D&D 5E The Adventuring Day has nothing to do with encounter balance.

[Swarmkeeper]

Good for you for finding what works for your group. I think any given group can find house rules to fit their style. I am taking the thread topic to cover more addressing the situation overall/across the breadth of gamers.
As an example of one where a time constraint is hard, I would suggest 'let's go explore that long-abandoned _____.'

I'm not sure I find that hard, though. If exploration takes time (like @iserith's 10 minute turns to explore a set area) and you have random encounter checks at regular intervals, or use a tension pool of dice, the time constraint is there.

 

[Willie the Duck]

I'm not sure I find that hard, though. If exploration takes time (like @iserith's 10 minute turns to explore a set area) and you have random encounter checks at regular intervals, or use a tension pool of dice, the time constraint is there.

I think you missed part of the discussion. The time constraint in question is the kind that keeps people from retreating and resting whenever their reserves are low (I guess often called a doom clock), not the kind of time constraint which limits how long you can be in the dungeon.

 

[Blue]

My point is that it really doesnt have anything to do with encounter balance if the design of encounter assume every character has all of their resources.

But that's nop true. Even the quote you gave doesn't say that - they said that the monsters are designed assuming PCs are full up. But encounter building rules are not about the individual monsters. They are about making a collection of the monsters into a encounter.

And D&D has always been attrition based. Those encounters are supposed to be multiple, and add up to to the adventuring day.

The actual issue here is that the encounter building rules have been broken for awhile.

Yeah, they aren't the greatest. Because of differences in player system mastery, party synergy, terrain, and the like, no encounter building rules can be exact. They are more than guidelines that you need to adjust knowing your own table.

Working that level of wishy-washiness as a standard, the encounter building guidelines do fine for building an encounter with a reasonable number of opponents with a reasonable strength going against a reasonable party.

When you halve or double the number of people in the party, it breaks down. When you do solo foes, it breaks down. When you do gobs of weak monsters it breaks down. This is a factor of the system. Literally action economy with bounded accuracy are large factors in these.

But it can give you a working idea assuming middle of the road, and then - as always - adjusted by your table.

 

[FallenRX]

But that's nop true. Even the quote you gave doesn't say that - they said that the monsters are designed assuming PCs are full up. But encounter building rules are not about the individual monsters. They are about making a collection of the monsters into a encounter.

And D&D has always been attrition based. Those encounters are supposed to be multiple, and add up to to the adventuring day.

Nope, after each encounter you are expected it assumes you have most if not all of your resources at all times, from health and short rest stuff. And assumes you have at least 1 or 2 of your biggest long rest spell slot.

It does not design like that because the design your describing is impossible to make for encounter balance, since how much resources they spend and retrieve is 100% variable and no one is naughty word psychic enough to know that. So they design focused on characters just having most of their resources to give a little wiggle room for less. Even JC isaid that, you can even observe this in the DMG when they talk about multipart encounters, where you have to count it as harder if they cant short rest to get back HD and SR stuff.

DnD has always been attrition based, but the attrition was based on healing, but even in those games, it assumed you went into a fight with most of your health, no more no less. And if you didnt have enough healing to do that? You left the dungeon. And 5e is still based on that attrition when it comes to hit dice and short rests. But encounter balance? That intersects but is neither here nor there, They build their monsters as if your at your best.

 

[Quickleaf]

I don't know, man. I wouldn't have been able to terrify my 10th level party with a band of goblins if the PCs hadn't been worn down and tapped for resources (both spells/features and HP).

Generally, I'm wary of anyone constructing absolute arguments based on Twitter-quoting Jeremy Crawford. I think he's a terrific guy and a brilliant designer, but expecting what he says to unequivocally manifest the most accurate version of design intent...

I've found that whatever WotC is saying about encounter design/balance... so far has usually felt off target, at least from my gaming experience.

And I'm wary about quoting anyone from WotC on Twitter or Sage Advice as if it were absolute truth. For instance, Jeremy Crawford (iirc) has contradicted himself in the past posting different answers for how the Tiny Hut spell works. And for years they affirmed that the DMG/MM monster building guidelines were accurate, while tons of us were saying "eh, something isn't matching up here, your guidelines are borked", and what did we finally hear from the D&D One Creator Summit?

Paraphrasing from Beth Rimmels' article:

"The CR calculation in the 2014 CR is wrong and doesn't' match their internal tool. This will be fixed in the 2024 DMB. You'll be able to use a paper version of their CR calculation tool and eventually a digital version."

You don't say!

