Part of what I like about this forum is that it makes you aware of things you either forgot or completely overlooked as you progress in your DM career. A different discussion made me aware of the "6-8 encounters per day" mentioned in the DMG, I don't think I have ever done this. (TL;DR below)
I ran SKT as my first module and running of DnD. Right now I am running CoS for my group and they are knee deep in the Death House. So for those unaware,
Death House is the first dungeon that you can run if you want to start your players at level 1 and introduce them to campaign. It is optional and is contained in the Appendix of the module, and a lot of DMs don't like, but I really liked it so I decided to run it. The first half of the house is basically an adventure to figure out what the house is. The characters are lured in and explore the house. As they explore they discover that the family that used to live here are not exactly what they appear. The characters start to learn about the evil acts the family used to perform and can trigger up to 3 combat encounters before they hit the level 2 milestone, when they discover the secret door to the basement.
Now the adventure does not say that the characters get a rest here. But in my version, I treated the room the kids' ghosts inhabits as a safe room. The kids were lonely and wanted to spend time with the PCs, and so I made them take a long rest here and play with the kids for a little while. While they rested they leveled up, I am from the school of thought that you should really level up during a long rest. After that they descended into the basement.
In the basement they have triggered the centipede, the grick, the ghouls, the mimic, the ghasts, and they would have triggered the shadows but I replaced those with a haunting cut scene instead. Now up to this point they have just triggered the Ghasts encounter, and have not short rested yet. After this they only have the final encounter to go. I anticipate the Ghasts to be a bit of a tough one for them, considering the casters are low on spells slots now and HP is starting to dip. So surely they will short rest, at the minimum to recover channel divinity (there are 2 clerics in this party).
So with the totality of what they will encounter, especially when they go to leave the house and what that entails, they will have certainly met the 6-8 encounters base line.
So my problem right now is that once they are out of this dungeon at the beginning of the game I am kind of at a loss for how they are supposed to hit 6-8 encounters per day outside of a dungeon crawl scenario. Additionally, does 6-8 encounters per day mean combat encounters only? I see a lot of people arguing (and rightly so because it only makes sense based on design) that unless you run that many encounters, the martial classes just seem a little more under powered compared to caster classes. But in the two modules I have run, that seems like something that just does not happen (but I am going to stick to CoS because that is what I am currently running).
For example, once they are out of the dungeon, they will definitely want to rest. (The spoiler I use below can replace the following text, I just don't want to spoil it for anyone who is playing or will play this module) I have one social event that is going to happen first, but then they get to rest. After that, they are going to meet their new contact who might have a job for them. Along the way I am planning a social encounter with a certain traveling sales woman. They get to the contact, the contact outlines their task, but first they have to go do something for him before they can begin. They go do this thing, which can then spark a combat encounter. After that they are free to do the mission (supposedly everything thus far takes little to no time and the characters can leave before noon). Now that the characters are on the road we can use random encounters, but the module says that a max of two can occur. The travel time involved will take them to the next town in just under 6ish hours, and that assumes nothing way lays them on the way. They get to the next town, it will be night now, so naturally they will long rest.
So after Death House the characters will go to the Blood of the Vine tavern in order to rest and encounter Ismark. Ismark will converse with them and ask them to escort his sister to Vallaki, then the characters get to long rest. The next morning, they will encounter Morgantha along the way to the Burgo Master's mansion. I plan to rewrite this entire encounter more akin to what Lunch Break Heroes suggests, so this should not turn violent at all really. The characters will meet with Ismark and be introduced to Ireena. Then they will be asked to help bury their dead father, which can then lead to the encounter with his son the vampire spawn. Once that is done, there is nothing in the module stopping the characters from leaving right away, and with Vallaki perfectly within walking distance, they would have little reason not to leave right away. So from there I can run the 2 random encounters, the reading at the Tser Pools (which is not a social encounter because it is essentially a cut scene), and potentially something could happen at the Windmill (but I don't plan on making this violent yet). They arrive at Vallaki, it is the end of the day, and there is no scripted encounter for this area at all, so there is nothing stopping them from going to the inn and long resting.
