The only thing to keep in mind is that various classes consume resources differently, and it WILL have an impact on the fun of some of your players if you do not keep in mind that some characters can go nova, others not, that some classes rely on long rests, others on short rests, etc. and this even if you play a more narrative game (like I do).
This is the main reason the 'adventuring day' concept is problematic; while it's okay for some classes to be situationally better or worse than others, it should be balanced to be equal in the most common case, and 5e is treating the most common case as being the adventuring day.
Honestly, I wouldn't lay it at the door of the adventuring day, it's just that it makes for variety that some classes have different mechanics and therefore different resources to manage and recovery time.
Yes, but the problem is that balancing different mechanics to be equivalent in overall power requires you to come up with the expected use case where they're equivalent, and if your concept of expected use case is wrong, your balancing is also wrong.
If every class needs to be the same, they already have an entire system for that called D&D 4th Edition.
I didn't say they needed to be the same. Just that they need to be balanced against game as actually played. If most people play 'one fight per day', balance for one fight.
The benefit of the 4th edition method is that classes will be balanced against one another whether you have one encounter per day or ten, and there really isn't any way of doing that which doesn't resemble 4th edition. If you're going to declare that different classes consume resources difficulty, you're going to have to decide what an average adventuring day is supposed to be (or change other types of flow so you wind up with the right number of encounters per rest), and if you're wrong the power level gets skewed.
If every class needs to be the same, they already have an entire system for that called D&D 4th Edition.
I didn't say they needed to be the same. Just that they need to be balanced against game as actually played. If most people play 'one fight per day', balance for one fight.
The benefit of the 4th edition method is that classes will be balanced against one another whether you have one encounter per day or ten, and there really isn't any way of doing that which doesn't resemble 4th edition. If you're going to declare that different classes consume resources difficulty, you're going to have to decide what an average adventuring day is supposed to be, and if you're wrong the power level gets skewed.
Got it.
Wouldn’t that be the two tables in the DMG then? One table for how much xp “budget” to go through between long rests with short rests at 1/3rd and 2/3rds of that xp budget. And one table showing how much of that xp budget to create encounters of different difficulty.
Wouldn’t that be the two tables in the DMG then? One table for how much xp “budget” to go through between long rests with short rests at 1/3rd and 2/3rds of that xp budget. And one table showing how much of that xp budget to create encounters of different difficulty.
Dissociating the long rest system from the calendar is a viable option, but it has simulation issues.
I think too many people put too much emphasis on the 6-8 encounters bit. Whether your table likes little to no fighting every day, lots of fights each day, or one big epic fight per day, the charts on those pages are the key no matter what to making it work. Throw the 6-8 out the window. The charts give us how much xp worth of encounters the classes are designed to encounter before a new mechanical long rest, with two short rests along the way. They give a little more insight on over powered CR monsters and back to back monsters, but the charts are the big thing. The other chart gives you how much xp per PC for each level to make encounters of varying difficulty.
My two points in the OP were:
1. Use the chart's xp thresholds to design your encounters, whatever they may be. This is how the classes, all of the classes, are designed in regards to short rests, long rests, and expenditure of resources
I have been using those XP charts and finding them next to useless as playe5r simply breeze through supposedly Deadly encounters without raising a sweat (I discussed this in another thread).
System really does soeen to be based on 6-8 encounter attrition warfare which is a depressing thought.
As for rests,well how do you define them? If they decide to spend an hour resting, then surely that constitutes a short rest?
I think too many people put too much emphasis on the 6-8 encounters bit. Whether your table likes little to no fighting every day, lots of fights each day, or one big epic fight per day, the charts on those pages are the key no matter what to making it work. Throw the 6-8 out the window. The charts give us how much xp worth of encounters the classes are designed to encounter before a new mechanical long rest, with two short rests along the way. They give a little more insight on over powered CR monsters and back to back monsters, but the charts are the big thing. The other chart gives you how much xp per PC for each level to make encounters of varying difficulty.
