Frankly, conversation in combat isn't any more unreasonable than a lot of other people can do in combat time; it's an inherent artifact of turn-based combat that people have an unreasonable amount of time to figure out what's going on and choose an optimal action. It's why real-time games that emulate D&D (e.g. Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights) play much differently from tabletop D&D, despite using nominally similar rules.
One thing I'd really have liked if I got the chance would be maybe to buff the humans a bit more? a +1 to every ability score doesn't really make up for a lack of, well, anything else-
For one, I want to create characters that I'm attached to and invested in. That's what makes a campaign fun and memorable. I don't mind if a character dies, but if I'm losing a character once per session or every other session, I'm not going to invest in him. I'm not belittling the gamestyle, but it really isn't for me.
Secondly, having unconscious but on death saves really ratchets up the tension. We were fighting a Young Green Dragon and my wife's character went down and had one failure plus one success. I had a choice, I could try and finish off the dragon and hope that she doesn't fail her next two death saves before someone gets around to succeeding in stabilising her, or I could use my turn to administer her the first aid, take the 50:50 chance that it does nothing (my Wisdom is low, ironically, she was our strong in Wisdom character and the medic) and that the dragon might get to do more damage and take someone else out. Choices, choices! That's what makes D&D fun for me. Not having faux grief over a dead character while someone rolls up a new one, but the choices my character is presented with in order to prevent it. Death saves present that opportunity, that dilemma that really does ratchet up tension, rather than "this is the 50,000th roll, maybe this time my character might randomly die?"
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.
For one, I want to create characters that I'm attached to and invested in. That's what makes a campaign fun and memorable. I don't mind if a character dies, but if I'm losing a character once per session or every other session, I'm not going to invest in him. I'm not belittling the gamestyle, but it really isn't for me.
Secondly, having unconscious but on death saves really ratchets up the tension. We were fighting a [Tooltip Not Found] and my wife's character went down and had one failure plus one success. I had a choice, I could try and finish off the dragon and hope that she doesn't fail her next two death saves before someone gets around to succeeding in stabilising her, or I could use my turn to administer her the first aid, take the 50:50 chance that it does nothing (my Wisdom is low, ironically, she was our strong in Wisdom character and the medic) and that the dragon might get to do more damage and take someone else out. Choices, choices! That's what makes D&D fun for me. Not having faux grief over a dead character while someone rolls up a new one, but the choices my character is presented with in order to prevent it. Death saves present that opportunity, that dilemma that really does ratchet up tension, rather than "this is the 50,000th roll, maybe this time my character might randomly die?"
Agree for the most part. I mean the death save mechanic is not the worst I've seen, bu it creates this "I'm down, I get up and knocked down and get up again" effect and when you see it fight after fight, session after session, whatever tension or narrative weight it had the first few times is lost and it just becomes part of a routine that is neither dramatic or interesting.
The real issue however is that it has no consequences or impact on the narrative afterward. Players don't change anything about their narrative or direction of the story because Bob The Barbarian went down 3 times in the last fight after being scorched by dragon breath, clawed to oblivion and swallowed and spit out the hole. You cast a Cure Light Wound and go on like nothing happened. It lacks in drama so much, players don't even talk about it, they just act like it was nothing because in practice, it was nothing. No penalty.. why should they care?
It again goes back to the fact that rewards and penalties drive player behavior. If there is no reward or penalty at all for something, it has no relevance to anyone and doesn't impact player behavior.
It's why I developed an Injury system.. I want the impact of battles to effect player behavior. If someone took a Mortal Injury, the direction of the story changes. Now they have an unconscious character, they need to get them some place safe, they have to carry them out of whatever situation they are in, they are short one character if something else dangerous happens. It creates tension and drama and there is no guarantee that the character will live as dying from a mortal wound is a real possibility unless the players can keep you stable which is not always possible depending on where it happens. Players that take mortal injuries lose 1 point of the permanent constitution as well which means there are long-term consequences of going down in battles which in turn creates more caution and concern over the status of Hit Points before they go down to 0.