TL;DR
So running the adventure as written, there is really only 3 combat (and 1 social) encounters that could logically occur over the course of their next adventuring day, well below the 6-8 recommended by the DMG. Near as I can tell, this is common for not just CoS, but also for SKT. So as the DM what am I supposed to do? Do I add more encounters to the day randomly? Do they all need to be combat encounters? It seems unrealistic (and immersion breaking) to tell them they can't rest because they have not fought enough.
In D&D, the term "encounters" includes combat, puzzles, traps, and even some social interactions. Basically an encounter is anything that might cause your players to expend resources, such as their limited spell slots to kill an enemy, the HP they lose to a trap, or the gold spent to bribe a reluctant NPC into giving the party information they're looking for.
You want your players to be spending resources in encounters, even easy ones, because challenge ratings assume that often when you're fighting a monster, each time it's not with all your spell slots, action surges, ki points, sorcery points, hit points, etc. Combat encounters are geared towards still being winnable without 100% resources (otherwise you could never have more than 1 encounter per day because enemies would be two powerful), so in order for your players to be properly challenged by encounters, the devs determined that 6-8 per adventuring day was the number to hit, with earlier encounters being easier and end encounters more challenging, the degree to which depending on how wisely or otherwise players chose to spend resources in earlier encounters.
Another thing to bear in mind is, while the average D&D session is probably around 3 to 4 hours long, with RP and other gameplay, most people don't have time for more than 2 to 3 encounters per session. There are two solutions here: either you set it up so that an adventuring "day" takes place over the course of multiple sessions, only allowing the players to take a long ready every few sessions-- this is more the dungeon crawl approach that works better when there's more combat and exploration going on than RP and intrigue. Or option 2 is you generally just plan more difficult encounters for your players on days where only 2 or 3 fit in the timespan.
As far as allowing rests, there's always plenty of reasons why not to. An area could be unsafe or inhospitable, and if they decide to rest anyways, that's what random encounters are for. That isn't to say your throw a monster at them every time they rest when you don't want them to, but rather if you tell them it may not be safe to test here and they do it anyways, ask them how they prepare their camp and protect themselves. Make them roll survival and perceptions for setting up camp and defense and keeping watch, and if they fail those rolls, then a monster gets through their defenses and an encounter ensues. You can determine the difficulty of the encounter by the level the players prepare, such as, if one character merely says "I'll keep watch" and doesn't roll well and there are no other defenses then maybe a big monster lumbers up to what appears to be a free meal. But, if the players work together and one scouts out for a secluded place to camp while another sets snares around the surrounding area, and the remaining members divvy up the watch in shifts, and only one of them rolls poorly, then maybe only a small monster gets in, or maybe the big monster from before gets near the camp where the players can see it, and maybe they don't want to stay and sleep in an area with one of those just slinking around waiting to eat them. Thus, they don't complete their rest and have to move on till they find somewhere safer.
I have only DMed 6 sessions so far for 5th edition, having come back to D&D recently, but I DMed tons of 1st edition and GMed lots of other games.
But I agree that, outside of a dungeon crawl or maybe a 'running battle' of a war (army chasing you, that kind of thing) it is probably very unlikely that a party would have 6-8 encounters in one day. I mean that amounts to like an encounter every hour or two of being awake... which is pretty frequently if you are in a city or if you are traveling across a wilderness area. Again unless it's war or something.
I can't comment on published adventures.... but I agree with you that it seems a bit crazy to have defaulted the encounter design system to an encounter density that even the published adventures do not provide.
