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

[Imaro]

What are you talking about? People in the books mentioned the queer folk asking questions about the shire and hobbits. Lots of encounters took place. No fights, but yes encounters with them.

But we are specifically speaking to combat encounters (With an emphasis on monsters)... right?

 

[Maxperson]

But we are specifically speaking to combat encounters (With an emphasis on monsters)... right?

You said no encounters OR monster fighting, differentiating the two.

 

[Imaro]

You said no encounters OR monster fighting, differentiating the two.

Ok the general discussion for at least the last couple of pages has been around combat encounters with an emphasis on monsters... didn't think I needed to specify unless I was speaking to something different.

 

[hawkeyefan]

If it's a simple trip through known and-or safe lands, sure.

But there's quite a few published adventures out there where the travel, or some of it, is itself an actual part of the adventure (or, in the case of the B-series module Journey to the Rock, is all of the adventure). And this is where the problems reside...how to make the travel bits challenging without spamming encounters all over the place, and without having to break consistency and use two sets of resting rules depending what the PCs are doing.

I would expect that any published adventure that incorporates travel as a significant part of the adventure would have encounter expectations that make sense for the area of travel. Like in Out of the Abyss, the PCs are fleeing through a demon infested Underdark....so the travel is very dangerous.

In Princes of the Apocalypse, the Dessarin Valley is described as a wilderness where creatures are common. It provides random encounter guidelines and tables. Interestingly, it has a table for Early Encounters and then a table for Later Encounters. The second includes more dangerous encounters in order to better challenge PCs as they gain levels.

Skipping, then: Old Man Willow, Bree, the pursuit by the Ringwraiths - and that's just to get to Rivendell. Then there's some more minor stuff, and Caradhras, and the Mines of Moria....

Sure, and the Barrow-Wight. But all of that is along the road from the Shire to Bree, right? Outside of the actual Shire.

And interestingly enough, for the most part, the road from the Shire to Bree would be perfectly safe for just about any travelers. It's dangerous for the Hobbits, though....kind of a different rules for PCs type of thing. Obviously, there is an explanation in the story for this....but that's something a DM can come up with in his game, if he feels he needs to justify the reason for the PCs having encounters. Things were different for Tolkien's main characters than for the background characters (based on the monster attractor you mentioned, mostly).

Skipping the travel bits, particularly through dangerous territory, means you lose quite a bit.

Sure, but I'm talking about skipping travel through non-dangerous areas. Travel in dangerous areas would not seem to pose a problem for the encounter expectations. For those who think that multiple encounter days, or multiple deadly encounter days break the verisimilitude of their world, they should not have such days in areas they don't want to be considered dangerous.

Well, it's a bit late to ask JRRT about that; but he did put some there.

Lanefan

Not really. The examples you gave are all outside the Shire. The only encounters taking place in the Shire are the few Hobbits who encounter the Ringwraiths asking after Frodo. Oh, and the scouring of the Shire after the end of the last book.

But I would expect most of us would view those as anomalies rather than as cause to change up a Shire Encounter Table to make it a very dangerous area.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I would expect that any published adventure that incorporates travel as a significant part of the adventure would have encounter expectations that make sense for the area of travel. Like in Out of the Abyss, the PCs are fleeing through a demon infested Underdark....so the travel is very dangerous.

But its not really after the first 3-4 chapters. The random encounters become quite trivial. There are a couple real bombs in a few of the charts but really I'd tell a DM that unless his party loves trivial fights to just handwave most of the travel stuff and tell the players to role play like it was really dangerous.

 

[hawkeyefan]

But its not really after the first 3-4 chapters. The random encounters become quite trivial. There are a couple real bombs in a few of the charts but really I'd tell a DM that unless his party loves trivial fights to just handwave most of the travel stuff and tell the players to role play like it was really dangerous.

I'm more familiar with the earlier part where the PCs are low level and fleeing drow pursuit. I should have qualified that statement, as I'm not as familiar with the particulars of the later part of the adventure when the PCs return to the Underdark at higher level.

I would probably handle it the way you do if I found that the encounters were not engaging or did not combine to create a challenge for the PCs. Or I'd tweak the encounters or add some of my own design if I thought that would help.

Ultimately, though, I don't think that anyone would complain about the impact of having dangerous encounters in the Underdark on worldbuilding.....most of us expect and want the Underdark to be dangerous. What you're describing is almost the opposite problem.

 

[Ovinomancer]

My point is that you keep arguing about encounter building and confusing it with worldbuilding. You can choose to let one influence the other but it's not a given (again these are rules for creating encounters for PC's not for worldbuilding... you keep ignoring that fact), thus if you're having a problem with that it's because you are choosing to do that, there's nothing inherent in the encounter rules that forces it...

You may have missed it, but the "rules" for encounter building are as strong as the 'rules' for worldbuilding -- the entire DMG is present as a set of recommendations and guidelines and not rules.

So, in effect, there are no rules for encounter building, there are guidelines and suggestions, just as there are for worldbuilding.

And my point is you easily could do so if you wanted to. Encounter building and world building are two different things. D&D has rules for encounter building that can affect worldbuilding if the DM wants them to... or he chooses to use them in an absurd way (Like placing deadly encounters in a safe area, which nothing in the encounter rules states has to be done). There are no mechanics for worldbuilding in D&D that dictate where deadly encounters have to be... so again your argument makes no sense. It's a choice you are making as a DM not one dictated by your use of deadly encounters.

I agree with the separation at the single encounter level, but if you build enough encounters, you're building a world.

No I'm not... you've yet to show me where the rules for deadly encounters force changes on worldbuilding. What I have seen is you choose deadly encounters that make no sense in the context you're choosing to place them in...but that is an [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] problem, not one of using deadly encounters for balance.

Okay, you've clearly lost the thread, here. I haven't said anything about deadly encounters forcing changes in worldbuilding. I've said that using 3 deadly encounters an adventuring day to balance rests exclusively or even often can have worldbuilding implications. I've repeated this a few times now in our conversations to clarify, but it's still missing you somehow?

So you agree that it's your choices around how to use the encounter rules vs. the actual rules themselves that is causing your problems? If so yes, we are in agreement.

I can't even parse this -- what encounter rules vs actual rules are you talking about? There are no encounter rules, and I have no idea what actual rules you're referring to.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Well, it's possible that the mechanics are being considered, yes. But is that really what's being considered?

Let's run with the Orc/gerbil comparison. Why are their stat blocks different? (I suppose we'll have to pretend that gerbils actually have statblocks for this, but let's try....or if we must, let's use a mouse statblock reskinned to be a gerbil). Are the stats different for some mechanical game purpose? I would say perhaps that's an outcome, but not the goal of the stats being different.

The stats are different because we have an idea of what an orc is and what it's capable of, and the same for the gerbil. The mechanics are designed around these ideas. I think this is the main contention of this whole tangent....the mechanics don't exist first and then ideas get added to them, it's the other way around. Here's an orc, how can we represent that in game mechanics. It's not "here's a low level threat that may be dangerous in numbers, hey let's assign the orc to these stats!"

So any narrative decision I make is not about the mechanics, but instead is about the ideas that the mechanics represent. That's the commonality I mentioned. Other factors such as story needs and simple DM desire can easily override any such logic.

So while it's easy to follow such logic and say "ah you're letting the mechanics dictate the outcome" I don't really think that's the case. Some might see this as a semantic quibble, but I think it's a pretty significant distinction.

But, then aren't the judgement call on what happens to the town and the mechanics of the orc both then built on a worldbuilding assumption of what orcness is? And, if so, aren't we then saying that encounter building with orcs rests fundamentally on a worldbuilding assumption? Kind of like how all of D&D rests on the core world assumptions in the DMG and also on the core world assumptions underlying popular myth and each and every MM entry?

It almost sounds to me like people assume that encounters must happen for PCs EVERY SINGLE DAY no matter what.

Don't you control worldbuilding impact by simply narrating travel through areas that would be safe? I mean, saying an area is safe and then forcing a bunch of random encounter checks just to "feed the elephant" and then blaming the system for ruining the worldbuilding....well that's a bit odd, no?

And you're absolutely correct that such a use -- encounters all the time -- is ridiculous on it's face. That's never been my stance, or what I've argued based up. I've stridently maintained my position that using 3 deadlies an adventuring day distorts things, not because you have encounters every day, but because when you do it's always deadly. And in 3s. So, if you decide to roll for encounters (or plot them) for your 10th level party walking the Nevertrouble Way, you're introducing some serious threats to a "safe" area. So, either you don't have encounters in the "safe" area, which is a worldbuilding choice, or you do, and now need to maybe lampshade how those deadly things got there a bit. Or not, if you and yours don't care. It seems, though, given the recent turn in wondering why you're even having such deadly encounters in safe areas, that there's at least a level of caring even among those that nominally disagree with me.

I honestly, at this point, feel that there's been some major misunderstanding of what I said, and we're now all in internet arguing ruts about it.

 

[Ovinomancer]

But we are specifically speaking to combat encounters (With an emphasis on monsters)... right?

First it was 'why are you using so many low CR monsters for your deadly encounters?' then it was 'why did you pick a dragon for that example, use something else' and now its 'encounters have to be combat to count.'

Could you maybe tell us which deadly Scotsmen encounters are acceptable so we quit making mistakes about the untrue ones?

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I'm more familiar with the earlier part where the PCs are low level and fleeing drow pursuit. I should have qualified that statement, as I'm not as familiar with the particulars of the later part of the adventure when the PCs return to the Underdark at higher level.

I would probably handle it the way you do if I found that the encounters were not engaging or did not combine to create a challenge for the PCs. Or I'd tweak the encounters or add some of my own design if I thought that would help.

Ultimately, though, I don't think that anyone would complain about the impact of having dangerous encounters in the Underdark on worldbuilding.....most of us expect and want the Underdark to be dangerous. What you're describing is almost the opposite problem.

Yeah the first few chapters are pretty hairy at times and after that I was liking the setup and environment. But later on as a handful of CR 1/2 or so foes become a joke its tedious. A lvl 7 party and having twice daily encounters, possible encounters, and you get things like a single drider, or a handful of drow. If you were getting the 6-8 encounters per day it would be a little better, but who wants to do a 300 mile journey section with 6-8 possible encounters per day? But I think since the module wants to keep giving the party anywhere from 10-100 NPC followers its geared towards people who like to just RP with NPC along the journey. My group isn't into that and I'm just going to skip the travel parts for the rest of the campaign unless there is a real need. Also they can teleport now which should get rid of a lot of that.