D&D 5E [Historical context] Why "6 to 8 medium/hard encounters" meme is obsolete

[FormerlyHemlock]

Why would you do the conversion? You just use the base unit.

Perhaps I misunderstood what you were trying to say.

That fact supports the hypothesis: it's the ideal situation. What we wanted to see is that the character classes were already locked in when they published the text of the DMG. The fact they sustained that line of text most simply suggests that it remained true: the game was indeed balanced around 6-8 encounters. For me the climb down is clearly in the table, where they pulled back on the difficulty. I believe we agree that the number of encounters the table yields produces an easier game difficulty. Difficulty is relative: for that difficulty to be "easier" the classes must be balanced to handle a harder difficulty.

It's not plausible to me that, if they were indeed trying to scale the difficulty of the entire adventuring day up in tandem with increasing encounter difficulty, they would recompute and then retain the "six to eight medium/hard" text, but then forget to update the whole chart that comes along with it. Human minds don't work that way--we see large visible charts more readily than we see captions for those charts. It's more plausible IMO that they weren't thinking about adventuring day difficulty at all there--they were just trying to relabel the difficulty of the individual encounters, but not try change their recommendations for the adventuring day.

If you are aware of cases where someone updated a caption but accidentally forgot to update the chart, I'd love to hear about it.

 

[Tony Vargas]

If you are aware of cases where someone updated a caption but accidentally forgot to update the chart, I'd love to hear about it.

That's tickling a memory, but I can't quite place it...

 

[discosoc]

I don't understand your chart--it doesn't seem to be measuring what I would expect it to measure. For example, at first level, if #Easy is supposed to be the number of Easy encounters a four-man party can fit in a day, it should be 8, not 12. (Easy encounter is from 100-199 XP, so 150 on average, and you can fit in eight of those in a 1200 XP budget day.) Each PC will beat 300 XP worth of difficulty that day, which means they might level up in a single day--the only reason they wouldn't would be if much of that difficulty came from "adjusted" XP. So E Days should likewise be 1, not 1.7.

Yeah, I probably should have described the chart a bit better. Sorry about that. First of all, there is a sheet for backend data that has the core CR chart and a place for group size:



On the main sheet, I'll go over the fields and explain any calculations I made.

Level and XP
Should be self-explanatory.

To Level
Simply a calculation of the current level xp subtracted from the next level xp, to get a total xp value needed by *each* character to level up.

Easy, Medium, Hard, Deadly
These fields are simply extrapolations of the CR Encounter Building chart and party size., using the rules in the DMG. For example, it shows that a medium difficulty (at its lowest xp) encounter for a party of 4 level 1 characters would be 200 xp (50x4=200). A hard encounter would be 300 xp ( 75x4=300).

#Easy, #Med, #Hard, #Deadly
These fields are the number of each encounter type it takes to level up. This is not the same as the number of encounters that happen in a day (or per long rest). At it's most basic, you can consider this a calculation that divides the xp needed to level by the relevant encounter xp value. For example, a group of 4 level 1 characters needs 1,200 xp to level up. An "easy" encounter is 100 xp, which means it takes 12 such encounters to reach the needed 1,200 xp to level. I think where you're differing from me here is that you're trying to average out what an "easy" encounter's xp actually is. I handle averaging thing out later in the process.

E Days, M Days, H Days, D Days
These fields are pretty simple. Since the DMG referenced "6 to 8 medium or hard encounters" per day, I averaged the result to get 7. I then simply take the number of encounters required to level up, and divide by the number of encounters expected each day, to get a baseline. For example, since it takes 12 Easy encounters to level up the above example group, I do 12/7 for a total of 1.7 "adventuring days."

Sessions
Assuming each session equals an adventuring day, the goal of this field is to calculate how many sessions it takes to level. More importantly, this is where I run some averages and attempt to take into considering the differences between the base xp value of an easy/medium/hard/deadly encounter and the actual range (encounters aren't often balanced at the base level). To do this, I simply average the Medium, Hard, and Difficulty results from the previous fields, under the assumption that most encounters will fall in the middle of their encounter difficulties, with the occasional deadly boss fight. I specifically excluded Easy encounters from this calculation because almost no encounters seem to balance close to the bottom of that difficulty.

End result is this chart (linked again in case this post ends up on another page).



Without getting too obsessive over encounter building, I found the chart to be pretty accurate during the course of several AP's and custom campaigns I've run. It also helped me identify interesting quirks in the leveling chart. You'll notice it's separated into the 4 tiers of levels, and the speed at which you level is clearly changed for each one.

 

[Harzel]

E Days, M Days, H Days, D Days
These fields are pretty simple. Since the DMG referenced "6 to 8 medium or hard encounters" per day, I averaged the result to get 7. I then simply take the number of encounters required to level up, and divide by the number of encounters expected each day, to get a baseline. For example, since it takes 12 Easy encounters to level up the above example group, I do 12/7 for a total of 1.7 "adventuring days."

