D&D 5E Barbarian troubles

[Flamestrike]

That's not actually a rule. In fact, I'd call it little more than wishful thinking on the designers' part.

Many forumists will vouch for that long adventuring days happening not very often. Many DMs will tell you it's incredibly difficult to railroad the players into keep going even 6 encounters that day.

Your other advice is sound.

Its not railroading anymore than building an encounter using the XP budget and CR guidelines is railroading.

Its not hard to hardwire into an adventure a hard (or soft) time limit or constraint. And as long as you dont do it all the time (I aim for around 50 percent of my adventures) then its not intrusive at all.

50 percent of my adventures feature a 6 encounter/ 2 short rest adventuring day assumption. Some of them feature just the one deadly encounter. If you enforce the 6-8 AD paradigm around 50 percent of the time, your players will naturally conserve resources around this expectation. The system becomes self reulating, and you can back off with enforcing it.

Its an art as much of a science.

 

[Flamestrike]

Sorry for a bit of a threadjack, but I have a Barbarian in my own 5e campaign (well, one of them) and it is an issue, as is the Druid's wildshape in the other campaign. In practice I don't find there is any way to stop PCs long resting after daily resources are depleted. From the player character POV, not to do so would be suicidal.

Allow a short rest and throw more encounters at them. Theyll learn.

There is every chance that youve adjusted to this tactic and are throwing 'deadly' encounters at them. Big mistake. This just increases the chance of a TPK for no gain.

An encounter in 5e isnt supposed to nearly (or even possibly) kill the PC's; just deplete resources. The PC's are expected to win, depleting only around 10-20 percent of thier resources (HD, HP, spell slots, sup dice, action surge, ki points etc). If your players are only getting through 2-3 encounters before being drained of everything, your encounters are too difficult and youre toying with a TPK.

Dial your encounters down, and throw more of them at the party. The class imbalance issue you identify above (certain classes being OP compared to others) will vanish.

 

[hawkeyefan]

This thread took a bit of a turn...but for me, I have no problem at all controlling when my players have either a short or a long rest. When they ask me if they can, I take all the different factors into consideration, including the level of difficulty and drama, and then I tell them yes or no.

I think if the players are telling the DM "we are now taking a short rest" then something's a bit wrong.

 

[Sacrosanct]

PCs can try to take a rest whenever they want to. Doesn't mean it's gonna happen. The DM should never tell them yes or no based on reasons that don't have a game world impact. I.e., a DM should never say yes or no unless there's something happening in that area that would allow or prevent a rest from happening. Just giving them a rest, or denying them a rest because you don't personally like how it flows or whatever is a bad reason. PCs need to weigh the risk vs reward. If a party of PCs are dungeon delving and they ran out of resources and declare they're taking a short rest, that's all well and good for them, but are there still monsters around that could reasonably find them in an hour? The game world should never go on pause just because the party wants a rest.

 

[S'mon]

Then don't give them a home base.

They can retreat from the dungeon, sure.

But give them the choice between camping in the woodlands outside the dungeon, where any stay longer than one night is sure to attract dangerous wildlife and enough monsters to interfere with the dungeon delving...

...or, they could walk all the way back home. Do make sure that would be a) considered as an admittance of defeat and b) the dungeon would have had time to fully recover (replacing any slain foes with more dangerous cousins)

IME running a sandbox game, (a) the PCs will accept defeat if the likely alternative is
demise and (b) they will happily walk away from a dungeon and go seek another one.
After all, they have already banked the XP! They already walk away from dungeons where
there isn't enough loot (Caverns of Thracia!)

I guess the one thing that would stop this would be to refuse to give them any XP until
they'd done their 6-8 encounters, with no award for the day if they stopped too soon. I don't think that would make for very happy players. But maybe a milder version like a bonus for hitting a
milestone in one AD would help.

Edit: Only really inexperienced or foolish players have their PCs camp outside an active
dungeon IMCs; that's a quick route to TPK. Though as I've mellowed I've started pointing out to players the suicidal nature of robbing the bank then going to sleep on the street outside...

 

[S'mon]

They long rest on the way to Alderran.

They then get picked up by the tractor beam, take out some stormtroopers on the MF (before putting on their armor) wander down to the detention block, take out the guards, get into another fight on the way out, the trash monster then nearly kills Luke, the compactor nearly kills them all, then there is a running skirmish on the way out with Han (and Luke and Leia get into another skirmish over the chasm they swing over). A running gun battle then takes place as they escape, followed by a spaceship battle once they leave the death star.

They then get a short rest in on the way to Yavin (to spend some hit dice), before Luke has to take on the imperial fleet and blow up the death star.

Thats a pretty full on adventuring day!

"This Will Be An Adventuring Day Long Remembered..."

[video=youtube;eeEx5W4P6Vs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeEx5W4P6Vs[/video]

 

[hawkeyefan]

PCs can try to take a rest whenever they want to. Doesn't mean it's gonna happen. The DM should never tell them yes or no based on reasons that don't have a game world impact. I.e., a DM should never say yes or no unless there's something happening in that area that would allow or prevent a rest from happening. Just giving them a rest, or denying them a rest because you don't personally like how it flows or whatever is a bad reason. PCs need to weigh the risk vs reward. If a party of PCs are dungeon delving and they ran out of resources and declare they're taking a short rest, that's all well and good for them, but are there still monsters around that could reasonably find them in an hour? The game world should never go on pause just because the party wants a rest.

I agree with you for the most part, but I'm not sure if I see a real distinction between the game world and the DM. I mean, the DM determines the game world.

I think that reasons of pacing and tension should also be considered when the DM decides if a rest should be possible or not.

 

[Kithas]

Honestly the talk of more encounters/ adventuring day is really interesting to me. In my group we have done less and less encounters a session/day, as we have gotten more powerful our dm has given us harder and harder fights and the fights have started to really drag on. The fights taking so long (averaging 2-3 hours) is in part the difficulty and also in part the players, at this point we are down to about 1-2 encounters per session, not always taking a rest between sessions though. When the fights take so long my first thought is definitely not let's have more of them, but maybe it should be...

With that said how do you guys who do 6+ encounters a day do on time? how many sessions does that take?

I'm curious if it is the players or the difficulty that is really slowing us down.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

simple encounters they can blow through. Try not to have them encounter all enemies at once. Allow them with good scouting to surprise small groups of enemies.

 

[Flamestrike]

Honestly the talk of more encounters/ adventuring day is really interesting to me. In my group we have done less and less encounters a session/day, as we have gotten more powerful our dm has given us harder and harder fights and the fights have started to really drag on.

Your DM is reacting to the players in setting the pacing of his adventures. It should be happening the other way around.

If the DM instead planned out 6-8 [medium to hard] encounters with 2 short rests [and a hard 24 hour time limit imposed - save the princess by midnight or the BBEG wins, you dont get paid, and he attacks the town with his powers doubled, riding a dragon, as a triple deadly encounter] then the players tactics will change to reflect this.

With that said how do you guys who do 6+ encounters a day do on time? how many sessions does that take?

Parties can defeat a [medium-hard] encounter inside of 5 rounds generally. It takes less than 15 minutes of real time for a party of 5 mid level PC's to overcome a medium to hard encounter (assumiong no external disruptions, everyone is reasonably focussed on the battle, and most have a reasonable understanding of the rules and their class features).

You can get 3 encounters in a 3 hour session and have plenty of time for exploration and social pillars. Wrap up the session by granting them a short rest.

In a longer session (a lunch to late weekender) you can get 6-8 encounters in easily.