Five-Minute Workday Article

[Hussar]

Well, sort of Majoru Oakheart. In 3e, there's a chart that says about 50% of encounter should be par, and the other half should be higher or lower. Not exactly an overwhelming majority. In 4e, if you look at the encounter packages that they suggest, whether a "wolf pack" or whatever term they give them, it's pretty quickly apparent that 5 Level=Party Level opponents was not what was envisioned. Almost every encounter package consists of one (or two) higher level monsters and a parcel full of lower level monsters.

I find that this makes for pretty interesting encounters - you have one sort of encounter boss, and loads of smaller stuff that makes up for its relatively weaker attacks by simply having more attacks.

But, no, I'm going to disagree with you. Both 3e and 4e did not advocate most of encounters being par.

 

[pemerton]

For magic it's more difficult to explain why casting spells at all would help cast more powerful spells.

Necromancy/life drain?

 

[MarkB]

For magic it's more difficult to explain why casting spells at all would help cast more powerful spells.

I think of it in terms of focus. Casting big, complicated spells takes a lot of work mentally, and tends to break your concentration. Casting simple, well-known spells that you've fully mastered, on the other hand, is routine mental exercise and actually helps to focus your concentration.

 

[keterys]

It's probably fine for casters to be a burst and recover type... for example, let's say a wizard has max mana equal to their highest spell level, and they recover 1 point per round they cast no more than a cantrip.

So a 1st level wizard could
Round 1: Cast a 1st level spell
Round 2: Cast a cantrip
Round 3: Cast a 1st level spell

And a 5th level wizard could
Round 1: Cast a 3rd level spell
Round 2: Cast a cantrip
Round 3: Cast a 1st level spell

or
Round 1: Cast a 1st level spell
Round 2: Cast a 2nd level spell
Round 3: Cast a cantrip

Etc.

 

[Zustiur]

I know we were very happy to see that in 3e when we fought a battle it was because the battle meant something and actually risked real resources. So, we didn't want to run any encounters that were weaker than that. In fact, even encounters that only drained 20% of our resources still felt a little weak to us. It became fairly normal to fight APL+3 or APL+4 encounters as our "average" encounter simply because it felt like there was some actual risk involved. Which required us to actually USE our spells or we wouldn't win.

Which added to the effect of the 15MAD.

So, in other words; you (as a group) focused on encounter based attrition, rather than attrition spread across the whole day?

I think that may be where a lot of the problem stems from. If you want to feel like every individual combat is that much of a challenge, then yes, 15 MAD is likely. On the other hand, if you see surviving the whole day, rather than just the encounter, as the goal, then you're less likely to see 15 MAD.

This is where we say "it's a play style thing". I typically favour the 'many small encounters across the day' thing, rather than 'fewer more challenging encounters'.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

So, in other words; you (as a group) focused on encounter based attrition, rather than attrition spread across the whole day?

It's not that. It's that the mechanics prevented us from concentrating on anything else.

Combats with less powerful creatures tended to go like this:

"A CR 8 Destrachan? We're level 11. Alright, Rogue, you go first. You sneak attack for 7d6+11. You do 36 damage. Fighter, you're next. You charge, power attack and do 2d6+23 or 30 damage. That kills it."

No hitpoints lost at all, no resources used up at all. We were capable of fighting infinite of those fights each day. After the first 6 or 7 of those fights(especially after it took 20-25 minutes to draw out the room on the battle map, put all the minis on the board, roll initiative and record it all down, describe the room and the monsters, as well as have a brief conversation about tactics before going into the battle) we got really tired of spending 20 minutes on battles that had literally NO effect on the characters.

Even if the group got hit once and had to use 2 or 3 charges of their Wand of Cure Light Wounds...it amounted to so little resources that they could fight 20 or 30 of them in a day and they wouldn't have lost any resources(the loot they got from the fights would pay for a new wand).

My players started asking at the beginning of every combat "Do we have to play this out? They aren't going to hurt us. I'd rather just roll a d10 for each of us to determine the damage we take and assume we beat them. I want to have time left in this session to have a real fight or two."

I kept telling them no...until I got tired of running those combats realizing that they had no effect at all. Then I just stopped including them in the game.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

But, no, I'm going to disagree with you. Both 3e and 4e did not advocate most of encounters being par.

Not most being par....but most being CLOSE to par. I don't remember the exact numbers again. But 50% were supposed to be par...that's already almost most right there(51% being "most"). The next largest was "easy if handled properly"(whatever that means...presumably encounters close enough to be a challenge but not too much higher or lower so they'd still be considered "easy"). But the next largest percent was supposed to be APL+1 through 4.

If you add up those percentages, it came to 85-95% of encounters that were supposed to be either on par or slightly harder or easier than par(technically, it said 10% should be less than your parties level and 5% should be APL+5 or higher...though it never says how much of the 10% should be dramatically lower than the APL of the party).

