D&D 5E 5e Revision: Re-Balancing and Combats per Day?

[Aldarc]

5e is occasionally derided as an "easy mode" game or version of D&D, but part of that results from how the designers of D&D overestimated the number of combat encounters per day that groups will run as well as the average number of short rests.

Will WotC attempt to rebalance the game for 5e's revision and the various character options under a more "realistic" and average number of combat encounters? If so, which areas of the game and/or character options will see the biggest changes?

Not that I can dictate how this thread topic will evolve, but I would like to keep discussion on this one possible aspect (or set of overlapping issues) of the revision: Will WotC attempt to re-balance 5e D&D with the assumption of less combat encounters per day? If so, how?

 

[commandercrud]

No, they won't do that because WotC doesn't see it as a flaw.

 

[Horwath]

Currently with 1hr short rest, they shout axe the short rest mechanic.

Either make Short Rest really short, 1-5mins range or do not bother. You could hard limit it to 2 or 3 times per long rest.

If you can get away with doing nothing for 1 hour, you can get away doing nothing for 8 hrs in most of those cases.

 

[Lyxen]

5e is occasionally derided as an "easy mode" game or version of D&D, but part of that results from how the designers of D&D overestimated the number of combat encounters per day that groups will run as well as the average number of short rests.

They did nothing of the kind, since they have not given any advice about the number of encounters or the number of short rests, even less rules about that. The only thing they have given is a very rough estimate of how many encounters of a specific level of difficulty an average party could handle without needing a long rest. All the rest is up to the DM.

Will WotC attempt to re-balance 5e D&D with the assumption of less combat encounters per day? If so, how?

No, because they never did balance it in the third place, only individual DMs do that with the tools given, which can only be very imprecise anyway due to the openendedness of the game.

 

[DEFCON 1]

They might remove the language of "6-8 encounters per day" from a new version of the book (since so many people have taken that as gospel over the years and have gotten so bent out of shape when their own game didn't match it)... but the game itself won't be greatly changed.

What they really need to do is just say "The 'average' D&D game will see X happen. But the average table is smack dab in the middle of the hundreds of thousands of different tables out there. The odds of your table being that average are slim to none. So you as a DM are going to have to experiment and accept that your game will not actually see X happen, and you'll have to be prepared to adjust away from X to get the experience you want. And this goes for CR and the Encounter Building rules as well."

 

[Osgood]

Currently with 1hr short rest, they shout axe the short rest mechanic.

Either make Short Rest really short, 1-5mins range or do not bother. You could hard limit it to 2 or 3 times per long rest.

If you can get away with doing nothing for 1 hour, you can get away doing nothing for 8 hrs in most of those cases.

Way, way back I played in the very first public play test for 5E (Monte Cook DMed for our table). They had something similar to what you describe at the time... you were limited to a single 1 hour rest, and two 5 minute rests.

You may have me in part to blame for it never seeing the light of day... there was a LOT our group slammed about that version of the game (It was basically 3.5, but with saves based on the six abilities), but there was nothing we laid into more mercilessly than the "two breaks and a lunch" system.

I think I asked if the breaks and lunches were mandated by a governing body, and if so who would be fined if we missed one (the party or the BBEG)? Or were they negotiated by some sort of union, and if so, could we file grievances for poor adventuring conditions or low treasure outputs? Did they have to be on a fixed schedule (break time, sorry orcs, we'll finish this fight in 10 minutes)? And do we provide our own coffee, or will the dungeon designer have coffee stations?

Not long after Monte parted ways with the 5E design project... I'm not saying our feedback was the reason, but I'm not NOT saying that either.

Anyway, I'm not opposed to shorter short rests or limiting the number, but I think it helps if you have a reason. I think there will be pushback on seemingly arbitrary limits. That said, I strongly suspect we aren't going to see large scale mechanical changes like that with the anniversary edition.

 

[Aldarc]

Way, way back I played in the very first public play test for 5E (Monte Cook DMed for our table). They had something similar to what you describe at the time... you were limited to a single 1 hour rest, and two 5 minute rests.

