D&D 5E 6-8 encounters/day - how common is this?

[S'mon]

Interesting. Why does 5e not work for this style?

Makes sense. Was my comment about helping with dungeon-style play on the right track in this respect, or are there other aspects to this that I'm missing?

1. 5e PCs don't really have the resources to withstand increased pressure, they are closer to 3e eggshell-with-hammer design.

2. Yes, a 10-15 rest helps recreate pre-3e turn-based dungeon exploration. But I mostly am keen on keeping short-rest PC classes viable by ensuring they get enough rests.

BTW we played 5e for 4.5 hours yesterday, the start of Shattered Star #2. There was one fight over the 6 game days and 7 or 8 encounters.

 

[Tony Vargas]

But speaking for myself, the problem with expecting 6-8 discrete encounters per day has nothing to do with game balance or difficulty and everything to do with plausibility and roleplaying. When you look at scenarios that involve an eight-encounter day, such as the "6-8 encounter 13th level adventuring day" thread going on right now, the biggest thing that jumps out at me is that they don't make any sense from an in-world perspective. Really, there just "happens" to be a group of frost giants there in the abandoned dracolich lair, right when we teleport in? Really, there just "happen" to be a couple of paranoid death slaads in the entryway to the demiplane with readied actions (according to Flamestrike) to instantly Fireball anyone entering the demiplane? Really, there just happens to be a berserk Iron Golem rampaging through the dungeon? And he and the death slaads just ignored each other, but chose to attack the PCs? It strains credulity to the point where, as a player, I'd be looking for a hidden manipulator behind the scenes. Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action. Eight times is ludicrous.

You have to go out of your way as you can see to prevent this from turning into one giant encounter.

If you're not worried about class balance, it's not an issue. An encounters/day formula ("Crystal clear guidance") was promised for those who did want to take a stab at balancing the classes in their campaign. It happens to be 6-8. If your are, though, there may not be an equally clear way to get there...

But, it could be that part of the idea is that the players will seek to take on enemies in smaller bites, via 'skilled play.' Instead of a frontal assault, you sneak around and take out smaller groups of defenders on your way in, hit specific objectives, and exit via a different route. You approach 1-2 deadly+ encounters, but take them on as 6-8 easier ones.

And, obviously, traditional dungeons can feature a lot of discrete encounters, and consequences to bugging out early for a rest. So that's one place where 'classic feel' and 'class balance' can intersect.

As someone who has recent (current, even?) experience with classic AD&D, 4e and 5e, how do you find 5e's asymmetric resource suites in conjunction with its obvious aspiration for cross-class balance?

What obvious aspiration for cross-class balance?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

[MENTION=6787650]Hemlock[/MENTION], after your post about OSR/AD&D style incentives, I'm curious - have you adjusted your approach to 5e, or houseruled anything, to deal with some of the issues being discussed in this thread?

Yes, although I continue to experiment further. For example, I haven't yet implemented Courtney Campbell's insights about "traditional" directed-acyclic-graph style adventures. My natural style is wide-open sandbox but I'm experimenting with imposing more structure, for the sake of the players, without wanting to go all the way to a linear structure. I may do the DAG thing this Wednesday though.

But so far, I've increased XP requirements in my new campaign by factor of 10x (with my players' full enthusiastic agreement) and started handing out XP for gold on a 1:1 basis for gold spent offscreen in certain predetermined ways (sending gold home to your home village; buying presents for your love interest). The new campaign is still pretty new, only a few weeks, so the only definite feedback I have so far is that one of the players expressed gratification at the fact that, at the end of the second session, he was still at first level despite having earned close to 3000 XP. I think it's working but I'm not sure. We did have a discussion at the end of session #2 where one of the players felt like they were earning so little XP from goblins that it cheapened the play for him, but we fixed that by adjusting the rules. (They wound up getting 50 XP per goblin instead of 13--the new rule is that you shift monster CRs by 2 categories before applying the monster CRlayer level ratio, so a 1st level PC gains full XP from a goblin.)

I think my next move is to see if I can apply these new house rules to construct an adventuring day full of weak foes without breaking my own suspension of disbelief. Probably it will be something like:

(1) PCs approach orc village (they've already expressed an interest in going there).
(2) An orc "tough" picks a fight with one of the PCs while his gang looks on. Presumably they flatten him; otherwise he goes through their pockets and leaves them for dead, laughing with his buddies.
(3) An agent of the current orc headman (female?) shows up, patches up the PCs if necessary (Healer feat) to demonstrate goodwill, and asks them to come meet secretly with the headman.
(4) Headman outlines current troubles w/ kidnapped elders (I'm going to go for the Quill of Law approach here) and an ongoing coup attempt, asks for help. Unfortunately he cannot help at all since he's already read the laws in question and must therefore obey them--but the PCs have never read the laws and so are not bound by them! (PCs must be careful not to read any signs or proclamations now.) They get to negotiate a price with him for their help, and he signs a Contract of Nepthas with them to enforce it.
(5) Six or eight encounters with orcs follow. The PCs hopefully liberate the elders.
(6) Twist: there's a loophole in the contract they signed, if they didn't detect it in step #4. They may need to threaten the headman to get paid, or make a brilliant legal argument, or just grab the treasure and run. Or maybe the headman likes them enough that he pays them anyway, despite the loophole.
(7) Hopefully, they get a bunch of treasure and need to get out of town quick.
(8) Bandits attempt to follow and intercept them when they camp for the night and demand a share of the treasure recovered from the filthy orcs. Can be evaded via stealth.

