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

[Tony Vargas]

Three. Three deadly encounters in a safe area. The entire focus of this discussion is that if you have 1 encounter, you have to have 2 more, and all of them are deadly. So, your safe area has to have three encounters in pretty rapid succession every time you have any encounters.

Not too rapid: the party gets their union-mandated 1 hr break after each, too, remember, to stick to the adapted guideline.

This is bizarre. Are you saying that an area that threatened 1st level characters can successfully threaten 10th level ones just by changing the CR, #appearing, and so on of the threats that your worldbuilding allowed at level 1? How does that work? Where were these advanced threats back at level 1? Where are the level 1 threats at level 10?

The idea is that at level 1, you'd bump into a few, say, orc patrols as you skirted/snuck through their territory, at 10th you'd take on the whole tribe, I suppose? That's part of the central conceit of BA, that monsters don't have an expiration date anymore.

The best approach is to use what works when it works, as I said waaaay back up at the beginning of this detour. Any dogmatic approach has failure points.

The game is designed for a dogmatic approach, though.

 

[hawkeyefan]

As a good starting point? No one's saying so, so yes. A good starting point for worldbuiliding is a concept or theme. Mechanical issues will impact that and need to be considered, though. There are a number of campaign/world ideas that I've round binned because they just do not work with D&D mechanics.

Well I didn't mean as a literal starting point, but still....for world-building purposes, the road from Daggerford to Waterdeep is an impassably dangerous road for common folk whether it's simply swarms of wolves or a dragon that kills them. So what is the impact on the world-building? Would the people of Daggerford consider death by slowly being nipped to death by wolves to be significantly different than being engulfed in one flyby bite of a dragon?

And I've said that encounter choices (frequency and severity) may have impact on the world-building....but if so, it's because you've chosen that to be the case. It's a matter of preference.

So if you decide to put Dragons on the road to Waterdeep, then you have chosen to take a relatively safe road and made it extremely dangerous. But there are other encounters you could design that would be Deadly for the purposes of challenging the PCs but which would actually work WITH the world you've built, leaving the prevailing opinion of the area by the world's inhabitants unchanged. Or do you not agree with that? Sure, we can all come up with examples that lend themselves to world-building disruption. Can't we all just as easily come up with examples that work with the fiction instead of counter to it?

And of course, this is to say nothing of folks who simply handwave the world-building and for whom there is no impact because they choose for there not to be.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Not too rapid: the party gets their union-mandated 1 hr break after each, too, remember, to stick to the adapted guideline.

Oh, of course, no one's suggesting we violate the union rules. Well, I wasn't right then...

The idea is that at level 1, you'd bump into a few, say, orc patrols as you skirted/snuck through their territory, at 10th you'd take on the whole tribe, I suppose? That's part of the central conceit of BA, that monsters don't have an expiration date anymore.

In the beginning, where is the orc tribe and at the end where are the orc patrols? That's what I'm trying to get at. I understand the idea of progression, the problem is more of a restriction on the types and kinds of encounters available to certain areas based only on level of the PCs.

The game is designed for a dogmatic approach, though.

Well, that's the Elephant behind the Elephant, yes.

 

[Tony Vargas]

In the beginning, where is the orc tribe

Deeper into orc territory, where you couldn't reach them, because you couldn't handle that many patrols.

and at the end where are the orc patrols?

Dead at your feet without a die being rolled because there's no point.

Well, that's the Elephant behind the Elephant, yes.

Heh.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Well I didn't mean as a literal starting point, but still....for world-building purposes, the road from Daggerford to Waterdeep is an impassably dangerous road for common folk whether it's simply swarms of wolves or a dragon that kills them. So what is the impact on the world-building? Would the people of Daggerford consider death by slowly being nipped to death by wolves to be significantly different than being engulfed in one flyby bite of a dragon?

And I've said that encounter choices (frequency and severity) may have impact on the world-building....but if so, it's because you've chosen that to be the case. It's a matter of preference.

So if you decide to put Dragons on the road to Waterdeep, then you have chosen to take a relatively safe road and made it extremely dangerous. But there are other encounters you could design that would be Deadly for the purposes of challenging the PCs but which would actually work WITH the world you've built, leaving the prevailing opinion of the area by the world's inhabitants unchanged. Or do you not agree with that? Sure, we can all come up with examples that lend themselves to world-building disruption. Can't we all just as easily come up with examples that work with the fiction instead of counter to it?