The effects of a good injury system are quite wide and they impact the narrative which to me is what a good injury system should do.
Could simply keep track of negative hps, while still leaving them merely unconscious. That way, it may well take more than a single cure light to wake them up again. The cure would stabilize them, if they are not yet stable but not necessarily wake them up unless it does enough to compensate for the negative hps.
Yeah, I dont like the death save system, but it depends on the style of campaign your running.
If it's a campaign where your players get knocked out every combat, you'de proabably have to keep the current system or at least not make one that's harder for players.
But in campaigns with less hard encounters... the system really could be changed.
I kinda wish the DMG had suggested alternate death saving throw systems.
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The current system does not support the idea of spellcasters talking about what spells to cast etc on their turn, so that really isn't impacted by these changes or not. That's all just up to the DM and how much mid combat chatter/planning they personally allow. The PHB suggests brief utterances or gestures.
If I had a 6 second egg timer I would bring it to my table. That would end a lot of the nonsense. It would also drive away many many players.
I"m not saying that it's good or bad, simply that RAW does not support the idea of people coordinating or talking a lot during their turns in combat, and thus your proposed restructure of turns wouldn't really do anything to get rid of it, because it's already something DMs allow beyond the normal rules of combat anyway.
I think a six-second timer is terrible idea. Remember, the first rule of DnD is to have fun. Not to simulate.battlefield conditions.
It depends on the players your working with. If they really dislike a six second timer, dont do it. If they are ok with it, or your player ina very gritty, down to earth campaign, it might be worth a shot.
Personally, I think it might frustrate players, and their are other ways of dealing with people abusing free actions. But it is an interesting idea and you might have fun by giving it a try.
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I can see the use of a timer if you have players who really drag their feet to the point it's ruining through game for everyone. It would suck to be sat there, knowing that they've spent everyone else's turn chatting away, getting to their turn, and then insisting on going through all 5 manuals to check what it is they can do, pick a shortlist, reread them all, pick one, double check it does what they think it does, try it out, check again to see if they did it right, and then 30 minutes later decide that they aren't going to use their Bonus Action after all. I've never had a use for it so far though, and even if I did, it certainly wouldn't be set to 6 seconds.
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.
I can see the use of a timer if you have players who really drag their feet to the point it's ruining through game for everyone. It would suck to be sat there, knowing that they've spent everyone else's turn chatting away, getting to their turn, and then insisting on going through all 5 manuals to check what it is they can do, pock a shortlist, reread them all, pick one, double check it does what they think it does, try it out, check again to see if they did it right, and then 30 minutes later decide that they aren't going to use their Bonus Action after all. I've.neber had a use for it so far though, and even if I did, it certainly wouldn't be set to 6 seconds.
Glad I've never had to deal with a player like that.
Forgive me if my suggestion has been said before, but the only thing major enough to warrant a system-wide change is the adventuring day. I don't think I've ever played in a campaign that had 5 encounters in one long rest to long rest period, let alone 6-8. So many of the mechanics (be it CR or class features) are balanced by a statistic that I just don't think is practical for most groups.
I think the most prominent example of this is 'going nova'. This is a balancing problem in so many campaigns, where certain party members can use their high power limited use abilities (think paladin smites or high level spell slots) to just obliterate enemies while other party members (and the DMs attempts at balancing) are wasted. The standard answer to this is either: A. Put specialized encounters for the other party members, or B. Increase the number of encounters in the adventuring day. Answer B is what I have a problem with. Most groups don't have the session time to run 6-8 encounters, and trying to split adventuring days over sessions can be hard to keep track of and make players feel like they are less powerful than they are. A redesign of this system could eliminate the need for the wonky solution in the first place. Balancing around 3-4 encounters average would just make more sense for how the game is played currently.
Aside from that, a fact that annoys me immensely is that Rangers do not get the choice of a shortbow as starting equipment. This means that any small race ranger will have to use the longbow at disadvantage, immediately purchase a shortbow (which can be a problem in some campaigns), or specifically ask DM permission to start with the shortbow instead of longbow; something that (AFAIK) no other class has to do.