My two points in the OP were:
1. Use the chart's xp thresholds to design your encounters, whatever they may be. This is how the classes, all of the classes, are designed in regards to short rests, long rests, and expenditure of resources
I have been using those XP charts and finding them next to useless as playe5r simply breeze through supposedly Deadly encounters without raising a sweat (I discussed this in another thread).
System really does soeen to be based on 6-8 encounter attrition warfare which is a depressing thought.
As for rests,well how do you define them? If they decide to spend an hour resting, then surely that constitutes a short rest?
I’m not one for sports, but I think of a person that plays a sport at a high level, and many times have heard interviews where they something like “I have to practice 2-3 hours a day to stay at this level.” Now I imagine a class in D&D, let’s say a fighter. The fighter gets to level 9 and then just starts phoning in his work like avoiding it, paying someone else to do it, skipping or quitting altogether. The fighter won’t get much worse, but they won’t get any better either. If you tether the mechanical benefits of a short or long rest to having to obtain a set threshold of xp INSTEAD of sitting around (short rest) or sleeping (long rest) it makes more sense (at least to me) to keep at, or improve upon, a peak level of performance. Picture Thor in End Game. He took lots of long rests.
Let's take a party of four PCs that are all level 5.
Page 84 of the DMG says that the party should have two short rests (one at 1/3rd and one at 2/3rds) during the time it takes them to overcome 14,000 experience points, and after which they should take a long rest. That's 3,500 xp per character with four characters. Using page 82 of the DMG that would make for about 4 1/2 hard encounters or just a little over 3 deadly encounters.
I'm also suggesting that this math should be hard wired to the rests and completely decoupled form the actual time of day or what they characters are doing. If this same group only overcomes one hard encounter they can short rest all they want, but they don't gain anything from the short rest in regards to spent hit dice, short rest restore abilities, or anything.
The common method, as Lyxen points out, is for the DM to just handle the controlling of rests in the game with time constraints, wandering encounters, environmental hazards, etc.
Let's take a party of four PCs that are all level 5.
Page 84 of the DMG says that the party should have two short rests (one at 1/3rd and one at 2/3rds) during the time it takes them to overcome 14,000 experience points, and after which they should take a long rest. That's 3,500 xp per character with four characters. Using page 82 of the DMG that would make for about 4 1/2 hard encounters or just a little over 3 deadly encounters.
I'm also suggesting that this math should be hard wired to the rests and completely decoupled form the actual time of day or what they characters are doing. If this same group only overcomes one hard encounter they can short rest all they want, but they don't gain anything from the short rest in regards to spent hit dice, short rest restore abilities, or anything.
The common method, as Lyxen points out, is for the DM to just handle the controlling of rests in the game with time constraints, wandering encounters, environmental hazards, etc.
My issue is that all of a sudden the rest doesn't equate to the narrative concept of a rest. If they want to sit there for the prescribed hour and tend their wounds, patch their gear and have a cup of tea, then who am I to say "no, that doesn't count as a short rest" ?
Sure there are instances where that rest could be interrupted BUT if I keep doing it, the players will get unhappy especially given the rules. Indeed in one AD&D campaign we had major problem with DM making magical gear non-effective when it suited him or the narrative. I can see the players getting agitated if all a sudden I am repeatedly not allowing them to take short rests .
6-8 encounters in a day doesn't have to all combat encounters, a discussion with an NPC is still an encounter... an RP encounter.
The 6-8 encounter figure comes from 'daily xp budget / medium encounter budget', so it really is intended as 6-8 combat, as RP encounters don't have an xp budget.
For the purposes of dealing with "# of encounters per long rest," I would argue that an "encounter" may not have to be combat, but it does have to be something on which the party must spend at least some resources. If they don't have to spend any resources on it, then it may be an interesting period of the session, but it's not an "encounter" as we would care about for the purposes of the 6-8 number. You can have 100 "events" (not encounters) that take 0 resources and not need a long rest. The only time the party needs long rests, is after they have spent a considerable number of resources (and I include h.p. in the list of resources).
