Three death saves? Max. hit points recovered upon a single long rest? So many ******* hit points it takes forever for combat to be resolved? That's unrealistic nonsense fabricated on the desire to turn a party of adventurers into a team of ******* superheroes and one with zero understanding of how actual combat and the injuries sustained during and recovery actually work.
You know there is gritty realism rest option right? It is in the DMG.
And death saves is more of a failsafe thing built into the game mechanics to prevent accidental death: as a GM you can ensure your monsters properly kill the PCs while they are making death saves.
I’ve never felt like the players were superheroes save maybe for defense / endurance. Honestly, the game barely convinces me the PCs are heroes. Fantasy heroes shouldn’t be anime death machines but they are far from being Conan.
You know there is gritty realism rest option right? It is in the DMG.
And death saves is more of a failsafe thing built into the game mechanics to prevent accidental death: as a GM you can ensure your monsters properly kill the PCs while they are making death saves.
Do you use that option? Or do you like to play a game that feels like a video game because the characters are afforded a level of invulnerability not afforded to monsters or most NPCs?
You know there is gritty realism rest option right? It is in the DMG.
And death saves is more of a failsafe thing built into the game mechanics to prevent accidental death: as a GM you can ensure your monsters properly kill the PCs while they are making death saves.
Do you use that option? Or do you like to play a game that feels like a video game because the characters are afforded a level of invulnerability not afforded to monsters or most NPCs?
I do not use gritty realism rest because I want my party to feel stronger like actual fantasy heroes. If you think that makes them feel like videogame characters, then sure I guess, depending on which game you are talking about.
The only level of invulnerability that my party has that my monsters do not is plot armor. I am not actually trying to kill my party, whereas I am encouraging them to kill my monsters.
I do not use gritty realism rest because I want my party to feel stronger like actual fantasy heroes. If you think that makes them feel like videogame characters, then sure I guess, depending on which game you are talking about.
The only level of invulnerability that my party has that my monsters do not is plot armor. I am not actually trying to kill my party, whereas I am encouraging them to kill my monsters.
Unless monsters are making those death saves then characters are very much afforded a level of invulnerability not afforded monsters.
Do you need to be reminded Wizards were considering getting rid of Critical Hits for monsters?
Why would that be?
To afford an even greater level of invulnerability to characters not afforded to monsters.
Many of us were but mere children when we started playing D&D. But we still endured character deaths. We delighted in prevailing against every possibility we would be enduring those character deaths. And we were fine. These days they want to treat the game like it is a game for babies. It's partially why there are movements in the hobby to move away from it entirely or to change it or improve it.
I do not use gritty realism rest because I want my party to feel stronger like actual fantasy heroes. If you think that makes them feel like videogame characters, then sure I guess, depending on which game you are talking about.
The only level of invulnerability that my party has that my monsters do not is plot armor. I am not actually trying to kill my party, whereas I am encouraging them to kill my monsters.
Unless monsters are making those death saves then characters are very much afforded a level of invulnerability not afforded monsters.
Do you need to be reminded Wizards were considering getting rid of Critical Hits for monsters?
Why would that be?
To afford an even greater level of invulnerability to characters not afforded to monsters.
Many of us were but mere children when we started playing D&D. But we still endured character deaths. We delighted in prevailing against every possibility we would be enduring those character deaths. And we were fine. These days they want to treat the game like it is a game for babies. It's partially why there are movements in the hobby to move away from it entirely or to change it or improve it.
And you walked to your campaigns uphill both ways in the snow and youliked it that way, right? Yes, Death saves are demonstrably a measure to keep a character active in the game after they hit 0 HP. And that's fine. If you don't like it, you can disregard it and pull out the grim and gritty rules for your table. But I think the majority of us get attached enough to our characters that we'd rather not have to worry that one bad roll is gonna take them off the board for all time. Honestly, this attitude comes across as very gate-keepy.
And you walked to your campaigns uphill both ways in the snow and youliked it that way, right? Yes, Death saves are demonstrably a measure to keep a character active in the game after they hit 0 HP. And that's fine. If you don't like it, you can disregard it and pull out the grim and gritty rules for your table. But I think the majority of us get attached enough to our characters that we'd rather not have to worry that one bad roll is gonna take them off the board for all time. Honestly, this attitude comes across as very gate-keepy.
In one of the long-haul campaigns I currently play in I am onto my third character. Did I grow attached to the first two? Yes. So did the other players in fact. It's okay. We can still play. It hans't been all that upsetting for us.