And of course, this is to say nothing of folks who simply handwave the world-building and for whom there is no impact because they choose for there not to be.

Can you just by picking select encounters that are acceptable to the world (ie, do not make the road to Waterdeep dangerous for others) while still being dangerous to the players? 3 times an adventuring day, even? Don't you at least have to add to the area fiction a reason for this incredibly dangerous encounter to be there, and is that not worldbuilding?

So, you can't do a dragon (because, well, reasons?) but you can do something else that's mechanically as dangerous, like a group of bandits made up of bandit captains lead by a gladiator or knight, suitably reskinned. But that's a pretty dangerous crew to travel and commerce, even if less fantastic and likely less dangerous to the surrounding countryside, so do you just have it occur on the road to Waterdeep without any explanation for why such a group is there, or do you come up with some narrative that explains this new crew of highwaymen and their impact on commerce in the area? Do you foreshadow it at all by having the party meet a recent victim, fleeced for all of their goods while going to market in Waterdeep?

I'm repeatedly being told that you can pick encounters that match the world and still meet the 3 deadly a day encounter pacing. And, I agree you can, sparingly. But the more you do it the more it strains things until they break. This seems entirely obvious to me -- you can't just keep dropping deadly encounters and not have some explanation for why it's become so dangerous in the area. Even in tier I, but especially afterwards. Arguments that you just move the encounter areas fail, because that's affecting worldbuilding -- you can no longer have encounters in areas you previously did without adjusting the story of that area to accomodate. The orcs from Tony's example illustrate this nicely -- at early levels you fight orc patrols, at later levels you're clearing the tribe out. But at those early levels you can never encounter the tribe (too hard) and at later levels you never encounter patrols (too easy). What changes in the world to accommodate this? Claims that you don't ever do that and just rotate to a new threat vector still don't explain the sudden lack of orc patrols the moment you outlevel them.

And, also, Forgotten Realms is pretty much as close to a failed setting as I get -- it's history and current state are replete with incongruous and impossible situations, like the example road to Waterdeep, which just about no one could actually travel without a miracle. Or the road along the Evermoors, which are so dangerous that lightly guarded caravans can pass it's almost uninhabited outskirts between two major trading cities but can spit trolls and giants and worse at any adventurers passing by. The Realms have pretty much given up being remotely close to sensical. If you're holding the Realms up as something that does encounter balances with the worldbuilding right, I'm not sure we have any common ground on the topic.

 

[Ovinomancer]

So you weren't speaking to mixing up the encounter difficulty and numbers as somehow avoiding or alleviating the impact for worldbuilding?? If not I misunderstood what you were getting at.

You've lost the thread again. The part you quoted with the response I quoted said nothing about changing encounter pacing to alleviate the impact for worldbuilding. If you can't follow along, don't fisk.

No it's not a strawman... it's exactly what I do when designing my encounters without running into the issue of unwanted impact on my world. It's the same process and same underlying philosophy. Use common sense and logic when picking the encounters.

Nope, it was a strawman, as you were holding out an example of putting a roc at the bottom of the ocean as a silly thing your method doesn't allow for. Putting rocs at the bottom of the ocean isn't something anyone is doing or advocating, so you trying to make it seem like it's a problem people are having you don't is a strawman. A silly one, too boot.

LOL!! See this is where we border on the absurd. Why are the PC's in an entirely safe area and we are trying to force an adventuring day on them? If we use easy encounters that's 18... is it safer now? this is where the commons sense thing kicks in. I don't declare a part of my world safe and then have adventuring days there because by definition it's not safe. You;re constructing absurd situations to narrow this down to a situation where your point is proven... but it just shows how silly it is there is no number of encounters that equal an adventuring day that you can have in the single area designated as safe that won't make that name sound like a lie.

Dude. Lost the thread again? My response was directly in response to you talking about having encounters in safe areas being okay and something you could do. Here's what you actually said I was responding to:

"I am not following this at all... why can't you have a deadly encounter in the safe area... you've got an entire adventuring day to space them out..." Ellipsis in original.

Again, if you can't follow the conversation and remember what you said just a few hours ago, don't fisk.

Huh?

What didn't you understand?

SO we are or we're not talking adventuring days, because otherwise I'm saying the same thing as you... or are we talking every day... again commons sense and logic on top of the fact that the guidelines are for Adventuring Days... not every day.

Such a tired semantic deflection. Did the fact I didn't put 'adventuring days' in that one instance really throw you? I doubt it, highly; you seem quicker than that.