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So I was correct in assuming that "encounters" are combat, social, traps and such, I wish that was a little bit more clear in the DMG. Even with that being the case, "encounter" assumes that there is either A) something to be gained by this confrontation, or B) something to expend/lose. In the pre-written adventures that I have run so far, there have not been many situations were the book specifically says that something can be lost in a social "encounter". In fact it is not really called out at all. In most cases, NPCs presented by the material exist to further the characters along. In most scenarios, the only way I have found to "lose" a social encounter is for the players to either kill the NPC, or to do something that goes against that NPC.
I think the best example of a social encounter that I have ever done is one of the first ones I ever did running Dnd. The PCs were traveling from Waterdeep to Triboar, along the way I rolled a random encounter for Travelers. Now I decided to completely ignore what the book said, because the book basically gives you a group of NPCs who tell the PCs about something happening elsewhere and I did not want them to get sidetracked. Instead I generated a traveling merchant with an Arrow of Giant Slaying for sale. I basically had them roll to see if the salesman felt safe enough to deal with them in the middle of nowhere. The succeeded and so he sold it to them, and everyone proceeded on their merry way.
In this case, should I have awarded them XP for this "encounter"? At the time I felt the boon of the magic item they just purchased as enough. But now I am second guessing myself.
Additionally I think I may have found a better way to answer this question for myself. I don't know if anyone here watches Highrollers, but Mark Hulmes came up with an interesting way to award XP in addition to combat encounters. The basic idea is that if the players killed monsters (or avoided them) they get the regular XP from them. In addition if any of the players meet the following conditions then they receive XP equal to 25 times their player level for each instance. I just did the Math for it and it maybe a little faster than the normal XP method in the DMG, it does take out a lot of the guess work around it. I think the only thing I would change about it so far is the XP award per session, I might be tempted to cut it back more than he already suggests, considering that the "standard adventuring day" is typically longer than 1 or maybe even 2 sessions.
Actually, the meaning of 6-8 encounters per day is that you use up your daily encounter budget, which generally requires 6-8 medium encounters (e.g. the level 1 daily budget is 300 per PC, a medium encounter is 50 xp per PC, so you need 6 medium. Or 4 hard, at 75 xp each. Or 3 deadly, at 100 xp each).
Outside of a dungeon, it's nearly impossible to achieve and tends to result in either house rules or balance distortions because if you only have one encounter per day spellcasters can blow all their spells in a single fight.
A relatively easy patch is to make it so long rests have restrictions beyond one per day. For example, you can only take a long rest after gaining one adventure-day of experience... another alternative is to use the variant resting rules in the DMG, possibly combined with the limited ability to recover higher level slots for epic heroism (i.e. a normal long rest only recovers half spell slots, rounded down, and doesn't recover slots above level 5 at all, and you get a full rest at longer intervals).
I guess my tiny human brain never made the leap to using the chart right below the the other one to determine how many of what encounter I could do in one day. But thank you for pointing that out.
I could do the resting like the variant one, only problem is that in my experience, when you try to implement a rule like that, players get very antsy about it. They like knowing that at the end of the day, they will get their hp and coll stuff back. If I was to "chase balance" so to speak, I would rather just implement more difficult encounters rather than take away their ability to do cool things less often. More of a "yes and" approach.
I guess my tiny human brain never made the leap to using the chart right below the the other one to determine how many of what encounter I could do in one day. But thank you for pointing that out.
I could do the resting like the variant one, only problem is that in my experience, when you try to implement a rule like that, players get very antsy about it. They like knowing that at the end of the day, they will get their hp and coll stuff back. If I was to "chase balance" so to speak, I would rather just implement more difficult encounters rather than take away their ability to do cool things less often. More of a "yes and" approach.
I agree. I have found that takes about 2-3 Deadly+ encounters, and 1-2 encounters so hard the builder weeps and begs me stop.
I could do the resting like the variant one, only problem is that in my experience, when you try to implement a rule like that, players get very antsy about it. They like knowing that at the end of the day, they will get their hp and coll stuff back. If I was to "chase balance" so to speak, I would rather just implement more difficult encounters rather than take away their ability to do cool things less often. More of a "yes and" approach.
