So I ran a 6-8 encounter day...

[abirdcall]

While true from a cinematic perspective, it strains credulity for both players and GM in my experience to have wall-to-wall encounters like this. The TV show 24 was critically acclaimed and beloved by many people... until the second and third seasons, because having non-stop hour-by-hour action begins to look extremely implausible.

That’s my biggest problem with frequent days with 3 or more encounters, because it almost never happens outside of a war zone or battlefield. To me, if it becomes the rule rather than the exception, then the exciting becomes commonplace, and that’s no fun either. In most cases, there’s not a time pressure, and if there isn’t, then the GM has no control over when the PCs rest or not, leaving them to be as break-neck or as scenic as they want to be.

All of that time is covered in 'downtime'. If it isn't interesting don't play it out.

Why are you playing 'adventures' with no pressure?

 

[Blue]

Yep. I usually need to allow one long rest every two days of game play.

We get around that by having a house rule that says 'for balance reasons between classes, we'll have the equivalent of 6-8 encounters with two short rests between long rests. That means sometimes in the narrative you won't always get a long rest by sleeping overnight. I'll narrate something as best as I can to keep the verisimilitude of the game, but this is necessary to ensure the most fun for everyone so I hope you understand and roll with it.'

Absolutely. Breaking the long-rest timing from player control of "when we sleep" allows me to fit in a mechanically appropriate number of challenges over a story-controlled period of time.

Adventures in Middle Earth, the Tolkien adaption of 5e, does something similar. During the "journey" phase - akin to exploration/discovery pillar in 5e but more structured - you can only get the benefits of a long rest at a Sanctuary, Like Eldron's Halfway House.

13th Age also have a "full-heal up" every four encounters. It could be four encounters over three weeks of traveling across a jungle, or four encounters before lunch in a dungeon.

 

[Patrick McGill]

I do the optional rule in the DMG with some tweaks: where a short rest is an overnight and a long rest is a full day in a safe place with access to food and water. However, I also do a thing with camping for the night: if the party has access to fresh food, have water or alcohol, and someone wants to spend the night entertaining with music or stories they get to choose a resting bonus which can be anything from a free extra HD for the night or sometimes even a low level spell slot of class feature refresh.

This makes it so I can still do 6-8 encounters between long rests without having a rushed narrative. I like battles to feel significant and it's hard to do that with 8 goblin fights in one day.

I also use injuries and stuff though so YMMV.

 

[Henry]

All of that time is covered in 'downtime'. If it isn't interesting don't play it out.

Why are you playing 'adventures' with no pressure?

I’m not sure I understand what “downtime” you are referring to? Are you talking about days with less than 6 encounters? I’m referring to having a time pressure behind the PCs all the time - I’m saying that’s implausible to keep up. If you are talking about non-combat encounters, there’s roleplay in between, which doesn’t get skipped, and in fact, are encounters, just not ones involving spending resources such as spells or a short rest powers. What I was referring to was keeping 6 to 8 encounters a day for balance purposes, the original point in the thread, and how it doesn’t lend to plausibility. What “downtime” do you mean?

 

[Henry]

I do the optional rule in the DMG with some tweaks: where a short rest is an overnight and a long rest is a full day in a safe place with access to food and water. However, I also do a thing with camping for the night: if the party has access to fresh food, have water or alcohol, and someone wants to spend the night entertaining with music or stories they get to choose a resting bonus which can be anything from a free extra HD for the night or sometimes even a low level spell slot of class feature refresh.

This makes it so I can still do 6-8 encounters between long rests without having a rushed narrative. I like battles to feel significant and it's hard to do that with 8 goblin fights in one day.

I also use injuries and stuff though so YMMV.

That’s not a bad option, to disallow long rest benefits in the wilderness, so that you can get your “6 to 8” every few days. I’ve thought several times to just limit the benefits of a short rest to once per day, also, though I worry this may disadvantage warlocks in particular too much.

 

[schnee]

I've gotten away from planning "X" number of short rests between Long Rests or how many Long Rests the characters take between points in the story. The story is the story, if they need to rest and can rest, then they rest.

An unfortunate side effect of this is the different classes will have different levels of effectiveness depending on how that 'story' plays out, instead of being balanced consistently.

