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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cap'n Kobold" data-source="post: 8654426" data-attributes="member: 6802951">Indeed. I think that is where the advice about having different stages to the fight, or reinforcements arriving in waves is useful: it lets the DM adjust on the fly in case of bad luck. You can still design an encounter that isn't too easy for the party, but change it partway through if the party get unlucky and are in trouble.The multiple medium encounters are closer to what 5e is balanced around, so there isn't so much class imbalance. Generally a 6-8 encounter day, with two short rests and a long rest seems to be the sweet spot for class balance, backed up by comments from the designers to that end I believe. Have 9+ encounters in a day and the game will start to favour at-will heavy classes like most martials. Have less than 5 encounters, and/or only one short rest, and the game starts to favour full-caster classes.  You can use the spell point variant to compare some classes. For example monks (particularly the 4-elements) are set up as short-rest-based half-casters. (As in they have about 1/3rd as many ki points as a half-caster would have spell points and spend them at the same costs as a half-caster would for the same spell.) Multiply their Ki by three (since it would be expected to refresh three times a day rather than once for a normal spell caster) and those are the resources the class is expected to have access to between long rests.Likewise there is a rough equivalency if you convert Warlock spellcasting into spell points compared to a normal full caster: they have about 1/3rd as many. Artificer: - You're correct. Artificers are very much built around sustained damage and support, and very little nova. In a long adventuring day they will excel but they cannot compete with a full caster in nova capability.Cleric: - Healing word prevents casting another full spell that round. At a certain level it is probably more efficient to just continue to cast high-level spells rather than healing word and cantrip to get someone back up. Particularly if that character isn't a full caster and so may not be able to contribute as much as the cleric continuing to nova.Warlock: - Will perform much worse than a long-rest-based full caster if the encounter goes on longer than their spell slots. A full-caster can just start casting their next lowest level of spells, but the warlock will be down to cantrips. (Very effective cantrips: better than a lot of martial attacks, but generally no competition between those and reasonably high level spells.)</blockquote>

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