D&D 5E Differing opinions about 5e

[Oofta]

I agree that a big part of the issue is DMs not following the 6-8 encounters with 2-3 short rests per day.

A lot of DMs seem to be resistant to throwing enough encounters to really challenge parties with PCs that can go "nova". That does not mean we should insult them as being "bad" or "lazy" DMs.

The solution is not to change the game to give champions recharge powers or to belittle people who don't play it the way "it should be done".

It just means the general assumption should have been stressed a little more and we should explain options to people looking for answers. Personally, I use the alternate rules and a short rest is overnight and a long rest is several days. I find that works for the pace of the story I want to tell. For other people it may mean just having PCs in dangerous environments where even an hour's rest is a luxury.

 

[Flamestrike]

I agree that a big part of the issue is DMs not following the 6-8 encounters with 2-3 short rests per day.

A lot of DMs seem to be resistant to throwing enough encounters to really challenge parties with PCs that can go "nova". That does not mean we should insult them as being "bad" or "lazy" DMs.

The solution is not to change the game to give champions recharge powers or to belittle people who don't play it the way "it should be done".

It just means the general assumption should have been stressed a little more and we should explain options to people looking for answers. Personally, I use the alternate rules and a short rest is overnight and a long rest is several days. I find that works for the pace of the story I want to tell. For other people it may mean just having PCs in dangerous environments where even an hour's rest is a luxury.

I made short rests just happen once every 4 hours with a 5 minute breather (basically once per dungeon) to avoid jarring 1 hour breaks in adventuring, and I made long rests only give back hit dice (but no hit points) and only 1 spell slot of each of levels 1-5 and one spell slot of 6+ (meaning you need about 4 of them to get back all of your HP, HD and spell slots).

That works for my own personal pacing. It means I can generally get away with 4-5 encounters per AD instead of 6-8. Casters naturally hold back on spell usage and nova strikes, knowing they only get 1 slot back of each level overnight.

 

[Ashkelon]

I agree that a big part of the issue is DMs not following the 6-8 encounters with 2-3 short rests per day.

A lot of DMs seem to be resistant to throwing enough encounters to really challenge parties with PCs that can go "nova". That does not mean we should insult them as being "bad" or "lazy" DMs.

The solution is not to change the game to give champions recharge powers or to belittle people who don't play it the way "it should be done".

It just means the general assumption should have been stressed a little more and we should explain options to people looking for answers. Personally, I use the alternate rules and a short rest is overnight and a long rest is several days. I find that works for the pace of the story I want to tell. For other people it may mean just having PCs in dangerous environments where even an hour's rest is a luxury.

I would say the bigger problem here is that the adventuring day assumes 6-8 medium to hard encounters per day to achieve both class balance and danger to the party. The 6-8 encounters per adventuring day is simply not possible to achieve for many gaming groups. My current gaming group is lucky if we can get through two encounters in a single session. Most games I have played in get only 3 to 5 encounters per session, and usually a single session can cover more than just one day of in game time. There simply isn't enough time for the 6-8 encounters per day.

It also severely limits the types of campaigns that DMs can run. Not all games are hack and slash dungeon crawls. Any sandbox type game will be hard pressed to find 6-8 meaningful encounters per day. Not all games have a doomsday clock constantly ticking to force players to rush through encounter after encounter. Even the published modules I have played in rarely follow the 6-8 encounters per day paradigm.

 

[Oofta]

I would say the bigger problem here is that the adventuring day assumes 6-8 medium to hard encounters per day to achieve both class balance and danger to the party. The 6-8 encounters per adventuring day is simply not possible to achieve for many gaming groups. My current gaming group is lucky if we can get through two encounters in a single session. Most games I have played in get only 3 to 5 encounters per session, and usually a single session can cover more than just one day of in game time. There simply isn't enough time for the 6-8 encounters per day.

