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

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Again, a small shift in how you approach what random encounters are can net a large impact in play.

I don't feel inclined to change a system that I've found works, that my players enjoy, and that is simple and easy for me to understand just because the DMG says that I should be doing 6-8 encounters a day.

My players and I like it as it currently is at my table. We're not gonna change because of what's written in the core rulebooks, especially if WotC themselves don't adhere to those rules in their adventure books.

 

[iserith]

The 6-battle adventuring day, does it even exist?

Yes, if the players are the sort that likes to Get Stuff Done.

 

[tetrasodium]

Not really, Wotc designed the whole system around a few baselines that are so impractical for how people play d&d that they don't even pretend they try to follow them in their own published adventured. Unfortunately a lot of things start coming apart at the seams depending on how you deviate from that 6-8 combat* encounter expectation. Coincidentally this great post on it was posted to reddit today with a lot of details including page numbers

* the linked post goes into detail on why exactly it is actually combat encounters specifically

 

[Malmuria]

I don't feel inclined to change a system that I've found works, that my players enjoy, and that is simple and easy for me to understand just because the DMG says that I should be doing 6-8 encounters a day.

My players and I like it as it is currently at my table. We're not gonna change because of what's written in the core rulebooks, especially if WotC themselves don't adhere to those rules in their adventure books.

And the trouble is that I don't know how they would alter this in a new edition while maintaining backwards compatibility. Though, it is possible that 5e materials aren't totally compatible with themselves at this point.

It's also odd that they are simultaneously increasing the power level and '4e'ness of the game (through Tasha's) while releasing narrative-driven, low-combat products (witchlight, and aspects of CM and VRgtR).

 

[Ovinomancer]

Not really, Wotc designed the whole system around a few baselines that are so impractical for how people play d&d that they don't even pretend they try to follow them in their own published adventured. Unfortunately a lot of things start coming apart at the seams depending on how you deviate from that 6-8 combat* encounter expectation. Coincidentally this great post on it was posted to reddit today with a lot of details including page numbers

* the linked post goes into detail on why exactly it is actually combat encounters specifically

They aren't impractical, they're just different from previous versions. Your link goes the same way. People showed up wanting to run 5e how they ran before, but it's a different game. I had the same issues, until I stopped and tried to figure out how to play the game that's presented. It works, with only small adjustments, mostly in how GMs conceive and plan encounters. And I do mean small.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I don't feel inclined to change a system that I've found works, that my players enjoy, and that is simple and easy for me to understand just because the DMG says that I should be doing 6-8 encounters a day.

My players and I like it as it is currently at my table. We're not gonna change because of what's written in the core rulebooks, especially if WotC themselves don't adhere to those rules in their adventure books.

My bad, I must have missed where you said this in the post I responded to.

 

[tetrasodium]

They aren't impractical, they're just different from previous versions. Your link goes the same way. People showed up wanting to run 5e how they ran before, but it's a different game. I had the same issues, until I stopped and tried to figure out how to play the game that's presented. It works, with only small adjustments, mostly in how GMs conceive and plan encounters. And I do mean small.

They are impractical because 6-8 encounters do not fit in the average session & trying to cram that much combat in across multiple sessions results in losing track of any plot & things going on when 2-3 sessions of combat wrap up. There is also the body count problem where you wind up with things like 200% of a town's population being part of the evil cult in town.

Yes you can make changes that sorta fix the bad baseline, but that runs into trouble with making it more difficult to make changes elsewhere without a lot of changes. At the end of the day the 6-8 encounter expectation so many things are tuned to is a bonkers mistake that should never have happened even if >70% of the mostly players surveyed said they want to see much longer adventuring days with more combats than their gm gives them.

 

[ad_hoc]

I only play 1st party 5e adventures and I have found most chapters to be designed around this paradigm including providing penalties for long resting up to and including failing the objective.

The only places where it tends to fall short are encounters during overland travel. My solution to this is to have long rests only occur in friendly settlements. For example I'm currently running Rime of the Frostmaiden and adventure locations have plenty of encounters but as written there is little drama in random encounters on the way to the location as the party can just long rest after.

This incentivizes players to defeat encounters through means other than just attacking too. There are often opportunities to do so sprinkled throughout an adventure. Maybe it's finding a secret shortcut or perhaps learning about the denizens allows the party to engage with them and give them an alternative to fighting. That's still a valid encounter and the players get rewarded by not using up many if any resources.

 

[ad_hoc]

In all the WOTC adventures I have played and DMed I think I have only had a handful of days that met that threshold.

Could you name those adventures? If I have played them I can respond in spoilers about how many encounters there are per chapter/adventure and what is supposed to happen if the party long rests in between them.

 

[ECMO3]

Could you name those adventures? If I have played them I can respond in spoilers about how many encounters there are per chapter/adventure and what is supposed to happen if the party long rests in between them.

DIA - player
ROFM - player
TOA - player
POA - DM
TOD - player
OOA - DM
SKT-player
MOC-player

None of these had even 6 fights in most days in my experience.