How about you establish what the criteria is where you admit it can be done and we go from there.

You've rejected just about every set of criteria I've previously presented, why should I believe you're going to engage them now? But, sure: your campaign, one area, and how you presented a weeks worth of adventuring for a tier I party in an area, and then how you presented a tier III party with a weeks adventuring in the same area. A description of the area and it's general theme as well.

Actually I'm saying most of the time the PC's don't adventure over again in the same places... what's the point and how can you stay in line with the intended progression of the game if you do? Mechanically yes you could just adjust the CR of those threats... increease the numbers... etc.

Eh, if you have your party murderhobo around, I suppose it's not a problem -- they kill everything worth killing, take the loot, and move on. If you have a game where the PCs put down roots in an area, though, it doesn't work. However, your claim wasn't one that required a mobile party that moves with available adventure, it was a general claim. If you'd like to amend your claim that you can provide that pacing so long as the PCs keep moving into ever more dangerous lands and never return or never have encounters if they return to previously pacified areas, then we're good -- and I note that early in our discussion I called out that kind of world as one where the pacing can work, alongside points of lights game, but that those were worldbuilding choices that support the encounter building and so meet my criteria for pacing affecting worldbuilding.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Deeper into orc territory, where you couldn't reach them, because you couldn't handle that many patrols.

Yeah, sure, but that raises the question of if their so big they don't notice all of those missing patrols and go WAAAAAGH!, are they really that big of a threat?

Dead at your feet without a die being rolled because there's no point.

Well, there's a point where orc patrols shift from Deadly to Hard, and then from Hard to Medium, and then Medium to Easy, and the from Easy to dead at your feet because there's no point. If the dogma is 3 deadlies a day, that's a big period of missing orc patrols. (But, props for introducing non-encounter encounters for flavor, a nice missing element to the discussion.)

Heh.

I thought so, too.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Yeah, sure, but that raises the question of if their so big they don't notice all of those missing patrols and go WAAAAAGH!, are they really that big of a threat?

Big enough they notice 6-8, er, 3 missing patrols, I guess. :shrug:

Well, there's a point where orc patrols shift from Deadly to Hard, and then from Hard to Medium, and then Medium to Easy, and the from Easy to dead at your feet because there's no point. If the dogma is 3 deadlies a day, that's a big period of missing orc patrols.

The idea is that, under BA, you merely scale the size of the encounter rather than the CR of what you're encountering. So 'Orc Territory' means that encounters with orcs is on the table, whether that's level 1 deadly or something higher, because BA.

And, I don't think the dogma is 3 deadlies/day. It's 'whatever minimally wrecks the picture of the campaign world,' that could be 3 deadlies if the objection being fielded is "6-8 is generally too many," but it could be 6-8 or even 18 patrols, if the objection is 'there's just orcs around here,' I suppose.

I don't find 'always use 3 deadlies' adequate, anyway, as it has it's own issues relative to the 6-8 guideline. FWIW.

(But, props for introducing non-encounter encounters for flavor, a nice missing element to the discussion.)

Credit where it's due, I think hawkeyefan brought that up some pages back.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Can you just by picking select encounters that are acceptable to the world (ie, do not make the road to Waterdeep dangerous for others) while still being dangerous to the players? 3 times an adventuring day, even? Don't you at least have to add to the area fiction a reason for this incredibly dangerous encounter to be there, and is that not worldbuilding?

So, you can't do a dragon (because, well, reasons?) but you can do something else that's mechanically as dangerous, like a group of bandits made up of bandit captains lead by a gladiator or knight, suitably reskinned. But that's a pretty dangerous crew to travel and commerce, even if less fantastic and likely less dangerous to the surrounding countryside, so do you just have it occur on the road to Waterdeep without any explanation for why such a group is there, or do you come up with some narrative that explains this new crew of highwaymen and their impact on commerce in the area? Do you foreshadow it at all by having the party meet a recent victim, fleeced for all of their goods while going to market in Waterdeep?

I'm repeatedly being told that you can pick encounters that match the world and still meet the 3 deadly a day encounter pacing. And, I agree you can, sparingly. But the more you do it the more it strains things until they break. This seems entirely obvious to me -- you can't just keep dropping deadly encounters and not have some explanation for why it's become so dangerous in the area. Even in tier I, but especially afterwards. Arguments that you just move the encounter areas fail, because that's affecting worldbuilding -- you can no longer have encounters in areas you previously did without adjusting the story of that area to accomodate. The orcs from Tony's example illustrate this nicely -- at early levels you fight orc patrols, at later levels you're clearing the tribe out. But at those early levels you can never encounter the tribe (too hard) and at later levels you never encounter patrols (too easy). What changes in the world to accommodate this? Claims that you don't ever do that and just rotate to a new threat vector still don't explain the sudden lack of orc patrols the moment you outlevel them.

