D&D 5E It's Official! Most of my encounters are "Deadly" (now updated with info through the end of 2022!)

[el-remmen]

Im also making the point that choosing not to police the adventuring day can affect encounter difficulty and class balance, and leads to button mashing and rocket tag.

Barbarians raging round 1. Wizards dumping high level slots like they grow on trees. No real strategy to resource management etc.

Also, this has not been an issue - as you shall see as I post more data. Since the PCs can't always (or even often) know what will happen next, even if they think something is "a last fight" or they will likely get a rest in after, they tend to keep something in the tank (if possible) just in case. Players having a feel for "being in the world" manages all that fine.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

If you add potential before deadly, you are closer to the truth.

If you know something about expectation value and standard deviation and you want to tell a coherent stroy without a constant change in cast, deadly should only have very low chance of lethality. If deadly would mean 20 Percent chance to kill a PC, would mean an average one character dead per adventuring day.
I think most people don't want that.

If you look at it like this: a deadly encounter faced under less than ideal circumstances (end of day, surprise etc) might result in a dead PC, it is better.

I want to agree with former posters, that below level 5 there is a higher chance to die, but that is low level as it should be. The wizard also has a few tricks up his sleeve that fall off at higher levels.

 

[tetrasodium]

Just to be clear the encounters don't have a level. They have an XP budget and a degree of difficulty. Describing encounters in terms of level or CR is misleading.

ye but players do. if a level x group can take encounters rated deadly for x+y groups, wat value is y. That was my point. After about 11 to low teens it accelerates at a silly rate

 

[Rabulias]

I'm a bit confused. Why did they take 2 short rests after the Otyugh fight? There's no additional benefit for this, yes?

el-remmen has clarified what occurred in his game, but I can see two examples where back-to-back short rests would make sense: if one character needs to attune to two new magic items, or if one character needs to end attunement to one magic item and attune to another.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

Most of my encounters are deadly, too.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Thats completely untrue.

I literally ran Age of Worms all the way through, all the C series of AD&D modules, several Pathfinder modules all in one campaign over 3 years of real time and didn't have to drastically change anything.

The older adventure above. What's the hook? Why are the PCs there?

You asserting something is in "completely untrue" without explaining why is pretty crap argumentation, mate.

And your "how is altering the adventure by making the clock specific 'altering the adventure'?!?!!" is pretty funny but shows you should probably consider your own logic a lot harder. You're literally altering the adventure. Not everyone wants to add a clock to everything.

Plus it's a boring story when there are no time constraints and the PCs can just pack up and pause whenever.

I trust you mate. I'm just saying stories with no time pressure are boring and super unrealistic as a general rule. Few stories lack impetus driving them forward.

The 5E rules is based around a few mathematical things on resting. Ignoring them leads to skewed results in this edition.

Basically you arguing for a One True Way-ist approach of a fairly extreme kind, making some serious absolute statements. Your argument also seems to be using "unrealistic" completely incorrectly, and meaning "un-trope-y". I'm not saying you're entirely wrong, but you're definitely significantly wrong, and your approach here shows zero flexibility or allowance for the possibility that you might actually have a narrow and pedantic view of how D&D 5E works well, one that leans extremely hard on math and fails to account for how differently different groups actually play. Clocks have their place, and if you're having actual balance problems they can help, but they're not a cure-all, and I think for a lot of groups, they're kind of antithetical to D&D.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

At that time they were Gnome Bard, Tiefling Ranger, Half-Orc Barbarian, Human Druid. The bard and ranger would later multiclass.

Ah. These are all solidly long-rest-based classes. They don't have much incentive to take multiple short rests per day.
They're likely fine with the current tempo, and can probably happily deal with deadly encounters at that rate.

 

[el-remmen]

Something that might bear mentioning is that all these adventures (so far) did not have established or predictable "Big end fights." A Wizard's Fate's battles were all equally potentially difficult because of the imp's behavior, in Sinister Secret they just wandered around a house fighting spiders and stirges, eventually were surprised to find smugglers, fought them, retreated, rested and then the remaining smugglers came and found them! And for the sea cave adventure, they were hunting invasive species dinos, the otyugh was a total surprise (as was the piercers - but I didn't even mention them because the party avoided them and then laughed and walked away), as was finding the hidden remaining smugglers.

 

[dave2008]

ye but players do. if a level x group can take encounters rated deadly for x+y groups, wat value is y. That was my point. After about 11 to low teens it accelerates at a silly rate

I think I know what you mean; but to be honest, this paragraph make no sense to me.

 

[el-remmen]

I guess I'll do two a day until I catch up to the present.

Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh pt II (Assault on the Sea Ghost)

Encounter #​	Monsters (#)	# of (N)PCs / Levels​	CRs​	Difficulty​
19​	Bandits (6), First Mate (1), Deck Mage (1), Bosun (1), Captain (1)	4/3​	1/8, 1, 1, 1/2, 2	Deadly​

Notes: So this is an odd one because the entire "adventure" (or part thereof) was the assault on a pirate ship. The party was able to manage to all board before being spotted, but it was basically like, the other 3 PCs were in place and then the barbarian climbed aboard was immediately seen and the fight started. They did not fight all these foes at once but a lot of them were on one of the top decks when the fight started (captain and mage on poopdeck, Bosun and bandit on main deck, and one bandit on foredeck. . oh and one bandit in the crow's nest who was immediately taken out of it by a fog cloud - fired a few ineffectual crossbow bolts from up there when it dissipated and then surrendered). The others came up in subsequent rounds. However, what really made this combat deadly was that it was soon after it began that the barbarian realized his new magic great axe was a cursed berserkers axe! And he took out the party's own druid when he got too close. Luckily, the other PCs were clever enough to use the stuff on the deck, and arriving people ignorant of the barbarian killing machine let loose up top, to keep him directed at enemies and were able to heal the druid so he could rejoin the fight. In a final clever move, they arranged to be far from where the barbarian fought so rather than go after them, he chased a fleeing pirate below deck, finished him and then was far enough away for his rage to end and temporarily put aside the curse. In the end, they took the captain and two of the bandits prisoner. Oh, there were also two lizardfolk on board, but I ruled they only attacked if attacked, not having skin in the game. So they fled mid-battle and the PCs let them flee.