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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6846766" data-attributes="member: 6787650">I'd be interested to know what you mean by saying "no trouble matching, or even exceeding". My experience is that even non-optimizing players have no trouble exceeding the guidelines (unless the DM is deliberately gaming the system with deadly but low-CR monsters, or metagaming the monsters as tactical battlecomputers bent on killing the PCs, instead of roleplaying the monsters as beings with lives and goals), but when the players fight 200% of the daily XP budget without even a short rest, that's technically a form of "5E XP guidelines don't work."In other words, I get the sense from your writing that you think 5E guidelines don't work in the "too hard" direction whereas I think they are waaaay too easy. Although erring on the side of easy is fine, since psychologically, a DM would rather that players feel awesome about beating a fight that is officially "too hard" instead of feeling lame about almost losing a fight that is officially "pretty easy", even if it's the exact same fight in both cases.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.I think this problem is solvable, but not in the way that gamist DMs tend to solve it. That's why I loved libramarian's comments about sandboxes, statistical power for detecting good play, alternate endings, and "story weight". Great comments. The solution lies in that direction.</blockquote>

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