doesn't have an index by CR which is just a dumb oversight. The very purpose of this book is for me to go, hrm, I need a CR 3 monster, what can I use? I need to check my laptop! That's ignoring the very artificial segregation of where things are so even with the WoTC online index it still sometimes takes multiple goes to actually find the monster. *shakes fist of rage*

I actually feel like GM quality of life in 3.5 v 4 v 5 is a huge and under-explored issue that 6E should bring front and centre.

 

[Ancalagon]

I've only rarely had 6-8 encounter days. I think a good component is that I've found that 3-4 hard encounters, one of which is heavily roleplaying, makes for a better 3 to 4 hour adventure, than a 6 to 8 medium intensity fights that gradually ramp up in difficulty because the party has fewer and fewer resources to bring to bear.

That's another problem. D&D combat, absent options to choose from, is really boring. Casting cantrip after cantrip, making your standard attack round after round, because you don't have any more leveled spells, or your action surge has already been used in the previous encounter and you don't have anything to do in this one, isn't a tense, nailbiting experience, it's just a boring one.

That's why I finally just made short rests last 15 minutes and went back to the 4e assumption that they occur after every encounter. If people were playing short rest heavy classes I'd have to look a adjusting their numbers, but as the party currently consists of mostly daily dependent classes, it means they almost always have something fun to do.

I'm not sure I would go as far as you do, but I think you are saying in other words what I said earlier - it's *fun* for the players to go Nova. I have very fond memories of my war cleric casting huge buffing smell and then smashing everything left and right with the fury of my god in 3e

To me it's one of the biggest DM quality of life losses from 4E. In 4E it's very fast to go ''here is a monster that does something I want mechanically but it's at the wrong level and flavour' plug in the correct numbers, retheme it on the fly and go.

5E is more painful with regards to this because of a confluence of factors: It's much harder to relevel a monster, there are less published monsters and a large tranche of the published monsters are rather dull multiattacking HP sacs. The result is that the pool of designed monsters with interesting effects available a given CR is very shallow.

Related DM quality of life beef: the MM doesn't have an index by CR which is just a dumb oversight. The very purpose of this book is for me to go, hrm, I need a CR 3 monster, what can I use? I need to check my laptop! That's ignoring the very artificial segregation of where things are so even with the WoTC online index it still sometimes takes multiple goes to actually find the monster. *shakes fist of rage*

I actually feel like GM quality of life in 3.5 v 4 v 5 is a huge and under-explored issue that 6E should bring front and centre.

GM "ease of use" is important to me as well. The *only* reason I'm going to be running a D&D game again is because 5e is simpler than 3.X (well, besides really liking D&D of course)

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

That's not the part that takes me significant time. The time consuming part (for me) is encounter design. The 5E framework (as is the 4E and 3.5E!) for this is complex. We're expected to do the following:

A) Cross reference the pair of tables that tells you the XP budget and XP multiplier. The bit I find tricky here is that getting the value of encounters right is tricky because adding a new monster changes two things and you need to do a lot of fiddling.
B) The internal balance of monsters in 5E is worth discussing. I think there is a lot of variance around damage which means encounter design needs a careful eye to make sure you don't overuse monsters with high alpha or create padded sumo. For example, the centaur who can quite plausibly 1 shot a PC at level 3, has excellent standoff capability with 2 longbow attacks for reasonable damage, high movement speed, and the encounter design guidelines call for using 3 centaurs vs a party of 5 level 3 PCs. At the other end of the table you have a bunch of sacks of low damage attacks with HP and resistances which don't make for fun. 5 suits of animated Armour have more than twice the effective HP and less than half the DPR which leads to a very slow fight as the players whittle away the sack of HP (Animated armour have another problem in that they don't actually do anything interesting other than 'I attack' for what rates to be a protracted fight)
C) The framework for designing and rescaling monsters is not fast. There are a number of blog posts about the multi step process that walk through the complexity of the steps.

This is why I personally have a huge preference for running canned modules in D&D - the last 3 editions place huge reliance on the combat subgame, but it is a lot of work to design robust balance encounters. You can just 'wing it' or fudge a lot when you realise you've screwed up, but I buy into the school that this sucks the drama out.

Here's a suggestion, but I feel it is important to preface by saying I am not joking, I'm not meaning to belittle you in any way, and I am genuinely trying to help you improve the way that 5th edition works for you:

Don't.

Just don't.

The things that you think are expected are actually only conditionally expected of you; they only apply if you meet the condition of wanting to run encounters that are fine-tuned and "appropriate" or "safe" according to the numbers - and the game doesn't actually expect that you will care about the fine-tuning/numbers/safe/appropriate side of things; the game just expects that you'll have fun playing.