The problem is that it messes up class balance. Consider level 5 wizard vs level 5 fighter
In a standard adventuring day of ~20 total rounds combat, the wizard will cast
Fireball 2x; fireball hits multiple targets of which some save, so figure 84 damage per fireball (4 targets, 2 of which save); total 168.
Shatter 3x; shatter is much smaller so figure 21 damage per shatter (2 targets, one of which saves); total 63
Magic Missile x3 (one Mage Armor was cast) for 10.5 each; total 31
Fire Bolt x10 (70% to hit,, 5% to crit), doing 50 damage.
Total per day: 312 (16 per round)
In a 'one hard combat' day of only 6 rounds combat (one hard fight), the wizard still does 242 damage (40 per round)
In the same standard adventuring day, with 2 short rests, a Fighter (Champion) will
Use Attack 20 times; each Attack action does about 15 (2 attacks, 70% to hit, 10% to crit, 1d8+7); total 300.
Use Action Surge 3 times for another +15 damage each.
Total per day: 345 (17 per round)
In a 'one hard combat' day of only 6 rounds combat, the fighter does 105 damage (17.5 per round)
So in the full adventuring day, the fighter is arguably more powerful than the wizard (though we're ignoring the value of alpha strike damage vs sustained damage, and ranged vs melee, and durability). In a short adventuring day, the wizard is more powerful, and by a lot.
I do XP so players can track it, but I do XP and encounters different so it accomplishes things in a similar manner to Milestones without actually using Milestone.
...I wish that was a little bit more clear in the DMG.
Bruh, I have so much beef with the DMG & PHB. My players are a little sick of me complaining about how certain types of rules are split between the two books, how the layouts are a headache, how the DMG puts the rules in Part 3 instead of Part 1...
IMHO, the DMG is useful for magic items and little else if you know how to tell a story and do some arithmetic.
The tables really tick me off - they could at least be organized by item type. I need a random table of potions for my next session. I found some good stuff online, but it wasn't formatted for Excel/Sheets, so I ended up pulling down my copy of Table Fables and sticking a bookmark at the "potions" section.
The only problem I have with that example is that it assumes the Wizard uses their full complement of spells in order to do damage.
There is something to be said for a full dungeon crawl where the Wizard probably is going to take thier full complement in offense. But what about in urban environments where combat is (and really should be) less common. At that point where things are more social, am I punishing the player for taking an offensive oriented class into a campaign where social prowess matters more? What about the instances where combat is inevitable, in those cases he shines, but it would be less often.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't strive to hit those 6-8 encounters a day when we can. But sometimes it just is not going to happen. Additionally there are classes and options in this game that have less emphasis on combat and more utility outside of it (like Bards, Thief, Masterminds, Some Clerics). I know that we are supposed to count "social encounters" as well, but the stakes for that are much lower more often than combat ones (death vs. minor inconveniences).
The only problem I have with that example is that it assumes the Wizard uses their full complement of spells in order to do damage.
There is something to be said for a full dungeon crawl where the Wizard probably is going to take thier full complement in offense. But what about in urban environments where combat is (and really should be) less common. At that point where things are more social, am I punishing the player for taking an offensive oriented class into a campaign where social prowess matters more? What about the instances where combat is inevitable, in those cases he shines, but it would be less often.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't strive to hit those 6-8 encounters a day when we can. But sometimes it just is not going to happen. Additionally there are classes and options in this game that have less emphasis on combat and more utility outside of it (like Bards, Thief, Masterminds, Some Clerics). I know that we are supposed to count "social encounters" as well, but the stakes for that are much lower more often than combat ones (death vs. minor inconveniences).
