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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Flamestrike" data-source="post: 6776850" data-attributes="member: 6788736">Timed adventures, environment, and 'random' encounters. For inspiration grab yourself an action movie. Any of them will do. Every single one features a race against time. Blow up the death star before it destroys the rebel base, save your daughter before the baddies realise your not on the plane, etc etc.A central part of your job as a DM in 5E is to police the 5 minute adventuring day. The default adventuring day is [6-8 medium to hard encounters/ 2 short rests] per long rest.Some suggestions:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Save the princess by midnight or she gets sacrificed</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Recover the artifact for wealthy patron within 2 days or else the BBEG will use it to summon demon lord</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">PC's employer offers double the salary if they recover the macguffin within 24 hours</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">PC's are stranded in dungeon on island and at risk of being marooned if they cant escape within 2 days</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">BBEG is smart and reinforces all rooms (or moves the princess/ macguffin elsewhere) if PC's use a hit and run strategy</li> </ul>Im sure you can come up with others.You dont have to impose the [6-8 medium to hard encounters/ 2 short rests] paradigm religiously. I stick to it about 50 percent of the time (sometimes using less encounters, sometimes more, sometimes allowing more short rests, sometimes less). What imposing an adventuring day at this frequency does is it channels and conditions the players into managing resources (healing, spell slots, rages, ki points etc) around the expectation that theyre gonna get 6-8 encounters/ broken up by 2 short rests before I allow them a long rest.Sometimes the first encounter of the adventuring day is the only one they get. But the players are so used to stretching out their resources over 6-8 encounters, they still rarely nova on them even when they do occur. The system becomes self fulfilling and self policing, and you dont have to be as heavy handed with (time limited) adventures. The PC's police themselves.By only throwing two or three encounters per long rest at the PC's you seriously nerf Fighters, Monks, and Warlocks in comparison with Barbarians, Paladins and full casters like the Wizard. Rage is balanced around the fact that you need to ration it out over 6-8 encounters before it refreshes. Same deal with Warlock casting v Wizard casting.Every single time I see complaints about class imbalance, or encoutner difficulty it always gets back to the DM not enforcing the [6-8 encounter/ 2 short rest] adventuring day paradigm.Stick to it at least half the time, and most of thes problems vanish.</blockquote>

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