You may have me in part to blame for it never seeing the light of day... there was a LOT our group slammed about that version of the game (It was basically 3.5, but with saves based on the six abilities), but there was nothing we laid into more mercilessly than the "two breaks and a lunch" system.

I think I asked if the breaks and lunches were mandated by a governing body, and if so who would be fined if we missed one (the party or the BBEG)? Or were they negotiated by some sort of union, and if so, could we file grievances for poor adventuring conditions or low treasure outputs? Did they have to be on a fixed schedule (break time, sorry orcs, we'll finish this fight in 10 minutes)? And do we provide our own coffee, or will the dungeon designer have coffee stations?

Not long after Monte parted ways with the 5E design project... I'm not saying our feedback was the reason, but I'm not NOT saying that either.

Anyway, I'm not opposed to shorter short rests or limiting the number, but I think it helps if you have a reason. I think there will be pushback on seemingly arbitrary limits. That said, I strongly suspect we aren't going to see large scale mechanical changes like that with the anniversary edition.

In the Cypher System, he had short rests get progressively longer after each time you took one until you eventually had to take a long rest.

 

[Azuresun]

They might remove the language of "6-8 encounters per day" from a new version of the book (since so many people have taken that as gospel over the years and have gotten so bent out of shape when their own game didn't match it)... but the game itself won't be greatly changed.

If people would actually read it for themselves, it would be pretty clear that's just an example given, since the very next sentence talks about the party having fewer tough encounters or more easy ones. I think the problem is that most people don't read it for themselves and take someone else's word for it, and that gets broken-telephoned into "6-8 encounters is the intended and one true way to play the game", and then people start complaining about a problem that doesn't exist, entirely because they never checked the rules for themselves.

 

[Amros]

If people would actually read it for themselves, it would be pretty clear that's just an example given, since the very next sentence talks about the party having fewer tough encounters or more easy ones. I think the problem is that most people don't read it for themselves and take someone else's word for it, and that gets broken-telephoned into "6-8 encounters is the intended and one true way to play the game", and then people start complaining about a problem that doesn't exist, entirely because they never checked the rules for themselves.

For completeness, this is the exact wording:

THE ADVENTURING DAY
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.

I don't know how that can be read as "this is how we balanced the game" either. So IMO no, there won't be any rebalancing on the 'Combats per Day' issue, because there is none. Besides, 'encounters' does not mean combat encounters only. For instance, infiltrating an enemy warehouse, stealing something, and getting out is an encounter; there was no combat involved, and you potentially spent resources, like a spell slot (or several) on Pass without Trace, Invisibility, etc. leaving you short of spell slots, or even no spell slots remaining, for the next encounter.

 

[Ovinomancer]

For completeness, this is the exact wording:

I don't know how that can be read as "this is how we balanced the game" either. So IMO no, there won't be any rebalancing on the 'Combats per Day' issue, because there is none. Besides, 'encounters' does not mean combat encounters only. For instance, infiltrating an enemy warehouse, stealing something, and getting out is an encounter; there was no combat involved, and you potentially spent resources, like a spell slot (or several) on Pass without Trace, Invisibility, etc. leaving you short of spell slots, or even no spell slots remaining, for the next encounter.

The game is balanced against the daily XP budget. This is absolutely clear if you look at how short rest versus long rest abilities balance -- it really only levels if you're throwing daily XP at the PCs.

And this is why @Aldarc's OP question is going to be no. The assumptions of the daily XP budget flow down into the assumed rest cycles which flow down into the class resource recharge assumptions. A huge chunk of the game rests on this foundation. Every thread talking about rest problems, every threat talking about nova problems, every thread talking about DPS comparisons is fundamentally about this. Change the daily XP assumption and you have to go through a huge chunk of the class design to realign. The only quick pass would be to make everything daily resources, ie change all recharge on short rest to x/long rest abilities. This doesn't really fix anything, it just puts everything on equal footing -- now everyone can nova.