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

[James Gasik]

there is a long list of spells that pretty much just say "skip part of the game"

Yeah, to the point that every time someone complains they "break the game", I have to point out that not only are they part of the game, but they have been for a long time. Goodberry, Tiny Hut, Magnificient Mansion, Teleport, Fly- all these spells and more, are legacies.

But you know what edition got rid of them, for the most part?

And was derided for not "feeling like D&D"?

And so they were brought back for that very reason?

Amusing, isn't it?

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

It'd be amusing if it wasn't so painful to witness.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Is your entire campaign that one adventuring day?

If not, then you just need to hit it as a median. Over your entire campaign.

Are not campaigns made up of adventuring days?

"I made a mistake…focused on big picture. Big picture made of little pictures. Too many variables."

 

[Flamestrike]

Only the bold are balanced among the classes.

For the seventh time (please read this this time). every day doesnt have to be balanced.

Overall balance is maintained as long as you hit the 6ish encounter / 2 short rest baseline as a median.

Example (A group of PCs going from 1st to 5th level):

AD 1: Medium dungeon level, random that morning on the way plus 7 encounters (easy to hard), 4 short rests.
(downtime)
AD 2: 1 Deadly encounter on way to dungeon.
AD 3: Medium dungeon level. 6 encounters (medium to hard, one easy, one very hard), 2 short rests
(back to town, downtime)
AD 4: Urban adventure. 3 very hard encounters, 2 short rests.
(downtime)
AD 5: Dungeon level 1 of a 2 level dungeon. 5 encounters (medium to hard), 2 short rests
AD 6: Dungeon level 2 of the 2 level dungeon. 9 encounters (easy to very hard) 4 short rests.
AD 7: 1 Deadly encounter.

Only adventuring day 3 conforms to the 6-8/2-3 paradigm. The rest dont. But the median is met. The party is averaging 2 short rests per day, with an average of 5 or so encounters per adventuring day (with the shorter adventuring days, featuring more deadly encounters to compensate).

On the longer days the Fighter shines (and the Monk and the Warlock). On days 2 and 7, the Casters (and Paladin) shine.

Overall balance is maintained. You dont have to do it every single day mate, AND NO-ONE IS SAYING YOU DO.

 

[Flamestrike]

Are not campaigns made up of adventuring days?

Yeah, and some of those days will feature less encounters, and favor the long rest based classes (casters and paladins).

On those days, they get a chance to shine.

And some of those days will feature a lot of encounters, and a lot of short rests favoring the Fighters, Monks and Warlocks.

On those days, they get a chance to shine.

Overall balance is maintained.

Understand this point? I've had to make it eight times now.

 

[Minigiant]

For the seventh time (please read this this time). every day doesnt have to be balanced.

Overall balance is maintained as long as you hit the 6ish encounter / 2 short rest baseline as a median.

Example (A group of PCs going from 1st to 5th level):

AD 1: Medium dungeon level, random that morning on the way plus 7 encounters (easy to hard), 4 short rests.
(downtime)
AD 2: 1 Deadly encounter on way to dungeon.
AD 3: Medium dungeon level. 6 encounters (medium to hard, one easy, one very hard), 2 short rests
(back to town, downtime)
AD 4: Urban adventure. 3 very hard encounters, 2 short rests.
(downtime)
AD 5: Dungeon level 1 of a 2 level dungeon. 5 encounters (medium to hard), 2 short rests
AD 6: Dungeon level 2 of the 2 level dungeon. 9 encounters (easy to very hard) 4 short rests.
AD 7: 1 Deadly encounter.

Only adventuring day 3 conforms to the 6-8/2-3 paradigm. The rest dont. But the median is met. The party is averaging 2 short rests per day, with an average of 5 or so encounters per adventuring day (with the shorter adventuring days, featuring more deadly encounters to compensate).

On the longer days the Fighter shines (and the Monk and the Warlock). On days 2 and 7, the Casters (and Paladin) shine.

Overall balance is maintained. You dont have to do it every single day mate, AND NO-ONE IS SAYING YOU DO.

For the eight time I'm not saying every adventuring day has to be balanced. I'm saying most of them do.

You need 9 or more encounters to shift an adventuring day towards an at-will class and 4 or more short rests.These are practically impossible outside of megadungeons or survival horror.

