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

[Flamestrike]

Barbarians effectively have perma-rage after round 1, with a bit of management, in every game I've GM'd or played.

Not on a default 6-8 encounter adventuring day they dont.

I've never seen a Barbarian, mine or someone else's, enter a major battle without Rage.

Thats because the games you play in dont make using player abilities a choice. They feature few enough encounters per adventuring day that all barbarians rage on round 1 of every battle, all paladins smite with every attack, all casters reach for their highest level spell on round 1 and so forth.

In my campaign, the default pacing is around 6 encounters per long rest. Our party barbarian is 7th level (Barb 5/ Fighter 2). He has 3 rages per long rest, meaning he only gets to rage for 50 percent of those encounters. Going into 'rage mode' is a meaningful player choice.

Same deal with our Ancients Paladin/ Moon Druid blowing a spell slot to smite, heal or cast a spell. He only has around 10 slots in total to stretch out over the whole AD. Choosing to use one is a meaningful choice, and not an automatic go to button.

I'm not that interested in nerfing Barbarians; I would rather bring Warlocks & Fighters up.

Its not a question of 'nerfing' anyone. A barbarian that is always in rage (by virtue of a shorter AD) is getting a massive leg up (as are full casters in such shorter ADs). Youre actually nerfing Warlocks, Monks and Fighters by default by dropping shorter ADs on the party.

I strongly suggest throwing the occasional longer AD at your party even if you stick to the 3-4 encounter pacing of your current campaign as default.

Another option is to insert race against time to [save the princess] or something. Design a ruin where the party [shortly after completing a long rest] are tasked with reaching the BBEG before the following midnight or [bad thing happens]. Stat up 12 medium-hard encounters and give the PCs 20 hours to complete it. They cannot long rest between the morning they wake and midnight of the next day as less than 24 hours has passed, however they can short rest as often as they want within those 20 hours.

They could conceivably short rest after every single encounter on the way to the BBEG. Your Warlock and Fighter will feel like Gods and your barbarian will have to marshal his rage and use it on only on the most challenging of the encoutners.

This is the strength of 5E. by simply messing with the rest allowances adn rest meta from adventure to adventure, you can grant different classes in your party a chance to own the spotlight.

 

[S'mon]

Not on a default 6-8 encounter adventuring day they dont.

I play in 2 5e campaigns and I DM 2 more. That is 4 active campaigns with 3 DMs - 1 weekly (66 sessions), 2 fortnightly (11 & ca 6 sessions), 1 monthly (ca 12 sessions). In none of these have I ever encountered the 6-8 encounter day. I also polled here last year, according to the poll 3-4 encounters/day was typical for most groups.
The 6-8 'default' seems to be rare in practice.

Edit: I agree with your advice though and will try to have the occasional long AD, especially at
higher level.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

The 6-8 'default' seems to be rare in practice.

It would be interesting if we could find out some way whether that is because of many groups cleaving to their old ways taught to them by some prior edition and not giving themselves a chance to try it the way 5th edition suggests, or because there are a significant number of groups that are trying to do things as 5th edition suggests but are failing to do so.

 

[S'mon]

It would be interesting if we could find out some way whether that is because of many groups cleaving to their old ways taught to them by some prior edition and not giving themselves a chance to try it the way 5th edition suggests, or because there are a significant number of groups that are trying to do things as 5th edition suggests but are failing to do so.

5e may suggest it, but doesn't provide much in the way of DM-side tools to facilitate it from what I've seen. I think players tend naturally to a '3 fights then out' mode of dungeon-crawling independent of edition - I see it in Classic, 3e/PF, 4e, and 5e. 4e did provide player-side tools to make longer 'days' viable, so the PCs in 4e were more likely to press on if they felt it necessary.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

5e may suggest it, but doesn't provide much in the way of DM-side tools to facilitate it from what I've seen.

If one follows the encounter building guidelines for each encounter, the natural result seems to be the characters being able to take on about 6 encounters and then have a few resources left to still have the ability to deal with 1 or 2 encounters that try to interrupt the taking of a long rest.

There isn't anything more than that to facilitate the encounters that needs to be done. If you meant there is not much in the way of DM-side tools to mandate it, that would be true, and I don't see why anyone would expect there to be such in the first place (and even then, there is still that the players choose to try to rest, and the DM chooses if that rest is interrupted by an encounter or not, so while "not much" there is still "the only tool necessary for such a goal")

I think players tend naturally to a '3 fights then out' mode of dungeon-crawling independent of edition

I think players tend naturally to a "Do everything it seems like we can and still get out without undesired consequences" mode of dungeon-crawling independent of edition.

I see it in Classic, 3e/PF, 4e, and 5e.

And I see each of the versions of D&D, having different rules as they do, resulting in variations of player behavior to match. In Classic, as in 5th edition, the characters can handle more than a dozen encounters in a day if they play intelligently and have moderate luck. In 3e/PF how much can be done in a day depends solely on how long whatever magical healing the party has available can keep up topping off hit points between encounters. In 4e things were very by the numbers: spend all encounter powers as quickly as possible in each encounter, short rest after, use dailies only when their "best benefit" is possible, long rest once dailies are gone and healing surges are low.

