The War of Attrition: How WotC Thought We'd Play vs. How We Actually Play
Analysis
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.