PC death is rare in 5e. I have found that the risks inherent with failing social encounters can be far more than minor inconveniences if done right. For example, in my campaign setting bards are the major source of news in the land. Simply being rude to a traveling bard in my setting can get you labeled as criminals or worse if that bard is vindictive enough. I throw encounters so tough that DDB’s encounter builder practically cries when I hit save, yet the party has no problems winning.
The only problem I have with that example is that it assumes the Wizard uses their full complement of spells in order to do damage.
A mixed adventuring day is more than one encounter (just some non-combat) and advantages the wizard even more, because the fighter has nothing in his kit that isn't combat and does not favor stats that are useful outside of combat.
A session of play doesn't have to finish a day's worth of encounters. Cliffhang encounters until next session. Use cascading encounters, party get's Ambushed(part 1). Reinforcements(part 2) arrive much to the party's dismay. Cleaning House(part 3), the party tracks fleeing enemies back to their base of operations. Devise grueling marathon encounters. Even if you are playing official campaigns, you alter them as you see fit if you don't always want to have 100% resources available after every encounter.
A session of play doesn't have to finish a day's worth of encounters.
It once took 4 sessions (12 hours total over 2 months IRL) to get through on day in game. It felt like (by my design as DM) the longest and most grueling day ever to both the players, and the PCs. (They got loot for that though, and a shed load of XP.)
Another session we had three days within the first half hour of the session.
Part of what I like about this forum is that it makes you aware of things you either forgot or completely overlooked as you progress in your DM career. A different discussion made me aware of the "6-8 encounters per day" mentioned in the DMG, I don't think I have ever done this. (TL;DR below)
I ran SKT as my first module and running of DnD. Right now I am running CoS for my group and they are knee deep in the Death House. So for those unaware,
Death House is the first dungeon that you can run if you want to start your players at level 1 and introduce them to campaign. It is optional and is contained in the Appendix of the module, and a lot of DMs don't like, but I really liked it so I decided to run it. The first half of the house is basically an adventure to figure out what the house is. The characters are lured in and explore the house. As they explore they discover that the family that used to live here are not exactly what they appear. The characters start to learn about the evil acts the family used to perform and can trigger up to 3 combat encounters before they hit the level 2 milestone, when they discover the secret door to the basement.
Now the adventure does not say that the characters get a rest here. But in my version, I treated the room the kids' ghosts inhabits as a safe room. The kids were lonely and wanted to spend time with the PCs, and so I made them take a long rest here and play with the kids for a little while. While they rested they leveled up, I am from the school of thought that you should really level up during a long rest. After that they descended into the basement.
In the basement they have triggered the centipede, the grick, the ghouls, the mimic, the ghasts, and they would have triggered the shadows but I replaced those with a haunting cut scene instead. Now up to this point they have just triggered the Ghasts encounter, and have not short rested yet. After this they only have the final encounter to go. I anticipate the Ghasts to be a bit of a tough one for them, considering the casters are low on spells slots now and HP is starting to dip. So surely they will short rest, at the minimum to recover channel divinity (there are 2 clerics in this party).
So with the totality of what they will encounter, especially when they go to leave the house and what that entails, they will have certainly met the 6-8 encounters base line.
So my problem right now is that once they are out of this dungeon at the beginning of the game I am kind of at a loss for how they are supposed to hit 6-8 encounters per day outside of a dungeon crawl scenario. Additionally, does 6-8 encounters per day mean combat encounters only? I see a lot of people arguing (and rightly so because it only makes sense based on design) that unless you run that many encounters, the martial classes just seem a little more under powered compared to caster classes. But in the two modules I have run, that seems like something that just does not happen (but I am going to stick to CoS because that is what I am currently running).
