D&D 5E Resting and the frikkin' Elephant in the Room

[Tony Vargas]

But, he does have a point. At some point, you HAVE to take ownership of your own playstyle. Particularly when a given system doesn't really dovetail with your play style. It works that way, no matter what the game is.

To a large extent, a better-balanced system will hanle a wider range of styles with fewer issues.

Try running 3e, for example, where you have 6-8 encounters per day. It really doesn't work very well.

It'd work better than the more typical 5MWD. but, yeah, 4 is expected. I'm not sure it is (or there even is) the balance point, though

So, what do you do? Do you insist that 3e is broken and needs to be fixed?

You wouldn't be wrong.

. They aren't having this issue because they aren't insisting on the system conforming to their chosen playstyle but rather they have adjusted their play style to the system.

That is having the issue. It's just accepting it.

. D&D is not, nor has it ever been, a world building system. It just isn't. The amount of lamp shading you need to do in order to conform a world to the system looks like a solar eclipse

That doesn't actually excuse it from screwing up a campaign world or theme, it just points up a shortcoming... A 'problem' with the system..

A D&D world that actually tried to fit the system to the world would be a very, very bizarre place. It most certainly wouldn't be the Faux Europe that most campaigns are.

No doubt.

 

[Hussar]

To a large extent, a better-balanced system will hanle a wider range of styles with fewer issues.

But, how wide are we talking here? If you have 3 encounters in a day, say 2 - short rest - 1, then 99% of the Elephant goes away. The only play style that has an issue with this is the one that insists on one and ONLY one encounter per adventuring day.

I'd say that's a pretty wide range of play styles. No one else is having these problems.

It'd work better than the more typical 5MWD. but, yeah, 4 is expected. I'm not sure it is (or there even is) the balance point, though

You wouldn't be wrong.

Meh, I'm not as critical of 3e as you are. I played it for a heck of a long time without a lot of the issues that people talked about, so, I have a rather softer spot for 3e than you do. 4 EL=Party Level encounters was the DMG standard, but, typically, it tended to slide far closer to 1-3, particularly because of the swinginess of 3e. It was ridiculously easy for a Par encounter to turn deadly if the DM got on anything like a hot streak with the dice.

That is having the issue. It's just accepting it.

If you accept it, then it's not an issue is it? Isn't it the same as saying, "That's not a bug, it's a feature"? In other words, I'm not really seeing a problem if the group doesn't have any problem with the new paradigm.

That doesn't actually excuse it from screwing up a campaign world or theme, it just points up a shortcoming... A 'problem' with the system..

AFAIC, yes, it very much does. You don't blame a screwdriver for not being a hammer. The system is not, nor has it ever been, a world building system. There are world building systems out there. Traveller being probably the grand daddy of them all. But, there are lots of others. Ranging from rules heavy to rules light. Tons of systems out there are built around the idea that you are going to use that system to develop a game world.

D&D has never been that. D&D was first and foremost about building a dungeon for the adventurers to go into and do stuff. Everything else has been layered on top of that. There's a reason that we get spells like Continual Light, and Create Food and Water, and Leomand's Hut. And all those other "We don't want to cart around all this crap all the time, so, let's have a spell for that" type spells.

At no point was D&D designed to deliver a believable world.

 

[Tony Vargas]

But, how wide are we talking here?

Depends on the system. Many could be completely unaffected by pacing an encounter per year, or 24 in a day, 0 issues. So very wide.

3.5 can't do 6+ encounters too well, because the party might start seeing character deaths, but that long a day is barely starting to turn the tide, so it's hard to say it ever works in the same sense balanced systems do. 5e needs 6-8, and a specific short/long rest ratio.

If you have 3 encounters in a day, say 2 - short rest - 1, then 99% of the Elephant goes away.

Nope, that breaks the short/long ratio. You'd need 3 encounter with a rest after each. They'd also need to be deadly encounters, and that further shifts the dynamic to the most potent daily resources being the most important. They'd also need to be unusually long encounters to burn through all those resources and give things a chance to even out, and 5e doesn't handle that well, either.

Maybe, if you handled it well, you go from elephant to hippo.

The only play style that has an issue with this is the one that insists on one and ONLY one encounter per adventuring day.

Not an uncommon one, though 2/day would also have serious issues.

. No one else is having these problems.

That's the nature of the elephant, it's unacknowledged.

Meh, I'm not as critical of 3e as you are. I played it for a heck of a long time without a lot of the issues that people talked about, so, I have a rather softer spot for 3e than you do.

I quite enjoyed 3e for the whole 8-year run, and'll still play 3.0 when I get the chance. But I'm not reticent about ripping things I like when they have real issues. 3e was intentionally imbalanced on top of all the unintended balance issues a bloated list-based system is heir to. Just the reality of it.

