D&D 5E The Gloves Are Off?

[jmartkdr2]

I REALLY wonder what caused the last minute shift to 6-8 encounters per day? It was initially 3-4, which is hefty but not ridiculous.

It’s still 3-4 if you use hard or deadly encounters. It’s only 6-8 medium.

Except that what they call medium most people IME would call “trivial”, hard = almost worth the effort and deadly = actually interesting (although I play with gaming vets: rpg or video, same skills)

But even with that: narratively, the right amount is often one encounter per day and if your players know this it’s easy for them to make every encounter trivial unless they purposely hold back. Which is, in my opinion, a design flaw.

 

[Xamnam]

Again, the 6-8 medium-hard encounters only matters if you want your party to be nigh-empty of resources before the end of the adventuring day. It is not a rule, but it's also not an expectation. It's the standardized upper bound, with the written assumption of average conditions for an average party.

 

[tetrasodium]

And yet, this MAJOR assumption is buried in 1 section of the DMG and has very little space devoted to it. It's very frustrating that WoTC doesn't place such a major design assumption front and center. I wonder if that will change in 1D&D, I suspect not.

the assumption ids on Wotc's part during design. "That is what we assumed and mapped to". It doesn't end there though, you drastically understate the importance of the section it happens to be found in

Spoiler: Nice detailed breakdown

So if you're like me, you like to read. And there's a lot of things to read related to Dungeons & Dragons, and undoubtedly the most important stuff is what's in the core books—the Player's Handbook, the Dungeon Master's Guide, and the Monster Manual. Then, to a lesser extent, Xanathar's Guide to Everything, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, as well as Volo's Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes.

And in those books are quite a few guidelines on how to run the game. There has been no end of debate about whether this is what you should have, what you might have, what you can have, and so on.

One of the most controversial bits is in the DMG, on Page 84. Most of you already know what I'm about to quote.

Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day. If the adventure has more easy encounters, the adventurers can get through more. If it has more deadly encounters, they can handle fewer.

And just right after it:

In general, over the course of a full adventuring day, the party will likely need to take two short rests, about one-third and two-thirds of the way through the day.

So right there we have a rough outline of an "adventuring day." 6-8 medium or hard encounters, with two short rests, per long rest. And there are a lot of arguments about what this actually means.

"It says the party can handle it, not that they have to."

"Not every day is an adventuring day."

"It's not combat encounters."

And all of these are probably true to some extent, but if you read that section in context of how they're also talking about XP (which RAW is only granted by combat), and increasing encounter difficulty with things like "The whole party is surprised, and the enemy isn’t." or "The characters are taking damage every round from some environmental effect or magical source, and the enemy isn’t." these are clearly intended to be combat encounters. I mean maybe in your games you have "surprise" for Social Encounters, but I've certainly never seen it.

I don't think we should be trying to do mental gymnastics to justify what "6-8 encounters with 2 short rests" means. I think it's much easier to just admit WotC designed a game how most people don't want to play it. This also explains why there's so much class disparity. Classes like Monks and Warlocks are supposed to get 2 short rests every day. Similarly, the Monk capstone of "you gain back 4 ki points when you roll initiative if you have 0" sounds a lot better if you're doing 8 fights per long rest. This is also why classes with full spellcasting progression go off the rails at higher levels. Because they never get properly drained throughout the day, and instead are allowed to blow 8 encounters worth of spell slots in only 1 or 2.

Jeremy Crawford says "there is no minimum" but Mike Mearls says that they intended for 6-8 encounters per day.

I think the truth of the matter is, this game was designed for people to fight a lot of things. Like, a lot. But most people don't want to spend four three-hour sessions in a single dungeon trying to squeeze in 8 encounters. They want contained, episodic "Avatar: The Last Airbender" style sessions where a series of smaller stories are connected by an overarching plot. Nobody wants to watch A:TLA where they spend 4 episodes just fighting guys nonstop. Similarly, nobody wants to watch A:TLA where a single day takes 4 episodes (outside of some specific plots, perhaps). Because it's not narratively satisfying. If you follow the XP and encounter guidelines, you'll be level 20 in a matter of in-game weeks, which is very unsatisfying unless you do massive time skips constantly, but again that's not always going to fit in every story. It certainly doesn't fit in any of the adventure modules. And this is where ludonarrative dissonance comes into play with D&D: the story being told narratively vs. the story being told in the gameplay. D&D is a role-playing game, after all, and at a certain point the "role-playing" stops making any sense when your character has a 500 body count by level 3.

If we look in other sections of the books, we also see a lot more "guidelines" like this that don't really fit how most people play.

