Encounters per day

[cooperjer]

In any game with feats, multiclassing, more than four PCs, experienced minmax players, and/or magic items, you need double-deadly or even deadlier encounters to challenge the party.

The DMG idea of an endless parade of weaksauce encounters where the outcome of the fight is never in question and no challenge is present is simply not what I want out of the game.

I'll be experimenting with some ideas to help with this concern, and a concern I have that forces combat at high levels to last several rounds and hours of real time. In my experience, I've run a variety of encounters per day ranging from 4 to 6. One of my players likes to try to get full utility our of his time limited spells since he is playing a warlock and has a few spells per day. He also never feels confident in taking a short rest in a dungeon, and my sorcerer player asks why she should take a short rest because she has very little benefit from it. I find that as levels increase and damage output increases, that HP values of the monsters increase. The net result is combat that seems to take a few hours real time. I believe the target number of rounds for combat should be between 3 and 5 rounds, based on what feels fun to play and what I seen in AL and on streaming games. Lately I'm in the 7 to 10 round range. To address this, I'm going to implement a bonus to hit and save difficulty and multiplier to damage starting at round 3. I think this is used in Savage Worlds and I heard Adam Koebel, but I'm not 100% sure. I need to iron out the details with my players, but the current thought is to add a bonus to hit and to save difficulty equal to the round number starting at round 3 (i.e. +3 bonus to hit or save difficulty on round 3, +4 to hit or save difficulty on round 4, etc.). In addition, a damage multiplier equal to the round number will be multiplied to the static bonus for damage. For example a weapon attack that does 1d6+2 damage would then do 1d6+6 damage on round 3. A spell attack would receive the benefit of adding 3 for each die rolled on round 3, thus a fireball is 6d6+18 or a magic missile is 1d4+4 per missile On round 4 the multiplier becomes 4 and all damage is adjusted accordingly. I feel like this will end combat quickly and possibly still cause a resource drain requiring the players to think about moving ahead.

In addition, I'm considering adding a benefit to the players if they continue on for the day without taking a long rest. This is something I heard Matt Colville mention and it's from a Warhammer game. Once the character reach 4 rounds of combat during the adventuring day they each receive inspiration. Once they reach 7 rounds of combat during the adventuring day one of the PCs get the ability to inspire ally as a bonus action granting some temporary HP. Once they reach 10 rounds of combat in a day they each get 1 lucky point to use. Once they reach 13 rounds of combat they've worked together so well that day that one PC gets to switch initiative order with another with another PC once in the encounter. Again, I need to iron this out with my players.

 

[5ekyu]

Fwiw, some games use a fairly free flowing plot/hero point system where in action players acquire and burn a resource that does vanish or reduce at rests. This serves to provide a mechanical driver to keep going, press the advantage etc and makes rest-a-lot have a very measurable sacrifice to it.

One example is Star Trek momentum. But iirc i think Cortex had similar sort of.

But, one downside can be a flavor/feel thing. Some games i have seen of STA it seemed each scene was more about momentum mechanics than character traits and "how much momentum do we have and can i spend or did we get" was asked, checked or referenced more than character traits and what happened.

 

[Kinematics]

Think of it another way and things get easier:

A deadly encounter is likely to remove about 40% of a normal party's long rest replenishing resources (hps, spells, etc...)
A hard encounter will deplete 20%.
A normal about 10%.
Easy none. These battles should have a purpose other than threatening the lives of the PCs. They should have someone to rescue, something to stop, or information to be uncovered.

Plan for a 100% usage and you'll be providing a nice challenge.

This is certainly an interesting approach, but I'm not sure it's 'easier'. I'd say it's supplementary, where it helps you judge if you're making the encounter hard enough. If you're not using up enough resources with a particular encounter, do you need to add more mobs, or change how you approach the fight?

"So, the DMG infamously suggests 6 to 8 encounters per day (of the medium-to-hard variety), which most gaming tables find... untenable. However I've discovered data that has led me to a different conclusion."

The data i discovered was that the DMG said with a lot of caveats on typical this, blah blah that parties could "handle" 6 to 8 medium to hard encounters a day... Later on with a mention of an expected 2 shorts and a long.

Not sure how what you came up with, which seems to be that differing the mix of encounters produces a similar set of results proves this to be "a lie".

No, the "lie" is that 6 to 8 medium to hard encounters (ie: 6 hard, 8 medium) are suggested per day, but the XP suggested per day only allows 4.5 hard to 6.5 medium encounters. And when I looked at what patterns of encounters could add up to the suggested total XP and remain fairly consistent across levels, I found that a balanced set of encounters was most reliable.

I think most that complain about the DMG rules want 2-4 encounters per day. So even your 5-6-7-8 total encounters is a bit much for their taste.

