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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rhenny" data-source="post: 6839855" data-attributes="member: 18333">Ugh, I typed a response on my phone and lost it all.  Back to the drawing board...I think both DMs and players need to celebrate the choice that adventuring day planning affords over encounter planning.  One of the reasons why WoTC designed the 6-8 encounter day and moved away from encounter by encounter design was to put the decision to take short and long rests firmly in the hands of the players.  Now, it really is a choice.  Do you stop for an hour to recover slightly, or do you keep pursuing foes?  Do you as a party feel as if you've found a safe enough place to rest either for 1 hour or for a full 8 when you feel exhausted an nearly drained?   These are substantial questions that each party should face.  I'm finding that when we give ourselves over to this mentality, we are more immersed in our character experience and the mechanics of resting rarely break my immersion.   When we played with milestones (4e) the game always intruded and it felt more mechanical and less organic.   So, to get the most out of 6-8, everyone has to buy into it.I've also found that when players expect more in a day, I feel much more free to throw anything at them that fits with the story/situation, rather than try to balance encounters.   Like you mentioned in the original post,  [MENTION=2067]I'm A Banana[/MENTION], it gives the DM more freedom.   With adventuring day, I feel perfectly fine just having the party encounter 2 guards.  Most of the times, this is a triffle, but it fits the story, and with some random rolls it is quite possible that even against 2 guards, the party may need to blow some resources, or an alarm can be raised or one of the guards can escape, etc.   I can also introduce them to an encounter where they are severely outmatched and depending on their condition or time of day, they have a different set of decisions that they must decide between.   6-8 encounters basically opens up the design space for a DM and allows the DM to use variety and diversity to make the adventure more interesting.   To capitalize on this, all DMs need to pay more attention to variety and building encounters that have meaning and fit within the story of the campaign rather than worry so much about developing each and every encounter as a test that pushes the party to its limits. Also, it is so easy now to have an easy encounter escalate into a more difficult battle as reinforcements join the fray.  This is definitely a positive in my book.  It gives DM much more control to raise and lower the level of tension during the game session.  And, related to the escalation of a single encounter, one of the best tricks for taking advantage of 6-8 is to use deadly, easy, hard, easy (or combinations like that) to raise tension and provide relief, raise tension again, and provide relief.   For any good story, tension and relief work hand in hand to enhance the story and make it more memorable.  6-8 encounter/day gives a DM more chances to use this technique.Overall, the key to enjoying 6-8 encounter/day design is to be conscious of the variety and diversity it affords.</blockquote>

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