D&D 4E Encounters-per-day guideline in 4e?

[pemerton]

From another thread:

In 4e there was an encounter/day guideline, but deviating from it didn't matter too much to class balance - so again, the encounter/day guideline didn't seem that important (though it really was nice to have to keep encounter balance where it was designed to be).

Where did 4e have an encounters per day guideline?

I don't recall ever encountering such a thing. And because PCs are all on the same recovery schedule, I've never felt the need for it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

DMG1 does have some guidelines, but you really have to read between the lines. The magic item power use limit rule, the use of milestones at 2 encounter intervals, number of daily powers and healing surges, etc. all indicates that a 5-encounter day was the model around which the game was designed. In 4e its about stretching, how much are you pushing the players to manage and wisely expend their resources?

Its true, the game's BALANCE is not impacted by shorter (or longer I suppose) days. The resource management game certainly IS though, and many trade-offs in terms of increased survivability vs increased firepower don't work out as well with shorter days. I suspect that short days is one reason players tend to favor strikers and high damage output over leaders and general survivability.

I really did a lot of LONG days in my first campaign, thinking that I wanted to see the characters reaching the bottom of their barrel and digging. The Warden was the huge winner in these. Wardens are just unbelievably tough. By mid-paragon the character was literally beyond the range of being put into negative hit points, it just wasn't feasible anymore, and 7 or 8 encounter days were really not that big a deal for that character, who would just stand in the line of fire and put up some stupidly ridiculous form, which I can't even recall the name of now, and laugh at damage.

I just settled on 5 tougher encounters as where things worked best. It didn't hurt that the warden's player dropped out a bit after that.

 

[pemerton]

DMG1 does have some guidelines, but you really have to read between the lines. The magic item power use limit rule, the use of milestones at 2 encounter intervals, number of daily powers and healing surges, etc. all indicates that a 5-encounter day was the model around which the game was designed. In 4e its about stretching, how much are you pushing the players to manage and wisely expend their resources?

I can't remember what the pattern was at very low levels, but my feeling is that for most of our 4e campaign the PCs have taken around 1 extended rest per level. Especially since paragon, anything less would tend to not to generate much pressure at all!

The closest I can find to a discussion of "adventuring days" in the DMG is in the account of Tiers of Play (p 146):

Since they rely on healing surges to regain lost hit points, heroic tier characters are likely to take an extended rest when surges get dangerously low. . . .

Paragon tier adventurers . . . have ways to regain hit points beyond healing surges, including regeneration, so they can complete more encounters between extended rests. . . .

Epic adventurers have even more ways to recover expended powers, more ways to heal damage without relying on healing surges, and more powers overall from magic items and epic destinies. . . . Such characters can last through many encounters before resting and can even return from death in the middle of a fight.​

But that is all in terms of "degrees" - more encounters, many encounters. There is no quantification.

Which is not a complaint, by the way: I think it's one of the editions many strengths that it is flexible in this way! (Compared to all the "6-8 encounter day" threads on the 5e boards.) What I think would have strengthened the system is a decent discussion of devices for rationing extended rests. I know there have been a lot of good suggestions over the years on these boards (and in my first months as a 4e GM I worked out that I could use a skill challenge to ration extended rests for my 2nd level PCs). But it's something that could have benefited from designer attention.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Sure, it might have been nice if it was spelled out more explicitly. I look at it this way, we know that there's a milestone every 2 encounters, and rings were designed to gain power after a milestone, so the idea was definitely there that PCs would normally, or often, continue for at least 3-4 encounters. Most characters have AT LEAST 6 and often 9 HS. While its POSSIBLE to burn up to say 4 HS in a single encounter, we all know that this is unusual, and its probably safe to say that the average character burns 1-2 per encounter. Again this points in the direction of an adventuring day in the range length of about 4 encounters before you're stretching, and you hit your 2nd milestone at that point, putting the 5th encounter in reach.