Six to eight encounters in an adventuring day is supposed to include 'chaff' encounters from random encounter lists, as the basic assumption was that the Dungeon Crawl would continue to be the standard mold to which all D&D games would apply. As narrative-focused play rose to prominence and 'chaff' encounters were dispensed with, the system started top gum up because D&D is and mostly always will be about attrition. It's why so many people complain that Challenge Rating doesn't work. It does work (as well as it's advertised to, anyways), but single encounters that can challenge a team of five to eight freshly-rested adventurers are supposed to be exceedingly rare. People assume that encounters exist in isolation and every encounter is - by itself and entirely unaided - supposed to challenge the party. This is not the case - the adventuring day is supposed to be a challenge, with individual encounters being a greater or lesser chunk of the overall challenge.
Redesigning the system to eliminate this might be beyond the scope of the "5.25" changes expected in 2024, but I do think a more realistic appraisal of encounter balancing and challenge would be very helpful. An alternative ruleset, or even just some DMG advice, for presenting challenge to players through fewer encounters would not at all go amiss. There's ways to do better than the DMG lets on, just like the whole idea that "high-level characters are impossible to challenge!" is nothing but Quitter Talk whining, but the DMG could very much go into better detail in both situations.
trying to split adventuring days over sessions can be hard to keep track of and make players feel like they are less powerful than they are.
D&D Beyond makes it so easy to log your expended resources and keep it recorded between sessions. I've never experienced this "one session adventuring day" and I don't understand why anyone would default to that. The game naturally makes your long rest a part of the adventure, by asking you to establish a watch order (is this still a thing, actually?), prepare spells, use race features like Trance or class features like Portent, and so on. You play through the rest, otherwise you miss stuff. I'm genuinely baffled. Is this how your group plays? Bookending every session with a long rest?
Six to eight encounters in an adventuring day is supposed to include 'chaff' encounters from random encounter lists, as the basic assumption was that the Dungeon Crawl would continue to be the standard mold to which all D&D games would apply. As narrative-focused play rose to prominence and 'chaff' encounters were dispensed with, the system started top gum up because D&D is and mostly always will be about attrition. It's why so many people complain that Challenge Rating doesn't work. It does work (as well as it's advertised to, anyways), but single encounters that can challenge a team of five to eight freshly-rested adventurers are supposed to be exceedingly rare. People assume that encounters exist in isolation and every encounter is - by itself and entirely unaided - supposed to challenge the party. This is not the case - the adventuring day is supposed to be a challenge, with individual encounters being a greater or lesser chunk of the overall challenge.
Redesigning the system to eliminate this might be beyond the scope of the "5.25" changes expected in 2024, but I do think a more realistic appraisal of encounter balancing and challenge would be very helpful. An alternative ruleset, or even just some DMG advice, for presenting challenge to players through fewer encounters would not at all go amiss. There's ways to do better than the DMG lets on, just like the whole idea that "high-level characters are impossible to challenge!" is nothing but Quitter Talk whining, but the DMG could very much go into better detail in both situations.
Yeah, CR relies heavily on the party being at least moderately taxed. D&D is a long game and their should be a long time without rests.
I think that in campaigns with less encounters per a day, the long rest is to good, you literraly regain everything after just one. If more abilities recharged after more than one long rest, it would allow DM's to have less dungeon crawls and more RP, with the combat still being hard.
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D&D Beyond makes it so easy to log your expended resources and keep it recorded between sessions. I've never experienced this "one session adventuring day" and I don't understand why anyone would default to that. The game naturally makes your long rest a part of the adventure, by asking you to establish a watch order (is this still a thing, actually?), prepare spells, use race features like Trance or class features like Portent, and so on. You play through the rest, otherwise you miss stuff. I'm genuinely baffled. Is this how your group plays? Bookending every session with a long rest?
