D&D 5E The 6-battle adventuring day, does it even exist?

[Marc_C]

Yup. You have no nova options there, having classes that are mostly based on short rest, reliable class features. The cleric is the only fully daily recharge class, but clerics tend to not be nova classes. Fewer encounters probably didn't make much difference for this party.

I'm curious, though, with the changes you made to resting (no healing, only hitdice), did you notice if the cleric used more slots for healing?

Difficult to tell since I only did one other 5e campaign that ended in 2017. I would say he probably did use more slots for healing. Which was in line with doing a Greyhawk style campaign (but not in GK).

 

[Asisreo]

There are absolutely spells that can end fights - banishment against a creature from a different plane is one example.

They exist, but those types of spells against those types of monsters are usually very difficult to actually land, making it a massive gamble. A charisma saving throw usually has a high bonus for most interplanar creatures and they'll often have magic resistance on top of that.

Even worse, if its a single enemy fight worth their salt, they will probably have legendary resistance as well. To give an example, a 7th level wizard casting banishment against a CR 8 (medium encounter) hezrou which is an interplanar creature with hardly any charisma defenses aside from magic resistance has almost a 50% chance of succeeding. A creature dipping into hard would have even greater defenses on top, and I'd say that if your single combat fight isn't at least deadly, it wasn't meant to be a challenge anyways.

Would you play in a game where spellcasters have unlimited slots once they have access to that spell level?

I have indeed played a game with a warlock. In seriousness, there couldn't be a string of battles in that case, but single combat days would be largely unchanged so long as these infinite spell slots were constrained within levels 1-5. Spell slots of levels 6+ are a different conversation and are limited to once per day for a reason.

 

[Marc_C]

There are absolutely spells that can end fights - banishment against a creature from a different plane is one example.

Yep... and totally forgot about it when preparing an encounter in which a Helmed Horror was supposed to block a staircase leading to an evil wizard casting spells from a first level mezzanine. My poor wizard didn't last as long as I had hoped.

 

[Oofta]

They exist, but those types of spells against those types of monsters are usually very difficult to actually land, making it a massive gamble. A charisma saving throw usually has a high bonus for most interplanar creatures and they'll often have magic resistance on top of that.

Even worse, if its a single enemy fight worth their salt, they will probably have legendary resistance as well. To give an example, a 7th level wizard casting banishment against a CR 8 (medium encounter) hezrou which is an interplanar creature with hardly any charisma defenses aside from magic resistance has almost a 50% chance of succeeding. A creature dipping into hard would have even greater defenses on top, and I'd say that if your single combat fight isn't at least deadly, it wasn't meant to be a challenge anyways.

Banishment is one of the few spells I ban because of this issue. There are ways to increase DC or to lower a target's DC especially if you can go nova every round. It can really minimize the threats of very specific types of creatures which makes combats incredibly swingy. But there are other spells that do similar, force cage is another example.

All I can say is that I've been in campaigns with a lot of casters and regular long rests; it really tilted the balance in favor of the casters. Too much for my own tastes. It can be fun for the casters to go nova during encounters now and then so I set up those scenarios. It can also be fun in a different way to have to be creative because you're running so low on resources.

Different strokes for different folks and all, of course. There's nothing wrong with only have a couple of encounters per long rest, more encounters between long rest is something I and my players enjoy.

 

[Oofta]

Yep... and totally forgot about it when preparing an encounter in which a Helmed Horror was supposed to block a staircase leading to an evil wizard casting spells from a first level mezzanine. My poor wizard didn't last as long as I had hoped.

Yeah, even with a lot of fights there are still times when the PCs stomp on my encounters. It's all good though because there are other encounters that I thought would be medium difficulty that practically end in TPKs.

 

[Mort]

There are absolutely spells that can end fights - banishment against a creature from a different plane is one example.

5e has clamped down on that though.

Let's take banishment:

It IS a great spell from a control perspective; but

The target gets a save, so if it's got magic resistance that's not easy. If it's got legendary resistance - well you need to really plan for the spell then.