And, also, Forgotten Realms is pretty much as close to a failed setting as I get -- it's history and current state are replete with incongruous and impossible situations, like the example road to Waterdeep, which just about no one could actually travel without a miracle. Or the road along the Evermoors, which are so dangerous that lightly guarded caravans can pass it's almost uninhabited outskirts between two major trading cities but can spit trolls and giants and worse at any adventurers passing by. The Realms have pretty much given up being remotely close to sensical. If you're holding the Realms up as something that does encounter balances with the worldbuilding right, I'm not sure we have any common ground on the topic.

Well it depends. It's going to vary by group. Verisimilitude matters more to some groups than others. For some, it doesn't really matter at all....so there is no stretching, and certainly no breaking. And please....I used Waterdeep as an example not an endorsement. But even still, my Realms may be exactly as "sensical" as any world you build....it's all up to interpretation and application. I use Faerun in my games, but I don't rely on any mechanics to establish my world, and the lore I use is pretty selective.

I honestly don't worry overmuch about the number of encounters per day, or meeting some arbitrary XP budget or anything like that. Sure, I recognize that individual encounters need to be designed a certain way in order to be challenging when compared to a series of encounters. I personally don't use random encounters very much at all.....even when I do decide to have an encounter come up out of the blue, I usually just decide what to have happen rather than consulting any tables. My world doesn't really have Random Encounter tables to speak of, to be honest, except if you consider the published material that I incorporate into my game and the tables that come with them. But I have not yet rolled on any such table while playing 5E.

So, for me, if the PCs are in a place that's safe....or even just safe enough that they won't have the kind of encounter or number of encounters to present an actual challenge....then I don't bother with having encounters at all. I narrate the trip. So there is no adjustment to achieve an "adventuring day" which then impacts world-building.

Another way I avoid this is by not having detailed encounter lists for areas. I think that such lists are as likely to hinder as to help. So I don't have them....so then without that, how do I determine if a few hard encounters are impacting my world-building? Not having a specific pre-determined list means that whatever I add, I'm not contradicting anything. I tend to rely on in world information to establish such information, and then use that as a guide for what can/will happen in an area. I don't commit that strongly to any such information ahead of my players knowing it that will make adding a specific threat a problem. Not unless the area in question is well known to be safe or dangerous or whatever.

So when I may decide how many encounters to have in an area....or if I decide to increase the difficulty of encounters...it's due to world-building decisions that I've made. Allowing the opposite to happen....choosing encounters that change my world-building....it just seems illogical to me.

 

[Imaro]

You've lost the thread again. The part you quoted with the response I quoted said nothing about changing encounter pacing to alleviate the impact for worldbuilding. If you can't follow along, don't fisk.

Not loosing the thread just finding it harder and harder to parse what you mean and/or what you are referring to in these endless hoops and convoluted discussions to prove that some of us can't do what we've both explained and successfully done in the test cases you gave. I was wholly aware that it was getting harder and harder for me to follow your arguments... thus... "If not I misunderstood what you were getting at."

Nope, it was a strawman, as you were holding out an example of putting a roc at the bottom of the ocean as a silly thing your method doesn't allow for. Putting rocs at the bottom of the ocean isn't something anyone is doing or advocating, so you trying to make it seem like it's a problem people are having you don't is a strawman. A silly one, too boot.

No it's an example of not picking the encounter to fit into the world you've designed... exactly what we are discussing. I'm sorry you can't make the connection but I can't make it any simpler or exaggerate it any more so that you can.

Dude. Lost the thread again? My response was directly in response to you talking about having encounters in safe areas being okay and something you could do. Here's what you actually said I was responding to:

"I am not following this at all... why can't you have a deadly encounter in the safe area... you've got an entire adventuring day to space them out..." Ellipsis in original.

Again, if you can't follow the conversation and remember what you said just a few hours ago, don't fisk.