Perhaps it's just because the groups I tend to play in are a bit newer to the game, but the one-session adventuring day was the standard for a good 2-3 years of play for me, and only went away once the DM got a handle on balancing encounters vs the power level of the characters. Some of the players wanted to rest whenever narratively possible, which led to silly things like a one encounter day, and most of the players just assumed a session end meant long rest (and once or twice even took a "long rest" during combat without the knowledge of the DM). Looking back, it was definitely a player problem (and a bit of a communication problem), but my experience was it was extremely hard for the DM to limit rests. This led the DM to up the difficulty of combat encounters by a lot to challenge the party's barbarian/paladin-with-20-CON frontline, which only made players want to rest even more after the combat encounter and also led to the cleric and bard just getting slapped whenever they engaged in combat. This was a vicious cycle that was only broken with a campaign reset with new characters, and still the DM had to have the tightest grip on making sure everyone wasn't resting between sessions. I figure that if all the groups I've ever played with have had this problem, others must be too. It's one of those things that's not hard for experienced players but it is a sticking point for newer/less rules-adherent players.
For the players that used D&D Beyond, it was somehow harder for them to keep track of their abilities/HP (for reasons I never understood; it was a problem with the players, not the software). I was still on the equivalent of paper n' pencil, and somehow I was the best at remembering between sessions. And setting a watch is still a thing (and kinda fun if done right), but in those campaigns with those players it really didn't make a difference.
As for arguing exactly why I think the adventuring day should be shortened, I think it should be 3-4 encounters mainly because of session time. Even with the most bestest DM I've played under, 4 encounters was the max before players were begging to take a long rest because they wanted their cool abilities and HP back. 6-8 is, I think, unrealistic except for dungeon crawls. Balancing around a lower number would help resolve a lot of the issues DMs have with CR, balancing, and party requests for rests.
It never even occurred to me to try a 1 session adventuring day. Hells, most of the time I’m lucky to get two combat encounters done in a single session, that would take the party from breakfast to elevensies, at most lunch. The day is the day, and most adventurers tend to sleep in the nighttime. 🤷♂️
Six to eight encounters in an adventuring day is supposed to include 'chaff' encounters from random encounter lists, as the basic assumption was that the Dungeon Crawl would continue to be the standard mold to which all D&D games would apply. As narrative-focused play rose to prominence and 'chaff' encounters were dispensed with, the system started top gum up because D&D is and mostly always will be about attrition.
It is worth noting that dispensing with 'chaff' encounters predate 5th edition. CR in 3/3.5e and Encounter Level in 4e had exactly the same problems as CR in 5e (prior editions didn't have the concept). You would think that game designers would learn, but apparently not.
It never even occurred to me to try a 1 session adventuring day. Hells, most of the time I’m lucky to get two combat encounters done in a single session, that would take the party from breakfast to elevensies, at most lunch. The day is the day, and most adventurers tend to sleep in the nighttime. 🤷♂️
Sometimes adventurers travel at night, especially if they have Darkvision.
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Really? I've been playing wrong. Can you drop a weapon and pull out a new one as a free action then?
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
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HERE.Frankly, conversation in combat isn't any more unreasonable than a lot of other people can do in combat time; it's an inherent artifact of turn-based combat that people have an unreasonable amount of time to figure out what's going on and choose an optimal action. It's why real-time games that emulate D&D (e.g. Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights) play much differently from tabletop D&D, despite using nominally similar rules.
One thing I'd really have liked if I got the chance would be maybe to buff the humans a bit more? a +1 to every ability score doesn't really make up for a lack of, well, anything else-
Hmmmmm 1 thing? I'd change D&D 5E so that WoTC owned DnDBeyond. :)
I disagree with the 0HP and dead.
For one, I want to create characters that I'm attached to and invested in. That's what makes a campaign fun and memorable. I don't mind if a character dies, but if I'm losing a character once per session or every other session, I'm not going to invest in him. I'm not belittling the gamestyle, but it really isn't for me.