It also severely limits the types of campaigns that DMs can run. Not all games are hack and slash dungeon crawls. Any sandbox type game will be hard pressed to find 6-8 meaningful encounters per day. Not all games have a doomsday clock constantly ticking to force players to rush through encounter after encounter. Even the published modules I have played in rarely follow the 6-8 encounters per day paradigm.

The time between long rests for your adventurers does not have to be limited to 1 session. Mine regularly last 2-3 sessions and cover days if not weeks of in-game time. That will sometimes include off-screen encounters that I just describe "You were hoping to get a break in the town of Safe Haven, but the orcs have kept you busy. While you didn't use any significant resources there have been multiple small skirmishes. It's been two weeks and you get a short rest, but not a long rest."

It's a bit of extra paperwork for the players to remember what spells and other resources they've used but it does work. Of course every once in a while I make it clear that the PCs can go nova, because sometimes it's fun for them.

EDIT: I should note too that if I have a between-game summary I also ask the players if they think they would be doing anything special, and get their input into the narrative.

 

[Flamestrike]

My current gaming group is lucky if we can get through two encounters in a single session. Most games I have played in get only 3 to 5 encounters per session, and usually a single session can cover more than just one day of in game time. There simply isn't enough time [in a session] for the 6-8 encounters per day.

A session is not an adventuring day.

It might be convenient to long rest at the end of a session (so everyone is back to full strength by the next session) but surely your group is able to handle recording resource usage (loss of hp, hid, spell slots, sorcery points, action surge etc) during the session so you can pick up where you left off last session?

If you're getting 3-4 encounters per session, and find that keying long rests to the end of your sessions works for you, then simply key long rests to happen the end of every second session.

Also note, an adventuring day doesn't have to be a actual 'day' in game either. An adventuring 'day' is simply the span of game time between long rests. There are options in the game to make long rest take an entire week (turning an adventuring 'day' into the activity that happens in the several weeks of adventuring between long rests) and another option that turns long rests into 1 hour breaks (meaning you can have several adventuring 'days' in one actual day).

You can key long rest resource recharge into something other than game time as well. Milestone resource recovery is one option (when the PCs clear the 1st dungeon level they get the benefits of a long rest).

There are other more arbitrary methods that I have seen work well - one of which as the DM simply telling the players straight up that they can rest as much as they want, but only the rest they take after the 6th encounter 'counts as' a long rest (and rests after every 2nd encounter count as short rests). It was arbitrary, but players stopped the [nova] fall back and rest [nova] fall back and rest [nova] cycle, and instead focused on beating the encounters and getting through to that long rest after the 6th encounter. The felt a lot more like 4th edition (short rest abilities became almost encounter abilities, and long rest abilities were dailies). there was no need to game the rest system, because it simply wassnt possible anymore. The game was balanced, but via an obvious artificial framework (much like 4E was).

You dont need to cram 6-8 encounters in a single [game day]. An adventuring 'day' is not a game day; it is simply the time between long rests. It can be any period of game time, or triggered off anything else that you want. You could have them happen after a whole week of rest in town (gritty realism), or on the first day of every game month, or after every second session, or after every 6th encounter or whatever.

 

[abirdcall]

IIt also severely limits the types of campaigns that DMs can run. Not all games are hack and slash dungeon crawls. Any sandbox type game will be hard pressed to find 6-8 meaningful encounters per day. Not all games have a doomsday clock constantly ticking to force players to rush through encounter after encounter. Even the published modules I have played in rarely follow the 6-8 encounters per day paradigm.

You don't need a doomsday clock, you just need danger. Sandbox games work fine. If the party retreats in the middle of the adventure and then go back all kinds of things are possible. There might be more monsters, another party might have conquered the dungeon, etc.

Also I have played the Starter Set, Hoard of the Dragon Queen, Out of the Abyss, and Curse of Strahd. They all follow the guidelines.

