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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 6858411" data-attributes="member: 12731">I'm having trouble spotting where you actually disagree. What did I say that is "not exactly true"? Your conclusion sounds confusingly identical to mine.The problem that's behind this entire thread (and others) is:Solution: "just stick to the 6-8 encounter guidelines and there will be goodness/balance/challenge/whatevs"Problems:1) "Sticking with" this guideline isn't supported by the rules. Like, at all. Rest is completely unregulated (beyond "not more than once a day"). The DM is completely on his own in somehow making the PCs stick it out and not rest.2) Most of the 8 encounters must by definition be weaksauce (or the party would have died/retreated/rested a long time ago). And the "we will win this in just a few rounds, only question is: do I have to drink this Potion of Healing" level of challenge is incredibly wet blanket.3) if you actually bother to use the XP awards, you'll either diddle around with appropriate xp awards for weaksauce fights; or you throw exciting monsters at the PCs but see them level up at an alarming rate. Or, to give Flame the benefit of the doubt, if you spend lots of creative energy on making your own encounters, you can convert hours of DM prep into something useful.Me, I'd rather simply use more dangerous foes and not spend all that prep time. Since I don't use xp, this particular problem evaporates. Compare this with another game:* The guidelines assume perhaps 3 significant fights per day, which means the gamers who run just 2 isn't too far off, while the ones that run 8 is still not too far off. I'm assuming there are next to no gamers running 10, 12 or even more encounters per day - so why optimize for such an extreme balancing point. And don't come and say "but I like softening up the heroes by a few groups of goblins first" - YOU CAN STILL DO THAT, but the game doesn't need to take it into account, the game shouldn't waste time on trivialities.* Each published adventure is tasked with presenting an "assumed number of rests". That is, each adventure states upfront "this adventure is balanced for a three day run" etc. There doesn't need to be an absolute prohibition on "extra rests". It would be nice if the adventure detailed consequences for being late: "Saturday midnight, the princess gets eaten". But the crucial point is to tell the DM the authors have thought about it. "try to have the party reach the Altar of Death by the fourth day" is excellent. To continue by "We can't be arsed to give you any suggestions on how to justify that, though" would perhaps be a bummer, but it would at least be upfront and honest. Then, all of this is open to change by the DM, but there is a default. This would be HUGE in empowering DMs to judge scenarios and their party's progress.* This would also force adventure authors to THINK ABOUT rests, and not just conveniently ignore the issue altogether. This would foster a culture where if a writer has to think about challenges and resting, he might say "know what? This adventure doesn't work for the a rest-a-day scheme, so for my adventure we'll say outright "you can only rest in the designated oases, port-of-calls, or hell nodes or whatevers". Or he might say "in this dungeon of death, the walls are infused with technobabble, so each long rest takes only one hour, and each short rest takes only five minutes".* The entire guff about xp and cr... drop the pretense! It is not exact. It is not scientific. It is not paramount. It is not easy. There is no shortcut to knowing your party's strengths and weaknesses. XP is a charade, since in the end, you don't level because of some objective reasons: you'll simply level at roughly the rate that suits the group and the campaign!This latter game is my kind of D&D game <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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