doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
My players were panicking last session that they were starting the third encounter in a day without any rests.
In one of my games as a player I am close to panicking right now and we have only had three fights and 1 short rest since our last long rest.My players were panicking last session that they were starting the third encounter in a day without any rests.
Yup. WotC ignores the way their own game is structured with the published adventures. It's very odd.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.
The 6-8 medium or hard encounter adventuring day is built into combat balance. If the adventure doesn’t focus on combat anyway, it won’t really matter if the classes are balanced in combat or not.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.
Yeah, also if you break down the math, it’s more like 6-8 medium encounters or about 3 hard encounters to hit the recommended XP budget, depending on party level. If you use a mix of both, 3 medium and 2 hard gets you pretty pretty close to the mark at most levels.Yup. WotC ignores the way their own game is structured with the published adventures. It's very odd.
The 6-8 encounters is a bit of a red herring, though. 6-8 medium and hard encounters usually meets the daily adventuring XP budget, which is the actual important bit, not the number of encounters. 6-8 encounters is a rough shorthand, you can string it together however you actually like -- 3 deadlies generally work, for instance. I like to use staggered encounters, where it opens with X combatants, and then adds more as it goes along. This keeps the danger level consistent while burning through the budget efficiently. Also, making encounters that have alternate goals that 'reduce the other side to zero hitpoints' works really well for getting in a number of encounters without the slog.