D&D General 6-8 encounters (combat?)

[Flamestrike]

Isn’t that the Oberoni fallacy? It isn’t a problem if the DM can fix it?

The rule itself isnt problematic. It's only problematic if you let it be.

 

[Maxperson]

The exact wording is ".. most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day."
Not seven, however if one does the math on the "Adventuring Day XP" table (at least for the levels i have sampled it at) that breaks down at about 7 to 8 medium or 4 to 5 hard or about 3 deadly or any combination thereof. There is quite a bit of flexibility in the thing.

The issue I have with that is that not every encounter is going to be hard or deadly. There are going to be a fair mix of medium and easy as well. All encounters being hard or super hard fights is as narratively unsatisfying as cramming 6-8 encounters into 24 hours or having a long rest be once a week. How the designers chose to balance 5e is super frustrating to me.

 

[Maxperson]

I am saying both mechanical extremes make no sense in the story when either must happen every day.

Every adventuring day, not every day. There's a pretty marked difference between the two. You can go 38 days before hitting an adventuring day, and then a flurry of fights.

 

[Maxperson]

Also, keep in mind, it's 6-8 hard encounters.

You can easily do less if you throw in a bunch of deadly ones. Especially as "deadly" in encounter design doesn't actually mean deadly - it means the party will likely have to throw roughly 25%+ of their combat resources at it or risk someone going down.

Of course, go a little too hard and you risk tipping the encounter into likely TPK territory. But, I've found that's not as huge an issue as I initially feared. Especially if proper escape opportunities are provided.

6-8 medium and hard encounters, not just hard.

 

[Yaarel]

What do you do if both long rests end up being used and they still have 3/4 of the level to go?

Honestly? As DM?

Heh. I would punish the players by forcing them to go thru combat encounters while they are out of resources. They can either slog or abandon the adventure and go into Downtime.

But that hasnt really happened. The players use the long rests well enough.

The first time it happens, I would probably help them out, maybe a magical way to refresh, or else supply noncombat encounters, while they learn how to manage their resting resources. But generally players get a sense of how the long rest works before reaching higher levels.

Sometimes players need to resolve an encounter without combat. So, running out of resources isnt necessarily game-ending.

Every adventuring day, not every day. There's a pretty marked difference between the two. You can go 38 days before hitting an adventuring day, and then a flurry of fights.

I know, but that doesnt really help the need for narrative flexibility either.

 

[Vaalingrade]

'Punish the players'

Found the problem.

 

[tetrasodium]

Then come up with your own resting rules to fix it!

All i hear from you is 'I dont wanna use Doom clocks' and 'None of the published variants work for me'.

You're the DM. Create one that does work for you. It's up to you to maintain it.

No, I've not said that at all. You seem to be assuming that one can't engage in a discussion about a deliberate area of poor design choices in the 5e ruleset without being incapable of handling them. What I have said is that the solutions are unsavory in various ways & expect an unreasonable level of overhead & work from the G/m to correct with various problems building depending on solutions being used to correct the oberoni problemthat was deliberately built into 5e at many levelds of design

 

[Maxperson]

@Maxperson, @UngainlyTitan, @Fanaelialae, @Micah Sweet, @Flamestrike, @FrozenNorth, etal.

Can a compromise be helpful? I am probably ok with:

Some questions for clarity.

• A Downtime of at least a week of rest automatically counts as a long rest.

Does that mean that if they are traveling and hit a few encounters, that they can just decide to take a week and get a long rest before continuing on? And do encounters/activity during that week disrupt this long rest?

• During an adventure, all rests are short rests.

How many? In my experience if short rest classes get more than 2 short rests before the long rest happens, they start being stronger as a class than the long rest classes.

• Twice before the next level, a player can change one short rest into a long rest.

I think I'm okay with this if they players can get week long rests when they decide to rest.

 

[Maxperson]

No because six to eight encounters is an unworkable bonkers target to begin with & it takes serious(often contrived or forced) effort to hit that target with any regularity. The other half are divided into "shorter" and "much shorter"..
In order to have them "longer" and "much longer" you gusrentee that for some of those only the contrived reason will be remembered because after spending so many sessions stuck in that slog of a megadungeon crawl nobody will remember anything else that was going on

I think it's pretty obvious that you'd have to treat megadungeons differently than adventuring + some dungeons. But then, 6-8 encounters in a 24 hour period is not unusual in a megadungeon, or any dungeon really. The 6-8 encounters in 24 hours gets crazy outside of dungeon(and a few other corner case) environments.

 

[Yaarel]

Some questions for clarity.

Does that mean that if they are traveling and hit a few encounters, that they can just decide to take a week and get a long rest before continuing on? And do encounters/activity during that week disrupt this long rest?

How many? In my experience if short rest classes get more than 2 short rests before the long rest happens, they start being stronger as a class than the long rest classes.

I think I'm okay with this if they players can get week long rests when they decide to rest.

As long as it makes sense in the context of the story, then yes, when on a journey, players can take a week of Downtime (camping can be a way to vacation). This probably applies to seafaring campaigns too. I am still ironing out the relationship between lengthy journeys and Downtime. But if the story allows real rest, I dont have a problem with players taking advantage of it.