Reducing the number of encounters in a day

[Xeviat]

Tony, thanks for the input. The barbarian is mainly my concern right now because the campaign I'm running has a barbarian player who already doesn't think he'll take barbarian past 9th. I'll probably have to put him in situations where he's likely to lose his rage, so he sees the value of extra rages, but it does feel like a one trick class that doesn't have other options. The 4E barbarian had Rage Strike for that issue, so they could burn their "dailies" in a big hard fight. That wouldn't work with the "unlimited rage" end point of the 5E barbarian, though.

The "balanced enough" status of 5E makes me less worried about messing things up, I'm just looking to avoid easy to avoid consequences of a change. I don't want to force 6 to 8 encounters a day to balance the characters (though my current party is more daily focused; EK, Diviner, Lore Bard, and Barbarian), and hard and deadly encounters offer more dynamic fights to me.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The barbarian is mainly my concern right now because the campaign I'm running has a barbarian player who already doesn't think he'll take barbarian past 9th.

Is that necessarily a bad thing? Heck, Conan probably didn't 'take barbarian levels' his whole career.

The "balanced enough" status of 5E makes me less worried about messing things up, I'm just looking to avoid easy to avoid consequences of a change. I don't want to force 6 to 8 encounters a day to balance the characters (though my current party is more daily focused; EK, Diviner, Lore Bard, and Barbarian), and hard and deadly encounters offer more dynamic fights to me.

Sounds like you shouldn't have a lot of trouble with that mix of classes. If that changes, you could always adjust things.

 

[PnPgamer]

I doubt it fits into goblins schedule to send more but less frequently.

 

[Xeviat]

Goblin swarms make far more interesting encounters than 2 goblins.

 

[Syntallah]

Decent discussion over here http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?474337-Guidelines-for-fewer-tougher-encounters.

 

[Xeviat]

It doesn't look like people are discussing the things that could be affected by this: barbarian rage and "at start of encounter" abilities mainly. But simply using Hard and Deadly encounters entirely, or two normal encounters back to back, does work at keeping daily balance while making the encounters bigger and having short rests after every encounter.

The notion of 8 hour rest is a short rest and a whole day's rest in a safe location as a long rest is interesting. It's definitely something I'd consider if I was doing a long term city game.

 

[The Myopic Sniper]

I don't think you have anything to sweat here. The 5th, 6th and ultimately unlimited rages just allows the Barbarian to expend rages on what would normally be non-rage worthy encounters. It is nice to have, but there is a reason why a lot of Barbarian players start looking at multiclassing when they start getting into the double digits levelwise. You wouldn't see that if having more than 4 rages was a major expansion of character power.

 

[pming]

EDIT: **Sorry, just read others posts and they cover much of what I said. Carry on! **

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[abirdcall]

Some things to keep in mind:

"Day" doesn't have to equal "long rest"

If you are designing encounters to be combat encounters specifically you may be limiting the game's potential. I prefer characters to be able to turn various encounters into exploration, combat, or social encounters depending on their actions and abilities.

I also agree with the poster above who suggested not using multiclassing. It is a class based game and it works the best when that is embraced. Subclasses give a lot of options in classes that don't take away from the class structures.

 

[Awesome Adam]

I also agree with the poster above who suggested not using multiclassing. It is a class based game and it works the best when that is embraced.

My Barbarian/Fighter/Ranger/Cleric/Rogue 1/1/1/1/1 would disagree ~