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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 6802070" data-attributes="member: 22779">Oh, totally agree.  Sorry if I implied any negative judgement on the decision.  It does work rather well.  The weak point of that model though is that it isn't very granular.  It's great at 1-3 monsters, starts to fall down at 4-7 and at 8 plus enemies, really doesn't work at all.  But, even then, the basic form of escalating difficulty still follows.  A fully rested party with full resources has a LOT more resources to play with than a tired party.  In 3e and earlier editions, there isn't a 1/2 rest recharge mechanic, so, most of the classes that are short rest in 4e and 5e were at will.  So long as the fighter has HP, in 3e, it doesn't really matter which encounter it was during the day - he's still doing the same thing in round 1 of encounter 1 as he is in round 4 or encounter 4.  OTOH, the casters really do change drastically over the course of a day.  A wizard without spells is basically just a commoner.  A cleric that's down to 1st level spells is a poor man's fighter.  5e changes this a bit with the idea of short rests.  The daily characters work more or less the same as they did in earlier editions.  You cast spells and run out of gas over the course of the day.  But, the short rest characters change drastically up and down over the same period.  A battle master whose used his second wind, action surge and superiority dice is significantly weaker than one who hasn't.  And that's where the 6-8 encounters per day paradigm comes in.  In all editions, that first fight of the day is pretty easy, particularly if it's the only fight of the day.  If you can blow everything in a single encounter, you can punch way, way above your weight class.  And, I think that's where people are having issues with the XP Budget advice.  They are trying to make every fight equally difficult.  But, it doesn't work like that.  It really can't.  The point is to gradually ramp up tension over the course of an adventure, to make the climax of the adventure coincide with that third encounter before a short rest.  It does, IMO, require a bit of pro-active DMing and keeping an eye on the pace of the adventure to a degree that wasn't necessarily apparent in earlier editions.</blockquote>

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