Bacon Bits
Hero
People grouse way too much about the 6-8 encounter adventuring day with 2-3 short rests, IMO. Yes, that is the assumption around which different resource recovery systems are balanced. Yes, inter-class balance is at its best when you stick broadly to this guideline. No, the game will not break if you don’t follow it precisely.
Personally, I plan my adventures around this guideline, but I don’t enforce the sequence, and I allow my players the freedom to break it. I plan around 4-6 encounters per session, and I roll for random complications (which can include encounters) in dangerous areas. The players are free to take rests when they want, but taking the time to do so creates a risk of such random complications occurring. We generally get close to the 6 encounters with two short rests per adventuring day, but sometimes we get fewer, and that’s fine. It’s very rare that we get more, because the PCs are pretty worn down by or before the end of that time. It works fine.
I feel like with a lot of the game balance assumptions of 5e, people have a tendency to either worry way too much about adhering to them, or decide that they’re oppressively restrictive and actively avoid them while decrying them as terrible game design. I think both positions are far too extreme. Treat them like simple guidelines and don’t stress about following them to the letter, and the game will work out fine.
It would be groused on less if the response towards people who deviate from it and find difficulties wasn't constantly, "Are you running the recommended schedule of encounters and rests?" or "You know that even a trap counts as an encounter, right? It's not hard to get to 8 encounters when everything counts as an encounter!" These responses are used to tell someone they are playing the game wrong rather than that the game isn't working well for them due to a genuine problem they've encountered in the game's design. It's an ultimately dismissive response because it fails to address the underlying issue while saying that it can't be a problem because not everyone experiences it.
It's the same as the complaints in prior editions about PCs long resting after 1 encounter. "Well, have you tried applying time pressure?" Like, that's not a fix, either! You can't do that every adventure. That's just a form of railroading. What if it's a sandbox campaign? "I just ambush my PCs when they rest too often." Really? You... just go full DM vs PCs? That's not fair, either.
It's not a big ask for the same game to support some tables running 1-2 really hard encounters each day, other tables running 3-4, others running 6-8 easy, and still other tables vacillating between 1 encounter days and 8 encounter days. We know that it's not a big ask because every edition of the game prior to 5e supported this style of play. That doesn't mean the editions had no problems -- like some tables abusing long rests -- but it does mean that the encounter schedule and rest schedule that the game suggested or implied you should aim for were not to blame. Think of it like this: Even if your table runs 6-8 in dungeons, do you seriously run more than 1-2 encounters per day during travel?
When they were designing 3e, WotC did a ton of research into how people actually played 1e/2e AD&D. They did that because TSR (perhaps somewhat unsurprisingly) never thought to do that. What they discovered was most tables played 2-4 combat encounters a session. That's what most DMs like to prepare for, what fit into most people's game sessions, and what most players seemed to enjoy. So, they pegged the game at 3-4 encounters per day. There's a reason nobody complained about that in 3e.
If you really want to fix the single encounter day problem, you've got to make the PCs get better as the day goes on. Like maybe you get better rewards like bonus XP, bonus gp, or bonus loot for making it to the 3rd encounter in a day. Or maybe you get bonus abilities that can't be used until you've had one encounter in a day. The problem that prompted short rests was that the game rewarded single encounter days. Just make the game not reward that style of play. Not by shaping the narrative into something that punishes the campaign progression. There need to be daily rewards for PCs.
Maybe PCs can't even earn XP until you've earned at least their daily budget. If they rest early, they get nothing or a greatly reduced reward. Now your players are pressured into moving on, playing smart, etc. Now short rests are valuable because they're healing and they're not long rests. Now it doesn't matter how many encounters you have in a day. It doesn't matter how hard they are. You've got to reach threshold in order to progress. It also means that when the PCs don't think they can achieve their daily goal, they aren't interested in empty combat. It's just a waste of resources.
Obviously, yes, a DM could definitely be a huge jerk and not give an opportunity for PCs to earn enough XP. But the more I think about it the more I'm liking this idea.