On Page 38 of the DMG we have "Starting Gold By Level" that includes a lot of money and a few starting magic items.

On Page 135 of XGtE again we have tables of magic items that you should probably have a certain level. And on the next page, 136, we are told to "overstock" the adventure because the numbers given are the numbers the party should have, not just those that are available.

Maybe it's just me, but I've never seen DMs be so generous with gold or magic items. I know the game is (apparently) "balanced around not having magic items" but if that's the case then why are they so emphasized and DMs are told to hand them out pretty frequently? We are literally told to "over-stuff your world with magic items because the party doesn't find them all." Just like you don't have to run 6-8 encounters, you don't have to have magic items, but it certainly seems to be the intended design. It's curious that people will argue about "6-8 encounters" forever, but if you never hand out magic items, (which the book explicitly says you don't need) everyone will call you a bad DM.

I think the truth of the matter is is that most of us do not play the way WotC thought we would, which is why there are a lot of design choices that don't make sense.

Bard and Monk capstones makes a lot more sense when you're rolling initiative 8 times per day. The Warlock capstone especially makes a lot more sense when it's basically a third short rest for your 8-fight day.

I think Gritty Realism is probably how most people should be playing, since they don't run that many fights, and they want a more narrative-driven experience. 50 magic items doesn't seem so bad when it takes them a whole week to shrug off maximum hit point reductions and poisons/diseases. Plus, it would let all those badass magic items that are basically just extra spells lots for fullcasters make a lot more sense too. 1-3 fights, short rest. 1-3 fights, short rest. 1-3 fights, long rest. Seems like it would balance things a lot more.
-Source

It's also designed & mapped to a party of about two players with no magic items & a love for feats like actor. The more you start deviating from all of those GiGo points that were assumed playstyle the more things start breaking down & wotc has made very little effort to provide GMs with tools to wrench the system's designed in assumptions back towards how people actually play outside of tightly controlled focus groups & such. You can see one example of the system tearing itself apart here

 

[Voadam]

Exactly - for me, nothing is more jarring than something that has to happen in the story because "the rules say so" rather than because it makes sense. Most of the time, though, the rules and the story work just fine together. On the rare occasion where there is a conflict, I always but the coherence of the story first, rules be damned. I think Lanefan and I are arguing the same point on this - we just disagree about whether one particular rule makes sense or not, which is pretty small potatoes.

You can't say this in agreement with @hawkeyefan's disagreement with my post since this is exactly what I mean by, " If the fiction has to twist itself to fit the rules, there's a break in the coherence." You are agreeing with me there.

Twisting the fiction to fit the rules is making something happen in the story(fiction), because the rules say so. You are twisting the fiction to fit the rules. And it's so jarring because it's causing the fiction to be incoherent.

I agree. And another bunch of the time it can go either way depending on the group and their views.

I think we're all(except maybe Hawkeyefan) on the same page here. If the rule doesn't make sense for a situation in the fiction, it gets changed at the very least for those situations.

For me it is generally the fiction that changes. Not the rules.

Take opportunity attacks which trigger when something "moves out of reach" but resolves before it leaves reach. This is literally rolling back time to resolve before triggering as written.

Mechanically this works fine. They leave you stop them and resolve as if it was just before they left the square. This is easy to run at the table.

Narratively I change the fiction to be the attack triggered right before they left reach.

I don't see a gain to trying to figure out the consequences and possible exploits of changing the rules to triggering when they intend to leave or trying to figure out a wording for going but just before gone mechanic. Leaving the square is an easy to implement trigger at the table in the natural flow of combat. You could potentially come up with something like mechanically require them to declare their intent to leave a threatened area while still in it so they provoke while still within, but this makes an extra step to be thought of as you declare your actions, so an added little bump of mechanics speak in what ideally you want flowing quickly and easily at the table.

Most mechanics you can get to work narratively even if it takes a little thinking through. The casting time for counterspelling a counterspell took some thinking through but I am satisfied with the logic of the narrative I came up with that works with the mechanics.

 

[Mort]

the assumption ids on Wotc's part during design. "That is what we assumed and mapped to". It doesn't end there though, you drastically understate the importance of the section it happens to be found in

Spoiler: Nice detailed breakdown

So if you're like me, you like to read. And there's a lot of things to read related to Dungeons & Dragons, and undoubtedly the most important stuff is what's in the core books—the Player's Handbook, the Dungeon Master's Guide, and the Monster Manual. Then, to a lesser extent, Xanathar's Guide to Everything, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, as well as Volo's Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes.

And in those books are quite a few guidelines on how to run the game. There has been no end of debate about whether this is what you should have, what you might have, what you can have, and so on.

