D&D 5E How to Break 5E

[Sword of Spirit]

No position to argue here, but I'm pretty sure that the 6-8 encounters per day thing is speaking of combat encounters. I don't recall the books ever referring to interaction encounters or exploration encounters.

We have one PC investigating an ongoing series of murders (spoiler - the murderer is another PC who is a lycanthrope and doesn't know it!),

That is awesome.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Sorry but I am specifically talking about the 6-8 encounter day expectation.

The only way trivial fights become interesting is if you KNOW you have to survive five more of them.

But why would you ever expose yourself to that in D&D?

Anyone going into a traditional D&D Dungeon?

In-character, there is no reason (since for all you know, that final encounter could be a deadly one that you barely can defeat at 100%, much less when at the expected 20%)

A would-be adventurer probably isn't patient enough to take a long rest after every encounter.

Mechanically, there is no reason. Each time anything is suggested, people tear down the heavens with hysterical cries about how much they hate meta.

There are other sorts of resources - food/water, light sources, etc - that might need to be conserved, precluding frequent long rests. They usually only matter at low level, and it's long since become fashionable to hand-wave them, but they could be re-emphasized.

The only reason left is story-based. Perhaps it's just me who see every princess-on-a-ticking-clock mission just as a clumsily hidden rest negating device? 90% of reasonable missions would still work even with a bonus long rest thrown in!

It's typical for a story to have some sources of tension, like a competing rival, racing against the clock, or whatever, yes. It's weird for it to /always/ equate to needing to get through 6-8 encounter a 'day' (or no-encounter downtime days) sure.

The reason I would love a mechanic reason is that I don't see that as inherently better or worse than any other reason why you can't rest. I am able to see how its absence only means a more or less forced story based must be invented. Why then not take the rest expectation to its logical conclusion, and build it right into the game itself?

The 'need' for a 6-8 encounter 'day' is mechanical, so a reason for going through with one rather than resting early being mechanical would be sensible, sure.

But if I don't, most adventuring days will be 0 to 2 encounters with no short rests. How I would wish this was the DMG baseline instead...

Then folks who wanted longer 'day's would annoyed. A game like 5e D&D simply can't be tuned, out of the box, to work with a wide variety of pacing. It's up to the DM to adjust it to anything other than the 6-8 encounter/daily-attrition balancing point.

 

[pming]

Hiya.

My houserule...

Long Rests: "Houserule: After a long rest, a character can not take another long rest until he/she has been awake and active for a number of hours equal to their Constitution score. Extreme physical activity can reduce that in half".

So, a character with a 12 Con has to be up/awake for 12 hours of "normal activity" before they can get a good, solid, 'long rest' (re: sleep). If, as is likely the case for adventurers, they are in high-stress situations, fighting, casting spells, climbing cliffs, punching sharks in the nose as they tread water in raging seas, etc... then it would be 6 hours.

Yeah, this makes having a high Con a little bit of a detriment, but hey, who said life was fair?

And, as a bonus Houserule...

Fatigue & Exhaustion: "Houserule: A character will start to suffer from Fatigue (start to accumulate Exhaustion Levels), after a number of hours equal to his Constitution x2, of normal activity, or their Constitution x1, of high-activity."

This means that someone with a Con 14 can "stay awake" for 28 hours before suffering Exhaustion...unless he's adventuring or hiking in hills, mountains, badlands, etc. Then it's only 7 hours.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Flamestrike]

Classes to avoid.
Barbarians (its just damage)
Most single classed fighters (shield bash champion if you have GWM types in the party)
Rangers (exception hunter archers)
Rogues (thief with healer feat an exception)
Monks (all of them)
Warlocks (single classed, treat as an archer though not a spellcaster and they’re OK)
Wizards (invokers it is just damage)

Spoken by someone who has never seen a Barbarian, Monk, Warlock or Wizard in action.

 

[Mephista]

Zard, if memory recalls, has simply banned monks for being "unthematic" anyways. So, I don't think he's the best judge of them in the first place.

 

[TwoSix]

As an aside, I find that this helps reduce the metagaming, as well. The question of "does my fat lazy halfling want to hang out in this dungeon for an hour not knowing what's behind that door to the north" is a question I've seen from players in 5e that I'd rarely see in 4e or 3e, where a few minutes and a few wand-waggles means that whatever is behind that door to the north isn't any more likely to come out than they were 5 minutes ago.

I think, like most of the discussion around this topic, it comes down to whether or not the adventure that is being run is more module-y or more sandbox-y (Free new adjectives!). If your players are free to say "Screw this, I'm going to bounce", and decide to vacate the adventure, then encounter attrition becomes much less of an issue. Likewise, any adventure that restricts the ability of the characters to leave when they want (say, something in a dungeon underground), is going to bring attrition much more to the fore.

 

[Zardnaar]

Zard, if memory recalls, has simply banned monks for being "unthematic" anyways. So, I don't think he's the best judge of them in the first place.

I kind of unbanned them because no one picks them anyway. They do not really turn up on the various char op posts anyway.

I usually ban stuff based on theme or the setting so no Dragonborn, Drow, Tieflings and Aasimar on Mystara for example, on Greyhawk and Krynn Paladins would be LG only.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I think, like most of the discussion around this topic, it comes down to whether or not the adventure that is being run is more module-y or more sandbox-y (Free new adjectives!). If your players are free to say "Screw this, I'm going to bounce", and decide to vacate the adventure, then encounter attrition becomes much less of an issue. Likewise, any adventure that restricts the ability of the characters to leave when they want (say, something in a dungeon underground), is going to bring attrition much more to the fore.

You can have a sandbox with time pressure too. Just make sure that opportunity only knocks once.

 

[CapnZapp]

You can have a sandbox with time pressure too. Just make sure that opportunity only knocks once.

Easy to say, hard to do (well).

 

[TwoSix]

You can have a sandbox with time pressure too. Just make sure that opportunity only knocks once.

Oh, absolutely. It's just that the appropriateness of multiple encounters per day is going to vary tremendously from campaign to campaign. That's why I'm using the slower healing variant for my next game.