D&D 5E Guidelines for fewer/tougher encounters?

[Psikerlord#]

Move short rests to an evening and long rests to a full day and/or a day in sanctuary type environment as in the DMG optional rules. This creates a pace of action that is more similar to classic fantasy novels.

Yep, the more I see and play the short rest mechanic, the less I like it. I think a per day resource is better, even if it is 3/day or whatever.

Similarly, the HD healing everyone gets is just pure buffer. If you remove HD healing, you need substantially less fights to make the day challenging. Uses spells to cure wounds is a meaningful choice with an opportunity cost. HD healing isnt, it's pure extra HP everyone gets. In hindsight I believe it is a mistake and pre-4e games worked better without it.

 

[Psikerlord#]

Or, to put it another way, I'm not looking to make attrition workable. I'm looking for a way to make fights dangerous and fun without the use of attrition.

I think attrition is integral to the design model, for better or worse. Especially given there are few save or die style threats.

 

[Sunseeker]

I did 4 and a half over the last 5 hours. Even though we often play longer, I honestly don't think I want to run that many combats. Typically, I double the CR math to make actually "hard" fights. My players are pretty skilled, both at optimizing and tactically, challenging them, even when we have a small party, takes more than what the math offers. I'd say most of my fights tonight for a party of 3 level 1's, no healing, were CR 2 fights. 4-5 enemies of roughly equal power to the players. There are other challenges throughout the day, I guess those can count as encounters. Actually come to think of it, these fights were split up over 2 adventuring days, so that's only 2ish fights per day. Running more than that feels like an action movie, or makes the fights themselves pointless.

 

[Flamestrike]

I'd say most of my fights tonight for a party of 3 level 1's, no healing, were CR 2 fights.

There is no such thing as a CR 2 fight mate. Individual mosnter CRs are simply around to tell you the amount of xp the creature is worth, and so you can gauge the lethality of the monster (you generally dont want to throw the PCs up against a monster more than 1 CR above their level. 2 CRs above extremely rarely, and almost never more than 2 CRs above the party level if you expect them to fight it and win).

Encounters in 5E are built and rated for difficulty according to the xp budget for the encounter.

For 3 x 1st level PCs:

Easy: 75 XP
Medium: 150 XP
Hard: 225 XP
Deadly: 300 XP

You want to be using the medium - hard threshold (so your encounters should be from 150 - 299xp for this party).

The following are appropriate threats [medium to hard] for this party:

5 cultists
1 Thug and 2 bandits
4 Kobolds and 1 winged kobold
1 Bugbear
2 Orcs
3 Goblins
1 Hippogriff
1 dire wolf
1 Half Ogre
1 Acolyte and 4 tribal warriors

CR 2 monsters are worth 450 xp (making them a 'deadly' encounter, in addition to being over the recommended CR for the party). They incude such common things as an Ogre (59 hp, melee attack +6 dealing 2d8+4 damage) and an Ankheg (39 hp, +5 bite, 3d6+3 damage and grapple DC 13 plus a 3d6 acid spray line effect).

One of those critters alone create a very good chance of a TPK for a party of three 1st level PCs.

4-5 enemies of roughly equal power to the players.

If you routinely throw 5 NPCs of the same power at 3 PCs of equal power, you should be getting TPKs all the time. Youre also encouraging nova tactics, buffing full casters, barbarians and paladins and totally nerfing fighters, monks and warlocks.

I dont want to sound critical of your campaign, but if youre only doing 2 encounters per day, you should consider toning them down to the 'medium - hard' level and using the longer rest variant instead.

 

[derickmoore25]

I disagree I've found any decent blayer tears through medium encounters so fast they don't feel challenged. Anything less then deadly in this system and players can finish it in a couple rounds using nothing but basic attacks and cantrips leaving them bored.

 

[derickmoore25]

Example first encounter in the entire game players rolled hier initiative and cast 2 sleep spells then one shoted the 5 goblins. Second encounter went the same way except this time I think the mobs got 4 total attacks. Short rest warlock gets 2 more sleeps shuts down half of each of the next 2 encounters. Short rest repeat for the next 2 encounters.

 

[CapnZapp]

Or, to put it another way, I'm not looking to make attrition workable. I'm looking for a way to make fights dangerous and fun without the use of attrition.