For example, once they are out of the dungeon, they will definitely want to rest. (The spoiler I use below can replace the following text, I just don't want to spoil it for anyone who is playing or will play this module) I have one social event that is going to happen first, but then they get to rest. After that, they are going to meet their new contact who might have a job for them. Along the way I am planning a social encounter with a certain traveling sales woman. They get to the contact, the contact outlines their task, but first they have to go do something for him before they can begin. They go do this thing, which can then spark a combat encounter. After that they are free to do the mission (supposedly everything thus far takes little to no time and the characters can leave before noon). Now that the characters are on the road we can use random encounters, but the module says that a max of two can occur. The travel time involved will take them to the next town in just under 6ish hours, and that assumes nothing way lays them on the way. They get to the next town, it will be night now, so naturally they will long rest.
So after Death House the characters will go to the Blood of the Vine tavern in order to rest and encounter Ismark. Ismark will converse with them and ask them to escort his sister to Vallaki, then the characters get to long rest. The next morning, they will encounter Morgantha along the way to the Burgo Master's mansion. I plan to rewrite this entire encounter more akin to what Lunch Break Heroes suggests, so this should not turn violent at all really. The characters will meet with Ismark and be introduced to Ireena. Then they will be asked to help bury their dead father, which can then lead to the encounter with his son the vampire spawn. Once that is done, there is nothing in the module stopping the characters from leaving right away, and with Vallaki perfectly within walking distance, they would have little reason not to leave right away. So from there I can run the 2 random encounters, the reading at the Tser Pools (which is not a social encounter because it is essentially a cut scene), and potentially something could happen at the Windmill (but I don't plan on making this violent yet). They arrive at Vallaki, it is the end of the day, and there is no scripted encounter for this area at all, so there is nothing stopping them from going to the inn and long resting.
TL;DR
So running the adventure as written, there is really only 3 combat (and 1 social) encounters that could logically occur over the course of their next adventuring day, well below the 6-8 recommended by the DMG. Near as I can tell, this is common for not just CoS, but also for SKT. So as the DM what am I supposed to do? Do I add more encounters to the day randomly? Do they all need to be combat encounters? It seems unrealistic (and immersion breaking) to tell them they can't rest because they have not fought enough.
In D&D, the term "encounters" includes combat, puzzles, traps, and even some social interactions. Basically an encounter is anything that might cause your players to expend resources, such as their limited spell slots to kill an enemy, the HP they lose to a trap, or the gold spent to bribe a reluctant NPC into giving the party information they're looking for.
You want your players to be spending resources in encounters, even easy ones, because challenge ratings assume that often when you're fighting a monster, each time it's not with all your spell slots, action surges, ki points, sorcery points, hit points, etc. Combat encounters are geared towards still being winnable without 100% resources (otherwise you could never have more than 1 encounter per day because enemies would be two powerful), so in order for your players to be properly challenged by encounters, the devs determined that 6-8 per adventuring day was the number to hit, with earlier encounters being easier and end encounters more challenging, the degree to which depending on how wisely or otherwise players chose to spend resources in earlier encounters.
Another thing to bear in mind is, while the average D&D session is probably around 3 to 4 hours long, with RP and other gameplay, most people don't have time for more than 2 to 3 encounters per session. There are two solutions here: either you set it up so that an adventuring "day" takes place over the course of multiple sessions, only allowing the players to take a long ready every few sessions-- this is more the dungeon crawl approach that works better when there's more combat and exploration going on than RP and intrigue. Or option 2 is you generally just plan more difficult encounters for your players on days where only 2 or 3 fit in the timespan.
As far as allowing rests, there's always plenty of reasons why not to. An area could be unsafe or inhospitable, and if they decide to rest anyways, that's what random encounters are for. That isn't to say your throw a monster at them every time they rest when you don't want them to, but rather if you tell them it may not be safe to test here and they do it anyways, ask them how they prepare their camp and protect themselves. Make them roll survival and perceptions for setting up camp and defense and keeping watch, and if they fail those rolls, then a monster gets through their defenses and an encounter ensues. You can determine the difficulty of the encounter by the level the players prepare, such as, if one character merely says "I'll keep watch" and doesn't roll well and there are no other defenses then maybe a big monster lumbers up to what appears to be a free meal. But, if the players work together and one scouts out for a secluded place to camp while another sets snares around the surrounding area, and the remaining members divvy up the watch in shifts, and only one of them rolls poorly, then maybe only a small monster gets in, or maybe the big monster from before gets near the camp where the players can see it, and maybe they don't want to stay and sleep in an area with one of those just slinking around waiting to eat them. Thus, they don't complete their rest and have to move on till they find somewhere safer.
