Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7148815" data-attributes="member: 996">The 6-8 encounters is what relative class resources are designed around, that is if you deviate class imbalances will become that much harder to paper over.&nbsp; Similarly, encounter guidelines are calibrated to a long day, that's why hard doesn't seem that hard - it's only 1/8th of a hard day.Why 6-8 rather than 1-3 or 3-5 or 1-6?&nbsp; IDK, but it might conceivably have been influenced by the 'fast combat' mandate - combats can be simpler &amp; less challenging individually but still add up to at least a resource management challenge if you have enough of them.&nbsp; It may also have stemmed from wanting to sufficiently differentiate short from long rest abilities, perhaps to help balance/justify the return to many and very potent daily spells.It certainly has no president in the broader genre, where single encounters are generally contrasted with long, grueling journeys, climactic duels, and huge, lengthy battles.&nbsp; Nor does it draw from the traditional dungeons and hexcrawls of the classic game, the former tending to be player-paced and the latter typically having few &amp; random encounters interspersed over many days.Ultimately, I think the guideline was there for those who wanted a theoretical formula for balance, some of the WotC era fans, I suppose, since it was those eds that introduced CR &amp; encounter-building guidelines, and wasn't intended to be stuck to, so much as just presented so no one could complain it was absent.I mean when does it come up?&nbsp; When someone complains encounters are too easy or casters too powerful or whatever. If you don't care for the pacing implied by those guidelines,&nbsp; your choices are to:&nbsp; re-balance all the classes &amp; monsters to teeter on some other theoretical balance point, and limit your campaign to that arbitrary pacing, instead; change the duration &amp; timing of rests to have those 6-8 encounters every week or whatever, and limit your campaign to that arbitrary pacing, instead; dynamically alter rest duration and availability to match the pacing appropriate to the current situation; or give up on imposing balance via resource management pressure.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 7148815, member: 996"] The 6-8 encounters is what relative class resources are designed around, that is if you deviate class imbalances will become that much harder to paper over. Similarly, encounter guidelines are calibrated to a long day, that's why hard doesn't seem that hard - it's only 1/8th of a hard day. Why 6-8 rather than 1-3 or 3-5 or 1-6? IDK, but it might conceivably have been influenced by the 'fast combat' mandate - combats can be simpler & less challenging individually but still add up to at least a resource management challenge if you have enough of them. It may also have stemmed from wanting to sufficiently differentiate short from long rest abilities, perhaps to help balance/justify the return to many and very potent daily spells. It certainly has no president in the broader genre, where single encounters are generally contrasted with long, grueling journeys, climactic duels, and huge, lengthy battles. Nor does it draw from the traditional dungeons and hexcrawls of the classic game, the former tending to be player-paced and the latter typically having few & random encounters interspersed over many days. Ultimately, I think the guideline was there for those who wanted a theoretical formula for balance, some of the WotC era fans, I suppose, since it was those eds that introduced CR & encounter-building guidelines, and wasn't intended to be stuck to, so much as just presented so no one could complain it was absent. I mean when does it come up? When someone complains encounters are too easy or casters too powerful or whatever. If you don't care for the pacing implied by those guidelines, your choices are to: re-balance all the classes & monsters to teeter on some other theoretical balance point, and limit your campaign to that arbitrary pacing, instead; change the duration & timing of rests to have those 6-8 encounters every week or whatever, and limit your campaign to that arbitrary pacing, instead; dynamically alter rest duration and availability to match the pacing appropriate to the current situation; or give up on imposing balance via resource management pressure. [/QUOTE]

Verification