Because it's agame.
A "gate-keepy" attitude? These forums are crawling with people fairly open in their desire to see people leave the hobby if they so much as disagree with them about anything or criticise Wizards for anything.
And you walked to your campaigns uphill both ways in the snow and youliked it that way, right? Yes, Death saves are demonstrably a measure to keep a character active in the game after they hit 0 HP. And that's fine. If you don't like it, you can disregard it and pull out the grim and gritty rules for your table. But I think the majority of us get attached enough to our characters that we'd rather not have to worry that one bad roll is gonna take them off the board for all time. Honestly, this attitude comes across as very gate-keepy.
In one of the long-haul campaigns I currently play in I am onto my third character. Did I grow attached to the first two? Yes. So did the other players in fact. It's okay. We can still play. It hans't been all that upsetting for us.
Because it's agame.
A "gate-keepy" attitude? These forums are crawling with people fairly open in their desire to see people leave the hobby if they so much as disagree with them about anything or criticise Wizards for anything.
A game in which you cannot lose (player death) is no longer a game, it is a chose your own adventure book where you can never chose the wrong path. If someone is so narcissistic where they need to always win and if they lose (player death) they throw a fit, they should not be at the table in the first place. Everyone should have learned how to lose in grade school and artificially reinforcing that in a game where one is acting as the referee is not helping the player become a better player in the first place let alone learning basic socialization skills.
I've DM'd with players who have never died before or didn't think the DM would allow their choices destroy their town. Very interesting listening to their rationalizations, ruling stands however. It helps when you don't roll behind a screen. That is also fun when you are at a table, and start rolling in front of players.
Unless monsters are making those death saves then characters are very much afforded a level of invulnerability not afforded monsters.
Do you need to be reminded Wizards were considering getting rid of Critical Hits for monsters?
Why would that be?
To afford an even greater level of invulnerability to characters not afforded to monsters.
Monsters CAN make death saving throws. I just do not let every old mook do that. I am not sure if you GMed before, but you do not seem to realize how much longer combat will unnecessarily drag on if the party needs to finish off every downed foe. Even if a GM insists on monsters having death saving throws, I highly doubt they are going to actually make the party keep rolling dice to kill every single downed monster. More likely than not, even those GMs would just handwaive that away and say that all incapacitated monsters are killed. So yeah, monsters having death saving throws have little to no bearing on PC mortality.
Not letting monsters crit is a good optional rule to have to prevent accidental TPKs, especially against level 1 PCs. If you do not like it, do not use it. It is OPTIONAL. Plus, it is not like you have to stick with that rule for the whole campaign: once the party reach level 3, you can totally ditch the no-crit rule for regular crit rules.
If you think your characters are invulnerable, that is an issue between you and your GM, and you should ask your GM to throw more challenging stuff at you. We GMs have no issue picking higher CR monsters, maximizing the HP and damage, throw in a few waves of reinforcements, and use homebrew to give every NPC some Boons of Combat Prowess and Invincibility.
I’m in much the same position as the OP, thinking of getting back in the hobby after not playing since 2e. I used to DM and play in quite a few game systems, and even had an adventure published in Dungeon Magazine, so I’m no stranger to these things but it’s interesting to see how the game has evolved. I’ve been watching Critical Role to get a feel for the 5e rules.
My old-school games were always intended to provide some challenges for the players, like traps which split the party or monster patrols which surprise the party while resting, without necessarily killing player characters. I remember doing something quite similar to the current death rules, so that 0 hp didn’t mean instant death. Player death interferes with the flow of storytelling, players put work and effort into creating characters and role-playing them and can really be put off by seeing it go to waste, and so on a series of encounters where death was a serious possibility I might provide a way to bring a dead player back like a Raise Dead scroll.
I always found player death, even if it’s just one member of a party, to be counter to the kind of camaraderie that often develops among player groups. Although sometimes it can motivate the rest of the group and make it into an adventure to bring a player character back from the dead.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Netherlands, GMT +1 // “Absorb what is useful, discard what is not, add what is uniquely your own.” — Bruce Lee
1: 5e's definition of a balanced fight is based on the 'Adventuring Day'
If you look at the rules on Evaluating Encounter Difficulty, they're based on an assumption of a daily budget, and all difficulties are tuned towards the assumption that you run the PCs through enough encounters to consume that entire budget. This generally takes 6-8 medium fights. In practice very few games actually use that many encounters per day. There's a relatively simple workaround, though: just combine encounters. Two simultaneous medium encounters (because of changes in the numbers bonus) use up about half your daily budget; three simultaneous encounters are likely to eat the entire daily budget. This method also works with the encounter generation rules in XGTE.