Hope that helped!
I have only DMed 6 sessions so far for 5th edition, having come back to D&D recently, but I DMed tons of 1st edition and GMed lots of other games.
But I agree that, outside of a dungeon crawl or maybe a 'running battle' of a war (army chasing you, that kind of thing) it is probably very unlikely that a party would have 6-8 encounters in one day. I mean that amounts to like an encounter every hour or two of being awake... which is pretty frequently if you are in a city or if you are traveling across a wilderness area. Again unless it's war or something.
I can't comment on published adventures.... but I agree with you that it seems a bit crazy to have defaulted the encounter design system to an encounter density that even the published adventures do not provide.
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An “encounter” is not limited to “combat encounters.” Even social/puzzle/trap/skill encounters can drain party resources.
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So I was correct in assuming that "encounters" are combat, social, traps and such, I wish that was a little bit more clear in the DMG. Even with that being the case, "encounter" assumes that there is either A) something to be gained by this confrontation, or B) something to expend/lose. In the pre-written adventures that I have run so far, there have not been many situations were the book specifically says that something can be lost in a social "encounter". In fact it is not really called out at all. In most cases, NPCs presented by the material exist to further the characters along. In most scenarios, the only way I have found to "lose" a social encounter is for the players to either kill the NPC, or to do something that goes against that NPC.
I think the best example of a social encounter that I have ever done is one of the first ones I ever did running Dnd. The PCs were traveling from Waterdeep to Triboar, along the way I rolled a random encounter for Travelers. Now I decided to completely ignore what the book said, because the book basically gives you a group of NPCs who tell the PCs about something happening elsewhere and I did not want them to get sidetracked. Instead I generated a traveling merchant with an Arrow of Giant Slaying for sale. I basically had them roll to see if the salesman felt safe enough to deal with them in the middle of nowhere. The succeeded and so he sold it to them, and everyone proceeded on their merry way.
In this case, should I have awarded them XP for this "encounter"? At the time I felt the boon of the magic item they just purchased as enough. But now I am second guessing myself.
Additionally I think I may have found a better way to answer this question for myself. I don't know if anyone here watches Highrollers, but Mark Hulmes came up with an interesting way to award XP in addition to combat encounters. The basic idea is that if the players killed monsters (or avoided them) they get the regular XP from them. In addition if any of the players meet the following conditions then they receive XP equal to 25 times their player level for each instance. I just did the Math for it and it maybe a little faster than the normal XP method in the DMG, it does take out a lot of the guess work around it. I think the only thing I would change about it so far is the XP award per session, I might be tempted to cut it back more than he already suggests, considering that the "standard adventuring day" is typically longer than 1 or maybe even 2 sessions.
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Actually, the meaning of 6-8 encounters per day is that you use up your daily encounter budget, which generally requires 6-8 medium encounters (e.g. the level 1 daily budget is 300 per PC, a medium encounter is 50 xp per PC, so you need 6 medium. Or 4 hard, at 75 xp each. Or 3 deadly, at 100 xp each).
Outside of a dungeon, it's nearly impossible to achieve and tends to result in either house rules or balance distortions because if you only have one encounter per day spellcasters can blow all their spells in a single fight.
A relatively easy patch is to make it so long rests have restrictions beyond one per day. For example, you can only take a long rest after gaining one adventure-day of experience... another alternative is to use the variant resting rules in the DMG, possibly combined with the limited ability to recover higher level slots for epic heroism (i.e. a normal long rest only recovers half spell slots, rounded down, and doesn't recover slots above level 5 at all, and you get a full rest at longer intervals).
