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

[Imaro]

Why would you have the same level and number of encounters in a safer area?

To challenge the PCs? If it is a safer area, I am okay with them not being challenged.

I've asked the same question. The only possible answer I've been able to glean is that some people feel that in every day they are in any way active... PC's must have an adventuring days worth of encounters... even if it makes absolutely no sense that they would?? I don't really get the reasoning behind it though...

 

[Imaro]

My players are inquisitive, they like to ask questions and try make sense of who/what their characters encounter - be it creature or object. It feels natural to me, to build encounters with the world as well as the particular adventure in mind.

We recently had a thread dealing with the issue of incorporating Elminster in any number of the FR APs and the barrage of table questions that would presumably arise from the PCs meeting him, I cannot imagine how an increase in number of dangerous wandering encounters wouldn't raise an eyebrow.

If you're building said encounters with the world and adventure in mind what kind f questions might arise that wouldn't have answers?

 

[Sadras]

If you're building said encounters with the world and adventure in mind what kind of questions might arise that wouldn't have answers?

None. I'm stating with our group setting the wandering monsters on God Mode would/should naturally impact the game world, therefore divorcing God Mode wandering encountering tables from world building wouldn't work at my table. It is not just viewed as a mechanic without implications.

Edit: Please keep in mind this is a thread about attrition, the suggestion made being that you can just ramp up the encounters to deadly to facilitate attrition. I'm saying doing this, without narrative backing, would raise eyebrows at my table.

Narrative backing = world building implications.

 

[clearstream]

I've asked the same question. The only possible answer I've been able to glean is that some people feel that in every day they are in any way active... PC's must have an adventuring days worth of encounters... even if it makes absolutely no sense that they would?? I don't really get the reasoning behind it though...

Yes, it is a strange assumption! Why couldn't those encounters be spread over any amount of calendar time between ability refreshes? An "adventuring day" simply isn't a calendar day!

 

[Imaro]

None. I'm stating with our group setting the wandering monsters on God Mode would/should naturally impact the game world, therefore divorcing God Mode wandering encountering tables from world building wouldn't work at my table. It is not just viewed as a mechanic without implications.

Edit: Please keep in mind this is a thread about attrition, the suggestion made being that you can just ramp up the encounters to deadly to facilitate attrition. I'm saying doing this, without narrative backing, would raise eyebrows at my table.

Narrative backing = world building implications.

But again, as I've said numerous times before... doesn't this depend on the encounter itself? A lone assassin can be a deadly encounter but have little to no ramifications on the world at large...

 

[Ovinomancer]

Why would you have the same level and number of encounters in a safer area?

To challenge the PCs? If it is a safer area, I am okay with them not being challenged.

Sigh. The contention was (and still is) that you cannot just ramp up the pacing to 3 deadly encounters per adventuring day without consequence to worldbuilding. Of course you could not do this and have fewer/less dangerous encounters in safer areas to avoid those impacts, but that directly ignores the baseline assertion of the argument, yeah? [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] and [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] are insisting that using 3 deadlies a day exclusively has no impact whatsoever on worldbuilding. That's the argument here, not 'just use fewer/weaker encounters in safe areas.'

Again: Having 3 deadly encounters an adventuring day exclusively has repercussions that echo back into worldbuilding. If you use different pacing methods, you will have different results.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Or conversely your worldbuilding is such that you take it into account when placing your encounters and thus they don't have an impact. As an example... you only place that deadly dire wolf encounter in a place it would make sense for in your world, thus it doesn't impact anything... A lone assassin in a town can be a deadly encounter and yet it has little to no implications (beyond the basic ones of a fantasy world) in your worldbuilding so use that instead of the Dire Wolves.

To further expound if you have an area where 4 Dire Wolves shouldn't reasonably exist... well why would you use them when there are tons of other pre-made threats (along with rules to create your own custom ones) available to use that would fit without the implications you want to avoid on your worldbuilding? IMO that's the point of worldbuilding, you are setting up the areas, limitations, etc. of your world that you abide by when populating it.

Which means that the choice of your encounters being always deadly and always 3 a day (when you have encounters) will echo back into the choices you make building your world, yes? If I built my world where there are very safe areas, then by choosing to also use 3 deadlies a day I've effectively said I cannot ever have encounters in this area. And, as PCs level, the places that they can have encounters becomes more limited -- I've then essentially built a world that tiers outward to accommodate my encounter design principle. Whether or not you do this up front or struggle to justify earlier choices in the face of changing your encounter pacing, this directly interacts with the world you've built and has implications therein. Being unable to set encounters in some areas because the danger level of those encounters would break the worldbuilding you've done is still a worldbuilding implication that's an outgrowth of your encounter pacing.

Again, all you're doing is moving the variable to the other side of the equation and then saying that it doesn't impact the side you're holding fixed.

If f(worldbuilding) is related to f(encounter building) by some variable f(pacing), then what you're saying is that f(worldbuilding) is a constant and any change in x requires a change in f(encounter building). So if you fix x to 3 a day, deadly only, then you must adjust your f(encounters) so that f(worldbuilding) remains constant. The problem is, though, that f(encounter building) isn't independant of f(worldbuilding) -- the encounters you're presenting are dependent on the world and narrative already, so worldbuilding is still present in the encounter building. You can't hold it constant because this is, in fact, a differential equation with co-dependent variables.

I've asked the same question. The only possible answer I've been able to glean is that some people feel that in every day they are in any way active... PC's must have an adventuring days worth of encounters... even if it makes absolutely no sense that they would?? I don't really get the reasoning behind it though...

Well, you don't get an answer because this is a strawman -- no one in this thread has ever claimed you have to have encounters every day. Instead, the assertion in this argument is that when you have encounters, they're 3 a day and deadly.

 

[Imaro]

Sigh. The contention was (and still is) that you cannot just ramp up the pacing to 3 deadly encounters per adventuring day without consequence to worldbuilding. Of course you could not do this and have fewer/less dangerous encounters in safer areas to avoid those impacts, but that directly ignores the baseline assertion of the argument, yeah? @Imaro and @Hussar are insisting that using 3 deadlies a day exclusively has no impact whatsoever on worldbuilding. That's the argument here, not 'just use fewer/weaker encounters in safe areas.'

Again: Having 3 deadly encounters an adventuring day exclusively has repercussions that echo back into worldbuilding. If you use different pacing methods, you will have different results.

But you wouldn't have ANY encounters in a safe area... that's the thing. It's a safe area.... easy, hard, moderate none would be there in a safe area.

 

[Ovinomancer]

But again, as I've said numerous times before... doesn't this depend on the encounter itself? A lone assassin can be a deadly encounter but have little to no ramifications on the world at large...

The argument is that a single encounter in isolation can't easily be accommodated, but that using only deadly encounters in 3/day batches is. It's an aggregate issue, not a single encounter issue. 1 assassin isn't a problem -- 3 assassins a day for a 4th level party of 4 characters has some level of needing explanations, though. If you do this occasionally in settled areas, again, you're back to less of an issue -- surges can be explained away. But if you want to have more encounters, then you run into issues. And this gets more and more pronounced as the characters level. At 4th, little issue. At 14th, though, the level of the threats do require some lampshading within the worldbuilding.

 

[Ovinomancer]

But you wouldn't have ANY encounters in a safe area... that's the thing. It's a safe area.... easy, hard, moderate none would be there in a safe area.

Right, you've built your world to accommodate your encounter pacing mechanic -- safe areas are immune from any encounters because the world will not allow them to exist and still be called safe. In other words, your world is now built in such a way as to explain why there are never any encounters in a safe area. Maybe the Nevertrouble Way has enchanted mile markers so that there cannot be any violence on the roadway. But did you pick that for your world and then pick your pacing mechanism and are lucky they match for the Nevertrouble Way, or did you build your world with the idea that you'd be using 3 deadlies/day and needed explanations why some areas are immune from encounters?