When our table started enforcing the rest/encounter rhythm, the 'martial' characters immediately noticed - the spellcasters didn't just go nova every combat, and used cantrips far more often. Overall, the team tactics improved because they were forced to.

 

[5ekyu]

I run my entire game this way. The game is just much better IMO when players are pushed to the brink. Now your players have to adjust.

The adjustment is this:

1. Each player has a finite resource pool;

2. The group has a total resource the is larger then the combination of each player IF they play as a group.

3. Each player must decide each encounter how to ration their individual resources to maximize the group resource pool, which means:

4. Player conserves resources this encounter to use them in later encounters, thereby forcing another player to spend more resources this encounter to over come it; or

5. Player burned resources this encounter to let other players conserve resources to use in later encounters.



This dynamic greatly changes the game, and is confusing for most players. They do not understand how to spend resources now to let the group conserve more later, nor do they understand how conserve resources now to nova later. It’s almost always the video game model of nova, then rest, then nova again.

To me the difference between SR and LR classes isn’t that different if you know what you are doing and how you interact with the group resource pool, but the game has been essentially been preached to be 2 encounters, SR, 2 encounters, LR. If you do that players monsters are less of a challenge, the idea for the bad guys in general is to wear you down until you reach the BBEG, that’s why he is the BBEG. PCs should NEVER reach the BBEG with everything on tap, that defeats the purpose.

"PCs should NEVER reach the BBEG with everything on tap, that defeats the purpose."

So a great session or three i ran saw my players trying to rescue hostages and take out slaver camp.

Due to a non-linear structure they actually met the BBEG basically as a patrol type encounter. They did not know that and a fight ensued.

At first it took a few rounds before they realized and shifted to full power try and survive mode. Net result they took him out but were very depleted AND they various raider low lifes started breaking down into chaotic situations...

So now instead of an organized group ready to ransom they had lotsa different divisions and ready to make run with whatever they had.

So the PCs had to move faster, encountering weaker foes but with their own tanks on empty as they tried to get to the hostages.

It was a great set of epidodes on its own but also, as a larger picture thing, it showed them never to expect any NEVERs ever again as far as story or structure goes and handle situations as they come.

 

[abirdcall]

I’m not sure I understand what “downtime” you are referring to? Are you talking about days with less than 6 encounters? I’m referring to having a time pressure behind the PCs all the time - I’m saying that’s implausible to keep up.

I disagree.

In times when there isn't pressure on the PCs we just move on to the next point in time where there will be. Whether that is a day, months, or years, it doesn't matter. We don't spend table time on mundane matters.

It's also not necessary to have exactly 6 encounters for every adventuring day. It is important to feel like there could be. If there isn't sufficient tension in the adventure it is best to play a better one.

You say it is 'implausible to keep up' and yet my table does it, others do it, and the WotC adventures are designed around it.

 

[Henry]

You say it is 'implausible to keep up' and yet my table does it, others do it, and the WotC adventures are designed around it.

Your table finds it believable to have constant time pressure on characters in every scenario, mine doesn’t. That’s fine. I know during Princes of the Apocalypse, we had a ticking clock that kept us from resting only once, but I’ve also only played the one AP (the rest of our games have been homebrew or conversions from earlier modules or APs) so I can’t gauge what WotC has done recently.

 

[abirdcall]

Your table finds it believable to have constant time pressure on characters in every scenario, mine doesn’t. That’s fine. I know during Princes of the Apocalypse, we had a ticking clock that kept us from resting only once, but I’ve also only played the one AP (the rest of our games have been homebrew or conversions from earlier modules or APs) so I can’t gauge what WotC has done recently.

i have played Hoard of the Dragon Queen, Out of the Abyss, Curse of Strahd, and some of Tales From the Yawning Portal.

Those are all structured this way. Each chapter is basically:

1) PCs show up and start the ball rolling
2) PCs stay ahead of the ball or fail the objective. (Failing the objective means different things - sometimes it's party death, sometimes it's campaign failure, but usually it is just that the party will have a more difficult time with something else, usually the finale.)

I suppose PoA could be the outlier here, can anyone else corroborate? Maybe that is just how you played it?