So I ran a 6-8 encounter day...

[iserith]

And this is %100 how the game was designed from the early editions. There was always the bail out where you rolled a random encounter, then the random encounter table entry you rolled was "no encounter." In PoTA the adventures have spots written right in where its safe for the PCs to rest, that's good design.

Yep. In Sunless Citadel, I also built in a time pressure around the events that are unfolding inside the dungeon. Combined with the wandering monsters/random encounters, it keeps the PCs on their toes.

I differentiate between "wandering monsters" and "random encounters," too. The former is almost certainly a combat challenge. The latter can be just about anything though there is plenty of opportunity for combat. I use the Hills 1-4 chart from Xanathar's for that. Sometimes you get a stone giant, other times you get a handful of goats.

The PCs can create a safe space by using supplies and succeeding at a group Wisdom (Survival) check to create a defensible camp. Success means there are no random encounters that rest. Failure means expended resources and two random encounter checks. The trade-off here is increased encumbrance and cost (supplies, hirelings, etc.) for a chance for a safe rest.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I really think it was a mistake to retain the short rest mechanic from 4E. The older editions functioned so much better without it.

It was changed quite a bit from 4e, which, like 1e, assumed the party would rest for a bit (bind wounds &c) after most every fight (3e also had a sort of short rest, thanks to the impact of Wands of low-level spells like CLW or Lesser Vigor, you could heal everyone up in a few minutes after every fight for a fairly trivial cost in consumables). 5e's 'short' rest is a full hour (to overnight if you use the 'gritty' variant) so you can easily have two or more encounters between short rests. 3.x/PF and earlier, most classes were either all-in on at-will or all-in on daily, with hybrids, like half-casters or multi-class fighter/magic-users & the like, splitting the difference, and coming with issues of their own.

In 4e, along with the class designs investing less overall effectiveness in daily resources, it meant the number of encounters/day mainly affected relative encounter difficulty: the party could be taxed to the breaking point over a very long day until even a level-1 encounter would look dicey, or it could engineer a single-encounter day and pull out all the stops taking on a more brutal encounter than usual with a much better chance of success. But, class balance didn't vary wildly with the day length the way it did in other eds, and does in 5e. So you could run a campaign that tended towards single encounter days, consistently, or one that varied around an average, or one that tended to long, grueling days - all with minimal issues.

And, for the first time, 5e has classes with a very significant portion of their effectiveness wrapped up in short-rest resources (the Warlock probably the prime example). Balancing 5e via pacing is thus as or more complex an exercise than it's ever been, with how you do it depending on party makeup, among other things.

And it was interesting.

I'll post the encounters below, but the short of it was that a thief (technically speaking, a warlock) stole an altar with a *god* in it (a very minor one, but still) and fled into a dangerous jungle. The party had to give chase before the tail grew cold or the warlock did something dangerous with the god.

The party (All level 7):
Monk (open hand)
Monk (drunken master)
Warlock (tome/topaz dragon, missed session 2)
Paladin (order of the ancient)
Cleric (knowledge, missed session 3).

So three short-rest types, and the two long-rest types (both healers) have more solid baselines than the stereotypical D&D magic-user... if they get the odd short rest, should be able to handle 6-8 encounters, no problem. If it gets rough and there are multiple short rests to burn HD, and the divine magic goes mostly to healing, it could be a frustrating day for the Cleric...

This took about 3 sessions (of 3 hours each) to do. The party had a single rest during the adventure (plus one at the end). And... it seems to really had an impact on the "long rest" classes, esp the paladin, who was out of spells, out of lay of hands and had 15 hp rest after the big fight. He complained that this really advantaged the short rest classes, but I pointed out that the reverse advantaged *him* so...

Actually, sounds rough for the short-rest types, too, only one short rest where 2 or 3 might be expected.

So yes, 6-8 encounters/day DOES help with class balance. But even after doing this, I can't help but note that this narrative structure does not work for all adventures...

Of course.

This fight should have been a *joke* for the party (the chieftain was a reskinned veteran with 15 AC and 70 hp, there was a 40 hp shaman (a druid-ish character who managed entangle, fairy fire and feign death) and 6 tribes-chickenmen (reskinned thugs who also had javelins). But it was actually fairly difficult due to low resources.

See? Working as intended! Not 'too easy,' afterall.


BTW: I like how you didn't limit yourself to actual fights when counting up 'encounters.'


Well done.

 

[Blue]

I find that the 6-8 adventure day is realistic only in certain circumstances - like in this instance there was a strong "time pressure". Now - let's be honest here, the party was going to arrive in the nick of time as long as they made reasonable efforts to hurry... BUUUT if they hadn't pushed, "oh I don't have the right spell list for this let's go tomorrow" or whatever... well they would have arrived too late.

In some circumstances though, these time pressures are not realistic. There are valid adventures where there isn't a time pressure. In some dungeon (some ancient tomb you are looting)... you can leave and come back tomorrow.

