Now see I had looked at that myself early on when I started this edition, but the mechanics exists to help challenge the players. I took a different approach than gonig by 24 hours as you said, this is a fantasy world after all. Who says a day is 24 hours there? Regardless of the length of days I do not consider every single night a full rest, it is difficult to take full rests of 8 hours on a trek when you are on a mission, especially one that has time constraints. If there are no time constraints I generally rule it as downtime and maybe the plays will have 1 or 2 random encounters but nothing taxing and nothing that rewards them very well. So they go through the standard 6 to 8 encounters before getting a long rest and they have to manage resources wisely. If you don't like doing this arbitrarily do things like throw battle in the middle of every other long rest, this interrupts the rest and they do not get the benefits. Now they are back on the same cycle count and have to manage their resources better.
D&D 5E Bard's Powers
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Now see I had looked at that myself early on when I started this edition, but the mechanics exists to help challenge the players. I took a different approach than gonig by 24 hours as you said, this is a fantasy world after all. Who says a day is 24 hours there? Regardless of the length of days I do not consider every single night a full rest, it is difficult to take full rests of 8 hours on a trek when you are on a mission, especially one that has time constraints. If there are no time constraints I generally rule it as downtime and maybe the plays will have 1 or 2 random encounters but nothing taxing and nothing that rewards them very well. So they go through the standard 6 to 8 encounters before getting a long rest and they have to manage resources wisely. If you don't like doing this arbitrarily do things like throw battle in the middle of every other long rest, this interrupts the rest and they do not get the benefits. Now they are back on the same cycle count and have to manage their resources better.
I find it funny that the Bard makes one of the best Necromancers in the game.
Use Magical Secrets to gain Animate Undead and then later create undead, then spread your inspiration dice amoung them.
If you have anyway to heal undead during a short rest they'll benifit from Song of Rest for more healing.
With the right choices the Bard also makes the best Summoner in the game, you can get with magical secrets Conjure Animals, Find Steed, Conjure Woodland Creatures, Conjure Minor Elemental, Conjure Elemental, Conjure Celestial, Planar Ally, Gate. It already has on its spell list Planar Binding so you can boost the duration of a summoning spell and Unseen Servant which is the only summoning spell that's a ritual.
And like the Necrobard, you can spread inspiration dice to your servants and you song of rest on them during a short rest.
Use Magical Secrets to gain Animate Undead and then later create undead, then spread your inspiration dice amoung them.
If you have anyway to heal undead during a short rest they'll benifit from Song of Rest for more healing.
With the right choices the Bard also makes the best Summoner in the game, you can get with magical secrets Conjure Animals, Find Steed, Conjure Woodland Creatures, Conjure Minor Elemental, Conjure Elemental, Conjure Celestial, Planar Ally, Gate. It already has on its spell list Planar Binding so you can boost the duration of a summoning spell and Unseen Servant which is the only summoning spell that's a ritual.
And like the Necrobard, you can spread inspiration dice to your servants and you song of rest on them during a short rest.
CapnZapp
Legend
My only real solution is to cut the hard link between days (nights) and long rests. No automatic gains; instead you leave it up to each adventure to decide.
If you can't gain the benefits of a long rest just because you sleep in a bedroll when out camping, this assumption works much better.
Any wilderness adventure gets much better pacing (concerning long and short rests) if you already say from the start that they will only be able to regain spells and hit points when they find an inn or a taverna (or oasis, for a desert trek, or port, for an ocean voyage)
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Salamandyr
Adventurer
Another option, if you're doing fewer encounters, is use bigger encounters. The math is 6 or so medium to hard encounters. Change the metric to 3 to 4 hard to deadly encounters and it works out okay.
FormerlyHemlock
Hero
Compared to an actual Necromancer who starts out at +6 HP, +3 damage to every single skeleton and scales to +20 HP, +6 damage plus a free Wight, the Necrobard is decidedly second-class, barely superior to a bog-standard cleric.
I think in order to make a Necrobard work you'd have to make him a Necrobardlock, Warlock 5/Lore Bard 6 at minimum, then steal Animate Dead and Crusader's Mantle so your skeletons can get +1d4 radiant damage per attack, then rely on Warlock slot regeneration to support crushing hordes of undead. But enormous hordes of undead is not a very fun playstyle for most players or DMs--would work best in a solo campaign.