 

[Flamestrike]

Also I have played the Starter Set, Hoard of the Dragon Queen, Out of the Abyss, and Curse of Strahd. They all follow the guidelines.

Broadly speaking you spend several weeks wandering around the underdark or above ground or around Barovia (or wherever) with little to no encounters (the occasional 1-2 encounter adventuring day) before stumbling on a 'zoomed in' adventure locale (a ruin, dungeon, Cult HQ, network of forest clearings and trails, bandit camp, flying castle, keep, caverns etc) featuring around half a dozen or more encounters, and designed to be dealt with in a single day of game time.

Within that broad structure, the bulk of policing the 5 minute adventuring day is up to the DM using the same techniques we've always had to use (time limits, environmental pressures, social contract with the players, alterations to the rest mechanic itself, reactive monsters who reinforce the dungeon/ leave taking the treasure with them/ raise the alarm/ come looking for the PCs etc).

No-one is saying your games cant feature the 5MWD if thats how you prefer to run your games. Its just that if you do choose to run your games that way, then you need to understand the consequences (class balance goes out of kilter, and encounter difficulty is trivialised, meaning to challenge the party you need to ramp up difficulty, increasing swingyness and the chances of a TPK, and further throwing class balance out of whack).

 

[abirdcall]

Broadly speaking you spend several weeks wandering around the underdark or above ground or around Barovia (or wherever) with little to no encounters (the occasional 1-2 encounter adventuring day) before stumbling on a 'zoomed in' adventure locale (a ruin, dungeon, Cult HQ, network of forest clearings and trails, bandit camp, flying castle, keep, caverns etc) featuring around half a dozen or more encounters, and designed to be dealt with in a single day of game time.

Most of the main chunks follow the encounters/adventuring day guidelines. As the DM you are given some leeway on pacing. Moreso in adventures like CoS where it is more of a sandbox. Still, locales are set up and there are often consequences for resting beyond the simple 'it's too dangerous' (though that is also good enough anyway).

The best example of this is HotDQ where all but 1 chapter is its own contained adventuring day with a ticking clock and/or lots of danger. Even if the DM plays the travelling chapter straight with a long rest following each encounter, that is just 1 of many episodes in the adventure.

 

[Blue]

There's been a few times where I've decided a fight has gone on long enough (and isn't particularly important, or the boss has already been taken out) and the remaining monsters suddenly only have 1 HP left.

Yeah, I've done that for pacing or dramatic* reasons, but rarely for "too easy/too hard" reasons.

(* Dramatic: Player describes a cool manuever they are doing. The dice love it. Creature is technically left with 4 HPs out of 166. My response: "You slayed it! Describe the kill."

 

[hejtmane]

Sometimes it's not purely optimizing, but taking a weird concept and making it as optimized as you possibly can in the rule set.

I play in a game that meets once a month, the DM just rebooted the campaign at first level. All the characters are supposed to be descended from one of the gods in the FR pantheon (giving us an extra feat at first level, but nothing else).

My character is a descendant of both Tymora (goddess of good fortune) and Beshaba (goddess of misfortune) - He's a halfling noble (was lucky enough to be born into the right family), his bonus feat is "Lucky" and he's a Sorceror (Wild mage) and soon will have 2 levels of Wizard (Divination). Basically he controls fate - re-rolls 1's automatically (halfling luck), can roll an extra D20 when he needs to (luck feat), can grant himself advantage when he needs to (Tides of Chaos), and can alter fate for himself or others at higher levels (Bend Fate from lvl 6 wild mage and Portent from lvl 2 wizard diviner).

He gets his spells two levels later due to the two levels of wizard, but it gives him Portent and Ritual Casting for several 1st level wizard spells. Not super powerful, but he definitely has an impact on events.

I have a player doing a Dragon Born EK Knight two handed bo GWF he took protection no GWM he took two level of wizard for Portent and the lucky feat and of course Imdomtiable when he got high enough. You will have some fun with the character