In other cases, there may be a time pressure, but the number of encounters per day is not going to be that high. The party must hurry from the barony of Bla to the capital of SuchandSuch to stop an ursuper from being crowned. It's 2 day's travel. Would it be fun to have an encounter during the trip? Sure. Would there be 6-8 encounters per day on a well traveled, safe road? Probably not...

This is why designing a game and balancing classes around 6-8 encounters during a set time / often-player controlled limit is a problem.

It's tying a mechanical balance point to a narrative-controlled action. It limits the stories we can tell without distorting the class balance.

If I want to have a three week trek across a gnoll-infested jungle that'll take a single session and have 1-4 combats over those 3 weeks depending on how good the party is at avoiding them, I need to resign myself to the long-rest-recovery classes dominating every fight. And that they won't be challenging unless the encounters are all amazingly tough for their level. Can I do that? Sure I'm the DM. Should I be forced by the mechanics every time because they can't support the story? That's where I have a problem.

I like how two systems handle it. Adventures in Middle Earth is the Tolkien 5e adaption. During "journey phase" (much like exploration/discovery pillar in 5e but more structured) you can only count on a long rest at a Sanctuary, like Elrond's Halfway House. Great nod to the books. BUT, you can also get one for an overwhelming moment of peace or beauty, like the perfect sunrise. Which is now back in the DM hands and can be done at the proper point to allow the class balance points to work.

The other system is 13th Age. It's a d20 that predates 5e by a bit but is similar in streamlining. You get a "full-heal-up" every 4 encounters. Could be over that three-week trek, could be when you stop for lunch in a dungeon. DM can give it sooner if the encounters are particularly difficult. And the party can always insist on one, but pays a campaign setback to do so. Maybe the cult has enough time to complete the first ritual and turns some of the captured peasants into blood-craving berserkers. *shrug* It's the more gamist of the two but really once you get used to the break it fades from consideration and isn't as big a deal.

 

[rogermexico]

I'm 2/3s of the way through running the first full "adventuring day" for my party. I've been doing my best to do it by the book, and we're all new at this. So I figure it will be interesting for you old-timers to see how some newbies are experiencing 6-8 encounters.

For background:

• We play at work—every other Friday over lunch for an hour and a half. So pretty casual and we keep an eye on the clock.
• We’re a mix of newbies and casual players. I hadn’t played since 1993 prior to DMing this group (I can do a whole other post on the things I’m learning as a ‘new with an asterix’ DM) and everyone else either had a similar gap or is pretty new to the game.
• The party is a Halfling Monk, Half-Elf Ranger and Human Wizard. (There was a half-orc rogue but he left the company and thus the party)
• Everyone just turned second level two sessions ago.
• We have played (counts on hands) 8 sessions total. The first few were basically one encounter per session with some travel and social mixed in to set the table. They headed into the dungeon (and thus their first “adventure day”) on session 5.

So yeah: I did my best to plan a proper dungeon delve. I planned for them to have roughly 5-9 encounters, depending on how efficiently they navigated the dungeon, with 12 encounters total across all the possible routes. Mostly we’re talking cultists, guards and Bullywugs, with a gray ooze and some evil Myconids thrown in. At the bottom of everything there’s a Sea Hag.

I built everything as per the encounter budgeting guidelines in the DMG. Kobold Fight Club was tremendously helpful as I’m not great at math.

They were meant to go at their own pace to start, and then I added a chase element to add pressure–halfway through they encounter some of the cultists with a prisoner. Either they free the prisoner and learn about the impeding ritual, or need to chase after to rescue, the idea being that once they were a way into the dungeon, they’d have a pressure to prevent too much resting.

Given that this is my first time building this kind of thing, and the party doesn’t have any healing resources, I loaded them up with minor healing potions (two each) prior to them entering the dungeon.

Here are the points relevant to this discussion:

• They’ve taken damage and have already used up 5 of those 6 potions. Everyone is at full health though currently with two big encounters to go, including that Sea Hag.
• The wizard has used 2 of his spell slots already.
• Once the “chase” bit kicked off, they were pretty into hurrying. With that said, after a tough encounter with some bullywugs and a giant frog that left the wizard pretty hurt, they did debate pausing for at least a long rest. “We’re probably too late to save that prisoner anyway,” was the discussion. They ended up pausing for a half an hour for the Monk to recover a Ki point. I decided that wasn’t such a long pause that it wouldn’t mean bad news for the prisoner.

So, I guess it’s mostly gone to plan. One of the things I liked, as a newbie DM, is that planning around “the adventuring day” meant I had to be thoughtful about what would make for exciting, plausible situations that they’d want to keep powering through without resting despite resource completion.

Also, I know I’ve seen it mentioned plenty on the boards, but holy cow low level characters are fragile. Especially without in-party healing or any particularly brawny classes on board.

Hopefully that's interesting for folks.

 

[smbakeresq]

BTW: I like how you didn't limit yourself to actual fights when counting up 'encounters.'


Well done.

