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

[Ranthalan]

A lot of players get very disengaged by their character going 'I Fire Bolt it.' 'I Fire Bolt it.' 'I Fire Bolt it.' repeatedly because they have to budget their abilities.

As I DM I make it my responsibility to vary the encounters so that the characters can make use of other abilities. Due to time constraints, the party generally has fewer but more difficult encounters.

If things go south and the players end up blowing a lot of their abilities in the first one or two encounters, they feel like you're picking on them as you drag their characters through the rest of the gauntlet.

My group will take an early rest and say, "well this day is shot" if that happens.

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 think you paying too much attention to that "6-8" value. I do whatever makes sense given the context of the story at that moment. It doesn't always make sense to have so many encounters. Do what makes sense.

 

[Oofta]

I've DMed a fair bit of 5E for a couple of groups and simply by using the alternative rest rules* I get in as many encounters as needed while still having a game pace that makes sense to me.

It's worked well. Sometimes I only have a few encounters between long rests, sometimes I have a dozen depending on what the story calls for. But I also do other things to make combat exciting and engaging like having goals other than kill all the bad guys.

There are a lot of ways to make combat dynamic, part of the enjoyment for me is trying to decide when to use my limited resources. YMMV.

*in most cases a short rest is overnight a long rest is several days. There are a few variants that other people use, like not allowing long rests in hazardous environments.

 

[5ekyu]

As someone who has run quite a few 3E, Pathfinder, and 4E D&D games and only a handful of 5E D&D games, I have to say that running large numbers of encounters in a 'workday' is problematic for two reasons:


1) A lot of players get very disengaged by their character going 'I Fire Bolt it.' 'I Fire Bolt it.' 'I Fire Bolt it.' repeatedly because they have to budget their abilities. There are a lot of players who legit don't mind describing how they're swinging their sword after taking the Attack action ten rounds in a row, but there are a lot of players who DO in fact mind, and I think it's both projectionist and unfair how the gaming community paints the former group as Proper Roleplayers Making The Best Use Of A Limited Toolkit and the latter group as Dirty Powergaming Munchkins Who Want To Show Off All The Time.


2) If things go south and the players end up blowing a lot of their abilities in the first one or two encounters, they feel like you're picking on them as you drag their characters through the rest of the gauntlet. This is also true if the players are casual or new to the group and aren't in tune with how D&D structures workdays. They aren't going to be sympathetic to your rejoinder of 'that's just bad luck/you not getting the rhythm of the game; better budget your abilities better next time', especially if it runs up against caveat one.

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.

The 6-8 encounters is showing the GM the benchmark the various rules, classes were balanced around.

It is not a mandate, just a standard for comparison.

 

[ExploderWizard]

The 6-8 encounters is showing the GM the benchmark the various rules, classes were balanced around.

It is not a mandate, just a standard for comparison.

Precisely. The benchmark numbers do not dictate what has to happen in your campaign. Mandatory encounter numbers also remove player choice. If the party is on an encounter treadmill then what is the point of making strategic decisions? Some sessions may be encounter heavy and some may be spent doing activities that don't lead to many if any, resource draining encounters such as research, or information gathering. Encounters in these situations may be purely role play based or require skill use but cramming resource draining events into these activities just for the sake of doing so could ruin the natural flow of activity in the campaign.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

6-8 encounters in a game day is a suggestion based on how long a party is expected to take to burn through there resources.

It's not and indicator of how many combat encounters to have in a session, since a session may represent a year's worth of game time passing, or an hour's.

This week's game we had one combat encounter, and spent the rest of the session larking about in the inn.

 

[CapnZapp]

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!

This.

Whenever the 6 to 8 number is bandied about, the implication is that sometimes you have few encounters, sometimes more.

But in reality, the game gives zero mandate to the DM and gives out plenty of "rest enabler" tools to players.

Unless you're fine with the whole "dragon eats princess in three days" time restriction (that virtually never happens in published modules) the grim reality is that a long string of easy encounters is a concept that is completely DOA.

The only way to challenge the player characters in practice is to create a single encounter that all by itself is a challenge.

That is, with NO assumption you're going to be able to make the party keep going while in the "red" of resources.

This, for well-built characters, means something many times the DMG definition of Deadly.

It also means the short-long class balance is an illusion.

In summary, what it means is, the encounter guidelines are a complete joke.

 

[CapnZapp]

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.

Well, the point is why would any canny group of players create a set of characters that doesn't trivially take long rests whenever they feel like it.

Which means your string of encounters is turned into two utterly trivial sets of four encounters each.

How they'd cope with eight is an academic issue. If you're right, it doesn't happen. If you're wrong, they might as well skip the long rest.

 

[CapnZapp]

"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.

I don't understand.

Why would you nerf spells if you remove a power? The logical thing would be to compensate them for your loss?

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

In the published AP I've run they make no real effort to stop the PC form blowing their wad on every single encounter before getting that long rest so honestly it wan't an issue. Made the game super easy though.

 

[Oofta]

This.

Whenever the 6 to 8 number is bandied about, the implication is that sometimes you have few encounters, sometimes more.

But in reality, the game gives zero mandate to the DM and gives out plenty of "rest enabler" tools to players.

Unless you're fine with the whole "dragon eats princess in three days" time restriction (that virtually never happens in published modules) the grim reality is that a long string of easy encounters is a concept that is completely DOA.

The only way to challenge the player characters in practice is to create a single encounter that all by itself is a challenge.

That is, with NO assumption you're going to be able to make the party keep going while in the "red" of resources.

This, for well-built characters, means something many times the DMG definition of Deadly.

It also means the short-long class balance is an illusion.

In summary, what it means is, the encounter guidelines are a complete joke.

[SARCASM]
Yep, 5E is totally f'ed and there are no simple easy to use solutions that have been suggested many times. If it's even an issue for you and your group. We can't possibly come up with reasons to not get long rests. Options that include no safe place to rest, long rests take several days using the optional rules in the DMG, or simply ignoring it and increasing difficulty a bit simply don't work.

Encounter guidelines are awful, stealth rules are FUBAR, the whole system is a complete mess. No wonder people are abandoning this version in droves.

[/SARCASM]

We've heard all of this before. All those reports of 5E being the most popular version ever? Fake news. I've never challenged my players in a single encounter by simply having my NPCs use effective tactics or set up scenarios where time constraints matter.

Personally I use the alternate rules which means that an adventuring "day" may span a week or more, but that's because I like different pacing to my game. It make more sense to me that going from level 1 to 20 should take years not weeks or months, but that's just me. Finding the balance that works for you and your group may take a bit of work but it's not that hard despite what some people say.