Here's an alternative way to design encounters, it's one that I use, and likely very close to the same method that Mike Mearls has professed to use:

A) Pick out monsters that seem like they'd make a fun and interesting encounter for you players, whether that encounter will be toe-to-toe combat, negotiation, or evasion being entirely irrelevant (and up to the players to choose which to attempt, though up to you as DM if one leads to another should that attempt fail).

That's it - just use whatever sounds cool and ignore the numbers beyond the most cursory glance along the lines of "Party is around level 5, this monster is CR 15... maybe I'll have it not be motivated to attack the party unless they force the issue since CR > Party level means significant risk that someone's character dies even as the party wins the encounter."

I should add this as a final note: I never fudge.

 

[The_Furious_Puffin]

I have previously run this style in 2nd and 3.5 where encounter guidelines didn't really exist (AD&D) or are just comically bad (3.5). Look, it's not terrible or unworkable, but I don't love it. A lot of it boils down to how you think combat is supposed to/going to work.

*I* want to have fun in combat too, so for me having to self nerf in combat because rolling out the full range of abilities on this terribly under CR'ed Centaur or Dragon will instagib the party in combat detracts from my fun. I like to play intelligent monsters all out - a style of play that's much harder to support with the serve yourself at the buffet style of play.

Secondly, I like combats to be dramatic and I *hate* filler fights. The best combats are ones where the players are intensely challenged, but pull through in the end. One of the reasons why I like the Zeitgeist AP so much is that my players (and myself!) are loving the combats once I figured out I need to chuck in 1 extra bad guy in a normal battle and 2 extra standard bad guys in a hard battle (or equivalent minions).

Thirdly, I don't like actually killing players. Killing players in long running RPGs with complex character generation blows and is generally unsatisfactory, particularly if they get punked in a stupid battle.

You can see with the things I want from the rules, I want good support for making well balanced combats before I put the miniatures on the battlemat, or sketch out the theater of mind situation. This

A) Ensures that I can play the monsters hard
B) The fight will be tough and dramatic requiring the players to step up
C) It's unlikely that I will accidently make it too hard - there is a related thing here about swingy systems. One reason I like 5E more than 3.5E is that's it's not as swingy once you get past level 3.

It's entirely possible to want different things from the rules though, so more power to you, but that's why I want to be able to prep reasonably well.

That's it - just use whatever sounds cool and ignore the numbers beyond the most cursory glance along the lines of "Party is around level 5, this monster is CR 15... maybe I'll have it not be motivated to attack the party unless they force the issue since CR > Party level means significant risk that someone's character dies even as the party wins the encounter."

I should add this as a final note: I never fudge.

I mean, this is what I used to do, but what do you do if you screw up and the players are going to get rolled by this combat in a very unfun way, such as getting blitzed by a T1 glitterdust? Or the lich has scry'ed them and is now going to execute a timestop powered 'die' phase on them? When you ran 3.5 did every mage from level 3+ heavily rely on save or dies? How did that actually work out in play?

I mean, I had these problems and just didn't play the monsters optimally (I don't think I ever used the glitterdust/stinking cloud/black tentacles line of spells on players in 3.5), but we still had tons of bad fights caused by badly designed encounters (I can remember EXACTLY the first time I realised that dragons were under CR'ed because it killed two players).

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

*I* want to have fun in combat too, so for me having to self nerf in combat because rolling out the full range of abilities on this terribly under CR'ed Centaur or Dragon will instagib the party in combat detracts from my fun.

Then don't "self nerf" once you have picked out what creature to use. Aim at lower CRs than the party level if you are afraid of "under CR'ed" creatures (which is a thing I've only heard people say about Bugbears, Ogres, Hobgoblins, and Intellect Devourers in 5th edition - most complaints about CR is that a creature is supposed over-CR'ed, and even those are just misunderstanding what CR actually means)

I like to play intelligent monsters all out - a style of play that's much harder to support with the serve yourself at the buffet style of play.

I genuinely have no idea what you are trying to say. I run intelligent monsters as intelligently as makes sense, I run my campaigns fully player-driven with me filling in what makes sense for what they are doing and where they are going. I have no difficulty in doing those things at the same time.

Secondly, I like combats to be dramatic and I *hate* filler fights.

I don't have any "filler fights." I have no idea what you even mean with that phrase.

The best combats are ones where the players are intensely challenged, but pull through in the end.

I find that to not necessarily be the case. Many of the most memorable combats to have taken place among my group are not the ones in which the party pulled through in the end, but rather ones in which it was obvious there was significant risk of harm to the party and they caught a lucky break on their strategy working out so that they won while relatively unscathed, or ones in which the party realized they were in over their heads and got away without anything too bad happening.

Thirdly, I don't like actually killing players.

Assuming that you meant characters, rather than players (which hopefully no DM is in the practice of killing), I agree. I don't like killing characters either.

