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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Daztur" data-source="post: 9449526" data-attributes="member: 55680">Agreed completely with this first part. Although the conclusions I draw from this point seem to be a bit different from yours (see below).Again mostly agreed, with some quibbles.I'm fully on board with the idea that the 3.*e model of "we'll calibrate things so that a certain level of the party's resources are drained during each encounter so that the last encounter where the PCs are on their last legs is a REAL challenge" seems to be a fools' errand. CR simply can't be fine-tuned that precisely, certainly not in 5.*ed D&D. So what's the solution?Old School: the solution here is very simple. The DM doesn't choose how many encounters the players will face in any given session, the players do. The simplest version of this is the classic dungeon crawl (although it can be elaborated on and complicated in many ways, it's good to have a nice simple default adventure to set expectations) where the PCs are adventuring in a dungeon that's simply FAR too big to clear in one session. In each session the PCs will want to explore a bit more of the dungeon and get more loot (because GP = XP). Walking around through already explored bits mean fighting Wandering Monsters with no treasure while delving too deep means that the PCs will end up dead. Each session the DM has no freaking clue which bit of the dungeon the PCs will choose to explore this time and the players get to choose when they turn back. Of course the players could get lost/fall down a chute/get captured and not be able to turn back when they want, but that's all part of the game. All of this means that the DM doesn't have to CARE about how many encounters there will be per day or about CR, that's the job of the PCs. This mode of play doesn't NECESSARILY involve a lot of player death, as the players can be smart and careful and each individual fight can be pretty easy while still be exciting as the easy fights may not be dangerous in and of themselves but they're FAST so they don't drag and they represent the players' resources slowly being drained away as the players wonder if they should turn back now or check out one more room, that next room might have enough treasure to let them level up after all...4e: the best way of play 4e is with very few but very fun and challenging battles. Since attrition isn't much of a thing in 4e (certainly not if you're only doing 1-2 adventures per long rest) the DM can fine-tune the appropriate CR relatively easily to provide a real challenge. Each battle is then a chess match where there is a real possibility of the players losing or at least suffering a death. However, since there aren't that many fights and the PCs are pretty tough and CR can be much more precisely fine-tuned than in 3.*e there can be a good bit of real challenge and player skill being tested without having player deaths be especially common over the course of a campaign. What 5*e seems to be moving towards: most fights (except some boss fights) aren't a meaningful challenge to player skill. They don't represent a drain to resources (since players are assumed to be able to refill their resources) and they don't represent a meaningful challenge in and of themselves since if each fight has a meaningful chance of leading to player defeat or death you're going to end up with a LOT more dead PCs than 5e assumes. Therefore from the point of view of testing player skill, most fights end up being a lot like random fights in old Final Fantasy games, no real challenge in and of themselves and also not draining the PCs down for the boss since you can rest up right before the boss. They tend mainly serve to be story beats, let the PCs show off and have fun being ass kickers. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. I'm in a really fun Blades in the Dark campaign and the focus is more on telling a wild story, the fights aren't really mean to be gamey tests of player skill but that's OK. My crazy old witchy PC is having a great time slowly turning herself into a living spirit well. Good times.However that third solution that 5e seems to be turning towards just isn't what I want out of D&D, if I want to scratch that itch I'll do it better with an AW game or BitD or FATE or somesuch. I want D&D to be a gamey game that tests player skill and cunning and 5e seems to be turning in the direction of serving up a series of trash mobs so that most fights don't serve as any meaningful challenge of player skill. With 5e I felt that the game wasn't designed with my preferences in mind but was enough of a compromise to meet me halfway and then I could get the rest of the way to where I wanted to go by being a decent DM. With 5.5e it seems like more and more of the basic assumptions the devs have about how the game should be run are fighting against how I want to run the game. If Old School D&D is more Combat as War and 4e was more Combat as Sport, then 5e seems to be heading towards Combat as Dance, fun and maybe selling a good story, but not really focused on serving up a gamey challenge.</blockquote>

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