2: PCs are generally glass cannons, and monster HP isn't high enough to compensate.
5e wants a standard encounter length to be 3 rounds. If PC damage was like monster damage (a typical monster takes 5 rounds to defeat an equal monster), that would be a reasonable estimate -- a 5 round fight would a coinflip, a 4 round would be expected to do around 64% of PC hp, a 3 round would do around 36% (and given the ability to spend hit dice, PCs could survive about five such fights in a day) -- but in reality PC damage is very high relative to hit points. This means a monster with enough hit points to survive for three rounds also has enough damage output to be a significant TPK risk.
3: Level scaling is off.
On average, monster hit points and damage are proportional to (CR+1), at least up to CR 20. PC capabilities scale faster than that -- a level 11 encounter probably has monsters with twice the damage and hit points of a level 5, but if you really wanted equal percentage of resources used, you need closer to three times.
So the pattern of play seems to be: in each encounter the players quickly wipe out the monsters, while taking only small amounts of damage. Then by the end of an adventuring day the players are down on resources and hit points and face a perilous boss encounter which might actually kill some PCs. Hmm.
I’d say there definitely is room for adjusting monster hit points if you know there is only going to be one encounter in a day. For example in the ordinary outdoors there isn’t going to be such a packed array of monsters that it makes sense to run 4 or more encounters in a day. But if you do that you end up having to invent subspecies of monsters, for example White Hand Orcs who are known to be much tougher, otherwise you get a situation where players tactical understanding of the creatures is undermined. You see orcs, you think it is an easy fight, but these are the orcs with doubled hit points.
This pattern of play would also mean that NPCs at higher levels become very dangerous because of their high damage output, mirroring the capabilities of the PCs.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Netherlands, GMT +1 // “Absorb what is useful, discard what is not, add what is uniquely your own.” — Bruce Lee
Unless monsters are making those death saves then characters are very much afforded a level of invulnerability not afforded monsters.
Monsters should never be given the same level of longevity of PCs. The point of PCs is that they might die, the point of monsters are that they do die.
Do you need to be reminded Wizards were considering getting rid of Critical Hits for monsters?
Why would that be?
Because early levels are too swingy. Nothing more, nothing less. I can have the party go up against the same bunch of gobbos twice. The first time they could get through without a single scratch and think it was far too easy and the second time they could TPK. That's still the case, but getting rid of monster crits helps a bit. Personally, I think they were being too hands on in messing with this and instead should have made it a DM suggestion rather than part of the actual rules. Still though, it's not about making the game easier, it's about making the game less unpredictable.
A "gate-keepy" attitude? These forums are crawling with people fairly open in their desire to see people leave the hobby if they so much as disagree with them about anything or criticise Wizards for anything.
And they're wrong for behaving that way*. There, I said it. Everyone should be welcome to play this game and feel they can enjoy it. If you want to do your one-hit-kills games, you should be able to. That's valid. Others want to play a roleplaying game where they can get into their character and so don't want to be resetting that process a couple of times a session, and they should be able to. That's valid. The rules, ideally, should be written in such a way that we both can enjoy the game with minimal modification to the rules. If Death Save is a problem...then have them. It's easier for you to excise that rule than for me to invent them. The same goes when the positions are reversed; if you like monster crits, leave them in; if I or someone else doesn't like them, we can just ignore them (and I do, if I feel it's about to make the game less fun).
* Let me clarify here, I'm not talking about indifference, I'm pretty indifferent as to whether a given individual plays the game or not...but it's wrong when we're trying to tell people how they play is wrong and they shouldn't be playing the game.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
So the pattern of play seems to be: in each encounter the players quickly wipe out the monsters, while taking only small amounts of damage. Then by the end of an adventuring day the players are down on resources and hit points and face a perilous boss encounter which might actually kill some PCs. Hmm.
I’d say there definitely is room for adjusting monster hit points if you know there is only going to be one encounter in a day. For example in the ordinary outdoors there isn’t going to be such a packed array of monsters that it makes sense to run 4 or more encounters in a day. But if you do that you end up having to invent subspecies of monsters, for example White Hand Orcs who are known to be much tougher, otherwise you get a situation where players tactical understanding of the creatures is undermined. You see orcs, you think it is an easy fight, but these are the orcs with doubled hit points.
