D&D 4E How many encounters between each extended rest? And does it change with tier?

[Illithidbix]

So I haven't played or run 4E for a few years but I do recall 4E was pretty much a breeze to DM.

But there was one piece of guidance that I recall was missed:

The encounter level and easy, standard and hard encounters was very clear and easy to use.
A 4E short rest between each combat encounter.
A milestone (with action points and magic item usage) when you complete two encounters without stopping for an extended rest

There was also the guidance on the spread of encounter difficulty across a level (see page 104 of the 4E DMG).

However the one thing I do recall missing is the number of easy/standard/hard encounters expected between extended rests, and how this changes between tiers.

The 4E DMG mentions

(Hard) encounters really test the characters’ resources, and might force them to take an extended rest at the end.

Since they rely on healing surges to regain lost hit points, heroic tier characters are likely to take an extended rest when surges get dangerously low

and

(Paragon Tier characters) also have ways to regain hit points beyond healing surges, including regeneration, so they can complete more encounters between extended rests.

(Epic Tier) characters can last through many encounters before resting and can even return from death in the middle of a fight.

Now, I almost always ran and played heroic tier and used the very rough rule of thumb of two milestones (so four or five standard encounters) between every extended rest, if I wanted to create a sense of taxingness. Which seemed to work.

But I am curious; was there some later official guidance I missed?
What was the rough guidelines that other DMs used?

I find it amusing to a degree that the "standard adventuring day" was defined in 5E and has become a somewhat controversial part of it.

 

[Jhaelen]

Imho, there is no 'standard adventuring day' in 4e.

It's up to the player character to decide if they want to go on or not. In general, the most important indicator is when the first pc runs out of healing surges.

In our games we've had anything from one to eight encounters in an 'adventuring day'. I think, it gets a bit easier to have more encounters at the highler levels.
In normal encounters, we typically try not to expend more than one of our daily powers. But if an encounter proves to be tougher than expected, you sometimes have to.

Also, in our games, we rarely bother with easy encounters. We'd much rather just do a skill challenge and save the time for the more challenging stuff.

But we've also done some experimenting with 'waves of encounters' without a chance to have short rests inbetween. Instead each pc may regain a single encounter power only.
In my games I've also ruled that during overland travel in the wilderness, no extended rests are possible.

 

[Tony Vargas]

So I haven't played or run 4E for a few years but I do recall 4E was pretty much a breeze to DM.
The encounter level and easy, standard and hard encounters was very clear and easy to use.
A 4E short rest between each combat encounter.
A milestone (with action points and magic item usage) when you complete two encounters without stopping for an extended res

Certainly the most care-free if you mostly just threw together encounters using the guidelines.

However the one thing I do recall missing is the number of easy/standard/hard encounters expected between extended rests, and how this changes between tiers.

But I am curious; was there some later official guidance I missed?

I heard rumors that it was originally expected to be 6-8, as in 5e, but that in practice it turned out being far fewer - though, personally, I've had 9+ encounter days.

What was the rough guidelines that other DMs used?

I like using an odd number, say 3 or 5, since, when you hit a milestone and get an action point, it's kinda fun to actually use it.

But, it really doesn't matter much: class balance won't go all wonky if you have much shorter or longer days, because there's a rough parity in daily resources. And while encounter balance is impacted by an early nova or a lack of dailies late in the day, it's not thrown completely out of whack - PCs don't have so much of their effectiveness locked up in daily uses as in other editions, and there's milestone benefits to help in later encounters, even if a lot of daily resources get used early.

The main limiter is surges.

And does it change with tier?

At Paragon, magic rings start to pop up, and they pretty consistently have a power or property that works better after you've reached a milestone. You'll also have more magic items, which, post-Essentials, means lots more item dailies, maybe a whole lot more. (Pre-E, there was a limit on the number of item dailies you could use, and one more opened up with each milestone - the limit when up at Paragon and Epic). Other than that, PC's pick up one more daily at 20th, and continue accumulating utilities. So there's not really a huge increase in daily resources as you level, like there is in other editions.
OTOH, at higher tiers there are more tricks - rituals, mostly, starting with Rope Trick at 12th - that might let you take a rest prettymuch when you want to. And, IMHO/X, it often becomes less plausible for the kinds of threats that challenge paragon and epic characters to just line up in abundance like heroic threats might. (Though, by the same token, enemies might engineer concerted attacks from different quarters to wear down the great heroes before making a bid to defeat them once and for all.) FWIW.

I find it amusing to a degree that the "standard adventuring day" was defined in 5E and has become a somewhat controversial part of it.

