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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bacon Bits" data-source="post: 8769257" data-attributes="member: 6777737">The rule of thumb for 6-8 encounters comes from <a href="https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dmg/creating-adventures#TheAdventuringDay" target="_blank">the combat encounter section of the DMG.</a>  It's in the subsection in Chapter 3 of the DMG called "The Adventuring Day," and is under the section called "Creating a Combat Encounter":"Medium or hard" means the definition for encounter difficulty in the same section defined only a page or two previously.Further, the rule is arrived at by simple math: You take the daily XP budget for combat encounters in an adventuring day for the party, and then divide that by the encounter XP budget for a medium or hard encounter. You either arrive at 8 encounters if you picked medium difficulty or 6 encounters if you picked hard difficulty. The XP values for those encounters are then derived from the CR of the NPCs or monsters the players are expected to overcome.While I agree that "non-combat encounters that consume resources similar to combat encounters" is, in practice, a perfectly acceptable substitution, the game rules are pretty clear that the rule of thumb for an adventuring day is 6-8 combat encounters.----Having played 5e for a while now, I think it's pretty clear where the 6-8 encounter day really came from.1. The game introduced short rests, which for some classes are a mandatory element of their design because they act as a fence to get access to a full adventuring day's worth of resources.2. In prior editions tables pretty consistently wanted 3-4 encounters per adventuring day. This came from the market analysis prior to 3e, and this factor was baked into 3e and 4e encounter design rules. However, these encounters are actually pretty challenging, and damage or resources generally get spent unevenly. So, the game needs to limit how likely it is that the players will choose to forego short rests at all in lieu of long rests because long rests always return the party to maximum effectiveness. The Fighter will take too much damage and need to rest, or the Wizard will spend all their spell slots, etc. Either way, the PCs will skip short resting and just jump to long rests, which decreases the overall effectiveness of short-rest reliant classes.3. So, the solution? Make the DMG direct DMs to lowball encounter difficulty. Take your XP budgets per encounter, and cut them by 40%-50%. Then tell them to run double the number of encounters. Now the PCs are more likely to have opportunities to short rest before they feel they must long rest.The trouble is, 6-8 encounters is boring to play, takes more time at the table, and takes more DM time because you just have to create a ton of encounters. It's just inconvenient for the adventuring day to have so many, which I think is clear because here we are 8-9 years after the game first released and people are still complaining about it. 3-4 always felt more natural at the table. You also run into another problem: Boss fights and traveling days where you often only ever want one encounter in a day, and how do those work with short rest classes? Worse, the PCs might still choose to long rest before short rest classes get their full benefits.You also run into something in 5e that I don't really recall happening much before: arguments about resting. Half of the part will want to short rest to recover abilities, and the rest will see no benefit so they don't want to. It's a strange dichotomy that encourages player vs player conflict. That isn't a good outcome.----A common response to how awkward the above feels is to use the grim-and-gritty recovery rules that make short rests take 24 hours and long rests take a whole week. This does work to encourage short rests, but it means the whole tone of the campaign changes. If you want heroic fantasy, you can't use this method. It's a tonal shift towards sword and sorcery or low fantasy.What we're ultimately trying to do is eliminate the dreaded Five Minute Work Day. That's why short rest classes were created, but they create all the above problems with adventuring days and encounter design. Ultimately, they don't fix the problem.Currently, the only reason not to long rest after every encounter from a game perspective is: the DM will punish you for it. Surprise encounters, ambushes, rearranging NPCs, or narrative time limits. Don't rest, or it'll go bad for you! Instead of building mechanics into the game that fix this issue, they make it a DM problem. That's bad design.What the game really needs is to reward the players for not long resting. The PCs should not be at maximum effectiveness at the end of a long rest. The PCs should gain access to new or improved powers as the adventuring day progresses. They should be at their most powerful at the end of an adventuring day, not the beginning.You could do something like bonus XP rewards or treasure for reaching encounter milestones during the day, but I don't like that because it accelerates the PC's power in the long run in exchange for short term risk of danger. It should be a short term risk with short term gains. For example, maybe after you have earned 50% of your daily XP budget since the last long rest, maybe your class abilities get an upgrade until you complete a long rest. Instead of an 8d6 fireball, you can cast a 10d6 hellball. Maybe Fighters recover Action Surge and Second Wind whenever they roll initiative once they have earned 50% of their XP budget.</blockquote>

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