This pattern of play would also mean that NPCs at higher levels become very dangerous because of their high damage output, mirroring the capabilities of the PCs.
Encounters per day does not have to mean fights per day, is one thing often missed in the daily encounter budget. A trap can damage someone as well as a monster. A social encounter that forces a cast of charm person or suggestion can also drain spells. Ditto traversing a chasm that forces a use of fly or dimension door. Pretty much anything that forces the characters to use limited resources. Combats tend to use large numbers of those limited resources, but there’s other ways to skin that cat.
Encounters per day does not have to mean fights per day, is one thing often missed in the daily encounter budget.
Encounters per day is derived from the daily encounter budget, so only things that have a value in that budget count. If the DM is using the Noncombat Challenges rule in the DMG it's arguable that those encounters count towards that budget (though the rules don't specify so) but most examples people give as fillers in the encounters per day would be no more than an Easy encounter. So yeah, for the most part encounters per day really does mean fights.
Saying the off the cuff examples people think of are too simple to be meaningful isn’t a great argument that the concept doesn’t hold water; one would assume a DM taking the time to plan the encounter out can come up with something a bit more involved. I’ve run into a few social or obstacle based encounters I had to dig beyond making skill checks to get past, which does consequently affect what resources were available for further play
Saying the off the cuff examples people think of are too simple to be meaningful isn’t a great argument that the concept doesn’t hold water; one would assume a DM taking the time to plan the encounter out can come up with something a bit more involved. I’ve run into a few social or obstacle based encounters I had to dig beyond making skill checks to get past, which does consequently affect what resources were available for further play
And as I said, if you design a noncombat encounter that is equivalent to a Medium or Hard or Deadly encounter, it presumably counts against your daily budget as that. However, a lot of people just assert that any encounter works for filling that 6-8 encounter budget, and it doesn't -- even if you assume noncombat encounters apply towards the daily xp budget, they only apply with the actual difficulty of the encounter, and it takes 12+ Easy encounters to fill a budget.
You know there is gritty realism rest option right? It is in the DMG.
And death saves is more of a failsafe thing built into the game mechanics to prevent accidental death: as a GM you can ensure your monsters properly kill the PCs while they are making death saves.
Check Licenses and Resync Entitlements: < https://www.dndbeyond.com/account/licenses >
Running the Game by Matt Colville; Introduction: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YZvLUXcR8 >
D&D with High School Students by Bill Allen; Season 1 Episode 1: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52NJTUDokyk&t >
I’ve never felt like the players were superheroes save maybe for defense / endurance. Honestly, the game barely convinces me the PCs are heroes. Fantasy heroes shouldn’t be anime death machines but they are far from being Conan.
Do you use that option? Or do you like to play a game that feels like a video game because the characters are afforded a level of invulnerability not afforded to monsters or most NPCs?
I do not use gritty realism rest because I want my party to feel stronger like actual fantasy heroes. If you think that makes them feel like videogame characters, then sure I guess, depending on which game you are talking about.
The only level of invulnerability that my party has that my monsters do not is plot armor. I am not actually trying to kill my party, whereas I am encouraging them to kill my monsters.
Check Licenses and Resync Entitlements: < https://www.dndbeyond.com/account/licenses >
Running the Game by Matt Colville; Introduction: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YZvLUXcR8 >
D&D with High School Students by Bill Allen; Season 1 Episode 1: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52NJTUDokyk&t >
Unless monsters are making those death saves then characters are very much afforded a level of invulnerability not afforded monsters.
Do you need to be reminded Wizards were considering getting rid of Critical Hits for monsters?
Why would that be?
To afford an even greater level of invulnerability to characters not afforded to monsters.
Many of us were but mere children when we started playing D&D. But we still endured character deaths. We delighted in prevailing against every possibility we would be enduring those character deaths. And we were fine. These days they want to treat the game like it is a game for babies. It's partially why there are movements in the hobby to move away from it entirely or to change it or improve it.
And you walked to your campaigns uphill both ways in the snow and you liked it that way, right? Yes, Death saves are demonstrably a measure to keep a character active in the game after they hit 0 HP. And that's fine. If you don't like it, you can disregard it and pull out the grim and gritty rules for your table. But I think the majority of us get attached enough to our characters that we'd rather not have to worry that one bad roll is gonna take them off the board for all time. Honestly, this attitude comes across as very gate-keepy.
