D&D 5E One or Two Fights a Day Encounter Design

[TwoSix]

I hadn't thought about that, but I'd be worried that without reliable healing that they're really going to be dependent on that long rest HD replacement.

I could probably move Exhaustion from a LR recovery to a short rest. I don't think that moving that, or any of the other LR keyed events would screw with anything.

The only other drawback I can think of is that there's a chance that this will segue into future holiday one shots that don't exist in, or even coexist with the overland travel scale. I don't know if it would be wonky to switch gears like that.

Hey Jose.

Personally, like someone else said, I prefer running 5e in general with 6 hr short rests and 48 hr long rests (with the requirement that long rests happen in a place of safety or civilization). I have trouble running adventures with 6 encounters in 24 hours outside of a lair or dungeon crawl. Lengthening rests makes the party think twice about dropping fireball on random encounters when they know they won't get it back until they make their way to another town. And if you're not going to put any resource pressure on the party during a wilderness chase, you might as well just fast-forward to their destination.

I do tend to give out healing potions, endurance potions (which give back Hit Dice) and sometimes mana potions (which restore spell slots) if it seems the party is struggling. I also give out a higher amount of consumable items to make sure combat can be a little more varied, which was a major concern of mine when limiting spell slots.

 

[Nytmare]

3-4 encounters should be manageable without a long rest without healing spells unless you're making them hella tough. If necessary use the suggestion that they can loot a couple of healing potions at the end of an unexpectedly difficult fight.

As for switching between the two scales of travel - hand-wave that only when you're travelling large distances are the characters tired enough that these resting rules apply, and adventuring in a fixed locale has the standard 1h/8h rests. It's for adjusting realism vs balance, don't get tied down.

Yeah, I'm starting to think that that might be the answer.

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking for or what your goal is here.

I was trying to figure out what equation I'd use to come up with 4 worthwhile encounters that had one or more long rests between them.

Hey Jose.

Personally, like someone else said, I prefer running 5e in general with 6 hr short rests and 48 hr long rests (with the requirement that long rests happen in a place of safety or civilization). I have trouble running adventures with 6 encounters in 24 hours outside of a lair or dungeon crawl. Lengthening rests makes the party think twice about dropping fireball on random encounters when they know they won't get it back until they make their way to another town. And if you're not going to put any resource pressure on the party during a wilderness chase, you might as well just fast-forward to their destination.

I do tend to give out healing potions, endurance potions (which give back Hit Dice) and sometimes mana potions (which restore spell slots) if it seems the party is struggling. I also give out a higher amount of consumable items to make sure combat can be a little more varied, which was a major concern of mine when limiting spell slots.

Hey Lawrence.

Yeah, I was only focusing on the resource game being about food and water, not abilities. Yoinking the endurance and mana potions as well.

 

[iserith]

I was trying to figure out what equation I'd use to come up with 4 worthwhile encounters that had one or more long rests between them.

By "worthwhile" do you mean capable of being a difficult challenge for PCs that tend to be fully-rested (but perhaps a few hit dice down at most)? Or something else?

 

[jayoungr]

Quoting myself from another thread:

It could be more like ...

• You encounter kobolds. When you beat on them, they squeal for help and their bugbear buddies show up.
• Some thugs assault you. When you fight back, they retreat...luring you into an ambush set by the cultists who hired them.
• You beat up a den of thieves and question them about the head of their organization. The criminal mastermind sends assassins to kill them before they can tell you anything. You then have to fight off the assassins and defend your informants.
• You take out a party of kobold guards in a watchtower before they can let the dragon know you're there. Then you fight the dragon before he finds out his guards have been killed.
• The evil wizard has locked himself in his inner sanctum. You must defeat his guardian golems, unlock the door, and defeat the wizard before he finishes casting a crucial ritual.

Any of those scenarios is two encounters chained together. Break any large fight into a couple of smaller subsections, and you can have your 6-8 encounters per day without resorting to "trash" encounters. Separating the parts of the fight will up your party's use of resources, because each fireball (or whatever) can only be used on one group of enemies.

If you plan your fights as chained encounters, then if your party is getting really torn up by part 1, you can weaken or even jettison part 2. The number of bugbears/cultists is cut in half, the assassins don't show up, the dragon happened to be out hunting at the time, or the wizard's ritual has backfired and you find him lying seriously injured on the floor of his sanctum when you finally break through.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Depending on the level, I would scale back on the difficulty a hair, too. My current campaign does not have a healer, and I'm finding that it gets a lot more deadly.

With it being a time-dependent chase that potentially limits long rests, that'll also put a damper on some of the classes' abilities. If there are any spellcasters, they could potentially be at an additional disadvantage.

Other variables being thrown into the mix. The party does not have, or have access to a healer. They have a smattering of potions, one of the characters does a lot of temp HP stuff, and I'm having bedrolls allow players to recover an additional HD.

 

[AriochQ]

Much of my campaign combats are 1 or 2 combats per long rest. I had trouble balancing difficulty at first. Now, I just add flunkies/minions to the encounters to increase the difficulty. I find that works better than upping monster AC/HP's or upping the encounter to two or more big bad monsters (unless the encounter is meant to occur that way).

If the combat is going against the party and I want to nudge it, I usually start to spread out the damage more, have monsters do actions other than attack (like aid), or have them move around a bit more so they draw opportunity attacks.

 

[Grakarg]

Not to derail the thread, as I like all the discussion (and it makes me re-evaluate some of my plans for an upcoming hexcrawl style game) but...

Why worry about the fact that the party doesn't have a dedicated healer?
THEY know they don't have a focused healer, shouldn't THEY take steps to compensate?
I say just run the encounters how you want them to play out and if the players feel like they need more healing they'll adjust. Many classes have access to some form of healing if the players choose to take it. A rogue with a healing kit can be super effective.

Its too bad if you have to softball your encounters because the players are being knuckleheads.
A little self-preservation and self-interest can go a long way and they'll have a hard time learning it if they blast through every encounter w/o any challenge.

That said, I do believe a DM should try to tailor their game to be the type of game the Players want to play in, and not force the game or story the DM wants to see onto the players (no railroads). Its just sometimes hard to not feel like we as DMs need to bail them out of the bonehead predicaments they get themselves into; especially since we usually set up the predicaments in the first place for them to stumble into blindly.

Whats the class makeup of the party?

 

[Tony Vargas]

I was envisioning maybe three to four encounters, but the pacing means that the majority of those encounters were probably going to have at least one long rest between them.

That will seriously throw off 5e. Challenge & balance is 5e is realized only over a long series of 6-8 relatively minor ("moderate-to-hard" is relative, perhaps misleading) encounters creating an attrition-based challenge overcome via resource-management and class diversity among the PCs.

Other variables being thrown into the mix. The party does not have, or have access to a healer.

Shorter days were going to be necessary then, anyway. Not 1-2 encounters, but shorter. You might consider just taking the long rest mechanic off the table, entirely, but allowing a short rest after every encounter. Class balance will still be badly distorted, but hp management might work out OK.

 

[Nytmare]

Why worry about the fact that the party doesn't have a dedicated healer?
THEY know they don't have a focused healer, shouldn't THEY take steps to compensate?
I say just run the encounters how you want them to play out and if the players feel like they need more healing they'll adjust. Many classes have access to some form of healing if the players choose to take it. A rogue with a healing kit can be super effective.

Its too bad if you have to softball your encounters because the players are being knuckleheads.
A little self-preservation and self-interest can go a long way and they'll have a hard time learning it if they blast through every encounter w/o any challenge.

That said, I do believe a DM should try to tailor their game to be the type of game the Players want to play in, and not force the game or story the DM wants to see onto the players (no railroads). Its just sometimes hard to not feel like we as DMs need to bail them out of the bonehead predicaments they get themselves into; especially since we usually set up the predicaments in the first place for them to stumble into blindly.

Whats the class makeup of the party?

Not every story needs to be about a crack team of ready-for-anything mercenaries.

I'm trying to break a bunch of my friends out of their standard "tank/healer/ranged guy/wizard is how to play D&D" game so instead of starting with characters, we started off with a bit of spit balling and world building and they ended up making a world where mages poked too deep into too many secrets they weren't meant to know, and wiped the face of the planet pretty much clean. Everything's a desert, magic isn't trusted, and the only religion any of them know about is the one practiced by the evil empire of lizard dudes who are the main antagonists. Then we started talking about a cast and a goal and they chose to be a hodgepodge group of mostly escaped slaves trying to free other slaves.

"And make sure you have a healer" was never part of the equation.


[EDIT]

Also this is a one shot game built around the strengths and weaknesses of the characters they thought would make for an interesting story. They probably won't have time to figure out that they're being knuckleheads.

 

[Grakarg]

Sounds like an awesome fun setting!

And sound like you have a good set of players then too, as they are making the story a priority. Win!