To actually banish the target to its home plane you have to concentrate on the spell for a full minute. That means you can't cast any other concentration spells while your doing it AND you can't have your concentration broken another way such as damage. Basically, if you're still in a fight after banishing the creature - you have to be super careful. That's a big tradeoff.

I've found much of 5e spellcasting to be like this - it's much more balanced than it appears at first glance and MUCH more than prior editions.

As for the OP topic. the 6-8 encounters is a guideline. Sometimes it's one, sometimes it's 3, sometimes it 8. If a DM is keeping an eye on the encounter budget, he should be able to challenge the group with varied numbers of encounters.

 

[Staffan]

I think this problem is far often overblown specifically because of how spellcasting is pretty limited in 5e D&D.

You've got a range, concentration, limited slots, limited actions, limited spells known/prepared, components and saving throws to worry about, not to mention the fact that there are some soft limitations like sight, recasting restrictions, penalties on miss, AoE, and enemy abilities.

Its pretty difficult to end an encounter with one spell unless that encounter was created without a good grasp on what makes fights challenging in the first place. Could the DMG do better to establish what that would look like? Yes. But one spell fights were usually doomed from the start even without a spellcaster.

I've had one occasion I can think of when a single spell trivialized an encounter, even if it didn't finish it. Spoiler for Princes of the Apocalypse:

Spoiler

Since the PCs had previously dispatched the Water prophet, the "final boss" of the Water Node was an aboleth, and the "boss room" was of course filled with water. The aboleth was being all sneaky, taking full advantage of its fast swim speed to do hit-and-run attacks with some occasional psionic stuff and using water for cover.
Until the cleric cast control water, dropping the water level and leaving my poor eldritch fish flopping about with a speed of 10 and no cover, and no mucus cloud. Made the whole thing much easier.

 

[S'mon]

Does the system in the book work well for your game?

IME the problem with deviating much from the book standard is that it imbalances SR classes vs LR classes. I had tried converting SR classes to LR classes with 3 times the powers, but it made several SR>LR classes overpowered, especially Monks with 3 times Ki. Going over to a longer LR while keeping SR the same solved all problems.

 

[Asisreo]

I've had one occasion I can think of when a single spell trivialized an encounter, even if it didn't finish it. Spoiler for Princes of the Apocalypse:

Spoiler

Since the PCs had previously dispatched the Water prophet, the "final boss" of the Water Node was an aboleth, and the "boss room" was of course filled with water. The aboleth was being all sneaky, taking full advantage of its fast swim speed to do hit-and-run attacks with some occasional psionic stuff and using water for cover.
Until the cleric cast control water, dropping the water level and leaving my poor eldritch fish flopping about with a speed of 10 and no cover, and no mucus cloud. Made the whole thing much easier.

That sounds hilarious. I do have reservations about the details, however.

Namely, Control Water doesn't let a spellcaster reduce the water's level. It lets it increase the level or cause a trench to form, but reducing water isn't part of its spell description.

I'd wonder if you were thinking of Create or Destroy Water, but that wouldn't work either. I wouldn't consider a room an "open container" and any decently sized room that lets an aboleth swim free would definitely have more than 10-18 gallons of water considering that doesn't even fill a barrel and roughly equals 1 or 2 cu. ft. of space.

 

[Nefermandias]

As I was listening to D&D live they mentioned the wild beyond the witchlight. Apparently it will be possible to complete that entire adventure without a single combat.

That is fine thematically, although doing away with a game pillar makes me question if it is actually a pillar. The bigger issue though is the 6 fights per long rest and 2 per short rest which is designed into the game balance. They clearly are not going to come anywhere close to this target if you have an adventure with no necessary combat at all.

To be honest I think the 6 fights per long rest is not really that common to start with in official content. In all the WOTC adventures I have played and DMed I think I have only had a handful of days that met that threshold.

Six is to few for my group. We often do eight or more.