One of the most controversial bits is in the DMG, on Page 84. Most of you already know what I'm about to quote.


And just right after it:


So right there we have a rough outline of an "adventuring day." 6-8 medium or hard encounters, with two short rests, per long rest. And there are a lot of arguments about what this actually means.

"It says the party can handle it, not that they have to."

"Not every day is an adventuring day."

"It's not combat encounters."

And all of these are probably true to some extent, but if you read that section in context of how they're also talking about XP (which RAW is only granted by combat), and increasing encounter difficulty with things like "The whole party is surprised, and the enemy isn’t." or "The characters are taking damage every round from some environmental effect or magical source, and the enemy isn’t." these are clearly intended to be combat encounters. I mean maybe in your games you have "surprise" for Social Encounters, but I've certainly never seen it.

I don't think we should be trying to do mental gymnastics to justify what "6-8 encounters with 2 short rests" means. I think it's much easier to just admit WotC designed a game how most people don't want to play it. This also explains why there's so much class disparity. Classes like Monks and Warlocks are supposed to get 2 short rests every day. Similarly, the Monk capstone of "you gain back 4 ki points when you roll initiative if you have 0" sounds a lot better if you're doing 8 fights per long rest. This is also why classes with full spellcasting progression go off the rails at higher levels. Because they never get properly drained throughout the day, and instead are allowed to blow 8 encounters worth of spell slots in only 1 or 2.

Jeremy Crawford says "there is no minimum" but Mike Mearls says that they intended for 6-8 encounters per day.

I think the truth of the matter is, this game was designed for people to fight a lot of things. Like, a lot. But most people don't want to spend four three-hour sessions in a single dungeon trying to squeeze in 8 encounters. They want contained, episodic "Avatar: The Last Airbender" style sessions where a series of smaller stories are connected by an overarching plot. Nobody wants to watch A:TLA where they spend 4 episodes just fighting guys nonstop. Similarly, nobody wants to watch A:TLA where a single day takes 4 episodes (outside of some specific plots, perhaps). Because it's not narratively satisfying. If you follow the XP and encounter guidelines, you'll be level 20 in a matter of in-game weeks, which is very unsatisfying unless you do massive time skips constantly, but again that's not always going to fit in every story. It certainly doesn't fit in any of the adventure modules. And this is where ludonarrative dissonance comes into play with D&D: the story being told narratively vs. the story being told in the gameplay. D&D is a role-playing game, after all, and at a certain point the "role-playing" stops making any sense when your character has a 500 body count by level 3.

If we look in other sections of the books, we also see a lot more "guidelines" like this that don't really fit how most people play.

On Page 38 of the DMG we have "Starting Gold By Level" that includes a lot of money and a few starting magic items.

On Page 135 of XGtE again we have tables of magic items that you should probably have a certain level. And on the next page, 136, we are told to "overstock" the adventure because the numbers given are the numbers the party should have, not just those that are available.

Maybe it's just me, but I've never seen DMs be so generous with gold or magic items. I know the game is (apparently) "balanced around not having magic items" but if that's the case then why are they so emphasized and DMs are told to hand them out pretty frequently? We are literally told to "over-stuff your world with magic items because the party doesn't find them all." Just like you don't have to run 6-8 encounters, you don't have to have magic items, but it certainly seems to be the intended design. It's curious that people will argue about "6-8 encounters" forever, but if you never hand out magic items, (which the book explicitly says you don't need) everyone will call you a bad DM.

I think the truth of the matter is is that most of us do not play the way WotC thought we would, which is why there are a lot of design choices that don't make sense.

Bard and Monk capstones makes a lot more sense when you're rolling initiative 8 times per day. The Warlock capstone especially makes a lot more sense when it's basically a third short rest for your 8-fight day.

I think Gritty Realism is probably how most people should be playing, since they don't run that many fights, and they want a more narrative-driven experience. 50 magic items doesn't seem so bad when it takes them a whole week to shrug off maximum hit point reductions and poisons/diseases. Plus, it would let all those badass magic items that are basically just extra spells lots for fullcasters make a lot more sense too. 1-3 fights, short rest. 1-3 fights, short rest. 1-3 fights, long rest. Seems like it would balance things a lot more.
-Source

It's also designed & mapped to a party of about two players with no magic items & a love for feats like actor. The more you start deviating from all of those GiGo points that were assumed playstyle the more things start breaking down & wotc has made very little effort to provide GMs with tools to wrench the system's designed in assumptions back towards how people actually play outside of tightly controlled focus groups & such. You can see one example of the system tearing itself apart here

I didn't downplay the importance or say unimportant. I said short and a bit throw away.

