6-8 Encounters a long rest is, actually, a pretty problematic idea.

[dave2008]

I am not sure what your suggesting. As [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] pointed out in the 2nd post, the 6-8 encounters per day is not a requirement for the system. It is simply one example of what PCs are expected to handle. Also implied in that description is that they can handle more Easy encounters or fewer Deadly encounters. It is not a requirement, just an example of what can be expected. You can have however many encounters per work day that works for you and your group. We typical only have 1-2 combat encounters, occasionally 3-4, and rarely 5-6 per long rest. I think we once had 8+/-

 

[dave2008]

I'd be happier with a resource system that didn't, when it was firing on all cylinders, force people to be stingy with their most exciting abilities and default to using seriously weak beer abilities. That D&D thinks eschewing this necessarily will lead to a five-minute workday (its justification for implementing such a problematic system) reveals more about its lack of imagination than any hard dichotomy.

Maybe my group is a little old school, this is not a problem we are having. How does the "system" force you to be stingy?

 

[ccs]

Well then, I guess it's a good thing that there's absolutely nothing (except lack of actual experience) preventing a DM from running however many encounters per day their group enjoys.

My DMG indicates that 6-8 medium/hard encounters is what the designers think an average party can handle. Nowhere does it mandate that I MUST run that many.
And so, just as in every other edition (or even other game systems), I'll run as many encounters per day as is story appropriate at the moment. Anywhere from 0-way more than 6-8.

As for the problem you note of gamers getting bored etc after x encounters? That's not a rules problem. That's a DM problem. Mainly that the DM isn't paying attention to/doesn't know/doesn't care what the group likes. You can't fix that with rules, or words, just practical experience.

 

[TheSword]

Encounters don’t all have to be combat. Also they don’t all need to have six. Some days will have one, particularly if in a town or on a journey. A wilderness section may have 3 or 4. While a dungeon section may have 6-8.

These days I get a bit tired of interminable dungeon crawling so I tend to max out at 4 or 5, but they will be made up of a few smaller encounters combined - so tougher overall.

The problem about blowing all your spells should only really be a problem levels 1-4. Also don’t forget that cantrips are good, wands recharge and any action is possible.

 

[Nevvur]

I've never used the encounter building guidelines in the DMG until just recently. One of the things that surprised me was that I overran my daily XP budget front loading the adventuring day with one hard and one deadly encounter. Basically, the math provides you with 6 MEDIUM encounters... +1 easy encounter, if you really want to hit your max budget (Kobold Fight Club is handy for quickly calculating your budgets)

If you're going to include any hard or deadly encounters, you need to throw some easy ones in there, too, and that's where I think a lot of DMs err when trying to meet the 6-encounter quota. I feel like many DMs expect each encounter should be threatening or challenging, but the DMG encounter builder doesn't seem to think so. It appears the 'typical adventuring day' includes stomping on some mooks. I've had some easy combats resolve in less than a minute with a choice spell, and even when the PCs opt to forego resource expenditure, it's usually less than a 10 minute affair. It's... not always 'exciting,' but it's hardly a slog, and my players still take satisfaction in turning weak monsters into paste.

A point of order, an encounter doesn't have to be monsters. It can be a trap or a social challenge or whatever. Those might be good for filling out easy and medium encounters if you want actual combats to stay on the hard-deadly difficulty.

 

[Li Shenron]

I also think that 6-8 encounters does violence to the narrative of action-adventure fiction (since it's a D&D-specific trope that doesn't have genre or metafictional justification) that can only be justified as a gameplay/story tradeoff but that's a separate discussion altogether. Just speaking from a gameplay perspective, it disengages certain kinds of players and I'm getting rather tired of boards like these treating such players as powergamers or n00bs.

I agree with this, but also any fixed number of encounters goes against the freedom of narrative. The "daily budget" of abilities really shouldn't get in the way of the story featuring both sparse encounters on some days, and some "battle days" as well, particularly when nearing the end of an adventure. I think it's quite common in fiction to have a story that starts with an occasional fight or two, then building up to a climax with a lot of fighting in a short time (whether a single big fight, or a lots of consecutive ones).

I also think there is a general flaw in the whole discussion tho... I don't know how you run your games, but I definitely do not normally force-feed encounters to my PCs. Yes, sometimes they are followed and attacked purposefully, and sometimes there are random encounters that seem unavoidable. But in general, it is the PCs who decide whether to get into trouble one more time for the day (by continuing exploration of a dangerous area, inflitrating an enemy base, or engage someone in combat) or to call it quit and seek some rest. I don't always let them choose freely, but in general I think the players have more control over the number of encounters than I have as a DM!

 

[Coroc]

As i pointed out in similar threads i can hardly imagine that a Group can survive (even with short rests) 8 medium combat Encounters even if the Group is well balanced and are experienced players. And this goes especially if the DM Plays the Mobs like they are intelligent beings not just assets on a battlemap.

 

[Blue]

"I fire bolt it" is an absolute feature.

Having enough spells that every round of every combat you can cast one of them, which is more powerful the weapon attacks, means that casters are back to absolutely ruling. If you have enough limited resources that you can use them without limit, they aren't limited.

If we didn't have "I firebolt it", then the average spell for a caster would need to be the power of an average at-will attack. It would mean severely nerfing all spells in order to preserve the balance between classes.

I really don't want to return to Linear Warrior, Quadratic Wizard again - having times when casters chose to conserve resources and instead "I firebolt it" is critical to keeping a balance between classes.

 

[GameOgre]

Strangely I to have DMed those role playing games as well and each one of them has the same issues as 5E.

If you run a huge mega encounter in Pathfinder and the Wizard blows her spells to get the party through it (regardless of if she needed to or not) guess what? She is out of spells and effectively reduced till she can regain her spells. If she does this one the first difficult encounter of the day in Rise of the Runelords or whatever adventure path im running she has a looong wait.

so the issue is either: Your encounters are not ranked right for your party, the wizard is too spell crazed and blew it all too soon or maybe the player is playing the wrong class. Loads of players hate the resource management of spellcasting.

Now on to the theory crafting you seem to be wanting. (Note im not even going to touch the loads of players want to do something besides swing a sword and firebolt every round)

So you want wizards who can go nova on several encounters to still have their spells left afterwards? You want them to have lower level spells and just loads more of them or ........your fine with higher level spells just more of them? I am not grasping what system you want instead.

What I would like for you to do is point out things in Pathfinder or 3E (D&D or copy of it) that worked better.

Or was this mostly about 4E? I their encounter. Daily and at will powers were indeed more balanced especially over the long haul but then again it has many issues all it's own.

 

[iserith]

One way to encourage players to engage in more encounters per day is to incentivize it with an XP house rule. This would be particularly good in my view in a campaign where the theme is war or the PCs are mercenaries or something like that.

Love the Bloodshed
For the fifth and each subsequent combat challenge you overcome in an adventuring day, gain +5% XP, cumulatively.

By the eighth battle, they're earning +20% XP. They're trading an increase in difficulty due to resource depletion for faster character advancement.

For milestone advancement, this would just be a set amount of bonus XP for overcoming a given number of challenges. If you use story-based or session-based advancement rather than standard XP, you might instead offer a useful blessing from the deity of the War domain in your setting.