Hitting a magic number of encounters would barely begin to impose balance on it.

4 EL=Party Level encounters was the DMG standard, but, typically, it tended to slide far closer to 1-3,

Not unusual, the 5MWD goes way back. Attrition balance is fundamentally flawed, that way. It takes something fixed/abstract, like 13A heal-ups, or something unthinkable radical, like classless design, to make it work.

D&D was first and foremost about building a dungeon for the adventurers to go into and do stuff. Everything else has been layered on top of that.

OK, that's fair.

But plenty had neen layered on. Including standards of Vtude & tradition that demand radical class imbalance, checked only by improbably long days.

 

[Hussar]

That's the nature of the elephant, it's unacknowledged.

But, if a group isn't having a problem at all, it's not that they don't acknowledge the elephant, it's that the elephant doesn't exist at all, for that group. The only way it becomes the elephant in the room is if the problem is experienced by everyone but, only a small group are actually recognizing the problem. My point is, the elephant simply does not exist at some tables.

And, really, it's only the 1/day folks that are actually having this issue. Even the 2/day bunch don't necessarily. Not if you have 1-short rest-1 encounter days where those two encounters are pretty serious. And, even the 2-short rest-1 bunch don't really have a problem. That third encounter is going to be a right nasty fight if the first two were serious fights - the casters are running pretty low on their higher level spells by that point.

See, to me, it's ludicrously easy to simply shift a 1 encounter/day adventure to a 2-1 encounter day. Take your first encounter, split it up into a couple of waves and have the third one show up 30 minutes later. Poof, 3 encounters before any rest. And you don't have to do it every time.

The trick here is variation. As soon as the group knows they can reliably do a 1/day rest schedule, they can plan accordingly - alpha striking to their hearts content. All you really have to do is switch that up from time to time. Make it so the party doesn't know if this encounter is the last one for the day or not. Then, the elephant largely goes away because the players can't take advantage of the DM's pacing.

The elephant in the room, AFAIC, is that some DM's want to be 100% predictable by their players and then complain that the players use that predictability to break the system. Stop being predictable and the elephant goes away.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Or, Option C, realize that system balances have NOTHING to do whatsoever with world building and that the system is designed to create ADVENTURES, not worlds, and not worry about it in the least.

I mean, good grief, it's pretty much part and parcel to the genre. The Ring Wraiths could obliterate Bree. Kill every last man, woman and child in every town they come to on their way to find the Hobbits. Without so much as breaking a sweat. So, why are there any living creatures left along their path? Well, genre conventions. Monsters fight the heroes and vice versa. We don't worry too much about the background, because, well, it's the background.

It's funny, you get TV shows like Hercules and Xena, where our heroes just happen to find monsters everywhere they go. But, surprisingly enough, people outside of those "adventure areas" live pretty much normal lives. And no one questions this. Lovecraftian horrors could destroy the world at any time they choose, but, shock and surprise, they never do.

Again, trying to use D&D as a world building system is an exercise in futility.

TIL Hussar's DMG doesn't have Part 1.

 

[Ovinomancer]

So then what's the issue? If I can modify the encounters (in a worldbuilding sense)... even balanced ones so that they fit in the world the way I want... what exactly is your issue? You claimed it would influence worldbuilding... I'm saying that with all the tools available it really doesn't have to unles you specifically let it. That is where we disagree and you seem to keep missing it.

EDIT: In other words unlike you I don't make the deadly encounter a horde of 50 orcs unless it fits the world otherwise I'll use another deadly encounter that does... in a city a single powerful necromancer with his disguised undead servants... on the road out of the city, an illithid and his thralls who sometimes kidnap and subvert those who they have a use for and are leaving the city... and so on. So again how is this affecting my worldbuilding unless I choose to let it? Having the tools to adjust the CR and even create new monsters means I don't have to compromise my world to get the encounter difficulty correct.

You've just said that large groups of low CR monsters aren't a thing in your world's and then you ask how you're affecting your world? I mean, really, you advise that I shouldn't use an extremely common trope of enemy in D&D (and fantasy in general) because it causes problems with world building and then you demand I acknowledge that doing so has no impact on worldbuilding?!

 

[Imaro]

You've just said that large groups of low CR monsters aren't a thing in your world's and then you ask how you're affecting your world?