Secondly, having unconscious but on death saves really ratchets up the tension. We were fighting a Young Green Dragon and my wife's character went down and had one failure plus one success. I had a choice, I could try and finish off the dragon and hope that she doesn't fail her next two death saves before someone gets around to succeeding in stabilising her, or I could use my turn to administer her the first aid, take the 50:50 chance that it does nothing (my Wisdom is low, ironically, she was our strong in Wisdom character and the medic) and that the dragon might get to do more damage and take someone else out. Choices, choices! That's what makes D&D fun for me. Not having faux grief over a dead character while someone rolls up a new one, but the choices my character is presented with in order to prevent it. Death saves present that opportunity, that dilemma that really does ratchet up tension, rather than "this is the 50,000th roll, maybe this time my character might randomly die?"
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.
Yeah, I dont like the death save system, but it depends on the style of campaign your running.
If it's a campaign where your players get knocked out every combat, you'de proabably have to keep the current system or at least not make one that's harder for players.
But in campaigns with less hard encounters... the system really could be changed.
I kinda wish the DMG had suggested alternate death saving throw systems.
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HERE.I"m not saying that it's good or bad, simply that RAW does not support the idea of people coordinating or talking a lot during their turns in combat, and thus your proposed restructure of turns wouldn't really do anything to get rid of it, because it's already something DMs allow beyond the normal rules of combat anyway.
It depends on the players your working with. If they really dislike a six second timer, dont do it. If they are ok with it, or your player ina very gritty, down to earth campaign, it might be worth a shot.
Personally, I think it might frustrate players, and their are other ways of dealing with people abusing free actions. But it is an interesting idea and you might have fun by giving it a try.
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HERE.If you have a smart phone, I would be very surprised if it can't do a 6 second timer.
I can see the use of a timer if you have players who really drag their feet to the point it's ruining through game for everyone. It would suck to be sat there, knowing that they've spent everyone else's turn chatting away, getting to their turn, and then insisting on going through all 5 manuals to check what it is they can do, pick a shortlist, reread them all, pick one, double check it does what they think it does, try it out, check again to see if they did it right, and then 30 minutes later decide that they aren't going to use their Bonus Action after all. I've never had a use for it so far though, and even if I did, it certainly wouldn't be set to 6 seconds.
Edited spelling errors.
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.
Glad I've never had to deal with a player like that.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
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HERE.actually fun monsters & a cr system that actually works!
Forgive me if my suggestion has been said before, but the only thing major enough to warrant a system-wide change is the adventuring day. I don't think I've ever played in a campaign that had 5 encounters in one long rest to long rest period, let alone 6-8. So many of the mechanics (be it CR or class features) are balanced by a statistic that I just don't think is practical for most groups.
I think the most prominent example of this is 'going nova'. This is a balancing problem in so many campaigns, where certain party members can use their high power limited use abilities (think paladin smites or high level spell slots) to just obliterate enemies while other party members (and the DMs attempts at balancing) are wasted. The standard answer to this is either: A. Put specialized encounters for the other party members, or B. Increase the number of encounters in the adventuring day. Answer B is what I have a problem with. Most groups don't have the session time to run 6-8 encounters, and trying to split adventuring days over sessions can be hard to keep track of and make players feel like they are less powerful than they are. A redesign of this system could eliminate the need for the wonky solution in the first place. Balancing around 3-4 encounters average would just make more sense for how the game is played currently.
Aside from that, a fact that annoys me immensely is that Rangers do not get the choice of a shortbow as starting equipment. This means that any small race ranger will have to use the longbow at disadvantage, immediately purchase a shortbow (which can be a problem in some campaigns), or specifically ask DM permission to start with the shortbow instead of longbow; something that (AFAIK) no other class has to do.
Six to eight encounters in an adventuring day is supposed to include 'chaff' encounters from random encounter lists, as the basic assumption was that the Dungeon Crawl would continue to be the standard mold to which all D&D games would apply. As narrative-focused play rose to prominence and 'chaff' encounters were dispensed with, the system started top gum up because D&D is and mostly always will be about attrition. It's why so many people complain that Challenge Rating doesn't work. It does work (as well as it's advertised to, anyways), but single encounters that can challenge a team of five to eight freshly-rested adventurers are supposed to be exceedingly rare. People assume that encounters exist in isolation and every encounter is - by itself and entirely unaided - supposed to challenge the party. This is not the case - the adventuring day is supposed to be a challenge, with individual encounters being a greater or lesser chunk of the overall challenge.