I guess my tiny human brain never made the leap to using the chart right below the the other one to determine how many of what encounter I could do in one day. But thank you for pointing that out.
I could do the resting like the variant one, only problem is that in my experience, when you try to implement a rule like that, players get very antsy about it. They like knowing that at the end of the day, they will get their hp and coll stuff back. If I was to "chase balance" so to speak, I would rather just implement more difficult encounters rather than take away their ability to do cool things less often. More of a "yes and" approach.
I agree. I have found that takes about 2-3 Deadly+ encounters, and 1-2 encounters so hard the builder weeps and begs me stop.
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The problem is that it messes up class balance. Consider level 5 wizard vs level 5 fighter
So in the full adventuring day, the fighter is arguably more powerful than the wizard (though we're ignoring the value of alpha strike damage vs sustained damage, and ranged vs melee, and durability). In a short adventuring day, the wizard is more powerful, and by a lot.
A lot of DMs just rely on milestone xp too, then all you just need to worry about encounter difficulty without all the fiddly xp numbers.
I do XP so players can track it, but I do XP and encounters different so it accomplishes things in a similar manner to Milestones without actually using Milestone.
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Bruh, I have so much beef with the DMG & PHB. My players are a little sick of me complaining about how certain types of rules are split between the two books, how the layouts are a headache, how the DMG puts the rules in Part 3 instead of Part 1...
Carrion
IMHO, the DMG is useful for magic items and little else if you know how to tell a story and do some arithmetic.
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The tables really tick me off - they could at least be organized by item type. I need a random table of potions for my next session. I found some good stuff online, but it wasn't formatted for Excel/Sheets, so I ended up pulling down my copy of Table Fables and sticking a bookmark at the "potions" section.
Carrion
The only problem I have with that example is that it assumes the Wizard uses their full complement of spells in order to do damage.
There is something to be said for a full dungeon crawl where the Wizard probably is going to take thier full complement in offense. But what about in urban environments where combat is (and really should be) less common. At that point where things are more social, am I punishing the player for taking an offensive oriented class into a campaign where social prowess matters more? What about the instances where combat is inevitable, in those cases he shines, but it would be less often.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't strive to hit those 6-8 encounters a day when we can. But sometimes it just is not going to happen. Additionally there are classes and options in this game that have less emphasis on combat and more utility outside of it (like Bards, Thief, Masterminds, Some Clerics). I know that we are supposed to count "social encounters" as well, but the stakes for that are much lower more often than combat ones (death vs. minor inconveniences).
PC death is rare in 5e. I have found that the risks inherent with failing social encounters can be far more than minor inconveniences if done right. For example, in my campaign setting bards are the major source of news in the land. Simply being rude to a traveling bard in my setting can get you labeled as criminals or worse if that bard is vindictive enough. I throw encounters so tough that DDB’s encounter builder practically cries when I hit save, yet the party has no problems winning.
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A mixed adventuring day is more than one encounter (just some non-combat) and advantages the wizard even more, because the fighter has nothing in his kit that isn't combat and does not favor stats that are useful outside of combat.
A session of play doesn't have to finish a day's worth of encounters. Cliffhang encounters until next session. Use cascading encounters, party get's Ambushed(part 1). Reinforcements(part 2) arrive much to the party's dismay. Cleaning House(part 3), the party tracks fleeing enemies back to their base of operations. Devise grueling marathon encounters. Even if you are playing official campaigns, you alter them as you see fit if you don't always want to have 100% resources available after every encounter.
It once took 4 sessions (12 hours total over 2 months IRL) to get through on day in game. It felt like (by my design as DM) the longest and most grueling day ever to both the players, and the PCs. (They got loot for that though, and a shed load of XP.)
Another session we had three days within the first half hour of the session.
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