What are your favorite OP adventure types?

[Pauper]

That might be more complicated than you think. Don't forget the in 5e you up all the xp and them multiply by a factor based on number of foes. Adding in player and then having the table fight two encounters at once is more than double the difficulty.

I'm not so sure -- the math about doubling the XP presumes that the encounter has that number of monsters from the beginning. If an encounter is designed so that it has a certain amount of monsters at the start, then more monsters appear at the beginning of round 3 (say, from a different encounter area which gets added to this encounter based on the size of the party), then you don't treat them as the same encounter -- you treat them as a 'multipart encounter' as noted in the DMG/DM's Basic Rules. You would still try to ensure that the total XP isn't more than 1/3 of the XP the party should earn for the day (unless you're going for a potentially deadly climactic encounter).

Note as well that the difficulty from a multipart encounter is specifically noted as being because the party can't take short rests between them -- so if you're not allowing short rest between the smaller components of a regular series of encounters, they're effectively one large multipart encounter already.

With all that said, it might still be harder than I think -- I should probably put together an example adventure and see if these ideas actually hold water. For instance, rather than combining four encounters into one large multipart encounter (as I suggested in my original post), maybe it would work better to only combine three such encounters, then have the fourth 'move on' to combine with another multipart encounter in another area of the adventure to increase that encounter's difficulty given the party size. I can see that such an adventure would require a DM to be more familiar with the adventure prior to running it, so as to be able to properly implement the proper encounter size for scaling, which could be a drawback.

--
Pauper

 

[kalani]

Well, there is also the fact that Expeditions is slated for a 2, 4, or 8hr window. It's hard to fit 6 decent encounters into an 8hr timeslot, especially with the non-combat encounters, investigation, and exploration also mixed in. It is that much harder for a 4hr time slot unless the bulk of those encounters are easy, or feature 2-3 creatures of middling difficulty (so that the encounters themselves only take 2-3 rounds to complete).

 

[Pauper]

Well, there is also the fact that Expeditions is slated for a 2, 4, or 8hr window. It's hard to fit 6 decent encounters into an 8hr timeslot, especially with the non-combat encounters, investigation, and exploration also mixed in.

Not sure that's a real issue -- if the default is that a 4-hour adventure represents 1 adventuring day, then an 8-hour adventure should represent 2 adventuring days, and the rest is just math. If, on the other hand, the 8-hour slot is 1 day, and the 4-hour slot is therefore half a day, so that two of those mods represent a single adventuring day, then I think that presumption does violence to the Fifth Edition definition of the adventuring day and should probably be revisited.

In any case, it seems that the campaign is trending away from 8-hour modules and toward more 2-hour modules -- I played two at GameholeCon -- so it seems the best advice to module writers would be to plan for two short rests in a 4-hour module (with the long rest being at the end of the adventure), and one in a 2-hour module (with the understanding that the module should probably be a bit harder than normal, since a party will be gaining long rests more frequently than the standard encounter design rules expect).

It is that much harder for a 4hr time slot unless the bulk of those encounters are easy, or feature 2-3 creatures of middling difficulty (so that the encounters themselves only take 2-3 rounds to complete).

It's kind of funny, because I just read an Angry GM column earlier today which argues that most DMs don't really understand what 'difficult' is supposed to mean in a 5E context -- it's not that every combat threatens a TPK, but that each encounter saps resources so that each encounter becomes effectively more dangerous (at the same difficulty) as the day goes on. Effectively denying the party short rests also effectively increases the danger of an encounter while not increasing its difficulty.

A 4-hour adventure written for Fifth Edition standards probably should feature 6 encounters, only one of which would be of above-average difficulty by XP budget, but which combined make for an effective challenge for a party that doesn't take a long rest. The problem is that 6 actual combats for a 7-player table would take way more than the available 4 hours in the time slot. Combining those 6 combats into three larger multipart combats (with a short rest available between each) would both simplify the combats for a larger table, allowing them to run faster, and provide the party with the short rests that the encounter system expects them to get. Leaving them separate for the smaller table provides greater flexibility (as well as the ability to 'skip' combats if the party is truly weaker than average to lessen the overall difficulty).

Again, easy enough to come up with this stuff as theory, but actually putting it into practice in an adventure is the real test. That will take some time, though.

--
Pauper

 

[warfteiner]

thanks for the responses so far, all - please keep 'em coming!

I'm primarily looking for content-related comments more than crunch-related comments at this time. The discussion on the number and difficulty of encounters is VERY interesting stuff, and I'll be sure to send Travis this way to review it though!

 

[Steve_MND]

IIRC, back in LG, the unofficial rule of thumb was three combats in a standard 4-hour module, as that would give enough time for the meat of the story, role playing, and miscellaneous paperwork and bookkeeping. Combats are a little faster in 5e due to the streamlining of mechanics, but even so, I'd still use that as a good guideline.

One thing I have liked lately is the fact that many AL modules so far have had way more stuff in them than would likely ever get played by any normal table in a standard slot. In an OP setup like AL where you can play a mod as many times as you'd like (albeit with different characters), this makes for a much-needed option of replayability.