FormerlyHemlock
Hero
It's no wonder D&D has a bad reputation from a fiction perspective. How often does Harry Dresden, professional wizard, get in eight fights per day of activity? He's pretty much the thuggiest wizard out there, and even on his worst day of the year (the ones captured in the books), it's more likely to be three or four than six to eight. E.g. in Skin Game, it was one fight on day one with the octokongs, three separate fights with Tessa, Binder's Goons/Bob, and Nicky/Genoskwa on day two, and six semi-separate fights with security guards, Tessa, *spoiler* and Nic, *spoiler* again, Genoskwa, and Nic's goons on day three.
The other thing you see in good fantasy novels is that unlike D&D fights, the protagonists are almost always punching up. D&D DMG guidelines concentrate on lots of easy fights, equivalent to Dresden fighting the security guards, which gets maybe a page of attention from the author, barely even a fight. The fights the author spends time on are against things that are always tougher and stronger than Dresden is; D&D calls these fights (high-end) "Deadly" and most DMs apparently won't touch them with a ten-foot pole because they're "unfair". (If Dresden were an 11th level PC, the Genoskwa would be a CR 16 threat, 6.25xDeadly, even before you apply the *spoiler* template from *spoiler*--and Dresden has to tackle that threat solo when he's already tapped out from everything earlier. There's no way he could possibly have won that fight if he hadn't cheated. And it's not even the last fight of the day.)
DMG-recommended style of "lots of 'Medium'/'Hard' fights" are boring. Quality is better than quantity. And that is why dungeon crawls make unmemorable stories and why balancing via attrition is doomed to failure.
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L
lowkey13
Guest
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BookBarbarian
Expert Long Rester
It could be that the DM in Harry's would using the Gritty Realism rest variant.
FormerlyHemlock
Hero
If so, that just makes it more incredibly deadly compared to D&D. Like fighting six different CR 11-20 monsters, sometimes solo, at level 11. (Tessa is probably lower-level than Harry when it comes to magic, but she had goons as backup. And the second time he fought her, he didn't have access to magic and she still had her crazy bug demon powers. It was not a fair fight by D&D standards.)
OB1
Jedi Master
I had the same reaction initially to the 6-8 encounter day, and ignored it for the first few months I DMed 5e. Then I decided to really give it a try for a few sessions and discovered it's a wonderful tool that makes the Adventuring Day feel special and forces me to be more creative as a DM. A couple of suggestions
1. Multi part encounters are your friend. You can get two encounters for one by having someone run to raise reinforcements or ambushing the party when they are searching for clues and gold.
2. For easy encounters use TOM even if you normally use a grid and give the players a non combat alternative (but one that still costs resources) to get around. Do we fight the small band of orcs that we can easily defeat but risk them getting a lucky crit and need to use healing magic or just have the ranger cast pass without trace to sneak around them. Using this has really expanded my idea of what an encounter is and let's the PCS use their abilities outside of combat. Should it end up in combat anyhow, TOM means it will move fast.
3. I count a Deadly as three encounters and try to allow a short rest after. Doesn't have to be at the end of the day either. Putting it first or middle means the "easy" combats after are much more challenging.
4. Just started this with OotA, but I now require 16 hours to benefit from a long rest if the party sets a watch. When you are chasing or being chased, that decision point can mean a lot and allows me to stretch an Adventuring day over several world days.
5. I still mix up and have single encounter days, or just a couple. It's just that I strive at least every 2-3 sessions to have a full on Adventuring Day. And every once in a while I'll throw a whole days XP into a single multi part encounter. Variety is key!
1. Multi part encounters are your friend. You can get two encounters for one by having someone run to raise reinforcements or ambushing the party when they are searching for clues and gold.
2. For easy encounters use TOM even if you normally use a grid and give the players a non combat alternative (but one that still costs resources) to get around. Do we fight the small band of orcs that we can easily defeat but risk them getting a lucky crit and need to use healing magic or just have the ranger cast pass without trace to sneak around them. Using this has really expanded my idea of what an encounter is and let's the PCS use their abilities outside of combat. Should it end up in combat anyhow, TOM means it will move fast.
3. I count a Deadly as three encounters and try to allow a short rest after. Doesn't have to be at the end of the day either. Putting it first or middle means the "easy" combats after are much more challenging.
4. Just started this with OotA, but I now require 16 hours to benefit from a long rest if the party sets a watch. When you are chasing or being chased, that decision point can mean a lot and allows me to stretch an Adventuring day over several world days.
5. I still mix up and have single encounter days, or just a couple. It's just that I strive at least every 2-3 sessions to have a full on Adventuring Day. And every once in a while I'll throw a whole days XP into a single multi part encounter. Variety is key!
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