D&D 5E Where did the 6-8 encounter standard come from?

[flametitan]

Additionally, I think people are taking the sentence of 6-8 encounters as an inflexible rule, rather than reading the rest of the paragraph. The actual chunk of text the sentence is from is actually about using the table provided to calculate the adventuring day.

The only real "we absolutely expect this" comes from the number of short rests to long rests. As long as there's two short rests to every one long rest, the classes should come out roughly balanced, regardless of the actual number of encounters. It means a minimum of 3 encounters, which isn't really hard to fit in if you assume the day will be combat heavier than average.

 

[FrogReaver]

Additionally, I think people are taking the sentence of 6-8 encounters as an inflexible rule, rather than reading the rest of the paragraph. The actual chunk of text the sentence is from is actually about using the table provided to calculate the adventuring day.

The only real "we absolutely expect this" comes from the number of short rests to long rests. As long as there's two short rests to every one long rest, the classes should come out roughly balanced, regardless of the actual number of encounters. It means a minimum of 3 encounters, which isn't really hard to fit in if you assume the day will be combat heavier than average.

1. Many short rest abilities map better to 1 short rest per adventuring day than 2 but probably not the majority

2. It's more the body of evidence type thing. We have the DMG words. We have the short rest to long rest balance point. We have long rest abilities (such as rage) that grow in uses far more than would really be required if the adventuring day wasn't meant to feature 4-8 combats per day most of the time.

 

[flametitan]

1. Many short rest abilities map better to 1 short rest per adventuring day than 2 but probably not the majority

The DMG itself says that you're expected 2 short rests to every long rest. This is not a "judging by the numbers" thing, this is something the DMG outright says is design intent.

2. It's more the body of evidence type thing. We have the DMG words. We have the short rest to long rest balance point. We have long rest abilities (such as rage) that grow in uses far more than would really be required if the adventuring day wasn't meant to feature 4-8 combats per day most of the time.

I mean, rage can end prematurely. That's one reason you'd want more than three uses, even if your DM doesn't have more than 3 encounters per day.

 

[Hussar]

The DMG itself says that you're expected 2 short rests to every long rest. This is not a "judging by the numbers" thing, this is something the DMG outright says is design intent.



I mean, rage can end prematurely. That's one reason you'd want more than three uses, even if your DM doesn't have more than 3 encounters per day.

But, we shouldn't get lost in the individual examples. There are more than just the number of rages per day. Monks gaining Ki, for example. There isn't much point in having 15 ki points if you only have 1 encounter/short rest. It's extremely unlikely a monk is going to burn more than 6 ki points in any given encounter. Well, I'm thinking Way of the Hand monks here. I suppose the elemental monks might be burning more with spells. But, at that point, if you're dropping that many spells in an encounter, why aren't you just playing a wizard?

Then there's things like the extended duration effects for things like Hunter's Mark. Again, not much point in having a spell that lasts for 8 hours if you're only going to have 2-4 encounters per day on average. And there are other spells like that as well.

6-8 per day also seems to line up pretty closely with how the modules seem to play out as well. At least, in our experience. Granted, I haven't played all the AP's, just Ravenloft and now the Giants one and half of Hoard of the Dragon Queen, but, from what I've seen, the whole 2-4/day thing just wouldn't do it justice.

Heck, I'm in the middle of MT Black's remake of Expedition to Barrier Peaks, and the group is going through half a dozen encounters before long rests pretty nicely. Works out quite well.

The problem with going with shorter days, and then expecting the system to back you up on this is that you would need to rewrite the entire Monster Manual and a good chunk of the PHB to make it work. The only way you can make the encounters dangerous enough is for the encounters to last longer. Instead of 3 rounds, each encounter has to last 5 or 6. But, then we're back into the grind complaints that plagued 4e. If the encounters go back down to 3 rounds, then we get the Rocket Tag effect of 3e.

In my mind, the 6-8 paradigm is a compromise between the two extremes of 3e and 4e. 3e you have pretty short encounters (round wise) but not very many while 4e you had very long encounters but, you could keep going for many more encounters per day. 5e is largely splitting the difference.

 

[Hussar]

Basically, it comes down to the old engineering issue. You can have:

1. Short fights
2. Fast to play fights
3. Deadly fights

Pick 2.

