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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6861589" data-attributes="member: 2067">It's a really common pitfall of 5e DMs, especially those who are used to 3e and 4e, so it's one of my first pieces of advice to someone having encounter difficulty.It's also not nearly as hard in practice as it can seem at first blush. The rules for random encounters keep it lively by RAW, if nothing else. (I know this caught me by surprise as a DM who never used random encounters, but seeing them all over WotC adventures, and seeing how they're use there, it has become clear to me that these are not a small throwback to earlier e's, they're a pretty important part of 5e's default pacing.)The decision in earlier encounters of: do I use this limited resource or not becomes the important decision. If you do, you won't have it later in the day. If you don't, the encounter you don't spend that resource in is more difficult. That's the interesting round-to-round decision in encounters that don't necessarily threaten PC death with every attack roll. For overland stuff...1) Decide what you want out of your overland journey encounters. Is atmosphere all you care about? Do you want to threaten the PC's lives with deadly monsters? Or do you want the journey itself (running out of rations, inclement weather, etc.) to be the difficulty?2-A) If it's just atmosphere you care about, encounter difficulty doesn't really matter2-B) If you want to challenge the party with deadly monsters, roll for random encounters every hour, and place quick "5-room" / 6-8 encounter dungeons/sidequests along the way.2-C) If you want the journey itself to be a challenge, use weather/terrain/monsters to cause skill checks where failure yields a level of exhaustion that doesn't go away until you rest in some sort of civilization.</blockquote>

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