You're the one not following at this point. I stated you could have a single deadly encounter in a safe zone and it would still be relatively safe for the majority of people travelling through it (depending on the encounter of course and since you want it to be safe you would pick something that matched the fiction of the world)... You respond with "Three. Three deadly encounters in a safe area. The entire focus of this discussion is that if you have 1 encounter, you have to have 2 more, and all of them are deadly. "... which of course begs the question why would I (and why do I have to...) put 3 encounters in a safe zone? Why not have one there and 2 in another area?

In other words... Why am I creating an adventure day scenario in a safe zone? This is what I mean by your convoluted exercises to prove your point. It's like logic, choice and common sense have all been tossed out in the examples you give. Nothing in the encounter guidelines or the adventuring day guidelines states every day must be an adventuring day or that every encounter must be in the same area. If my PC's are sticking to a safe area I assume it's because they've made an informed choice and want to be safe... deciding to put 3 deadly encounters in that area is unnecessary (I'd spread them out if they are leaving the safe area) and a kind of jerk move if I've established it as a safe place.

What didn't you understand?

Are you asking me if that's what I'd do or are you answering a question you didn't ask me?

Such a tired semantic deflection. Did the fact I didn't put 'adventuring days' in that one instance really throw you? I doubt it, highly; you seem quicker than that.

Look you're the one whose clarifying something no one was disputing here... that's what I don't understand what are you posting a clarification for... we know, we get it and we've stuck to your parameters. Unless now you're specifying they must all be in the same area as well?? Also, not keen on the personal jabs and I don't want to get into that type of argument so let's try to keep it classy...

You've rejected just about every set of criteria I've previously presented, why should I believe you're going to engage them now? But, sure: your campaign, one area, and how you presented a weeks worth of adventuring for a tier I party in an area, and then how you presented a tier III party with a weeks adventuring in the same area. A description of the area and it's general theme as well.

You haven't given any previous criteria. You gave two set ups and I showed you with little to no time to prepare how easily it could be done. I've told you my encounter building doesn't affect my worldbuilding but instead it's thoe other way around. I've shown you the mechanical tools that can be used such as varying number encountered or increasing CR... and I've tried to show you that yes it does take some common sense and logical thinking to accomplish. But it seems to me you aren't trying to see how it could be done... You've already decided it's impossible. If I thought this was a good faith effort I might actually spend the time engaging in yet another exercise you designed to show I can't do what I've been doing but yeah, not seeing the point.

Oh and just to show how your criteria gets narrower and narrower... your exercise above forces a single area (how many campaigns across multiple tiers happen in a single area?? I thought we were discussing WORLD building)... again let's look at the default expectations of the games for the tiers... because you know if we're going against those that's probably a more relevant factor than encounters on worldbuilding...

Tier 1: characters are effectively apprentice adventurers. The threats you face are relatively minor , usually posing threats to local farmsteads or villages

Tier 3: You have reached a level of power that sets you high above the ordinary populace and makes them special even among adventurers... These mighty adventurers often confront threats to whole regions or continents.


WHY would a tier 3 adventurer still be exploring around the same mud villages and farmsteads he did when he was an apprentice? Why is he not out stopping continent and kingdom destroyers?

Eh, if you have your party murderhobo around, I suppose it's not a problem -- they kill everything worth killing, take the loot, and move on. If you have a game where the PCs put down roots in an area, though, it doesn't work.

Why not? I would assume the PC's would put roots down somewhere safe, their homes wouldn't be places where an adventuring day occurs but instead would be places that are for the most part... safe??

However, your claim wasn't one that required a mobile party that moves with available adventure, it was a general claim. If you'd like to amend your claim that you can provide that pacing so long as the PCs keep moving into ever more dangerous lands and never return or never have encounters if they return to previously pacified areas, then we're good -- and I note that early in our discussion I called out that kind of world as one where the pacing can work, alongside points of lights game, but that those were worldbuilding choices that support the encounter building and so meet my criteria for pacing affecting worldbuilding.

Well then the adventure comes to them doesn't it? You don't get as powerful as a tier 3 adventurer is without gaining enemies, a reputation and loot people want. If you're hiding on a farmstead well then they're going to come for you there if they have too...

As long as you're meeting the expectations for the tier they are in... whether through random encounters or planned (honestly as a campaign progresses I tend to lean more and more on planned since it tends to engage my players on a more personal level)... they don't have to be mobile they just need the appropriate threats they are supposed to face coming for them. Now admittedly I just don't understand why adventurers capable of defending continents are adventuring in shanty towns and farmsteads and it basically goes against the basic premise the game defines for tiers but hey... knock yourself out.