Fewer combat encounters, yes. A handful of combat encounters can easily eat up all the time of a session, and slow down progress along the greater storyline (outside of pure dungeon-delving), which is annoying for both players and DMs. It's still feasible to reach the higher number of encounters by sprinkling some easy encounters in (which are much less likely to be combat encounters, but can still be a resource drain).

In any game with feats, multiclassing, more than four PCs, experienced minmax players, and/or magic items, you need double-deadly or even deadlier encounters to challenge the party.

The DMG idea of an endless parade of weaksauce encounters where the outcome of the fight is never in question and no challenge is present is simply not what I want out of the game.

Most of what I see where the players stomp all over the encounters is that the fights are like plain vanilla, "line up and shoot at each other" tactics from the 18th century. That extra text in the DMG about adjusting the 'actual' difficulty based on differences of environment and advantages/disadvantages for each side could be used to fix the apparent difficulty relative to the nominal difficulty. If the players are easily stomping through a hard/deadly encounter, it's likely that they have unacknowledged advantages that are stepping the encounter down (possibly specific to the particular group of characters, so not easy to generalize), or the opponents aren't being played to their best potential.



That might be an interesting challenge thread, actually. Given a standard four-person party, and freedom to choose the parameters of the encounter, try to determine the most difficult situation you can put the players in with an encounter challenge rating of easy, medium, or hard. Can choose what level to do the challenge at, too.

 

[5ekyu]

This is certainly an interesting approach, but I'm not sure it's 'easier'. I'd say it's supplementary, where it helps you judge if you're making the encounter hard enough. If you're not using up enough resources with a particular encounter, do you need to add more mobs, or change how you approach the fight?



No, the "lie" is that 6 to 8 medium to hard encounters (ie: 6 hard, 8 medium) are suggested per day, but the XP suggested per day only allows 4.5 hard to 6.5 medium encounters. And when I looked at what patterns of encounters could add up to the suggested total XP and remain fairly consistent across levels, I found that a balanced set of encounters was most reliable.


Fewer combat encounters, yes. A handful of combat encounters can easily eat up all the time of a session, and slow down progress along the greater storyline (outside of pure dungeon-delving), which is annoying for both players and DMs. It's still feasible to reach the higher number of encounters by sprinkling some easy encounters in (which are much less likely to be combat encounters, but can still be a resource drain).


Most of what I see where the players stomp all over the encounters is that the fights are like plain vanilla, "line up and shoot at each other" tactics from the 18th century. That extra text in the DMG about adjusting the 'actual' difficulty based on differences of environment and advantages/disadvantages for each side could be used to fix the apparent difficulty relative to the nominal difficulty. If the players are easily stomping through a hard/deadly encounter, it's likely that they have unacknowledged advantages that are stepping the encounter down (possibly specific to the particular group of characters, so not easy to generalize), or the opponents aren't being played to their best potential.



That might be an interesting challenge thread, actually. Given a standard four-person party, and freedom to choose the parameters of the encounter, try to determine the most difficult situation you can put the players in with an encounter challenge rating of easy, medium, or hard. Can choose what level to do the challenge at, too.

just to be clear, you are looking at that Xp per day chart that describes itself as a measure of the Xp a character can earn during a day at one point, then references the "adjusted xp" as what it is showing even thought the XP awards section makes it clear that adjusted Xp is used for "budget building" and that only actual unadjusted XP is given to characters?

Thats the lie? or is that just a badly identified chart?

 

[Kinematics]

just to be clear, you are looking at that Xp per day chart that describes itself as a measure of the Xp a character can earn during a day at one point, then references the "adjusted xp" as what it is showing even thought the XP awards section makes it clear that adjusted Xp is used for "budget building" and that only actual unadjusted XP is given to characters?

Thats the lie? or is that just a badly identified chart?

Using level 5 to illustrate. Using a hard encounter.

Single player: 750 XP
Party of 4: 3000 XP

Budget: 3000

Budget for 1 mob: 3000
Budget for 2 mobs: 2000
Budget for 3-6 mobs: 1500
etc.

Per day XP per character: 3500

Number of hard encounters to reach 3500 XP: 3500/750 = 4.67

Now, having written that, and going back and forth on what the DMG says, and the order in which I've been doing the calculations, I might have approached this incorrectly. That is, despite the encounters being of equivalent difficulty, it appears that they do not actually provide the same amount of experience. A hard encounter with 6 mobs will provide only half the XP of a hard encounter with just 1 mob. Counterintuitive, but could raise the average number of encounters needed...

However, on the other hand, the Adventuring Day XP table lists "Adjusted XP per Day per Character", which flips the results again, meaning I'm back to using the adjusted XP and comparing to the suggested adjusted XP per day. So the above ratio of encounters to reach the suggested XP per day (4.67) is still correct.


