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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 3131414" data-attributes="member: 32740">Okay, I'm not entirely sure how ANYONE gets the idea that there are INTENDED to be 4 encounters per day like some kind of clockwork.  Though I never USE the DMG rules on encounter frequency (which should be noteworthy to the OP in and of itself) I knew they were there.  A quick perusal of all of 2 minutes found three indications of encounter frequency.  One reference each for dungeon, wilderness, and city encounters:Dungeon encounters (p.77) roughly 10% chance per hour (with modifiers: essentially DM discretion).Wilderness encounters (p.95) 5%-12% chance per hour (depending on locale/population density).City Encounters (p.101) one encounter per day.Now you statistics fans would have to tell me how many encounters those percentages work out to per day - but I can with great confidence aver that it does not = 4.  As I mentioned I've never used these and there's NOT ONE game-function fracturing reason that I should need to.  Even willfully choosing to ignore this pacing the DMG suggests I think 3E still levels up the PC's too quickly because of the number of encounters seen in the typical dungeon/adventure and the standard XP awards for them.  But that's actually a side issue.I assume that you might have taken the notion of "4 encounters/day, every day" from the wording on p.49 under the heading "What's Challenging?"  Specifically, it says:"An encounter with an EL equal to the PC's level is one that should expend about 20% of their resources - hit points, spells, magic, item uses, and so on.  This means, on average, that after about four encounters of the party's level the PC's need to rest, heal and regain spells.  A fifth encounter would probably wipe them out."This is not a suggestion that anyone should be running 4 encounters per day.  It is a WARNING that running more than 4 (and assuming an average of CR=party level challenge for each) will have undesireable consequences.  It sets a LIMIT - not a MINIMUM.All of this is covered under the general topics of pacing the game, and encounter design.  Slowing the pacing of encounters WILL NOT break anything.  It only gives you an indication of where your characters resources are likely to be in the course of a given busy day of encounters.  As mentioned before this has HIGHLY undesireable implications for long dungeon crawls in 3E.  That is if the encounter CR = party level in kicking down the doors of just 4 rooms the party will need to rest and recuperate or risk being wiped out.  If a typical dungeon is 30+ occupied rooms that means it could take a WEEK to clear it barring other factors.I would really like to know where anyone sees the problems and dangers in NOT running 4 encounters per day.</blockquote>

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