 

[Li Shenron]

Modern D&D looks like a resource-management game, but the rate of recovery is so generous that you rarely have to worry about running out of anything. I still cringe when I'm playing and I see another PC casting a spell gratuitously, because I'm trained to think of spell slots as a valuable resource to be conserved, even if they player isn't actually in danger of dooming the party with their recklessness.

I also had the feeling that the rate of recovery is too generous, but now that I hear more about the 6-8 encounters budget, I realize that I am still somehow stuck with the old 3-4 encounters habit from 3e... so maybe that could explain why it feels too generous.

 

[flametitan]

But, we shouldn't get lost in the individual examples. There are more than just the number of rages per day. Monks gaining Ki, for example. There isn't much point in having 15 ki points if you only have 1 encounter/short rest. It's extremely unlikely a monk is going to burn more than 6 ki points in any given encounter. Well, I'm thinking Way of the Hand monks here. I suppose the elemental monks might be burning more with spells. But, at that point, if you're dropping that many spells in an encounter, why aren't you just playing a wizard?

Then there's things like the extended duration effects for things like Hunter's Mark. Again, not much point in having a spell that lasts for 8 hours if you're only going to have 2-4 encounters per day on average. And there are other spells like that as well.

Well, the idea with the fewer encounters is that they're harder so that the Monk feels like they're obligated to spend more Ki, like how your long rest casters are encouraged to throw more big spells. Hunter's Mark and Hex are designed to be flexible with the adventuring day. They should be useful whether your DM does a small number of encounters per rest or a lot of encounters per rest.

As for combats with more rounds taking longer, that's true, but 5e still doesn't have all of the possible things that could slow down 4e.

I'm not saying the 6-8 number doesn't work. I'm not saying wotc adventures don't assume it. I'm saying the DMG was just using it as an example, not as a set in stone, "The game becomes wildly unbalanced if you have a 4 encounter day," thing like it does with how the "Your party should ideally have two short rests per long rest" note is presented. It's an introductory sentence leading up to the adventuring day XP table, not a stand alone concept.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I also had the feeling that the rate of recovery is too generous, but now that I hear more about the 6-8 encounters budget, I realize that I am still somehow stuck with the old 3-4 encounters habit from 3e... so maybe that could explain why it feels too generous.

It would definitely explain a difference when you're talking about barbarians, but I don't know how much of a practical difference it really makes for wizards or paladins. As long as you're talking about the same number of combat rounds - which should roughly correspond to the daily experience budget - the long-rest spellcasters should operate the same whether you spread that over three encounters or six.

If you try to fit the daily experience budget into the 6-8 encounter guideline, you're probably going to end up with a few chump encounters that don't spend any resources. I mean, maybe they spend a couple of hit dice across the entire party, but I've never seen a party come anywhere close to spending all of those in a day.

 

[Stalker0]

It would definitely explain a difference when you're talking about barbarians, but I don't know how much of a practical difference it really makes for wizards or paladins. As long as you're talking about the same number of combat rounds - which should roughly correspond to the daily experience budget - the long-rest spellcasters should operate the same whether you spread that over three encounters or six.

If you try to fit the daily experience budget into the 6-8 encounter guideline, you're probably going to end up with a few chump encounters that don't spend any resources. I mean, maybe they spend a couple of hit dice across the entire party, but I've never seen a party come anywhere close to spending all of those in a day.

That’s not completely true. Spells that last a duration “like bless” depend more on encounter number than number of rounds. You could argue many buff spells do.

Also the short rest influences healing a lot. If I can rely on my healing dice I don’t need as much healing magic.

 

[Fanaelialae]

IME, 5e doesn't require 6-8 encounters to be balanced. What it does need is the POTENTIAL for 6-8 encounters.

If the players know that the DM will only throw 1-2 encounters at them per long rest, then of course the paladin will outshine the warlock, and the fights will be easier, since they know they can safely expend half their total resources every encounter.

At my table, we tend to roll about 6 random encounter checks for each day of overland travel (4 during the day, 2 at night). The odds of having 6 encounters is extremely low. But we avoid going nova because there's always a chance. Lately, on most days we have 0-2 encounters. Some of those encounters might benign or even beneficial. However, the potential for a hellish encounter day means that we treat each encounter as though it won't be the last. We've had days where we were so resource drained by the end that we were forced to flee from the last encounter or two despite our best resource management, and no one at my table likes running away. It happens rarely, but rarely is sufficient to keep us on our toes.