Not what I said at all. I said they're not a thing in my world unless I want them to be. SO again claiming it stretches verisimilitude for there to be 3 deadly encounters of 200 Orcs because the town would never be able to defend itself against that many Orcs makes no sense to me...Either world building wise you should use a mixture of different deadly encounters, that in this world of no walls and few guards would for some reason not easily pick off the town (though I'm finding it hard to justify why even non-deadly encounter monsters wouldn't be picking off these settlements)...or the town will be decimated by the 600 Orcs you decided must be the 3 deadly encounters unless the adventurers step in and stop the approaching horde...of course a world with roving bands of raiding humanoids and mythical monsters where civilizations apparently don't take even basic precautions for defending their settlements makes even less sense to me, but hey it's your world.

EDIT: In my world settlements have walls and guards that patrol and make alliances for aid against hordes of humanoids, hire adventurers for killing and handling things in and from the wild and well do the basic things for survival I figure they would have to do in order to reach the point of an actual thriving settlement in within a D&D world... that's the real difference.

I mean, really, you advise that I shouldn't use an extremely common trope of enemy in D&D (and fantasy in general) because it causes problems with world building and then you demand I acknowledge that doing so has no impact on worldbuilding?!

Again no I don't. Nowhere do I say don't use Orcs. What I did say, was don't use a 600 Orc horde if it doesn't make sense (the civilizations in this area couldn't hold them off, there's not enough food, there's not enough land, etc.) for where you're placing them in the world (honestly isn't this just common sense?? I mean it's not even about the deadly encounter bit, it's about what makes sense for your world.

Another option I haven't seen you address at all is to change the CR of the Orcs so there's a more realistic (for this world where settlements don't have walls and aren't concerned with defense against the things in the wild) number of them for the particular area. In other words I feel like its like complaining Orcs not being able to breathe water affects your world building because you can't put them in underwater cities at the bottom of lakes. Well use the tools 5e gives you to create a race of water breathing Orcs then. That's you choosing not to engage with the tools that's causing the problem not the rules themselves.

Also...is a horde of 600 Orcs a common trope of enemy in the more recent editions of D&D? With this number of combatants we're moving away from the small skirmishes the more recent editions of D&D are made for and more into the realm of staging wars at this point. Not saying you shouldn't use 5e to have a 5 on 600 battle but I'd hardly call that a common thing in the recent editions of D&D.

EDIT: I also have to ask because I haven't done the math and the 200 Orcs isn't my example but what level party are we talking here where this is a deadly encounter?

 

[Gardens & Goblins]

TIL Hussar's DMG doesn't have Part 1.

Its a question of granularity.

A D&D world can be designed to be as entertaining, functional and as grounded in reality as Disney World, all while following the Chapter 1 of the DMG.

And that's aok. At least where I game, there are far more tables whose world building consists of a series of encounters, framed within some loose context, than there are whose world building consists of fretting about the 'realistic' impact of their encounters and how they might better represent elements of the campaign world, both in the present and as it evolves.

Yes, it's all there in the DMG. But the points, while raised, are rarely explored as deeply as some folks would wish them to be. Be it because of word count, or a matter of target audience or something else, the fact is that the DMG introduces a fairly light approach to world building, and one that focuses on fun first. And that's simply not enough for some folks.

With this said, I would appreciate a DMG 2 that took a deeper look at world building, from geology to economics to politics and so on. It's been done before, the old Dragon magazines would occasionally give it a go, and I'd welcome its return. And to be clear, I'd like more than just 'points for discussion' being raised - I'd like to read how the Wizard's team take a crack at simulating trade routes, political landscapes, settlement management and the like, and I'd like the opportunity to engage with a 'living' adventure module, one that seems as if was written as an entertaining, functioning, system, rather than a series of encounters framed within an engaging narrative context that lightly nods at the wider system within which play takes place.

So aye, world building! DMG - granularity of design. Different folks & strokes. All good!

 

[hawkeyefan]

I thought that section of the DMG had more to do with using imagination to create a fictional world that would be interesting to play in rather than using the game mechanics to dictate the world you build.

Maybe it's just me, but this whole "impact on worldbuilding" is a pretty minor concern. Sure, it can influence worldbuilding decisions, but it doesn't have to determine every aspect of the fictional world.

 

[SkidAce]

D&D is not, nor has it ever been, a world building system. It just isn't. The amount of lamp shading you need to do in order to conform a world to the system looks like a solar eclipse. Making the argument that "Oh, this kind of encounter doesn't make sense because of world building considerations" has never, ever been a criteria in D&D. From the entire combat system, to Hit Points, to the magic system, to the economy, to the monsters, every single facet of the system is going to make your world building an exercise in futility.

Yeah, I always enjoy and respect your logic, but the fact that I build my world since the 80s with nothing but D&D contradicts your statement.


I could accept your implied (IMO) statement that it may not be the best or most consistent, but there's nothing wrong with it either.

/notangentintended