In one of the long-haul campaigns I currently play in I am onto my third character. Did I grow attached to the first two? Yes. So did the other players in fact. It's okay. We can still play. It hans't been all that upsetting for us.
Because it's a game.
A "gate-keepy" attitude? These forums are crawling with people fairly open in their desire to see people leave the hobby if they so much as disagree with them about anything or criticise Wizards for anything.
A game in which you cannot lose (player death) is no longer a game, it is a chose your own adventure book where you can never chose the wrong path. If someone is so narcissistic where they need to always win and if they lose (player death) they throw a fit, they should not be at the table in the first place. Everyone should have learned how to lose in grade school and artificially reinforcing that in a game where one is acting as the referee is not helping the player become a better player in the first place let alone learning basic socialization skills.
I've DM'd with players who have never died before or didn't think the DM would allow their choices destroy their town. Very interesting listening to their rationalizations, ruling stands however. It helps when you don't roll behind a screen. That is also fun when you are at a table, and start rolling in front of players.
Monsters CAN make death saving throws. I just do not let every old mook do that. I am not sure if you GMed before, but you do not seem to realize how much longer combat will unnecessarily drag on if the party needs to finish off every downed foe. Even if a GM insists on monsters having death saving throws, I highly doubt they are going to actually make the party keep rolling dice to kill every single downed monster. More likely than not, even those GMs would just handwaive that away and say that all incapacitated monsters are killed. So yeah, monsters having death saving throws have little to no bearing on PC mortality.
Not letting monsters crit is a good optional rule to have to prevent accidental TPKs, especially against level 1 PCs. If you do not like it, do not use it. It is OPTIONAL. Plus, it is not like you have to stick with that rule for the whole campaign: once the party reach level 3, you can totally ditch the no-crit rule for regular crit rules.
If you think your characters are invulnerable, that is an issue between you and your GM, and you should ask your GM to throw more challenging stuff at you. We GMs have no issue picking higher CR monsters, maximizing the HP and damage, throw in a few waves of reinforcements, and use homebrew to give every NPC some Boons of Combat Prowess and Invincibility.
Check Licenses and Resync Entitlements: < https://www.dndbeyond.com/account/licenses >
Running the Game by Matt Colville; Introduction: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YZvLUXcR8 >
D&D with High School Students by Bill Allen; Season 1 Episode 1: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52NJTUDokyk&t >
I’m in much the same position as the OP, thinking of getting back in the hobby after not playing since 2e. I used to DM and play in quite a few game systems, and even had an adventure published in Dungeon Magazine, so I’m no stranger to these things but it’s interesting to see how the game has evolved. I’ve been watching Critical Role to get a feel for the 5e rules.
My old-school games were always intended to provide some challenges for the players, like traps which split the party or monster patrols which surprise the party while resting, without necessarily killing player characters. I remember doing something quite similar to the current death rules, so that 0 hp didn’t mean instant death. Player death interferes with the flow of storytelling, players put work and effort into creating characters and role-playing them and can really be put off by seeing it go to waste, and so on a series of encounters where death was a serious possibility I might provide a way to bring a dead player back like a Raise Dead scroll.
I always found player death, even if it’s just one member of a party, to be counter to the kind of camaraderie that often develops among player groups. Although sometimes it can motivate the rest of the group and make it into an adventure to bring a player character back from the dead.
Netherlands, GMT +1 // “Absorb what is useful, discard what is not, add what is uniquely your own.” — Bruce Lee
There's really at least three separate issues.
1: 5e's definition of a balanced fight is based on the 'Adventuring Day'
If you look at the rules on Evaluating Encounter Difficulty, they're based on an assumption of a daily budget, and all difficulties are tuned towards the assumption that you run the PCs through enough encounters to consume that entire budget. This generally takes 6-8 medium fights. In practice very few games actually use that many encounters per day. There's a relatively simple workaround, though: just combine encounters. Two simultaneous medium encounters (because of changes in the numbers bonus) use up about half your daily budget; three simultaneous encounters are likely to eat the entire daily budget. This method also works with the encounter generation rules in XGTE.
2: PCs are generally glass cannons, and monster HP isn't high enough to compensate.
