D&D 5E Adjusting to 1 encounter per Day: Putting the XP Budget into a single fight

[prabe]

I think you can drop an entire day's XP budget into a single encounter, but that doesn't mean you should, at least on a regular basis. As has been pointed out, it can screw with the balance between classes, especially if you have a class that can just nova (Paladin, I'm looking at you ...) and it can be really easy for a turn of dice luck to render party members dead in a hurry.

That said, you can make memorable fights by dropping Deadly+ combats on the party, and IMO they work well as climaxes to long combat-oriented story-threads. I also have to admit that I've only ever calculated XP value retroactively--looking back on a combat. At this point I just kinda trust my judgment of what the parties I'm DMing can cope with.

 

[Krachek]

I think that such encounter would require DM assistance, which is like the opposite of the goal looking for.
Cant let the monster have the surprise, or terrain advantage.
So it should require DM benediction to scout, prepare and choose the timing of the encounter.

 

[LoganRan]

Actually the bonded accuracy of 5E gives mobs their best chance that D&D has ever given them. In earlier editions high level characters could wade through thousands of low level foes and never break a sweat.

This is true (about 5E) and it has always bothered me in every edition.

Edit: thinking about this more deeply, I am not sure I agree with the notion that four 7th level characters could wade through "thousands of low level foes". I did not play 3rd or 4th edition, so I can't speak to those games, but in Basic DnD or 1E, it seems incredibly unlikely that four PCs could hold off 200 regular folks.

If a natural 20 is always a hit, then the 200 guards would have an expected 10 hits in the first round even if they needed to roll a 20 to hit (which they likely would not need against a magic user or thief whose AC wouldn't be that great). They could do enough damage in that first round to kill a magic user or thief pretty easily...possibly both in the same round.

 

[LoganRan]

I am no military expert, but I am pretty sure in real life 200 people charging with baionets from afar are no match for a party of machine gun wielding soldiers. I won't lookup engagements in the late 19th century in Africa but it should be close to that result. Any sufficently reliable magic is undistinguishable from technology.

With a good commander that knows the PCs capabilities and can select the battlefield, the PCs are toast, though.

I did not bother to set the circumstances of the scenario but I was thinking in terms of 200 guards against 4 adventurers wherein the parties are already engaged in close combat. My fault for not making that clear.

Edit: Even if the guards were at range, if a DM were to play them with even a modicum of intelligence said guards would not conveniently line up or bunch up allowing the party wizard to toast them. Presumably, they would approach from all different angles and the sheer volume of guards would overwhelm the PCs.

 

[Umbran]

I am no military expert, but I am pretty sure in real life 200 people charging with baionets from afar are no match for a party of machine gun wielding soldiers

So, does the listing above say, "200 complete dimwits"? No.

Take those guards to be at least vaguely intelligent. They have missile weapons - pretty much anyone can wield a crossbow. They can tell the difference between a wizard and a barbarian. They know how to use cover. They know how to arrange a basic ambush.

 

[Blue]

There are several balance points of multiple encounters, and they adjust at different rates.

The most obvious is deadliness. We can increase the toughness and/or number of foes, add hazards and traps, and otherwise increase this pretty well. This is what seems to be addressed in the OP. That's do-able.

The other is class balance between the at-will characters like the rogue and the long-rest recovery classes like full casters or hybrids like the paladin and barbarian, and the short rest recovery classes (often hybrids as well) like the Monk, the Warlock, and some others like the Battlemaster Fighter.

Casting high level slots will do more in a single action then one at-will Action. This shouldn't be a surprise. If all we have is enough rounds of combat to exhaust a caster of high level slots (and use low level slots on things like Bless and Shield and Absorb Elements that all scale well), the output per action for the casters is a lot more than for the at-will classes.

And we can look at the flip side - if you took all spell slots away, a caster just using cantrips should average less effect per Action than an at-will character doing their thing.

So really, what we need to do to balance the effect per action is get casters to use a good number of cantrips, to bring down their average effect per Action.