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

I don't know, man. I wouldn't have been able to terrify my 10th level party with a band of goblins if the PCs hadn't been worn down and tapped for resources (both spells/features and HP).

Generally, I'm wary of anyone constructing absolute arguments based on Twitter-quoting Jeremy Crawford. I think he's a terrific guy and a brilliant designer, but expecting what he says to unequivocally manifest the most accurate version of design intent...

I've found that whatever WotC is saying about encounter design/balance... so far has usually felt off target, at least from my gaming experience.

And I'm wary about quoting anyone from WotC on Twitter or Sage Advice as if it were absolute truth. For instance, Jeremy Crawford (iirc) has contradicted himself in the past posting different answers for how the Tiny Hut spell works. And for years they affirmed that the DMG/MM monster building guidelines were accurate, while tons of us were saying "eh, something isn't matching up here, your guidelines are borked", and what did we finally hear from the D&D One Creator Summit?

Paraphrasing from Beth Rimmels' article:

"The CR calculation in the 2014 CR is wrong and doesn't' match their internal tool. This will be fixed in the 2024 DMB. You'll be able to use a paper version of their CR calculation tool and eventually a digital version."

You don't say!

So, here's a very important question, just quoting you for the article link:

So, in theory, the WOTC adventures follow the internal guidelines-- are the WOTC encounters actually better? Do optimized PCs still bend them in half? Do they accurately tell us how strong a monster has to be before it's an appropriate solo challenge? Does the class balance feel better in official modules?

 

[FallenRX]

I don't know, man. I wouldn't have been able to terrify my 10th level party with a band of goblins if the PCs hadn't been worn down and tapped for resources (both spells/features and HP).

Generally, I'm wary of anyone constructing absolute arguments based on Twitter-quoting Jeremy Crawford. I think he's a terrific guy and a brilliant designer, but expecting what he says to unequivocally manifest the most accurate version of design intent...

I've found that whatever WotC is saying about encounter design/balance... so far has usually felt off target, at least from my gaming experience.

And I'm wary about quoting anyone from WotC on Twitter or Sage Advice as if it were absolute truth. For instance, Jeremy Crawford (iirc) has contradicted himself in the past posting different answers for how the Tiny Hut spell works. And for years they affirmed that the DMG/MM monster building guidelines were accurate, while tons of us were saying "eh, something isn't matching up here, your guidelines are borked", and what did we finally hear from the D&D One Creator Summit?

Paraphrasing from Beth Rimmels' article:

"The CR calculation in the 2014 CR is wrong and doesn't' match their internal tool. This will be fixed in the 2024 DMB. You'll be able to use a paper version of their CR calculation tool and eventually a digital version."

You don't say!

Oh no, this isnt just in line with his words, but also my experiences after adjusting the encounters, and some design bits from the game,

It definitely helps, but yea.

You can also look at the design you are talking about here. "Monsters are balanced when your exactly around this amount of HP/spell slots, and when x classes hasnt short rested?"
How do you design for that? How do you know they expected X that much, didnt short or long rest, and used that many spell slots? You see how actually impossible that design is? You cant design like that. So i can believe they just assume you have most of your resources when a fight starts. A Deadly encounter is a deadly encounter when you have all your resources, there is no reason to believe otherwise.

 

[abirdcall]

Good for you for finding what works for your group. I think any given group can find house rules to fit their style. I am taking the thread topic to cover more addressing the situation overall/across the breadth of gamers.
As an example of one where a time constraint is hard, I would suggest 'let's go explore that long-abandoned _____.'

If it is truly abandoned that doesn't sound like an interesting adventure.

 

[abirdcall]

So, here's a very important question, just quoting you for the article link:

So, in theory, the WOTC adventures follow the internal guidelines-- are the WOTC encounters actually better? Do optimized PCs still bend them in half? Do they accurately tell us how strong a monster has to be before it's an appropriate solo challenge? Does the class balance feel better in official modules?

I only play published adventures and in most of them (HotDQ and elemental were bad) the pacing is quite good and the adventure provides constraints on resting.

The major exception are adventures with encounters during Overland travel. It just 1/day so there isn't much threat.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

So, here's a very important question, just quoting you for the article link:

So, in theory, the WOTC adventures follow the internal guidelines-- are the WOTC encounters actually better? Do optimized PCs still bend them in half? Do they accurately tell us how strong a monster has to be before it's an appropriate solo challenge? Does the class balance feel better in official modules?

Not so that I have noticed and it depends on tier. Their level one encounters tend to be on the tough side. They are ok'ish up to about level 7 and then they drop off, getting easier and easier up to about level 14. There are the occasional exception so I suspect that it is player and party dependent.