I feel like I've been doing this backwards, now, but I'm also having a hard time judging if the terminology of the text makes sense.

 

[5ekyu]

I'd also argue that the 0 or 1 encounters per day during travel leads to meta-gaming by the players, such that they know there is no need to hold anything in reserve and can sledgehammer the encounter into the ground (if it occurs). Varying the number of random encounters per day (and difficulty as you suggest) can put a governor on that behavior. For example, the trivial encounter they nova'd draws the attention of some much nastier and problematic creature... Now they're in trouble as they've used up their big guns

While i absolutely agree that encounters should have a lot of variety and variability, i do not agree that its metagaming to throw full out against a foe --- if --- there has been a history of such an encounter frequency. "How dangerous is this area usually" is a matter of experience, lore, and a facet of the environment - not some mystical "what chart is the Gm using" thingy.

If they are in total unknown lands, less to go on of course. Also, a new event may surprise and confound those expectations but should be seen as a new change not just another day at the office.

The best key for encounter vs balance is for the Gm to not have a "standard" arrangement but rather a highly story-based and situation set of options. my folks know the big bad mega-fight might be first thing, might be in the middle, might be last, might not exist but there be a lot of mid-tier etc etc etc and know that cannot really count on a set structure or flow... but they can operate with knowledge and expectations in known areas and that often the "sudden departures from normal" would have tells that they see - like say "hey you know, normally when we camp here there are plenty of deer but there are none... haven\t seen any at all. That is odd."

 

[pogre]

Interesting calculations and ideas.

I tend to run a lot more encounters per day/ adventure. My group flies through combat and enjoys it and it goes well (mechanically in the game, sometimes it is a disaster for the characters).

I play in a group where we tend to just have BIG fights. I don't think we abuse that knowledge, but it does change the feel of the game.

I enjoy both styles - but the number of encounters per day does change the feel of the game for me.

 

[Li Shenron]

I'd also argue that the 0 or 1 encounters per day during travel leads to meta-gaming by the players, such that they know there is no need to hold anything in reserve and can sledgehammer the encounter into the ground (if it occurs). Varying the number of random encounters per day (and difficulty as you suggest) can put a governor on that behavior. For example, the trivial encounter they nova'd draws the attention of some much nastier and problematic creature... Now they're in trouble as they've used up their big guns

Sure, but I don't actually think this is a big metagaming problem. It can makes sense also from a narrative in-character point of view that (depending on the location, of course) the PCs don't expect to encounter a lot of monsters during a certain travel and so they feel confident about using up most resources at once. They should also be capable of guesstimating the challenge of an encounter within a couple of rounds maximum. And also they probably need to sledgehammer such single encounter in order to survive.

 

[CapnZapp]

Most of what I see where the players stomp all over the encounters is that the fights are like plain vanilla, "line up and shoot at each other" tactics from the 18th century.

Could we stop doing this "any DM that complains must be a bad DM" schtick, please? There can be other explanations. Like, say, that the game designers have actually made objectively weaksauce monsters?

Easily four out of five encounters in published books have no interesting terrain or other features. I have my hands full as it is with DMing, I don't need to spend hours upon hours to make each and every encounter into a special snowflake encounter just to keep the challenge from disappearing.

Thank you.

 

[Horwath]

In my experience, this greatly favors classes with long-rest resource recovery, especially casters due to their flexibility.

Buff spells that will last for an encounter need 2-3 instead of 6-8.

If the encounter is deadly because of more creatures, then any area of efffect will be more efficient by affecting more targets. This is true of both damage and debuffs.

If the encounter is deadly because of tougher foes, then single target debuffs will have a lot more payoff. With the 5e system of 2 of 6 trained save proficiencies, good spell selection will make sure that the big foes are just as easy to affect as normal foes. (Except Legendary Saves, they provide a buffer.)

Finally, 2-3 deadly encounters will average less total rounds per day then 8-8 mixed encounters. More rounds are a benefit for those who can consistently put out, like weapon wielders. So this being shorter disadvantages them vs. casters.

The flip side is that casters get a boost from needing less "filler" like cantrips in order to stretch their spell slots - they can be casting meaningful spells every action, so they become more effective per action compared to the same character when they need to stretch for a lot more actions.

Thing is, do not play all encounters as pack animals.

And you can exceed XP limit of deadly by little if you think your party is over optimized.

Also attack from ambush, 2 or 3 vectors of attack so you can avoid majority of AoE damage/debuffs. Ranged attacks behind cover. Also never do solo monsters unless lore is 100% that the creature is solitary to a fault.

You can also retreat your villians and have them regroup with reinforcements few minutes later.