The section is 4 lines.

4 lines on one of the central design assumptions of the CR system is not a lot and it needed to be explained better along with a better explanation on how to play with and downright change the assumption.

 

[Lanefan]

Can you provide another 5e example for us of this "twisting the fiction to fit the rules" that has been jarring to you - one that doesn't have to do with spells with a casting time of Reaction?

Turn order rules that forbid two or more things happening at the same time in the fiction (expressed in mechanical-rules terms as simultaneous initiatives not being allowed) where in real combat simultaneous actions would be a common occurrence.

 

[Maxperson]

I don't tend to think of it as "twisting" in most cases. I think I would view it as such if something is established and then changes to accommodate rules. The counterspell example lacks that.... there's nothing established that needs to be twisted.

It seems to me that reading it that way is a product of an overly strict interpretation of turn order... which itself is a game necessity more than anything. That the things that the characters observe and do can't or don't overlap at all.

Counterspell, much like turn order, is inherently unsatisfying to me. It breaks the fiction, but there really is no better way to do it. Combat is not simultaneous in a turn order system. It can't be. It's an area where I just hold my nose and ignore it so that the game will function in a decent manner.

Next campaign counterspell won't be an issue for me since it will be banned.

 

[Maxperson]

And yet, this MAJOR assumption is buried in 1 section of the DMG and has very little space devoted to it. It's very frustrating that WoTC doesn't place such a major design assumption front and center. I wonder if that will change in 1D&D, I suspect not.

I completely agree. It needed much more space devoted to it. And I also suspect that won't change with 5.5. The entire game is fundamentally balanced around it. You'd have to do a complete re-write to get rid of it and the changes we have seen aren't that drastic.

 

[Maxperson]

It's also designed & mapped to a party of about two players with no magic items & a love for feats like actor. The more you start deviating from all of those GiGo points that were assumed playstyle the more things start breaking down & wotc has made very little effort to provide GMs with tools to wrench the system's designed in assumptions back towards how people actually play outside of tightly controlled focus groups & such. You can see one example of the system tearing itself apart here

The DMG says that it is designed and mapped to a party of 3-5.

DMG page 83: "The preceding guidelines assume that you have a party consisting of three to five adventurers."

 

[Voadam]

the assumption ids on Wotc's part during design. "That is what we assumed and mapped to". It doesn't end there though, you drastically understate the importance of the section it happens to be found in

Spoiler: Nice detailed breakdown

So if you're like me, you like to read. And there's a lot of things to read related to Dungeons & Dragons, and undoubtedly the most important stuff is what's in the core books—the Player's Handbook, the Dungeon Master's Guide, and the Monster Manual. Then, to a lesser extent, Xanathar's Guide to Everything, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, as well as Volo's Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes.

And in those books are quite a few guidelines on how to run the game. There has been no end of debate about whether this is what you should have, what you might have, what you can have, and so on.

One of the most controversial bits is in the DMG, on Page 84. Most of you already know what I'm about to quote.


And just right after it:


So right there we have a rough outline of an "adventuring day." 6-8 medium or hard encounters, with two short rests, per long rest. And there are a lot of arguments about what this actually means.

"It says the party can handle it, not that they have to."

"Not every day is an adventuring day."

"It's not combat encounters."

And all of these are probably true to some extent, but if you read that section in context of how they're also talking about XP (which RAW is only granted by combat), and increasing encounter difficulty with things like "The whole party is surprised, and the enemy isn’t." or "The characters are taking damage every round from some environmental effect or magical source, and the enemy isn’t." these are clearly intended to be combat encounters. I mean maybe in your games you have "surprise" for Social Encounters, but I've certainly never seen it.

I don't think we should be trying to do mental gymnastics to justify what "6-8 encounters with 2 short rests" means. I think it's much easier to just admit WotC designed a game how most people don't want to play it. This also explains why there's so much class disparity. Classes like Monks and Warlocks are supposed to get 2 short rests every day. Similarly, the Monk capstone of "you gain back 4 ki points when you roll initiative if you have 0" sounds a lot better if you're doing 8 fights per long rest. This is also why classes with full spellcasting progression go off the rails at higher levels. Because they never get properly drained throughout the day, and instead are allowed to blow 8 encounters worth of spell slots in only 1 or 2.

Jeremy Crawford says "there is no minimum" but Mike Mearls says that they intended for 6-8 encounters per day.