In your adventuring week, the rogue is tilted to once, thefighter once, and the monk twice. Whereas the casters can outshine them 3 times.

It's still tilted. You didn't hit the median nor average. It's hard to hit the median or average of 6-8 because the number is too high. That's my point.

WOTC caved to fast who want casters with a lot of spontaneous, powerful, undisruptable spells. With 4 levers on High, you have little wiggle room outside of banning, class favoritism in adjudications and treasure, or mostly don't megadungeons with doom clocks.

No one does 10 encounter days to balance out 1 encounter days. Because 10 encounter day are a stone's throw away from TPKland.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yeah, and some of those days will feature less encounters, and favor the long rest based classes (casters and paladins).

On those days, they get a chance to shine.

And some of those days will feature a lot of encounters, and a lot of short rests favoring the Fighters, Monks and Warlocks.

On those days, they get a chance to shine.

Overall balance is maintained.

Understand this point? I've had to make it eight times now.

I'm telling you that the players are actively incentivized not to let that happen. To always keep as few combats between long rests as possible and to avoid taking more than one or two short rests a day.

The big picture is made of small pictures, and the small pictures are significantly harder to control than you are presenting and significantly easier for players to push out of balance.

Or, to put it another way: I'm telling you that for ACTUAL balance of the kind you speak, if you have some days with 2-3 encounters that the casters blow away, you should have on average pretty much the same number of days with 10-13 encounters.* Have you ever had that happen? Have you ever seen things swing the other direction, where there are way too many encounters for casters to even remotely hope to overwhelm things and the reliability of non-casters becomes an utterly essential thing to keep going?

Because unless you do, you're saying that it's balanced to let the casters completely dominate some of the time and then to have everyone be more or less equal at other times. That's not balanced. It just means the casters aren't ruling the roost all the time. 6-8 encounters puts Fighters and Monks and Barbarians roughly on an even keel. You'd need to go even further to actually balance things.

*2-3 encounters is between 3 and 6 fewer than 6-8. Thus, we'd have a theoretical range of 9-14, but that's huge, so I shaved off one from both ends.

Edit: Let me put it another way. You're saying that, on average, things should match up. The "average" day would have 7 encounters. But you're only allowing for stuff up to 8, perhaps 9, while allowing as few as 1. That's going to require a LOT of high-end days to balance out.

For example, let's say that in a 100-day stretch, the party has five one-encounter days, ten two-encounter days, and ten three-encounter days. That would mean 75% of the time, there are more than three encounters per day, surely that is balanced! But we can work out what the average N must be for the remaining 75 days quite easily.

(5+10×2+10×3+75×N)/100 = 7
55+75N = 700
75N = 645
N = 8.6

In order for the average to work out correctly, you need to have more days with 9 encounters than 8 encounters for the entire rest of this 100-adventuring-day span. Even if we drop it to a mere average of 6, the absolute bare minimum, you would need every single day to have 7 or more encounters to make it work out.

And that assumes you as DM have total control over how many encounters players will face. Talk about a "white room" assumption!

 

[Flamestrike]

I'm telling you that the players are actively incentivized not to let that happen.

Of course they are. DnD is a resource management game. Players will naturally seek to nova and rest and abuse the 5MWD.

Enter Doom clocks. Let them know early they're on the clock, and let them self police.

 

[Flamestrike]

For the eight time I'm not saying every adventuring day has to be balanced. I'm saying most of them do.

No, they dont.

If you want to throw 6 x 12 encounter 6 short rest days at the party, 6 x single encounter days at the party, and 6 x 7 encounter 2-3 short rest days at the party, only 1/3 of your days are balanced. 2/3 are not.

Overall balance is maintained though.

 

[Minigiant]

No, they dont.

If you want to throw 6 x 12 encounter 6 short rest days at the party, 6 x single encounter days at the party, and 6 x 7 encounter 2-3 short rest days at the party, only 1/3 of your days are balanced. 2/3 are not.

Overall balance is maintained though.

My point is no one does 12 encounter days because a lot of them are boring "Single goblin in a room" encounters and "8 commoners in a room" encounters.

You have to inflate the adventuring day with trash encounters. And the encounter have to be trash yet draining so the casters don't cast any spells and everyone weapon and cantrip spams. And it is close to a TPK if anything goes wrong.

So no one gets to the median nor average.