Throw the CR guidelines to the wind, but provide the PCs with an escape route if all goes south?

My players were level 5 I think. They amazed me by fighting a bunch of goblins just to reach a Remorhaz, which they then proceeded to skewer (though it got in a few good licks).

A fully grown Remorhaz, mind you. Not the baby one the adventure suggests.

Solo, a creature probably needs to be either triple CR the party level or party level plus 10. (I say either or since my experience is still limited to the single-digit party levels, and while 5x3=15 I'm not sure the "rule" holds for 10x3=30... ;-)

The infamous green dragon of Lost Mines of Phandelver is a good entry-level example. I wasn't the DM, only the player, so I'm not sure exactly what CR it is, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's party level 4 + 10 = CR 14. I've read about the TPKs on the internet, but we charged it and got it well below half hp before it managed to disable more than a single PC, so our DM decided it flew away. And yes, that was at level 4 I think.

So, the most important thing is to know your players and their characters!

It's an absolute must to realize the encounter guidelines are a joke, and that the CR system is FUBAR: one and the same monster can be a TPK for one group and a cakewalk for another: it's easy to build two characters that look superficially similar but where one consistently does less than half the damage of the other. No wonder having a CR system is meaningless.

 

[derickmoore25]

You get it that weak encounter system doesn't even slow most experienced players down

 

[Radaceus]

The thing that bugs me about this whole discussion is that these encounters are all combat. This whole thread has a Hack'n Slash objective to it. And this in itself is the biggest problem you guys are all facing. I believe this is in part due to the core books lacking in information and inspiration on how to incorporate non-combat encounters.

I do agree the CR calculator is not accurate, for instance I run about 2-3 Deadly encounters per session for my group, this is because I have 6 veteran (20-30+ yrs ea), and this sometimes isn't enough, depending on the creatures. This session does not equal a full rest.

I do not use the 'add x more goblins' suggestion, as opposed to I upgrade and add improved CR creatures to the mix (NPC template casters for Goblin shamans etc)

Now, I also use terrain features, difficult terrain, obstacles, traps, pinch points, hard to access vantage points and the like in my encounters; It's the creatures home turf, they have been defending it for some time, the party has that at least in disadvantage. Also, I avoid absolute encounters, meaning, odds are the Goblin warren has many nooks and crannies and the goblins will use guerrilla tactics and tactical retreats if they are outgunned. Likewise, I like to use big maps for outdoor encounters due to our monk and barb can cover 80' in a turn if they choose.

So the above describes combat, like i said, probably 2-3 ...challenging, I prefer the term challenging, combat encounters. But they may have another 3 or more non combat (this does not equal non lethal, nor does it not incur the possibility of combat) encounters in which the players are to use there skill sets to get them from point A to Point B.
That is, getting from point A to point B in one of my dungeon crawls is not always a direct route. And it may require some problem solving. There may also be lethal encounters which can be easily avoided. And even if there is not a rogue in the party, there are traps.

Now, this campaign has been running for a year and a half, and I wont lie, they were sailing through encounters early on, but lately its come back around, I tend to drop at least one of them to 0 per session, and that in my opinion is a good thing.

Nevertheless, I do not run more than 2-3 combat encounters per session (6+hrs). An encounter averages about 15-20 turns, longer depending if a chase has incurred. That equals 1.5 to 2 minutes of combat in game time, leaving a lot of time left in a game day which is usually taken up by exploration, problem solving, diplomacy, and gathering information. I also do not let them rest until at least 8 hours in game has passed ( with all the necessary random encounters checked for), and that is only for the first rest. after that they can not take a full rest for 16 hrs, ( or 8 hrs rest + 16 equals a 24 hr day). As well as, they only get one short rest in between.

These things came about early on after we came to the conclusion that too many rests was easy mode, and too many creatures added to beef up encounters just wasn't fun for anybody (bogged up the flow of the game).

 

[derickmoore25]

My example of a good combat encounter for my players was 5 goblins with 5 class levels. Also its only combat listed cause we are discussing combat. I'd say more then half our games are out of combat. They once spent an hour investagating a statue because I said. You don't see anything special about it and it was the only statue in the cave lol. Note I'd like ao apologize for typos on my phone.