In 5e, encounters/day (ie 'time pressure') is a powerful tool if you want to impose some modicum of class balance, because classes have very different resources mixes, some with many daily slots and a wide variety of spells to cast with them, others with a short-rest-recharge trick or two and nothing much else but at-will DPR. And, it's critical to making encounters present a challenge close to their guidelines. A 'deadly' encounter that happens first thing that the party just unloads on could be trivialized, a modest encounter at the end of the day when they're tapped out could destroy them.

It shouldn't be controversial, though, such 'crystal clear guidance' was promised during the playtest.

 

[MoutonRustique]

Instead of "expected guidelines", I will tell you what I've found (this is very much IME).

Many encounters between long rests (6+) : players that know there are many challenges to come will hoard their limited resources. And I've found that once that mentality sets -in, it applies to pretty much everything : consumables, rituals, everything!

You get encounters where characters are loath to expend anything they think they won't get back - so you can get failures on SC that could have been avoided or combats that are a bit dragged out.

Few encounters between long rests (3-) : players are free-er with limited resources and will often nova even when the situation wouldn't have called for it.

The big "hurdle" here is that combat encounters tend to be built up to be stronger, so you can get to situations where characters are out of pretty much everything and if you don't change the scene a bit, it's liable to be a less-engaging spamming situation.

With a few tricks, this is easily allayed, but it's something to keep in mind when you're building stronger encounters.

Also, depending upon the party make-up, some classes and combinations have very strong resources to help with SCs. (I don't remember specifics - but there's one where Arcana can be used for pretty much everything AND there are a lot of ways to boost your Arcana check...) The strongest tend to be [Daily], so if the players know they have 3 or 4 situations to resolve before resting, they'll be more choosy. If they only have 1 or 2... They can crush pretty much any kind of challenge you put them to.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So I haven't played or run 4E for a few years but I do recall 4E was pretty much a breeze to DM.

But there was one piece of guidance that I recall was missed:

The encounter level and easy, standard and hard encounters was very clear and easy to use.
A 4E short rest between each combat encounter.
A milestone (with action points and magic item usage) when you complete two encounters without stopping for an extended rest

There was also the guidance on the spread of encounter difficulty across a level (see page 104 of the 4E DMG).

However the one thing I do recall missing is the number of easy/standard/hard encounters expected between extended rests, and how this changes between tiers.

The 4E DMG mentions

and



Now, I almost always ran and played heroic tier and used the very rough rule of thumb of two milestones (so four or five standard encounters) between every extended rest, if I wanted to create a sense of taxingness. Which seemed to work.

But I am curious; was there some later official guidance I missed?
What was the rough guidelines that other DMs used?

I find it amusing to a degree that the "standard adventuring day" was defined in 5E and has become a somewhat controversial part of it.

I personally believe that an adventuring day in 4e was targeted at 5 encounters. That makes 2 extended rests per level the norm. This could vary somewhat depending on the difficulty of the individual encounters, the number of quests and SCs involved, and perhaps other details. It does seem logical that higher level PCs might go longer, but even with the statements you quoted it seems to me that MATHEMATICALLY the intent was that monsters would proportionately challenge the PCs and counter their increased capabilities (OTOH actual monsters in MM1/2 don't bear that out, BUT if you follow the actual given monster damage output guidelines in the DMG they SHOULD).

I think it is correct to say that the DM is largely left to decide this for himself, but the game seems to naturally answer 'five'.

 

[Tony Vargas]

: players that know there are many challenges to come will hoard their limited resources. And I've found that once that mentality sets -in, it applies to pretty much everything : consumables, rituals, everything!

You get encounters where characters are loath to expend anything they think they won't get back..

One pattern I saw with longtime players getting used to 4e was: hording dailies, making early combats a little more painful, until someone ran out of surges, then blowing dailies, often inefficiently, to get through the last combats.

Another, with players used to 3e, was to unload a combo of dailies & encounters at the start of a tough combat, and be down to at-wills to finish things - resulting in a late-combat slog, especially vs one of those solo that got some nasty ability while bloodied. Closely-related was burning through encounters asap at the start of every combat ( cause you'll get em back), with similar at-will slogging to finish it.

 

[Igwilly]

My answer usually is: as much as they can handle.
Also, one strategy I use is: never bind yourself to a fixed number.
While I DM, some adventuring days are *very* long, while others are very short, even 1-battle days. The key is to make players be always uncertain about when they will rest at all. This have the intended effect of being careful with what you have.

And yes, that's one of the reasons why, in every edition, I think effects like alarm and rope trick are problematic.