D&D General The "Ease of Long Rests" as a metric for describing campaigns / DM styles?

As that famous saying goes: "The DM gives his hardest battles to his sleepiest soldiers"

Charlaquin said:

Interesting in concept, though 15 feels like a high number of encounters to me. By XP, most levels should take 10-12 Medium or Hard encounters.

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Officially, the math for the number of encounters depends on the level. It is about 15 medium encounters from levels 5 to 8. Here is a chart by Old Gamer Guy.


Compare a similar calculation by Dale M.



Officially the medium encounters are about 15 per level.


If the DM is counting encounters until the next level, the DM can decide according to taste, whether to zoom thru a level, or savor a level.

I do three encounters to reach level 2, six to level 3, nine to level 4, and twelve to level 5. Then to level 6 until to level 13 fifteen encounters each. Afterward, to level 14 and onward, I drop back down to nine encounters per level. But a DM that wants to slow advancement can do fifteen encounters for every level. Or speed it up, nine or ten.

In all of this, there is one long rest per level.

Charlaquin said:

What a lovely bell curve the poll results are forming (at time of posting)!

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I notice a lot of polls on this site has the yes/no and then something squishy in the middle. I can be a 1-5 or 1-10 and the squishy 'it depends' middle gets the biggest number. Not sure if people here cannot make the tough choice or are too smart and can come up with outlier reasons for about anything.

aco175 said:

I notice a lot of polls on this site has the yes/no and then something squishy in the middle. I can be a 1-5 or 1-10 and the squishy 'it depends' middle gets the biggest number. Not sure if people here cannot make the tough choice or are too smart and can come up with outlier reasons for about anything.

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There's also a personal normalcy bias, I think. Very few people think their own table is weird, so we tend to rate ourselves in the middle.

Especially if we can imagine both "way harder" and "way easier" - and we generally have good imaginations.

Yaarel said:

Officially, the math for the number of encounters depends on the level. It is about 15 medium encounters from levels 5 to 8. Here is a chart by Old Gamer Guy.

View attachment 427880
Compare a similar calculation by Dale M.

View attachment 427881

Officially the medium encounters are about 15 per level.


If the DM is counting encounters until the next level, the DM can decide according to taste, whether to zoom thru a level, or savor a level.

I do three encounters to reach level 2, six to level 3, nine to level 4, and twelve to level 5. Then to level 6 until to level 13 fifteen encounters each. Afterward, to level 14 and onward, I drop back down to nine encounters per level. But a DM that wants to slow advancement can do fifteen encounters for every level. Or speed it up, nine or ten.

In all of this, there is one long rest per level.

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Yeah, we’re working from the same data. I just thought 15 sounded like a strange number to default to if you aren’t adjusting it level by level. I’d probably pick 12 if I was going to make it a single number for every level.

aco175 said:

I notice a lot of polls on this site has the yes/no and then something squishy in the middle. I can be a 1-5 or 1-10 and the squishy 'it depends' middle gets the biggest number. Not sure if people here cannot make the tough choice or are too smart and can come up with outlier reasons for about anything.

Click to expand...

We also lean pretty pedantic around here. A lot of us are more inclined to argue why a question is wrong than to answer it on its own terms. Almost any time there’s a poll, you can expect someone to object to the framing and/or the available options. Sometimes it’ll be me doing the objecting

It's always so fascinating to pull back the curtain a bit and see so many ways of playing the Game.

What should we call the different classifications of this aspect of the game?

1. ???
2. ???
3. ???
4. ???
5. @greymist's school of hard knocks.

I like what you did with healing there. You kind of smeared it out in both directions.

The thing I always say is that I don't "let" the PCs take a long rest. I describe the environment in which they might be considering to take a long rest or they might describe an environment they are looking for to take said rest (this assumes out in the wilderness/dungeon/ruins, though it could apply to any town with more than one place to stay). I call for survival skill checks to find the kind of campsite (for example) they are looking for. The place they choose to try to rest is what determines the likelihood of disruption. They have to determine that likelihood for themselves based on DM description, questions they ask, and skill checks made. And of course, there are sometimes things they can do to mitigate that chance (not light a fire, set up barricades, post the watches on higher ground with a wider/better view, etc. . ). I don't necessarily prompt them to tell me that stuff - but sometimes I do based on the experience of the players, how long it has been since we played, if some detail their character would know was overlooked - but I do expect them to pay attention to such details.

So I guess my point is, I have to wonder if, because all those things can matter, is getting long rests harder in my games, or is it about average difficulty but we just call out what all those possible common difficulties could be?

I don't even let the players rest. 'Now what? An owlbear attacks you, what do you do? Put down your phone! Look at me! [strikes player] You take seven damage! The owlbear goes to eat your sandwiches! [strikes player] Stop crying! No eating! Attack! Block! Attack! Block!'. Games should be an ordeal, anything else is unrealistic.