Basically, if you followed the percentages in the book you only encountered "much easier" or "much harder" encounters about 5-10% of the time. That means that "approximately equal" encounters(which I define as encounters that are EL equal to the level your party plus or minus 4...even if the individual creatures might be outside of this range) ARE most of the encounters. Even if you ignore all the percentages other than EL=APL and EL=APL+1 through APL+4...you still have 65% of encounters should be at or slightly above their level...which I think qualifies as "most".

Also, Assuming 5 encounters a day, you should assume to get one of these extremely high or extremely low encounters only once every 2 days. And half of them should be dramatically lower...which means they shouldn't really use up resources at all. So, that means you are only really worried about the encounters that happen every 4th day of adventuring at a rate of 5 encounters a day.

And given that's the rate you should expect overwhelmingly powerful encounters...it only makes sense to retreat after one or two encounters, because you'll need all your resources to defeat an encounter that difficult. And each day COULD be the day you run into that encounter.

As for 4e. It suggested that anything outside about 5 levels of your party became too hard or too easy. Mike Mearls himself told me at DDXP right before 4e came out that they had tested the level range and they had people in house who pushed it to about 8 levels in carefully controlled situations(mostly monsters that were somehow restricted from using the full force of their abilities or were the only monster in the encounter), but he didn't recommend encounters beyond 5 in regular play....the system wasn't designed to handle that without TPKs or encounters so easy they might as well not be run.

 

[Zustiur]

It's not that. It's that the mechanics prevented us from concentrating on anything else.

Combats with less powerful creatures tended to go like this:

"A CR 8 Destrachan? We're level 11. Alright, Rogue, you go first. You sneak attack for 7d6+11. You do 36 damage. Fighter, you're next. You charge, power attack and do 2d6+23 or 30 damage. That kills it."

Right, that explains that, and I see your problem.

No hitpoints lost at all, no resources used up at all. We were capable of fighting infinite of those fights each day. After the first 6 or 7 of those fights(especially after it took 20-25 minutes to draw out the room on the battle map, put all the minis on the board, roll initiative and record it all down, describe the room and the monsters, as well as have a brief conversation about tactics before going into the battle) we got really tired of spending 20 minutes on battles that had literally NO effect on the characters.

Even if the group got hit once and had to use 2 or 3 charges of their Wand of Cure Light Wounds...it amounted to so little resources that they could fight 20 or 30 of them in a day and they wouldn't have lost any resources(the loot they got from the fights would pay for a new wand).

As for the rest; there are some key issues we can look at here:

• 20-25 minutes to draw out the room
• Describe the room and monsters
• Have a brief conversation about tactics
• Wand of Cure Light Wounds

If you know a battle is below par, it strikes me as an appropriate point for Theatre of the Mind, even in groups that love to use miniatures.

Describing the room and monsters, I'll concede. That's going to be required for any battle, so you can't really skip it.

Having a brief conversation about tactics? My inclination is to prevent this happening. While I accept it's a common way of playing, it is still meta-gaming. If your characters are standing around discussing tactics,
then the monster gets to go first and there is no surprise, and no sneak attack.
If the characters discuss tactics for more than 6 seconds, the monster gets a free round.
I don't mean to tell you how to play, but this is one of my pet peeves. If a round is equivalent to 6 seconds, there should be no character monologues. No discussion. Just quick (shouted) orders if anything. Things like:
"There's a Destrachan", "Cast lightning bolt", "Retreat!", "Hold the line"
These are all acceptable.
On the other hand:
"Ok rogue, you sneak in, then the fighter charges, then the wizard hits it with a magic missile, then next round we all get out of the way so the wizard can cast fireball..." Sorry, you've had your entire 6 seconds, you took no actions other than talking. NEXT. {second players says} "After the fireba..." Sorry, Person A used up 6 seconds talking, you won't have a chance to talk this round unless you're talking over the top of him. You can't listen and talk at the same time.

If your players don't have time to discuss tactics any more than the characters do, there will be a slight shift in favour of the monsters having some sort of chance to fight back. It won't be much, but it will help.

Finally and most importantly, the wands issue. I suggest we just remove them from the game. No cure light wounds wand. In fact, no healing wants at all. Possibly even as far as, no wands for divine magic. Then ensure that potions aren't a dime a dozen at any level.
This might be seen as a step backwards by some players, but I really think AD&D was better in this regard. All magic should be expensive in some manner. Item crafting is the worst culprit, so it's the first thing I'd fix. Even for things you can craft, I'd make it more expensive. Let's pick 10 as the multiplier. Now instead of a wand of magic missile being 375 GP and 30 XP to create, it becomes 3750 GP and 300 XP. Yes these numbers would still become trivial at high level, but it would take a lot longer to get there. Perhaps more importantly, the wand would now take 7-10 days to craft instead of 1 day. Even if you left cure wands in the game, having to spend 10 days to replace one is a significant impact on any adventure. This better represents the amount of cost such an expenditure should have.

