If you really, and I mean really want to challenge a party - set up 6-8 medium to hard encounters in an adventuring day and allow the party only 2 short rests, no long rests.
Your daily budget is typically only sufficient for 6-8 easy to medium encounters, and after tier 1 it will be long boring slog because those trash fights still take something like a third as much time to resolve as the giant fight that eats the entire budget.
This, Martin. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a 1-haymaker fight sort of DM, I simply wrote that tidbit for OP so he could have something to pipe down his cocky friends.
But 6-8 medium encounters? It’s just not realistic. You are putting your clock in the toilet and flushing. Between the typical 20 minute planning session and the bard trying to seduce the gelatinous cube that ends with the bored ranger saying “I shoot it with my bow” and rolling for initiative over and over, it just doesn’t make sense.
A “realistic” dungeon in 5e is about a quarter of your budget for a deadly fight here, a trap there, another quarter of your budget on a deadly fight over here, a short rest there, a puzzle room over there, then the rest of your budget on a boss fight, with a wandering monster check thrown in at some point.
Its boring. It’s repetitive. But it is the best 5E, an aging TTRPG system by 2025 almost 6 standards can offer. Despite all the bells, whistles, gizmos and gadgets the fights have, it seems like it’s built on a house of cards foundation.
A “realistic” dungeon in 5e is about a quarter of your budget for a deadly fight here, a trap there, another quarter of your budget on a deadly fight over here, a short rest there, a puzzle room over there, then the rest of your budget on a boss fight, with a wandering monster check thrown in at some point.
Its boring. It’s repetitive. But it is the best 5E, an aging TTRPG system by 2025 almost 6 standards can offer. Despite all the bells, whistles, gizmos and gadgets the fights have, it seems like it’s built on a house of cards foundation.
Well, it's not like it's actually impossible to have 6-8 encounters in a dungeon, but they shouldn't be fully independent, nor should it be essential to actually fight them all. The easiest way to have small encounters that are still interesting is if they're guards: take them out quickly and quietly and the PCs can go on, fail to be quick and quiet and nearby areas are alerted and suddenly instead of a couple of easy to medium fights you have one deadly fight.
Right after the fights ends, a door opens up with a creature that looks identical to the one the party just defeated. Except for the "2" tattoo on his head.
Identical in every way except he is resistant to what killed #1, and can do the same thing that killed #1.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
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This, Martin. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a 1-haymaker fight sort of DM, I simply wrote that tidbit for OP so he could have something to pipe down his cocky friends.
But 6-8 medium encounters? It’s just not realistic. You are putting your clock in the toilet and flushing. Between the typical 20 minute planning session and the bard trying to seduce the gelatinous cube that ends with the bored ranger saying “I shoot it with my bow” and rolling for initiative over and over, it just doesn’t make sense.
A “realistic” dungeon in 5e is about a quarter of your budget for a deadly fight here, a trap there, another quarter of your budget on a deadly fight over here, a short rest there, a puzzle room over there, then the rest of your budget on a boss fight, with a wandering monster check thrown in at some point.
Its boring. It’s repetitive. But it is the best 5E, an aging TTRPG system by 2025 almost 6 standards can offer. Despite all the bells, whistles, gizmos and gadgets the fights have, it seems like it’s built on a house of cards foundation.
Well, it's not like it's actually impossible to have 6-8 encounters in a dungeon, but they shouldn't be fully independent, nor should it be essential to actually fight them all. The easiest way to have small encounters that are still interesting is if they're guards: take them out quickly and quietly and the PCs can go on, fail to be quick and quiet and nearby areas are alerted and suddenly instead of a couple of easy to medium fights you have one deadly fight.
just use stronger bosses
Right after the fights ends, a door opens up with a creature that looks identical to the one the party just defeated. Except for the "2" tattoo on his head.
Identical in every way except he is resistant to what killed #1, and can do the same thing that killed #1.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale