D&D (2024) Playtest Druid and Paladin One D&D survey is live.

[Emberashh]

I will never understand how the argument over the Adventuring Day can repeat every week it seems, and theres always people neglecting to account for the fact that the recommendation is 6-8 Medium encounters.

If you run harder encounters, you can compress the day considerably.

And that tends to be the most sound idea anyway, given the games math was originally balanced around the equivalent of 3-4 Hards and that math never really changed when we transitioned out of Next, other than through the bizarre addition of the "Easy" encounter, which shifted the original difficulties upwards and presented an awkward natural language problem that insists on "medium" being the standard encounter when it shouldn't be mathematically.

Its also important to note that the same guidelines are balanced around things like Feats, Magic Items, and post-PHB content not being used, which is also something people constantly neglect to account for.

Overall if you want a functioning Adventuring Day in 5e, take this advice:

1. Double the encounter difficulty thresholds for each PC. Triple it when they reach level 10.

2. Stick with Hard as your standard encounter. Anything easier should not be run through Initiative based combat.

3. Optionally, swap to Epic Heroism (with Spell Recovery), and use Slow Natural Healing and Healing Surges. (Lingering Injuries as well if your players aren't weenies)

Doubling the difficulty thresholds fixes the encounter math. Its by no means comprehensive and you could get much more granular if you cared to, but 2x is a good general multiplier that will cover most party compositions.

Sticking with Hards consolidates the Adventuring Day into a more reasonable session, but it should also be said that an Adventuring Day doesn't need to be equal to a single session; they can be shorter than one, and its okay to still be on the same day across a couple of sessions.

And the variant rule options just take everything a step farther. EH brings the game back closer to its original 4E design, which will make encounter and adventure design dramatically easier, and the other 3 rules help temper the parties increased power levels.

They'll be more consistently powerful regardless of how far along in the day you are (meaning its easy to know an encounter will run fine), but the increased attrition of health means they can't just go hog wild on everything, and especially not when the encounters are corrected for the difficulty they should be at.

 

[tetrasodium]

I will never understand how the argument over the Adventuring Day can repeat every week it seems, and theres always people neglecting to account for the fact that the recommendation is 6-8 Medium encounters.

If you run harder encounters, you can compress the day considerably.

And that tends to be the most sound idea anyway, given the games math was originally balanced around the equivalent of 3-4 Hards and that math never really changed when we transitioned out of Next, other than through the bizarre addition of the "Easy" encounter, which shifted the original difficulties upwards and presented an awkward natural language problem that insists on "medium" being the standard encounter when it shouldn't be mathematically.

Its also important to note that the same guidelines are balanced around things like Feats, Magic Items, and post-PHB content not being used, which is also something people constantly neglect to account for.

Overall if you want a functioning Adventuring Day in 5e, take this advice:

1. Double the encounter difficulty thresholds for each PC. Triple it when they reach level 10.

2. Stick with Hard as your standard encounter. Anything easier should not be run through Initiative based combat.

3. Optionally, swap to Epic Heroism (with Spell Recovery), and use Slow Natural Healing and Healing Surges. (Lingering Injuries as well if your players aren't weenies)

Doubling the difficulty thresholds fixes the encounter math. Its by no means comprehensive and you could get much more granular if you cared to, but 2x is a good general multiplier that will cover most party compositions.

Sticking with Hards consolidates the Adventuring Day into a more reasonable session, but it should also be said that an Adventuring Day doesn't need to be equal to a single session; they can be shorter than one, and its okay to still be on the same day across a couple of sessions.

And the variant rule options just take everything a step farther. EH brings the game back closer to its original 4E design, which will make encounter and adventure design dramatically easier, and the other 3 rules help temper the parties increased power levels.

They'll be more consistently powerful regardless of how far along in the day you are (meaning its easy to know an encounter will run fine), but the increased attrition of health means they can't just go hog wild on everything, and especially not when the encounters are corrected for the difficulty they should be at.

When the expectation was more like 2-4ish encounters it was possible to squeeze a couple encounters together to apply pressure with fewer tougher fights. Now attrition was deemphasized to such an extreme degree that until the compressed adventuring day starts featuring rocks fall level overly tough encounters it really doesn't much matter when bounded accuracy makes sure those hard but still reasonable "hard" or even "deadly" encounters can be steamrolled by PCs.

Compressing the adventuring day with tougher encounters creates new problems for the GM to deal with. Some classes get much stronger, others get weaker.

 

[Maxperson]

I will never understand how the argument over the Adventuring Day can repeat every week it seems, and theres always people neglecting to account for the fact that the recommendation is 6-8 Medium encounters.

If you run harder encounters, you can compress the day considerably.

That's the theory, but it really doesn't work out that way in practice. You need to up a number of them to deadly if you want to compress the day. Even then you really aren't going to be down into the 1-3 range. You need to go beyond deadly to get that low and still challenge the group. The game is too easy for hard to do much, and 6-8 medium encounters is a cake walk.

Overall if you want a functioning Adventuring Day in 5e, take this advice:

1. Double the encounter difficulty thresholds for each PC. Triple it when they reach level 10.

2. Stick with Hard as your standard encounter. Anything easier should not be run through Initiative based combat.

3. Optionally, swap to Epic Heroism (with Spell Recovery), and use Slow Natural Healing and Healing Surges. (Lingering Injuries as well if your players aren't weenies)

Doubling the difficulty thresholds fixes the encounter math. Its by no means comprehensive and you could get much more granular if you cared to, but 2x is a good general multiplier that will cover most party compositions.

Most of that is good. It doesn't fix the issue completely, but it certainly helps significantly.