I think the truth of the matter is, this game was designed for people to fight a lot of things. Like, a lot. But most people don't want to spend four three-hour sessions in a single dungeon trying to squeeze in 8 encounters. They want contained, episodic "Avatar: The Last Airbender" style sessions where a series of smaller stories are connected by an overarching plot. Nobody wants to watch A:TLA where they spend 4 episodes just fighting guys nonstop. Similarly, nobody wants to watch A:TLA where a single day takes 4 episodes (outside of some specific plots, perhaps). Because it's not narratively satisfying. If you follow the XP and encounter guidelines, you'll be level 20 in a matter of in-game weeks, which is very unsatisfying unless you do massive time skips constantly, but again that's not always going to fit in every story. It certainly doesn't fit in any of the adventure modules. And this is where ludonarrative dissonance comes into play with D&D: the story being told narratively vs. the story being told in the gameplay. D&D is a role-playing game, after all, and at a certain point the "role-playing" stops making any sense when your character has a 500 body count by level 3.

If we look in other sections of the books, we also see a lot more "guidelines" like this that don't really fit how most people play.

On Page 38 of the DMG we have "Starting Gold By Level" that includes a lot of money and a few starting magic items.

On Page 135 of XGtE again we have tables of magic items that you should probably have a certain level. And on the next page, 136, we are told to "overstock" the adventure because the numbers given are the numbers the party should have, not just those that are available.

Maybe it's just me, but I've never seen DMs be so generous with gold or magic items. I know the game is (apparently) "balanced around not having magic items" but if that's the case then why are they so emphasized and DMs are told to hand them out pretty frequently? We are literally told to "over-stuff your world with magic items because the party doesn't find them all." Just like you don't have to run 6-8 encounters, you don't have to have magic items, but it certainly seems to be the intended design. It's curious that people will argue about "6-8 encounters" forever, but if you never hand out magic items, (which the book explicitly says you don't need) everyone will call you a bad DM.

I think the truth of the matter is is that most of us do not play the way WotC thought we would, which is why there are a lot of design choices that don't make sense.

Bard and Monk capstones makes a lot more sense when you're rolling initiative 8 times per day. The Warlock capstone especially makes a lot more sense when it's basically a third short rest for your 8-fight day.

I think Gritty Realism is probably how most people should be playing, since they don't run that many fights, and they want a more narrative-driven experience. 50 magic items doesn't seem so bad when it takes them a whole week to shrug off maximum hit point reductions and poisons/diseases. Plus, it would let all those badass magic items that are basically just extra spells lots for fullcasters make a lot more sense too. 1-3 fights, short rest. 1-3 fights, short rest. 1-3 fights, long rest. Seems like it would balance things a lot more.
-Source

It's also designed & mapped to a party of about two players with no magic items & a love for feats like actor. The more you start deviating from all of those GiGo points that were assumed playstyle the more things start breaking down & wotc has made very little effort to provide GMs with tools to wrench the system's designed in assumptions back towards how people actually play outside of tightly controlled focus groups & such. You can see one example of the system tearing itself apart here

I don't know.

I think the most you can expect to handle fighting in an adventuring day is not the same as expect the average adventure day to be fighting the most you can handle in a game day.

In the analysis above they take a quote about a "full adventure day" which with no other context seems to refer to the most you can fight in an adventure day and seems to conflate that into designed average "adventure days."

One of the most controversial bits is in the DMG, on Page 84. Most of you already know what I'm about to quote.

"Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day. If the adventure has more easy encounters, the adventurers can get through more. If it has more deadly encounters, they can handle fewer."

And just right after it:

"In general, over the course of a full adventuring day, the party will likely need to take two short rests, about one-third and two-thirds of the way through the day."

So right there we have a rough outline of an "adventuring day." 6-8 medium or hard encounters, with two short rests, per long rest. And there are a lot of arguments about what this actually means.

I think there is a good argument there that this full adventuring day is designed for combat encounters, but automatically conflating max expected to handle with baseline for adventuring and adventure design seems off.

I can even see an argument that they designed classes to balance at this max handling combat point so that short rests and long rest based classes are balanced when there are two short rests dividing the day evenly. I think this seems to be the case and this can give an edge to long rest based nova classes when there are fewer short rests per encounter or long rest on average than those two short rests in a full adventuring day.

I don't see an argument that xp here needs any specific average adventuring day length to make sense or that adventures should be assumed to do cumulative serial combats up to the edge of failure but no farther every adventuring day.

The classes being balanced at the full adventuring day is an issue because that can mean balance issues when not doing a full adventuring day, but that is only an indirect incentive to design adventure days to baseline be full adventuring days.

There could be other quotes from the DMG that state more directly an assumed full adventure day, but I don't see it from here.