COMING SOON! -- Presents for Goblins: Festive Resources for 5E on Kickstarter! A festive softcover of holiday-themed D&D 5E resources, including the short adventure 'Presents for Goblins'.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 7828132" data-attributes="member: 7006">I change my stuff all the time, and campaign to campaign.  I have found that trying to put together a "single way" to run any and all potential combats, encounters, and rests is a fool's errand.  Sometimes that adventure might have several encounters in a row.  Sometimes the story goes across several weeks and thus any fight can be nova'd and then recovered from.  Sometimes a campaign's short rest will be 10 minutes, other times it'll be three days.  It always changes.  And as a result I just improvise around it all, throwing more or less obstacles into encounters as I feel is necessary to make things interesting to players.Encounter building is a waste of my time and never works anyway.  Especially when trying to use it to create "solvable" adventures where the characters will be challenged but maybe not really challenged.  The numbers just aren't that tight.  And thus I thumb my nose at all of it.And truth be told, for me its all completely unnecessary anyway... as all I need to do is have two monsters flank a PC and all of a sudden that player throws up their hands and says "Well, I'm dead!"  Why?  Because my players are incredibly inept at understanding just how easy or difficult combat can be.  A PC gets whalloped for like 60 points of damage and that player now assumes it's time to rip up their character sheet... completely forgetting that there are like five other PCs at the table with healing spells or healing potions at their disposal to keep their character alive.  Nope-- that is completely forgotten about.  All the player knows is that their character got hit for like 3/4ths of their HP in a round and thus they are now decrying the unfair and humorless universe.Meanwhile, I'm back behind the screen knowing full well that those 60 hit points were not even 1/20th of the amount of HP and healed HP I need to whittle down to actually make this fight even start down the path towards a potential TPK.  So I'm sitting back there thinking "Oh shut the F up, you big baby!" as the player bemoans their situation.  LOL!So no... I don't worry about defaults or standards when it comes to resting because all of it is pretty much bullcrap anyway.  <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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