 

[Emberashh]

it really doesn't much matter when bounded accuracy makes sure those hard but still reasonable "hard" or even "deadly" encounters can be steamrolled by PCs.

That hasn't been my experience, but there again I think what you think is unreasonable is probably different from mine.

As an example, one of my favorite encounters involved a town that exists on a mountainside cliff, and its being besieged by a Cabal of 9 Archmages, who worship an ancient Red Dragon that lurks on the other side of the mountain and joins the fight partway through, who lead a horde of about 5000 Orcs.

The players goal (this was for 6 level 20s) is to break the siege and slay everyone.

Now, admittedly I was using homebrew mechanics to run the Orcs and Mages, but they as two groups were the equivalent of about 5 extra Dragons, all with Legendary Actions (or an equivalent)

The resulting fight was, naturally, excellent and wasn't at all a steamroll. The party split up to fight each threat and it eventually culminated in the Dragon managing to get away while the party drove the rest of the Orcs off the mountain.

You need to go beyond deadly to get that low and still challenge the group.

Yep, thats why my number one recc is to double the difficulty thresholds if you're using stuff that wasn't in the encounter math. Hards work if you use just the PHB and nothing else, including variant rules.

Most of that is good. It doesn't fix the issue completely, but it certainly helps significantly

Yeah to fix it completely really begs for a rewrite. Or just play 4E and skip the rigmarole of patching 4e back together from its bodyparts in 5e.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Slow Naturla Healing: Turning the 5 Minute Work Day into the Five Minute Work Week.

 

[tetrasodium]

That hasn't been my experience, but there again I think what you think is unreasonable is probably different from mine.

As an example, one of my favorite encounters involved a town that exists on a mountainside cliff, and its being besieged by a Cabal of 9 Archmages, who worship an ancient Red Dragon that lurks on the other side of the mountain and joins the fight partway through, who lead a horde of about 5000 Orcs.

The players goal (this was for 6 level 20s) is to break the siege and slay everyone.

Now, admittedly I was using homebrew mechanics to run the Orcs and Mages, but they as two groups were the equivalent of about 5 extra Dragons, all with Legendary Actions (or an equivalent)

The resulting fight was, naturally, excellent and wasn't at all a steamroll. The party split up to fight each threat and it eventually culminated in the Dragon managing to get away while the party drove the rest of the Orcs off the mountain.



Yep, thats why my number one recc is to double the difficulty thresholds if you're using stuff that wasn't in the encounter math. Hards work if you use just the PHB and nothing else, including variant rules.




Yeah to fix it completely really begs for a rewrite. Or just play 4E and skip the rigmarole of patching 4e back together from its bodyparts in 5e.

an Ancient Dragon, Nine archmages, and five thousand orcs was all it took? Yea... that's the embodiment of a rocks fall level encounter.

 

[Emberashh]

Slow Naturla Healing: Turning the 5 Minute Work Day into the Five Minute Work Week.

I mean, sure, if you try nothing and run out of ideas.

an Ancient Dragon, Nine archmages, and five thousand orcs was all it took? Yea... that's the embodiment of a rocks fall level encounter.

Well, the game tells you characters at level 20 are supposed to be heroes of the multiverse or whatever, and most everyone recognizes that level 20 characters, casters in particular, are basically gods.

Yet we want to act like some mages, a gaggle of Orcs, and a dragon are just out of line lol.

My group played at T4 a lot. Almost exclusively given how much we didn't mess around with taking 1927178 years to level up. High level characters can handle a lot, and they should.

The only shortcoming of the game is representing what they can handle without it being a mess to run smoothly, and thats where my Horde mechanics came in.

But even without them, 6 Ancient red dragons can be run smoothly by the default rules and it'd be an equivalent encounter. Between a solid party composition and a dearth of magic items, its really not a rocks falls situation.

Rocks fall in my view would be a horde of 5000 Dragons, which is the as yet not-revealed threat in my groups DCC campaign.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I mean, sure, if you try nothing and run out of ideas.

I try pacing my story instead of relying on mechanics based on a sixty year old book not designed to be used as inspiration for game mechanics.

 

[Emberashh]

I try pacing my story instead of relying on mechanics based on a sixty year old book not designed to be used as inspiration for game mechanics.

Ok?

 

[tetrasodium]

Well, the game tells you characters at level 20 are supposed to be heroes of the multiverse or whatever, and most everyone recognizes that level 20 characters, casters in particular, are basically gods.

Yet we want to act like some mages, a gaggle of Orcs, and a dragon are just out of line lol.

My group played at T4 a lot. Almost exclusively given how much we didn't mess around with taking 1927178 years to level up. High level characters can handle a lot, and they should.

The only shortcoming of the game is representing what they can handle without it being a mess to run smoothly, and thats where my Horde mechanics came in.

But even without them, 6 Ancient red dragons can be run smoothly by the default rules and it'd be an equivalent encounter. Between a solid party composition and a dearth of magic items, its really not a rocks falls situation.

Rocks fall in my view would be a horde of 5000 Dragons, which is the as yet not-revealed threat in my groups DCC campaign.

Round 1: cone of cold, cone of cold, cone of cold, cone of cold, cone of cold, cone of cold, cone of cold, cone of cold, cone of cold, dragon breath. minimum 72d8 dc17con save for half from cone of cold alone before factoring dragon breath & the rest.
round2see above
Round N: if all the cone of colds are used switch to lightning bolt or upcast cone of colds for lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt,

If the encounter requires the GM to run it with one arm behind their back & the other clad in a gentle velvet glove to avoid round one instagib players at the hands of nine 20 int 15wis casters supported by a dragon it's not "the characters" who are deftly handling the encounter.