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<blockquote data-quote="kigmatzomat" data-source="post: 9104978" data-attributes="member: 9254">I think a lot of this comes down to a late edit. There are various forum posts where people compare the 5e playtest encounter rules with the final print. All the playtests were essentially one tier higher. (I.e. playtest &quot;easy&quot; became published &quot;moderate&quot;)I suspect there was feedback that encounters were too hard so they nerfed it, but the real reason they were too hard is the rules for encounter design were vague crap so newbies who didn't have a decade of experience were throwing 2nd level characters at white dragons (see post above re &quot;Dragon of Icespire Peak&quot;).&nbsp; They should have improved the DMG instead of making the encounters wussier, and thus necessitating more encounters.So quick fix. If you want fewer encounters, make most of them Hard difficulty. Then when your players are somewhat acclimatized to this new environment, make Deadly encounters a common, if not frequent, event.&nbsp; The fights will take a little longer but needing fewer of them to deplete resources actually reduces the overall combat time.It may also drive players to mmmmaaaayyyybeee not throw themselves into fights willy nilly, resulting in more non-combat activity. (I know, crazy concept that if combat has risk, players may avoid it)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="kigmatzomat, post: 9104978, member: 9254"] I think a lot of this comes down to a late edit. There are various forum posts where people compare the 5e playtest encounter rules with the final print. All the playtests were essentially one tier higher. (I.e. playtest "easy" became published "moderate") I suspect there was feedback that encounters were too hard so they nerfed it, but the real reason they were too hard is the rules for encounter design were vague crap so newbies who didn't have a decade of experience were throwing 2nd level characters at white dragons (see post above re "Dragon of Icespire Peak"). They should have improved the DMG instead of making the encounters wussier, and thus necessitating more encounters. So quick fix. If you want fewer encounters, make most of them Hard difficulty. Then when your players are somewhat acclimatized to this new environment, make Deadly encounters a common, if not frequent, event. The fights will take a little longer but needing fewer of them to deplete resources actually reduces the overall combat time. It may also drive players to mmmmaaaayyyybeee not throw themselves into fights willy nilly, resulting in more non-combat activity. (I know, crazy concept that if combat has risk, players may avoid it) [/QUOTE]

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