Personally I don't have a specific pacing in this regard. I adjust pacing based on the engagement level of the players, as well as my feeling about what will feel most interesting and to provide variety. I've varied between 2 and 10 encounter days. On the average though, I aimed at a level break roughly every 2 to 3 adventuring 'days'. Sometimes if the day was really crazy it was one day, other times it might be 3 or even 4, but I like to keep the pace of advancement going.

I think one of the things that I dislike about a lot of D&D games is slow advancement. I want to see the story get on! Cut to the chase! This 5e game I'm a player in is doing that to me now. The mid levels are ENDLESS and filled with trash encounters that nobody really cares about. I mean, its RP and its OK, but frankly I've run 1000's of PCs in different games, probably literally. I don't need to experience all this trivia anymore. Get me to the part where I get to do something unique where I'll remember THIS PC, or to where I push it too far and it breaks and I get to go down in flames and try something new.

So, I run my game that way. This is a big reason I don't have XP anymore, and just give out a level whenever someone achieves a 'boon'. You do something special enough to advance your character in the world, it advances. Learn something new, go up a level, get a nice new cool item, go up a level, kill some stupid awesome monster, go up a level. It just works, and I can put paid to most of the issues of pacing at THAT level of things.

And yes, of course, we all long ago achieved mastery of the "when do you really get a long rest."

 

[MwaO]

Agree with most of that, but it isn't hard at all to burn up 3-5 surges if a PC gets knocked out in a combat, especially if some sort of timer is going.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Agree with most of that, but it isn't hard at all to burn up 3-5 surges if a PC gets knocked out in a combat, especially if some sort of timer is going.

Well, sure, you can push anything. I am not really surprised by a fighter burning 5 surges, but its not usual for that to happen EVERY fight. If it is then there's likely a warlock or something somewhere that's getting off scott free, and you need to be using tricks like surge transferring magic to keep things going, or a ton of surgeless healing, or whatever.

Even decently clever parties can always sluff off some hits onto other PCs. In fact the REAL art of carrying on involves knowing when to let the monster past the fighter so you can burn off an excess surge from the wizard instead, cause he's got some to spare. Parties that just try to make the fighter into a hit point sponge generally fail, though a warden or a Cavalier can be stupid tough.

 

[MwaO]

Well, sure, you can push anything. I am not really surprised by a fighter burning 5 surges, but its not usual for that to happen EVERY fight. If it is then there's likely a warlock or something somewhere that's getting off scott free, and you need to be using tricks like surge transferring magic to keep things going, or a ton of surgeless healing, or whatever.

In general, when I'm designing my encounters for a known group, a point of pride is that at least one PC ought to get knocked unconscious every combat. If that's not happening, the combats are probably too easy compared to the optimization level of the party.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

In general, when I'm designing my encounters for a known group, a point of pride is that at least one PC ought to get knocked unconscious every combat. If that's not happening, the combats are probably too easy compared to the optimization level of the party.

I'm happy enough if garden variety encounters make the players work a little bit to avoid anything worse than getting bloodied, but knocking someone down is pretty common. Few of the people I ever ran 4e for were really particularly optimizers, and only a few were really GOOD tacticians, so its not like I had to work super hard to make encounters challenging in a mechanical sense.

 

[Joshua Randall]

at least one PC ought to get knocked unconscious every combat

Because healing is maximally effective when it's used on a below 0 HP target, you're actually doing the PCs a favor, right?

 

[MwaO]

I'm happy enough if garden variety encounters make the players work a little bit to avoid anything worse than getting bloodied, but knocking someone down is pretty common. Few of the people I ever ran 4e for were really particularly optimizers, and only a few were really GOOD tacticians, so its not like I had to work super hard to make encounters challenging in a mechanical sense.

Right, but one of the things that you're describing about healing surge usage reflects that PCs are typically not getting dropped in any given combat. Have one PC dropped each combat and the rest using up 1-2 surges and rotate, and in a party of 4, each of the PCs will likely use up 7 surges after 4 combats.

Now the Defenders will clearly have a say in that and because I'm gunning for one unconscious PC, a little luck+smart tactics means no unconscious PC or the Defender is the PC who gets focused on more, so 4 combats+1 skill challenge tends to be the right number.