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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Helldritch" data-source="post: 7221687" data-attributes="member: 6855114">The goal of the 6-8 encounter is exactly to let players recharge short rest powers while forcing "daily" powers to be withheld for a crucial battle. That forced management of resource ensures a few things1) Players will tend not to nova.2) Classes with short rest regen powers will be able to compete and cope with nova style classes. 3) You no longuer needs only deadly encounters type to challenge your players. 2 to 3 hard encounters in a row can be a real tax on the resources of a party.You have many ways to ensure the 6-8 encounters per day.1) Make them happen by adventure design. Be it a time limit or Be it the total number of encounter in the adventure2) Make less true encounters and add in random encounters. Again these random encounters can be prepared or not. 3) Make the world more alive. Players are resting after a foray in a dungeon? May be the leaders should search for the players. The world should not be static.4) Not all encounters should be combat, traps are there too and can be quite a drain on resources. Novae are useless against traps...5) Do all of the above. As for encounter building a few reminders.1) A party is 4 adventurers. More that this and the CR system must be adjusted accordingly. Unfortunately it we are more or less left in the dark in that case. The DMG says to reduce the exp multipliers for monster by one category but it is (sometimes) not enough. I do increase the number of required monsters for a multiplier by 2 for each additionnal players. That works out a bit better, not perfect but still.2) Feats are not taken into account in CR of creatures. At level 4, I add one monster per PC with feats. These monsters are not factored in the exp multiplication budget. I don't take into account any ASI.At level 8-12, I consider monsters to be one CR category lower. At level 12+ I consider monsters to be two CR category lower. This can lead to more monsters in an encounter of stronger ones.3) Really powerful magic items force me to consider carefully their impact on an encounter. If the magic items would have a significant impact on an encounter, I consider to lower by one the CR of the affected creatures. (a flame tongue against undeads/trolls...) This could lead to either more monsters or stronger ones. This has the advantage of not lowering the efficiency of the magic items in questions and thus the players are quite happy to see that the magic items is not ampered articificially by me. (How come we see so much fire immune monsters/ennemies now that I have a staff of fire?)4) Some monsters are bound to be modified, either by giving them either better armor or better weapons. Sometimes both. Foes will use magic items if there are some in the treasure. If a monster is modified, I raise back its CR by one for each modifications.As you can see, I modify the exp encounter building budget system to suit my needs. I have  two groups of 6 players. Both are optimizers. So far these methods are working out quite fine. But though the exp encounter building budget system is modified, I still use it.The more options you add to the game, the more you have to "adjust" the game. Without options, the game works out quite fine.</blockquote>

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