Either I don't understand, or you are mixing units. 7 is an expected number of medium-hard encounters per adventuring day, but then you are dividing a # of easy encounters by that. If you go back to the numbers in the original charts, a 1st level character should be able to handle 12 easy encounters in a day, not 7, so E Days should be 1.0, not 1.7. In fact, the apparent differences among the E Days, M Days, H Days, and D Days values for any particular level are an artifact of your pegging the # of encounters at 7, rather than having it vary with the encounter difficulty, which seems to be the clear intent of the original charts.

 

[discosoc]

Either I don't understand, or you are mixing units. 7 is an expected number of medium-hard encounters per adventuring day, but then you are dividing a # of easy encounters by that. If you go back to the numbers in the original charts, a 1st level character should be able to handle 12 easy encounters in a day, not 7, so E Days should be 1.0, not 1.7. In fact, the apparent differences among the E Days, M Days, H Days, and D Days values for any particular level are an artifact of your pegging the # of encounters at 7, rather than having it vary with the encounter difficulty, which seems to be the clear intent of the original charts.

It has nothing to do with what they "can handle." It's simply seeing how many days it takes to complete the number of encounters that particular difficulty requires to reach the next level.

Assuming an "easy" encounter is 25 xp, and that it takes 300 xp to reach level 2, that's 12 easy encounters. There's nothing terribly complicated about that, unless you're somehow deciding that an "adventuring day" is supposed to equal a level's worth of encounters (which it's not). Otherwise, you just figure out how many days it takes to finish 12 easy encounters, assuming a rate of 7 per day. Nothing more.

 

[Harzel]

Since the DMG referenced "6 to 8 medium or hard encounters" per day, I averaged the result to get 7.

I assume what you are referring to is this:

Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium to hard encounters in a day. If the adventure has more easy encounters, the adventurers can get through more. If it has more deadly encounters, they can handle fewer.

Things to note: a) this is talking about how many encounters a party "can handle"; b) the quantity 6-8 is specifically tied to medium to hard encounters; c) this specifically mentions that the number would differ for encounters of other difficulty levels.

It has nothing to do with what they "can handle."

"can handle" is part of the DMG's description of the meaning of the number(s) that you chose to use. I'm not sure why you would complain about me referring to them that way. If you are saying that you took the number from the DMG, but are using it to mean something different - ok, but don't you think that requires a little justification? In any case, I don't think the difference between "can handle" and how you seem to be using it is really significant, and that difference is not what I was trying to point out.

It's simply seeing how many days it takes to complete the number of encounters that particular difficulty requires to reach the next level.

Assuming an "easy" encounter is 25 xp, and that it takes 300 xp to reach level 2, that's 12 easy encounters. There's nothing terribly complicated about that, unless you're somehow deciding that an "adventuring day" is supposed to equal a level's worth of encounters (which it's not). Otherwise, you just figure out how many days it takes to finish 12 easy encounters, assuming a rate of 7 per day. Nothing more.

You have taken a number that at its source was specifically tied to particular encounter difficulties and applied it across the board. I guess you could justify it as a rough approximation and that would be ok, except that there is a much more direct way to get from what is in the DMG to the final value that you appear to be wanting to calculate. If you want to estimate how many adventuring days are required to get from a particular level to the next, just take the XP per character needed to advance (column C in your spreadsheet) and divide it by the appropriate value from the Adventuring Day XP table. I think someone already did this calculation in another of the many related threads, but the first few results look like this.

Current Level	Next Level	XP to Level	XP per Adventuring Day	Adventuring Days Needed
1	2	300	300	1.0
2	3	600	600	1.0
3	4	1800	1200	1.5
4	5	3800	1700	2.2
5	6	7500	3500	2.1

Of course, as someone noted earlier in this thread, the XP per Adventuring Day table values are adjusted XP, which will generally be greater than the XP that the PCs actually get, so the results above would be underestimates. However, your method has the same problem since it uses the XP Thresholds table, which also reflect adjusted XP.

 

[discosoc]

that [/I]difference is not what I was trying to point out.

Actually, "can handle" is in the description for what the DMG calls an "Adventuring Day." My sheet isn't concerned about how many such encounters happen in a day, beyond needing to use *some* number to figure out how many sessions each level would take. I could update a single field to change the number of encounters per day to 20 and all it would do it change how many sessions a level takes.

You have taken a number that at its source was specifically tied to particular encounter difficulties and applied it across the board. I guess you could justify it as a rough approximation and that would be ok, except that there is a much more direct way to get from what is in the DMG to the final value that you appear to be wanting to calculate. If you want to estimate how many adventuring days are required to get from a particular level to the next, just take the XP per character needed to advance (column C in your spreadsheet) and divide it by the appropriate value from the Adventuring Day XP table. I think someone already did this calculation in another of the many related threads, but the first few results look like this.

Of course, as someone noted earlier in this thread, the XP per Adventuring Day table values are adjusted XP, which will generally be greater than the XP that the PCs actually get, so the results above would be underestimates. However, your method has the same problem since it uses the XP Thresholds table, which also reflect adjusted XP.