How much would your game have been affected by these suggestions? I cannot tell, but I know they would have made some difference. If healing 10-20 HP takes up some of your resources for the day (cleric's 1st level spells) then it has a much more significant and appropriate impact on the party's total resources than using up charges of a wand. This coupled with the inability to discuss serious tactics out-of-character should mean that those low level healing resources are used much more often. This in turn means that the EL/CR 8 encounter would start to have some relevance again.

I'm sure further factors can be identified and remedied, before we even begin looking at major mechanical changes such as replacing daily recovery cycles with something else.

 

[Pickles JG]

"If you know a battle is below par, it strikes me as an appropriate point for Theatre of the Mind, even in groups that love to use miniatures."

They would certainly be faster but still not very interesting & pretty much pointless. I would just narrate it rather than pretending there was any threat or challenge. Not that all fights have to be thretening - they can be there to let off steam or break the tension of a long RP session say but that does not apply to series of simple fights. A good tension breaker steam letter offer would be a par level encvounter consisting of a lot of lower level monsters.

A 3e favourite moment of mine was fireballing a room just because it had cobwebs in it, but I would not want to circumvent every encounter like that.

If the characters discuss tactics for more than 6 seconds, the monster gets a free round.
I don't mean to tell you how to play, but this is one of my pet peeves. If a round is equivalent to 6 seconds, there should be no character monologues. No discussion. Just quick (shouted) orders if anything. Things like:
"There's a Destrachan", "Cast lightning bolt", "Retreat!", "Hold the line"
These are all acceptable.
On the other hand:
"Ok rogue, you sneak in, then the fighter charges, then the wizard hits it with a magic missile, then next round we all get out of the way so the wizard can cast fireball..." Sorry, you've had your entire 6 seconds, you took no actions other than talking. NEXT. {second players says} "After the fireba..." Sorry, Person A used up 6 seconds talking, you won't have a chance to talk this round unless you're talking over the top of him. You can't listen and talk at the same time.

While this would speed up the game there is the argument my players put to me that their characters are experts at this & can communicate this much faster than the players & also make tactical decisions faster too. (They spend all that downtime between weekly play sessions training. )
This type of restriction also takes away the fun lots of people have in the game of socialising/discussing things with their co players & of making tactical decisions.

D&D is such poor simulation is always seems odd when someone gets hung up on one aspect of that poverty.

Finally and most importantly, the wands issue. I suggest we just remove them from the game. No cure light wounds wand. In fact, no healing wants at all. Possibly even as far as, no wands for divine magic. Then ensure that potions aren't a dime a dozen at any level.
This might be seen as a step backwards by some players, but I really think AD&D was better in this regard. All magic should be expensive in some manner. Item crafting is the worst culprit, so it's the first thing I'd fix. Even for things you can craft, I'd make it more expensive. Let's pick 10 as the multiplier. Now instead of a wand of magic missile being 375 GP and 30 XP to create, it becomes 3750 GP and 300 XP. Yes these numbers would still become trivial at high level, but it would take a lot longer to get there. Perhaps more importantly, the wand would now take 7-10 days to craft instead of 1 day. Even if you left cure wands in the game, having to spend 10 days to replace one is a significant impact on any adventure. This better represents the amount of cost such an expenditure should have.

I'm sure further factors can be identified and remedied, before we even begin looking at major mechanical changes such as replacing daily recovery cycles with something else.

You are suggesting massive house rulings. What I found worked OK was fewer tougher & consequently more interesting encounters, which carried into 4e. The CLW wand spam is an oddity & the Action Movie style surges in 4e feels much better but they both have the same sort of effect - PCs start most encounters at full health.

I share Majoru Oakhearts experience. Even EL encounters were often dull. the worst sort would be something like a handful of Bodaks when you massively outlevelled them. You can chop them down in a round or 2 but you might fail a death save on the way. Some people find gambling on slot machines fun but I am not one of them.

I complained so much in one dungeon that the DM just put all of the monsters into one large set of rooms & made us meet them all at once (foreshadowing purported 4e approach of encounter areas rather than rooms).

 

[Kraydak]

...
Even if the group got hit once and had to use 2 or 3 charges of their Wand of Cure Light Wounds...it amounted to so little resources that they could fight 20 or 30 of them in a day and they wouldn't have lost any resources(the loot they got from the fights would pay for a new wand).
...

Yup. Now remove the wand. Then slash the Cleric's healing spells and/or remove spontaneous casting. All of a sudden, the encounter DOES matter.

One of 3e's errors was going from a situation where the character's HP totals significantly/vastly outweighed the HP total contained within affordably-expendable items and the Cleric's spell pool. All of a sudden, to stress the PCs/players, the DM needed to make fights big. Which meant that once the Cleric was dry, that was *it* because any fight required the Cleric to cast heals. Yo-yoing HP pools was a very bad change.

In 1e, with NO spontaneous casting, NO +level to heals and Cure Serious a 4th level spell healing 2d8+1, ANY fight that drew a single cure spell was an important fight. On the other hand, a healthy party could keep adventuring even if the Cleric was dry, because they hadn't lost too much of their total (base+heals) HP pool, and they had some (expensive!) healing and extra-healing potions for emergencies.