Considering that most spells are an Action to cast, that means that even if we reduce the number of encounters, we really can't reduce the total length of the encounters much.

It gets even harder when you look at effects with duration. An action to cast a spell/activate an ability that is only effective for 3 more rounds before the combat ends with a normal combat but might last more rounds in a longer combat will be more effective for the same Action. Look at Spiritual Weapon. What's more powerful - a barbarian who can rage every combat or one who only has enough rages for 1/3 of the encounters? Even concentration spells can last longer (and are no weaker lasting the same), and they often have a big effect like Spirit Guardians, Call Lightning, or Animate Object. So to balance the greater effect, that's more rounds of cantrips to balance out.

This isn't even addressing the classes with significant short rest mechanics. Reducing down to three with guarenteed plot ways to get a short rest between them is about as tight as you can get without going and nerfing those classes. Doing only a single or two encounters on a regular basis will be a bad thing.

To sum up, in order to reduce the number of encounters but still have the effects of more encounters we need to balance both the deadliness (for the threat), the number of rounds (to keep the inter-class balance), and the number of short rests. Just making them deadly will unfairly boost long-rest recovery classes over others, and cutting out short rests per day will nerf those classes that need them.

 

[Krachek]

Honestly DnD don’t have the mechanics to play an encounter with 200 token monsters.
it will be gross approximation and house rules.
So we could stop hitching on this case.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Actually the bonded accuracy of 5E gives mobs their best chance that D&D has ever given them. In earlier editions high level characters could wade through thousands of low level foes and never break a sweat.

Something I will never forgive it for.

 

[Stalker0]

So, does the listing above say, "200 complete dimwits"? No.

Take those guards to be at least vaguely intelligent. They have missile weapons - pretty much anyone can wield a crossbow. They can tell the difference between a wizard and a barbarian. They know how to use cover. They know how to arrange a basic ambush.

Actually these guards (looking at the NPC stats) do not have a missile weapon per say, they can make a spear throw though.

Also just to make to make sure, as a few comments concerned me, so I wanted to clarify. I am saying that EACH bullet above would constitute the entire days worth of combat...not those points combined. Juuuuust making sure people understood we aren't using 200 NPC AND 4 mind flayers AND a demilich...etc, its one or the other.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Actually these guards (looking at the NPC stats) do not have a missile weapon per say, they can make a spear throw though.

Also just to make to make sure, as a few comments concerned me, so I wanted to clarify. I am saying that EACH bullet above would constitute the entire days worth of combat...not those points combined. Juuuuust making sure people understood we aren't using 200 NPC AND 4 mind flayers AND a demilich...etc, its one or the other.

Fair enough. I did assume an AND relationship, rather than OR.

That said, I'd nonetheless recommend using waves of enemies. I think a big part of it is that if you use an entire day at once it'll be very swingy.

In the case of 4 mind flayers, that could easily be a TPK if the PCs all have to save against 4 mind blasts in the first round. Even a PC with a fairly strong save is tempting bad luck, and a PC with a weak save is pretty much guaranteed to fail. Whereas if you stagger them a bit, the PCs have a bit better odds of not all being stun locked. It'll still likely be a tough fight with multiple party members stunned every round, but a bit more forgiving in terms of RNG.

Conversely, if the PCs have some awesome ability that can disable all 4 mind flayers in round 1, the fight becomes a cake walk. But if only two mind flayers are around in round 1, and more show up the next round, then they could still have a real fight on their hands.

Other encounters just don't work well in this setup. 8 black oozes is either fairly easy, if your party is well set up to deal with them, or a nightmarish slog if they aren't. A single powerful enemy could get locked down before they ever get to act (assuming they don't have legendary resistance), or TPK the party with an above average damage AoE (like a breath weapon).

I think that if you're only going to run one fight a day, you really need to put a bit of extra effort into the encounter design to make it interesting (since they won't be getting a typical variety of encounters over the course of the day). Obviously, the examples you gave were simply for what you can do with the daily budget, as opposed to what you should do. Just thought it bore mention.