Redesigning the system to eliminate this might be beyond the scope of the "5.25" changes expected in 2024, but I do think a more realistic appraisal of encounter balancing and challenge would be very helpful. An alternative ruleset, or even just some DMG advice, for presenting challenge to players through fewer encounters would not at all go amiss. There's ways to do better than the DMG lets on, just like the whole idea that "high-level characters are impossible to challenge!" is nothing but Quitter Talk whining, but the DMG could very much go into better detail in both situations.
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I agree with everything Yurei said.
I don't understand this assertion at all:
D&D Beyond makes it so easy to log your expended resources and keep it recorded between sessions. I've never experienced this "one session adventuring day" and I don't understand why anyone would default to that. The game naturally makes your long rest a part of the adventure, by asking you to establish a watch order (is this still a thing, actually?), prepare spells, use race features like Trance or class features like Portent, and so on. You play through the rest, otherwise you miss stuff. I'm genuinely baffled. Is this how your group plays? Bookending every session with a long rest?
Yeah, CR relies heavily on the party being at least moderately taxed. D&D is a long game and their should be a long time without rests.
I think that in campaigns with less encounters per a day, the long rest is to good, you literraly regain everything after just one. If more abilities recharged after more than one long rest, it would allow DM's to have less dungeon crawls and more RP, with the combat still being hard.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
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HERE.Perhaps it's just because the groups I tend to play in are a bit newer to the game, but the one-session adventuring day was the standard for a good 2-3 years of play for me, and only went away once the DM got a handle on balancing encounters vs the power level of the characters. Some of the players wanted to rest whenever narratively possible, which led to silly things like a one encounter day, and most of the players just assumed a session end meant long rest (and once or twice even took a "long rest" during combat without the knowledge of the DM). Looking back, it was definitely a player problem (and a bit of a communication problem), but my experience was it was extremely hard for the DM to limit rests. This led the DM to up the difficulty of combat encounters by a lot to challenge the party's barbarian/paladin-with-20-CON frontline, which only made players want to rest even more after the combat encounter and also led to the cleric and bard just getting slapped whenever they engaged in combat. This was a vicious cycle that was only broken with a campaign reset with new characters, and still the DM had to have the tightest grip on making sure everyone wasn't resting between sessions. I figure that if all the groups I've ever played with have had this problem, others must be too. It's one of those things that's not hard for experienced players but it is a sticking point for newer/less rules-adherent players.
For the players that used D&D Beyond, it was somehow harder for them to keep track of their abilities/HP (for reasons I never understood; it was a problem with the players, not the software). I was still on the equivalent of paper n' pencil, and somehow I was the best at remembering between sessions. And setting a watch is still a thing (and kinda fun if done right), but in those campaigns with those players it really didn't make a difference.
As for arguing exactly why I think the adventuring day should be shortened, I think it should be 3-4 encounters mainly because of session time. Even with the most bestest DM I've played under, 4 encounters was the max before players were begging to take a long rest because they wanted their cool abilities and HP back. 6-8 is, I think, unrealistic except for dungeon crawls. Balancing around a lower number would help resolve a lot of the issues DMs have with CR, balancing, and party requests for rests.
It never even occurred to me to try a 1 session adventuring day. Hells, most of the time I’m lucky to get two combat encounters done in a single session, that would take the party from breakfast to elevensies, at most lunch. The day is the day, and most adventurers tend to sleep in the nighttime. 🤷♂️
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It is worth noting that dispensing with 'chaff' encounters predate 5th edition. CR in 3/3.5e and Encounter Level in 4e had exactly the same problems as CR in 5e (prior editions didn't have the concept). You would think that game designers would learn, but apparently not.
Sometimes adventurers travel at night, especially if they have Darkvision.