D&D 5E Resource-Draining Model D&D Doesn't Work (for me)

[Sadras]

My group played on Saturday completing the Chapter 5 Den of Hill Giants of Storm King's Thunder. We started around 12 and finished around 4:30 - there was an hour of pre-planning and decision-making with a little bit of roleplay and exploration (discovery) in the end, but essentially we had 3 hours of pure glorious combat.

One PC drank a potion of enlarge and engaged the ogres and giants shielding his allies from much of the danger. The rest of the PCs assisted him in unleashing hurt on the monsters. The ogres waded in first, followed closely by the giants who threw chairs, small furniture, barrels and oil lamps at the PCs. Goblins fired volley after volley from their advantageous position, high up in the wooden ledges, remembering to hide, while starved wolves viciously barked nearby, banging against their cage doors.

Guh banged her club unceremoniously on the ground and wall behind her, demanding they bring her the filthy halfling to taste who had angered her with his constant chatter. An alarm bell sounded off erratically in the background alerting all the residents of Grudd Haug of an attack. Meanwhile the Watermaster, a proud Hobgoblin warrior in his own right, along with the kitchen staff entered the fray, dodging and weaving the movement of the hill giants, hiding behind benches and pillars, in effort to get to the cage-kennels and unleash the fury of the wolves. A well placed fireball decimated the goblin cook and his assistants.

As the mountain of corpses grew around the grown PC, providing much cover for the party from the volley of arrows, one of the armoured hill giants (horse-barding fashioned around his left arm like a gladiatior) engaged in a mighty grapple with the enlarged Battlemaster pulling him away, until they rolled back on the crisscrossing wooden beams over the stench producing hole. The beams unable to take the weight of both creatures, cracked and tore, sending both character and hill giant falling through into Oinky-Boinky's, the Ettin's, pigden below.

The Watermaster, finally reached the wolves and released them, ordering them to attack the intruders, the wolves dashed, climbing and ferociously bounding over corpses of hill giants and ogres to feast upon the hidden spellcasters. Meanwhile fresh danger loomed as two further hill giants arrived from the entrance, one of them covered in blood, and holding a large meat-cleaver. He ushered in his pet, an otyugh. Chief Guh laughed heartily as she bore witness to the battle that had now turned in her force's favour.

But unbeknownst to her, the fighter-rogue, who was engaged in fending off the wolves from her teammates, had one more trick up her sleeve...

That was the first hour and half. Now I ask you, who needs 6-8 encounters per day?

 

[dave2008]

You have two major options in encounter design in 5e:
a) the standard (long) adventuring day, for the majority of which the long rest classes have the capacity to nova and save the party's bacon, even if it might be inadvisable in the long term;
b) fewer but tougher fights in which everyone is encouraged to go nova.

c) a mix of a & b so that the party never knows when to go Nova and therefore rarely does.

That is what I do. Every group is different, but it works for mine. I actually have to encourage my group to go nova, the got so skittish about it.

 

[Flamestrike]

Now I ask you, who needs 6-8 encounters per day?

You dont.

You aim for a median of 6 [medium] encounters.

Some days that'll be 1 very deadly fight. Some days it'll be 2 very hard fights. Some days it'll be 2 hard fights, 3 medium fights and 1 easy fight. Some days there will be 1 short rest. Some days 2. Some days 3 or more. Some days there wont be time for any.

There is nothing wrong with having a single 'deadly++) encounter adventuring day. There is nothing in the rules to prohibit it, and nothing breaks if you do so. It only becomes a problem if you do so over and over and over again.

The problem only becomes a problem when DMs arent clever or assertive enough to manage the adventuring day. It goes like this:

1) Players resort to Nova tactics, destroying encounters in a few rounds, then falling back to rest.
2) DM responds by increasing difficulty of encounters to Deadly++ to 'make things a challenge'.
3) Nova tactics are now mandatory in the group to deal with the threat. Rather than fix the problem of encounter and class imbalance, the DM has entrenched it.
4) Game devolves into rocket tag. Either the DM rage quits, or the players get TPK'd. Non Nova 'builds' get outshone, and players of short rest dependent classes (Fighters and Warlocks) climb online to complain about the classes/ system (not realizing the problem actually lies with their DM).

Note; when I say [adventuring day] above, I mean [the arbitrary amount of time between long rests]. Depending on the rest variant used at your table and other factors an 'adventuring day' could be a month or more of in game time.