Encounters that are not fights are very important and should be used liberally, especially in a lair of some sort. They also tax the party and force them to think to overcome obstacles. If you can get a copy of Crypt of Lyzandred the Mad module, its mostly puzzles and mind games. To spice up fights make them also include various traps and hazards that the bad guys use to their advantage. I find pressure plates that trigger on certain weights (but less then the weight of the bad guys) to always be useful as players will chase the enemy right over them and traps that activate on delay (after all the pcs passed by.) Funny traps work too, like have to wade through a pool of glue that dries and causes -2 to all attacks rolls and Dex saving throws until cleaned off with wine or vinegar, oil sprayed all over PCs (as Grease spell until you remove it) urine sprayed all over PCs (attracts and makes berserk the animals in the area) etc.

 

[Tony Vargas]

We’re a mix of newbies and casual players. I hadn’t played since 1993 prior to DMing this group (I can do a whole other post on the things I’m learning as a ‘new with an asterix’ DM) and everyone else either had a similar gap or is pretty new to the game...
...One of the things I liked, as a newbie* DM, is that planning around “the adventuring day” meant I had to be thoughtful about what would make for exciting, plausible situations that they’d want to keep powering through without resting despite resource completion.

Sounds like you're getting back into the swing of DMing fairly quickly.

Also, I know I’ve seen it mentioned plenty on the boards, but holy cow low level characters are fragile. Especially without in-party healing or any particularly brawny classes on board.

Yeah, for future reference, starting at 3rd level isn't a terrible idea, and providing pre-generated characters for players to choose from can be a great idea. Pregens let you provide comfortably effective individual PCs, and a reasonably coherent party, while easing new/returning players into actual play rather than pushing them through rolling up characters first.

 

[rogermexico]

Sounds like you're getting back into the swing of DMing fairly quickly.

It's pretty amazing picking up the hobby these days. There are so many resources available and it is so easy to learn if you're interested. Just lurking on these boards you get exposed to so much fantastic advice. And then I've got about half a dozen blogs I follow on a weekly basis where you're always learning something.

The 5E DMG is a pretty great teaching tool as well. Outside of a few spots where it can be tough to follow, I feel like a newcomer is pretty well served if that book is all they've got to go on.

Yeah, for future reference, starting at 3rd level isn't a terrible idea, and providing pre-generated characters for players to choose from can be a great idea. Pregens let you provide comfortably effective individual PCs, and a reasonably coherent party, while easing new/returning players into actual play rather than pushing them through rolling up characters first.

I for sure will take that advice about starting at 3rd level for new groups. I wanted the experience of the first two levels–now that I've got that, I see the value of jumping in where everyone is a little bit sturdier, and the more interesting options have come online for the classes. And as a DM, I can't wait to have the more interesting monsters at my disposal.

 

[Harzel]

... a handful of goats.

Really small goats?

Sorry, sometimes my brain just works strangely.

 

[5ekyu]

This is why designing a game and balancing classes around 6-8 encounters during a set time / often-player controlled limit is a problem.

It's tying a mechanical balance point to a narrative-controlled action. It limits the stories we can tell without distorting the class balance.

If I want to have a three week trek across a gnoll-infested jungle that'll take a single session and have 1-4 combats over those 3 weeks depending on how good the party is at avoiding them, I need to resign myself to the long-rest-recovery classes dominating every fight. And that they won't be challenging unless the encounters are all amazingly tough for their level. Can I do that? Sure I'm the DM. Should I be forced by the mechanics every time because they can't support the story? That's where I have a problem.

I like how two systems handle it. Adventures in Middle Earth is the Tolkien 5e adaption. During "journey phase" (much like exploration/discovery pillar in 5e but more structured) you can only count on a long rest at a Sanctuary, like Elrond's Halfway House. Great nod to the books. BUT, you can also get one for an overwhelming moment of peace or beauty, like the perfect sunrise. Which is now back in the DM hands and can be done at the proper point to allow the class balance points to work.

The other system is 13th Age. It's a d20 that predates 5e by a bit but is similar in streamlining. You get a "full-heal-up" every 4 encounters. Could be over that three-week trek, could be when you stop for lunch in a dungeon. DM can give it sooner if the encounters are particularly difficult. And the party can always insist on one, but pays a campaign setback to do so. Maybe the cult has enough time to complete the first ritual and turns some of the captured peasants into blood-craving berserkers. *shrug* It's the more gamist of the two but really once you get used to the break it fades from consideration and isn't as big a deal.

To me the mindset that a baseline restricts story options is not one I will subscribe to.

I see 6-8 plus 2 shorts and 1 long as just a benchmark, not THE LAW.

I know that I can have sequences where it will skew one way and certain chars will shine. I know other times it can skew other ways and the others will.

I know that as long as I as GM Express a lot of different takes on the baseline that let's me show and spotlight the differences.

So, it's a toolkit for me to use, not a straightjacket.

If they all have sameness then its fewer tools for me to use to differentiate them.

 

[Ancalagon]

BTW: I like how you didn't limit yourself to actual fights when counting up 'encounters.'


Well done.

Thank you - some ended up not using much resources at all, but some did.