That's my basic outline, but I need to work on it for a bit to give it more choice points and make it less linear/homogenous. Maybe vary the terrains in which the elders are being held, make some of them guarded by worgs and others by orcs, add some wandering monsters (thug patrols), orcs with different weapon types, and a reaction squad of six orcs on horses who will come when called via gong. Maybe add some disguises and spycraft.

Steps #6-8 seem likely to occur on a different "adventuring day" than #1-5.

 

[pemerton]

What obvious aspiration for cross-class balance?

I think this is mostly evident in the non-traditional damage dice for spells, and the non-traditional spell-by-level tables. These all suggest an intention that damage output should be more-or-less balanced across classes.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I think this is mostly evident in the non-traditional damage dice for spells, and the non-traditional spell-by-level tables. These all suggest an intention that damage output should be more-or-less balanced across classes.

Sounds tenuous. Aside from being slots rather than spells, most classes look like they've returned to a more traditional spell/level approach. New spell level every-other character level, topping out at 4 slots/level, quite similar to the 3e wizard's progression. Sure, fewer high-level slots, but much closer to traditional than the last edition.

 

[Libramarian]

I don't know if the longer version is any clearer. And it could be wrong-headed - I'm trying to express a rough feeling more than a developed thesis - but maybe you can see a little bit what I'm trying to gesture at.

The more I think about it, the more I think you're on to an important point here, pemerton. I believe that explains part of my distaste for this type of scenario also. @Hemlock and @S'mon upthread mentioned that their primary problem is that it doesn't feel realistic or plausible, but that didn’t feel quite right for me to agree with since I love a good gonzo dungeon. It's more how contrived the whole thing is that puts me off, rather than the implausibility.

That's a pretty subtle distinction but it becomes clearer to me when I consider that a contrived scenario might leave little or no room left to influence it by engaging with the fiction, while an implausible scenario might merely make interaction more limited or less intuitive. A scenario where the DM has determined the order of all events, and the PCs motivations, leaves little room left to accomplish anything through the characters. You manage their resources but from the perspective of the characters it's all hang on, hope we make it through.

 

[S'mon]

The more I think about it, the more I think you're on to an important point here, pemerton. I believe that explains part of my distaste for this type of scenario also. @Hemlock and @S'mon upthread mentioned that their primary problem is that it doesn't feel realistic or plausible, but that didn’t feel quite right for me to agree with since I love a good gonzo dungeon. It's more how contrived the whole thing is that puts me off, rather than the implausibility.

That's a pretty subtle distinction but it becomes clearer to me when I consider that a contrived scenario might leave little or no room left to influence it by engaging with the fiction, while an implausible scenario might merely make interaction more limited or less intuitive. A scenario where the DM has determined the order of all events, and the PCs motivations, leaves little room left to accomplish anything through the characters. You manage their resources but from the perspective of the characters it's all hang on, hope we make it through.

Yes, this is my primary objection too - "Here are your scheduled Encounters for the Day, *choo* *choo*". I have no objection to implausibility in the Gonzo sense, Alice in Wonderland levels or heavy metal barbarians riding zombie t-rexes - which latter recently actually happened in my current Wilderlands sandbox purely as a result of emergent play.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Yes, this is my primary objection too - "Here are your scheduled Encounters for the Day, *choo* *choo*". I have no objection to implausibility in the Gonzo sense, Alice in Wonderland levels or heavy metal barbarians riding zombie t-rexes - which latter recently actually happened in my current Wilderlands sandbox purely as a result of emergent play.

I have a few objections to implausibility per se, but I'm mostly able to override those feelings just by communicating up-front to my players that, "Hey, you guys are weirdness magnets. If there's going to be a murder in town, it's probably going to happen near you or to you."

If I had a DM who was throwing implausible encounters at me, but those encounters were not contrived, I probably wouldn't have a problem with it. However, contrived encounters that break my suspension of disbelief will enrage me to the point where I don't come back to that table.

It's hard to tell whether this is different from what libramarian is talking about, but I just want it on the record taht implausibility per se is not what will drive me away from a game.

 

[Libramarian]

I have a few objections to implausibility per se, but I'm mostly able to override those feelings just by communicating up-front to my players that, "Hey, you guys are weirdness magnets. If there's going to be a murder in town, it's probably going to happen near you or to you."

If I had a DM who was throwing implausible encounters at me, but those encounters were not contrived, I probably wouldn't have a problem with it. However, contrived encounters that break my suspension of disbelief will enrage me to the point where I don't come back to that table.

It's hard to tell whether this is different from what libramarian is talking about, but I just want it on the record taht implausibility per se is not what will drive me away from a game.

Let me restate to try to make it clearer--I think the reason I dislike encounters or adventures that feel contrived, but am not generally a stickler for realism or plausibility, is because it usually means the DM has taken more control over how things will play out than they ought to in an RPG.

 

[Libramarian]

[MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] tangential question about your Wilderlands campaign: do you use the original '70s material or the 3e version?