5e wants a standard encounter length to be 3 rounds. If PC damage was like monster damage (a typical monster takes 5 rounds to defeat an equal monster), that would be a reasonable estimate -- a 5 round fight would a coinflip, a 4 round would be expected to do around 64% of PC hp, a 3 round would do around 36% (and given the ability to spend hit dice, PCs could survive about five such fights in a day) -- but in reality PC damage is very high relative to hit points. This means a monster with enough hit points to survive for three rounds also has enough damage output to be a significant TPK risk.
3: Level scaling is off.
On average, monster hit points and damage are proportional to (CR+1), at least up to CR 20. PC capabilities scale faster than that -- a level 11 encounter probably has monsters with twice the damage and hit points of a level 5, but if you really wanted equal percentage of resources used, you need closer to three times.
So the pattern of play seems to be: in each encounter the players quickly wipe out the monsters, while taking only small amounts of damage. Then by the end of an adventuring day the players are down on resources and hit points and face a perilous boss encounter which might actually kill some PCs. Hmm.
I’d say there definitely is room for adjusting monster hit points if you know there is only going to be one encounter in a day. For example in the ordinary outdoors there isn’t going to be such a packed array of monsters that it makes sense to run 4 or more encounters in a day. But if you do that you end up having to invent subspecies of monsters, for example White Hand Orcs who are known to be much tougher, otherwise you get a situation where players tactical understanding of the creatures is undermined. You see orcs, you think it is an easy fight, but these are the orcs with doubled hit points.
This pattern of play would also mean that NPCs at higher levels become very dangerous because of their high damage output, mirroring the capabilities of the PCs.
Netherlands, GMT +1 // “Absorb what is useful, discard what is not, add what is uniquely your own.” — Bruce Lee
Monsters should never be given the same level of longevity of PCs. The point of PCs is that they might die, the point of monsters are that they do die.
Because early levels are too swingy. Nothing more, nothing less. I can have the party go up against the same bunch of gobbos twice. The first time they could get through without a single scratch and think it was far too easy and the second time they could TPK. That's still the case, but getting rid of monster crits helps a bit. Personally, I think they were being too hands on in messing with this and instead should have made it a DM suggestion rather than part of the actual rules. Still though, it's not about making the game easier, it's about making the game less unpredictable.
And they're wrong for behaving that way*. There, I said it. Everyone should be welcome to play this game and feel they can enjoy it. If you want to do your one-hit-kills games, you should be able to. That's valid. Others want to play a roleplaying game where they can get into their character and so don't want to be resetting that process a couple of times a session, and they should be able to. That's valid. The rules, ideally, should be written in such a way that we both can enjoy the game with minimal modification to the rules. If Death Save is a problem...then have them. It's easier for you to excise that rule than for me to invent them. The same goes when the positions are reversed; if you like monster crits, leave them in; if I or someone else doesn't like them, we can just ignore them (and I do, if I feel it's about to make the game less fun).
* Let me clarify here, I'm not talking about indifference, I'm pretty indifferent as to whether a given individual plays the game or not...but it's wrong when we're trying to tell people how they play is wrong and they shouldn't be playing the game.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Encounters per day does not have to mean fights per day, is one thing often missed in the daily encounter budget. A trap can damage someone as well as a monster. A social encounter that forces a cast of charm person or suggestion can also drain spells. Ditto traversing a chasm that forces a use of fly or dimension door. Pretty much anything that forces the characters to use limited resources. Combats tend to use large numbers of those limited resources, but there’s other ways to skin that cat.
Encounters per day is derived from the daily encounter budget, so only things that have a value in that budget count. If the DM is using the Noncombat Challenges rule in the DMG it's arguable that those encounters count towards that budget (though the rules don't specify so) but most examples people give as fillers in the encounters per day would be no more than an Easy encounter. So yeah, for the most part encounters per day really does mean fights.
Saying the off the cuff examples people think of are too simple to be meaningful isn’t a great argument that the concept doesn’t hold water; one would assume a DM taking the time to plan the encounter out can come up with something a bit more involved. I’ve run into a few social or obstacle based encounters I had to dig beyond making skill checks to get past, which does consequently affect what resources were available for further play
And as I said, if you design a noncombat encounter that is equivalent to a Medium or Hard or Deadly encounter, it presumably counts against your daily budget as that. However, a lot of people just assert that any encounter works for filling that 6-8 encounter budget, and it doesn't -- even if you assume noncombat encounters apply towards the daily xp budget, they only apply with the actual difficulty of the encounter, and it takes 12+ Easy encounters to fill a budget.