The difference -- and the reason I even did mine in the first place -- is that mine ignores "easy" encounters entirely, and takes the average of the lower threshold for medium, hard, and deadly encounters. This reality was far more representative of my personal play experience, where fights were often a mix of high-medium to low-deadly encounters.

Also, all the calculations are handled directly rather than attempting any shortcuts because other pages hook into that data in ways that values can be adjusted if I want to try changing something. For example, I have an SQL database of all the 5e monster stats, and another page that I can use to build encounters based on all the normal data (type, size, CR, special abilities, AC limits, etc) exposed via drop-downs and such. I can pretty easily change a few things in an encounter -- perhaps because an extra player is showing up -- and immediately get updated data on where things like character levels will end up at the end of the session and how that will effect later sessions. With the number of sessions needed usually being fractions, I found that it meant every 2 or 3 sessions we'd have levels that only needed 1. Being able to anticipate this meant being able to plan my stuff further out than a week away.

Lastly, I did not link that sheet here because I thought it was some kind of ultimate data source to rule all other data sources. I linked it because it proved incredibly accurate and useful well above it's intended purpose, and figured someone else might be interested in seeing the same values I came to, because they *are* my values and not based on the DMG Adventuring Day xp expectation -- values which indicate a sever bias towards many low-end medium encounters. If you don't like my data, feel free to ignore it.

 

[Harzel]

Actually, "can handle" is in the description for what the DMG calls an "Adventuring Day." My sheet isn't concerned about how many such encounters happen in a day, beyond needing to use *some* number to figure out how many sessions each level would take. I could update a single field to change the number of encounters per day to 20 and all it would do it change how many sessions a level takes.



The difference -- and the reason I even did mine in the first place -- is that mine ignores "easy" encounters entirely, and takes the average of the lower threshold for medium, hard, and deadly encounters. This reality was far more representative of my personal play experience, where fights were often a mix of high-medium to low-deadly encounters.

Also, all the calculations are handled directly rather than attempting any shortcuts because other pages hook into that data in ways that values can be adjusted if I want to try changing something. For example, I have an SQL database of all the 5e monster stats, and another page that I can use to build encounters based on all the normal data (type, size, CR, special abilities, AC limits, etc) exposed via drop-downs and such. I can pretty easily change a few things in an encounter -- perhaps because an extra player is showing up -- and immediately get updated data on where things like character levels will end up at the end of the session and how that will effect later sessions. With the number of sessions needed usually being fractions, I found that it meant every 2 or 3 sessions we'd have levels that only needed 1. Being able to anticipate this meant being able to plan my stuff further out than a week away.

Lastly, I did not link that sheet here because I thought it was some kind of ultimate data source to rule all other data sources. I linked it because it proved incredibly accurate and useful well above it's intended purpose, and figured someone else might be interested in seeing the same values I came to, because they *are* my values and not based on the DMG Adventuring Day xp expectation -- values which indicate a sever bias towards many low-end medium encounters. If you don't like my data, feel free to ignore it.

Oooooh. Ok, I think I understand better. At least partly. Sorry for being dense about what you were doing.

But now I have a different question. Proceeding from the fact that the results of your calculations are pretty good predictions, working backward, I am curious about whether the constituent parts of the calculation also reflect reality at your table. In particular, do you find that, on average, you get through 7 encounters per session?

 

[discosoc]

Oooooh. Ok, I think I understand better. At least partly. Sorry for being dense about what you were doing.

But now I have a different question. Proceeding from the fact that the results of your calculations are pretty good predictions, working backward, I am curious about whether the constituent parts of the calculation also reflect reality at your table. In particular, do you find that, on average, you get through 7 encounters per session?

It ended up being closer to 5 with Storm King's thunder, with the standard flow being an intro fight (low-end medium), 3 main fights (acts 1,2, and 3), and a random encounter thrown in when I felt the pacing was needed. The biggest reason for this was that the "sessions to level" numbers were things like 1.7 and 1.1. I wasn't going to actually level them up in the middle of a game, but that fractional difference gave me room to drop the total encounters down a bit. Every once in a while (I remember level 7 did this).

My custom campaign averaged about 6 per day. I didn't want to try and shoehorn 7 encounters in just because it was the average of 6-8. I figured that the 1.7 value that was pretty common gave me the room to design some less-combat heavy sessions and there -- and being able to see the math unfold weeks in advanced meant I wasn't having to change stuff on short notice.

 

[clearstream]

But now I have a different question. Proceeding from the fact that the results of your calculations are pretty good predictions, working backward, I am curious about whether the constituent parts of the calculation also reflect reality at your table. In particular, do you find that, on average, you get through 7 encounters per session?

On average I feel the number of encounters needs to go more toward a max of 6 between long rests. Obviously one can string encounters between rests over multiple sessions (simply don't allow a rest every session), but I feel like the pace of levelling versus real time gets very slow if XP is spread too thin.