 

[Fanaelialae]

c) a mix of a & b so that the party never knows when to go Nova and therefore rarely does.

That is what I do. Every group is different, but it works for mine. I actually have to encourage my group to go nova, the got so skittish about it.

Yup, that's what I use too.

But c is just a hybrid of a and b, which is why I don't consider it a major option.

 

[Flamestrike]

c) a mix of a & b so that the party never knows when to go Nova and therefore rarely does.

That is what I do. Every group is different, but it works for mine. I actually have to encourage my group to go nova, the got so skittish about it.

I use a mix of Doom clocks [Save the princess by midnight or else the Demon gets summoned!], single encounter adventuring days, intelligent and reactive antagonists, environmental challenges and [not so] random encounters to manage my adventuring days.

Short rests are 5 minutes long and can be taken whenever with a hand-wave (unless the DM says no). Limit of 2 per long rest applies.

When I sit down to do my mid-week prep time, I turn my mind to the adventuring day. Framing the encounter in a doom clock, or how I intend to manage it for the next chunk of the adventure. Sometimes the answer to that question is 'I wont; the players can take things at their own pace for a while'. Of course; the players dont know when another encounter is around the corner, so they tend to self regulate in any event.

I have no issues.

 

[Oofta]

I can't speak for anyone else, but I regularly do between 5 and 10 encounters between long rests. Occasionally it's less ... but if I only do 1 or 2 encounters I try to broadcast that ahead of time so people know they can go nova. Because pulling out all the stops can be fun now and then. Ideally even the PCs without recharge abilities have a potion or two to chug so they can join in on the fun.

We do carry over from session to session though, and sometimes our sessions are all RP, other times they're all fighting. Personally I like the variety, and don't really care too much about balance as long as everyone has their time in the spotlight.

 

[dave2008]

Yup, that's what I use too.

But c is just a hybrid of a and b, which is why I don't consider it a major option.

First I didn't read all the previous threads. I thought the issue was finding ways to prevent Nova / 5MWD. For me, C does that very well. So I thought it was relevant.

 

[The Green Hermit]

My recommendations in no particular order:

• Skip the trivial fights. I don't bother with anything less than "medium" and, if I know I'm not going to get recommended number of encounters in I crank that up to "hard" or "deadly". Sometimes I'll ask for goal and approach to a scenario and just skip rolling dice.
• Pre-draw maps, or don't use detailed maps. I made blocks out of clay (some 1 inch, some 2 inch square, some 3 inch square) and use those to represent everything from buildings to trees. I've never been good at theater of the mind, but it shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes to set up a fight.
• I don't bother with PC mapping or detailed exploration. We only draw things out if it's confusing or there's a fight.
• Depending on style of campaign and pace, go with the alternate rules where a short rest is overnight and a long rest is a week or more.
• Carry over from one game to the next. There's no reason to say people have a long rest after the game session. Have people note HP, spell slots, conditions, etc at the end of the game. Next session picks up where you left off, even if that was in the middle of a dungeon.

We end a session in the middle of a dungeon all the time. We just take a quick picture of the map, along with notes, so we remember where all the carcasses are and in case it gets smudged.

 

[The Green Hermit]

9) Maps. I am not sure how you are using them, but I almost always have them pre-printed or drawn and just reveal them as needed. I don't have the PCs make maps.

How do you reveal them as needed? I've been struggling with this, because I hate taking the time to draw out the next room, but I also don't want the PCs to know what they are looking at before they get there. Also, I have roll-up whiteboard maps that get smudged between sessions. (We frequently have to pause at least once in-between sessions on a big dungeon, especially since all of us are learning as we go.)

 

[The Green Hermit]

I realize that. But the group in question is composed of six newbies. They still don't always successfully track their resources within a session; I have no faith that they'll track them beyond the session. Think me lazy if you wish, but I have no interest in doing all the work of tracking from week to week. Hence, the default for that campaign is that a week passes between sessions. They'll probably get there eventually, but they're not there yet. They waste a lot of time in debate. I could certainly step on it as a DM, set a timer, and fix the issue but this is a casual game with some guys from work. I'd rather they enjoy themselves (which they do) than optimize their fun into misery.

Do you keep a log for every session? Really quickly, I will just go around the table and note the spell slots, superiority dice, etc. that each PC has. I already have the HP from the latest battle sheet. Then, at the start of each session, we quickly recap where everybody was. Yes, as the DM I am still the one keeping track, but it takes at most 5 minutes total.