But then, maybe the real thing causing the difference is that you have players that want specifically "3 fights then out" to be the way things work (either because they are supremely cautious, or because you unintentionally make that all they can handle by ramping up the difficulty of each encounter), and I have players that want specifically "to do stuff" with "stuff" meaning all the RP, battle, scheming, exploration, discovery, and goal-completing that a game is made up of with "rest" meaning to not being doing stuff.

 

[S'mon]

But then, maybe the real thing causing the difference is that you have players that want specifically "3 fights then out" to be the way things work (either because they are supremely cautious, or because you unintentionally make that all they can handle by ramping up the difficulty of each encounter), and I have players that want specifically "to do stuff" with "stuff" meaning all the RP, battle, scheming, exploration, discovery, and goal-completing that a game is made up of with "rest" meaning to not being doing stuff.

Resting overnight rarely takes much real time. So the PCs skip ahead 12 hours and 'come back tomorrow'. Personally I do try to have realistic consequences for this - rarely supported in most adventures, but I've read my Gygax. But sometimes the realistic consequences just aren't very consequential.

 

[The_Furious_Puffin]

[MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION]: Druid wildshape is 1/2 druid level in duration, so its definately supposed to be able to last over a short rest.

I suspect a significant part of it is going to be a reduction in the use of wandering monsters due to people playing different campaign types. Wandering monsters tend to imply a specific campaign type: Dungeon crawling. My current 5E games are an urban setting and the other one features us trying to escape from a world we got planar shifted onto.

I suspect if you played a dungeon crawler, scrapped all the rope trick style spells and went back to per hour in the dungeon, a 1 on a 1d6 means a wandering monster shows up to claw your face, you'd see a lot less resting. That said, I feel like playing an OSR edition is a better fit for that sort of gameplay.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Resting overnight rarely takes much real time. So the PCs skip ahead 12 hours and 'come back tomorrow'. Personally I do try to have realistic consequences for this - rarely supported in most adventures, but I've read my Gygax. But sometimes the realistic consequences just aren't very consequential.

How much real time something takes is not a factor in my players deciding what to do in character.

When I said that the players want "to do stuff" I was meaning that is what they want in character. I can understand how it could have been confusing since the clarifying list I gave sounds like it could be out-of-character.

As for realistic consequences for taking longer than the character actually needs to get their goals completed... I guess I don't see how you could possibly have realistic consequences and still consider them to be not "very consequential."

And support in an adventure hasn't had anything to do with it in my experience. My group has played quite a lot of published adventures, and still they operate in the "do stuff" style rather than the "come back tomorrow" style.

Some written by Gygax, even, though I personally find his adventures more poorly thought out than most (note, however, that I don't hold it against him - the odds of you being the best at something are kind of stacked against you when you are the first at it, and thus haven't had a body of work to learn from before solidifying your style).

 

[GameOgre]

I play in 2 5e campaigns and I DM 2 more. That is 4 active campaigns with 3 DMs - 1 weekly (66 sessions), 2 fortnightly (11 & ca 6 sessions), 1 monthly (ca 12 sessions). In none of these have I ever encountered the 6-8 encounter day. I also polled here last year, according to the poll 3-4 encounters/day was typical for most groups.
The 6-8 'default' seems to be rare in practice.

Edit: I agree with your advice though and will try to have the occasional long AD, especially at
higher level.

Not meaning to be a jerk or anything. I understand how these things can happen but.....you guys are doing it wrong.

The encounter system is just as important as the stat system.

If everyone you knew played D&D with original D&D stat modifiers that might work just fine for your guys but that would not be using the system like it was meant to be played.

Or if you Didn't use hit points and instead used Strait Con.

Playing with 3-4 encounters per day is going to heavily change the way entire sections of the game play.

Not that you can't play that way and have fun! BUT the game would not be what the designers had in mind.

 

[Flamestrike]

I play in 2 5e campaigns and I DM 2 more. That is 4 active campaigns with 3 DMs - 1 weekly (66 sessions), 2 fortnightly (11 & ca 6 sessions), 1 monthly (ca 12 sessions). In none of these have I ever encountered the 6-8 encounter day.

You're directly responsible for 50 percent of that as the DM of 2 of those 4 campaigns, so thats fairly spurious reasoning.

I also polled here last year, according to the poll 3-4 encounters/day was typical for most groups.
The 6-8 'default' seems to be rare in practice.

You can have 3-4 be your campaign default, but it works best when the party are expecting 6-8 (or are rationing resources in expectaion of 6-8).

Throw a few unexpected 6-8 days at them once in a while, and that should be enough to tone down nova strikes, and get them thinking before they use those 1/long rest powers and spells.

Edit: I agree with your advice though and will try to have the occasional long AD, especially at
higher level.

Nothing funnier than watching a 15th level mage anhilate 2-3 encounters of moderate difficulty, and then be stuck with cantrips and lesser spells for several more fights, inlcuding the BBEG.

He should be keeping those big showy spells in his pocket and only pulling them out when absolutely needed, and not reaching for them as a matter of course on round 1 of every battle.

DnD is (at its core) and always has been a resource management game (hit points, hit dice, spell slots, 1/day abilites, daily/ encounter powers, charges, potions, scolls, xp, gp etc). As DM youre the guy who has to police this resource management. Making the expenditure of a resource a meaningful choice [risk/ reward] or a meaningful event enhances the game in so many ways. It brings the wonder back into spells or other abilities when they do get used, and makes every setback (even the loss of HP) one that needs to be managed over several encounters, and not just the one that the PCs are currently in.