I run my game as I've suggest you run yours, I never fudge, and I've seen no 5th edition characters die - they are just that difficult to kill without intentionally going for the kill by continuing to attack downed characters and prevent other characters from healing/stabilizing them.

...particularly if they get punked in a stupid battle.

The solution there is easy: Have zero stupid battles.

You can see with the things I want from the rules, I want good support for making well balanced combats before I put the miniatures on the battlemat, or sketch out the theater of mind situation. This

A) Ensures that I can play the monsters hard
B) The fight will be tough and dramatic requiring the players to step up
C) It's unlikely that I will accidently make it too hard - there is a related thing here about swingy systems. One reason I like 5E more than 3.5E is that's it's not as swingy once you get past level 3.

It's entirely possible to want different things from the rules though, so more power to you, but that's why I want to be able to prep reasonably well.

The only want that you are expressing that differs from my wants is that you want something besides "I'll just not use any creatures equal or higher CR to the party level" to follow as a guideline, even though there isn't actually a need for more than that to reach your other stated wants.

I mean, this is what I used to do, but what do you do if you screw up and the players are going to get rolled by this combat in a very unfun way, such as getting blitzed by a T1 glitterdust?

Let's use an example:

The party (3 characters, 5th level at the time) had just teleported via device onto a small island in the middle of a subterranean lake. The water was dark and murky, and they were expectant that some creature might lurk within. They tossed in a rock to see what response it might provoke, and a Hydra (CR 8) lunged forth angrily.

Initiative was rolled, and actions begun. The party tried to fight, finding in the first round that their attacks weren't likely to defeat the hydra before it's attacks finished them off. So in round 2, the party corrected their mistake of trying to fight such an overpowering enemy by retreating.

To state my point clearly: It is not by my screw up that the players wind up in a situation that might spell their characters' deaths - it is by theirs. And since we don't have any unfun or "filler" or "stupid" battles, each and every one is a success even when the characters suffer defeat (because defeat is dramatic and interesting, just like victory).

Or the lich has scry'ed them and is now going to execute a timestop powered 'die' phase on them?

If the party is facing a lich, they either have the capabilities to deal with a lich at their disposal and are responsible for using them correctly, or they have gone out of their way to agitate this lich to the point that its plan to deal with them has changed from "ignore them, they are insignificant, fleeting beings," to "personally see to their immediate destruction," while not having the capabilities to deal with a lich - which is to say either this isn't a problem, or it is a problem the party has deliberately worked towards for a not insignificant amount of time so it must be what the players actually want.

When you ran 3.5 did every mage from level 3+ heavily rely on save or dies?

Not that it has any significance to the topic actually at hand currently, but no, they didn't. I managed to have a group for the 3.5 era that didn't really enjoy playing spellcasters that often, despite the rules-set of the era heavily favoring such characters.

I mean, I had these problems and just didn't play the monsters optimally (I don't think I ever used the glitterdust/stinking cloud/black tentacles line of spells on players in 3.5), but we still had tons of bad fights caused by badly designed encounters (I can remember EXACTLY the first time I realised that dragons were under CR'ed because it killed two players).

You find dragons under CR'ed in 5th edition, or are you referencing what happened with 3.5 as if it has any bearing at all on how 5th edition actually plays?

I haven't found any of 5th editions monsters to be under, or over, CR'ed at this point - but I suspect that is mostly because 5th edition CR means "a party of this level that is rested and equipped shouldn't have anyone die in the process of defeating this creature", which is significantly different from the 3.5 CR which means "a party of this level should lose X specific quantity of resources when faced with this creature." The former being very easy to actually match, while the latter was nearly always inaccurate in practice.

 

[CapnZapp]

I've only rarely had 6-8 encounter days. I think a good component is that I've found that 3-4 hard encounters, one of which is heavily roleplaying, makes for a better 3 to 4 hour adventure, than a 6 to 8 medium intensity fights that gradually ramp up in difficulty because the party has fewer and fewer resources to bring to bear.

This is compounded though in 5E because it's much harder to bake the 6-8 encounter adventuring workday into the structure of the game.



I think 5E has some significant gaps in this tooling. The discussion thread I was responding to can be loosely summarised as follows:

A) It's not constructive telling me to use 6-8 encounters a day when the published adventures don't do this.
B) Why not design your own adventures, that's easy
C) I added the point that designing your own adventures is not super easy if you plan your encounters in a structured manner and don't fudge.

Bottom line, imho, the game should:

A) Pick something
B) Tell me what I need to adjust if I'm not doing that.

This vaguely recommend something, do something else in the published modules and provide no advice to guide me doesn't cut it from a DM POV imho.

All music to my ears. Thank you for showing people I'm not alone