So... a social RP situation can be counted as an "encounter" in the "DMG 6-8" sense if it takes up resources. If the sorcerer had to cast charm person, and the paladin had to Lay On Hands, and the cleric had to cast Sending and Channel Divinity, say, as part of the social interaction, then it's an encounter. If all the party had to do was make a couple of persuade checks, then it may have been an interesting part of the RP, but it was not "an encounter," because it used up no resources.
Therefore, if I were trying to go with a rule that said, "You must have at least 6 encounters before taking a long rest" (and that any "rests" taken before the 6 don't count for the purposes of the rest mechanics), then I would equally rule that any discrete "happening" in the session, be it disarming a trap with lockpicks that don't have any limited uses, or convincing someone using the persuade skill, or searching a room and finding a secret door -- these things are not "encounters" for the purpose of counting them, because they didn't use up any resources.
I actually think the DMG should have been clearer about this. They define an encounter like this in Chapter 3: "Encounters are the individual scenes in the larger story of your adventure." I would re-write it to say, "Encounters are the individual scenes in the larger story of your adventure, that cause one or more party members to expend consumable resources -- either item resources such as potions or arrows, or character resources such as spell slots, hit points, or special abilities."
I also think it borders on criminal that in the entire section on encounters, they only have rules for combat encounters. They say that encounters can be almost anything, but then they don't help the DM with anything but combat. And people wonder why everyone thinks "encounter = combat."
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Yeah, I ignore most of that crap too. The party still takes a long rest every solar day because it’s largely irrelevant for the way I DM. They will regularly have multiple solar days in a row with little to no combat whatsoever, but when they do see a combat-centric day, I try to shove them through a meat grinder. We’re talking around 4ish Deadly+ encounters that day, and typically one of those encounters will require two whole sessions to get through all by itself.
Frankly, I have always found the DMG to be the least useful of the three main books for D&D. That goes all the way back to ncludie 2e, 3/3.5, and now in 5e as well. (Even as a green as I was way back in 2e when I started it seemed the least useful of the three.) Every edition it seems to be at least half filled with stuff like this that doesn’t seem to work “as advertised” so to speak.
The other thing is an encounter, combat or not, takes significant real time. At 6-8 encounters per day, if you figure 2 traps, 2 social, and 2-3 combat... you're looking at a couple of sessions. PER DAY of game time. That's a heck of a lot of real time to take up per game day -- almost like you are taking up the equivalent of minute by minute.
Most of the in-game days I run take anywhere from 2-5 sessions. In the campaign I am currently DMing, the PCs have been “boots on ground” approximately 2.5 solar days, the game has been going since Oct/Nov 2020 with a 3-4 hour session almost every week.
I find that fascinating, because I have run across some very similar issues. How many levels has the group gone up in that time? What level did they start at? Are you using milestones or XP?
I was running a campaign that started at level 1, and used a combo of milestones and a general rule of thumb of a level up every 5 sessions. But the players were leveling up very rapidly in relation to time passing in the game. I liken it to a player being a totally green soldier landing on the beaches of Normandy. The ones that survive learn VERY quickly the basics of survival (say levels 1-3 in D&D). But after that, how does one marry time passing in the game with leveling? A real-life general (equivalent to say level 16 in D&D) that worked his way up through the ranks does not go from a low end lieutenant to general in a matter of months, or even a couple years. Someone that was a lieutenant in the British Army in 1939 was not a general in 1945. But if time passes slowly in the game (as it does in yours and mine), that is the end result.
The alternative is understanding that you don't have to balance encounters, not only because its not achievable, but because it sets a poor precedence for your game/campaign. Its a fantasy setting, their are monsters in it, why is there this insistence that no matter where your PC's go or what they do, the monsters they find there are perfectly "balanced" for their level?
While it kind of got lost, I think the original concept was "a level X dungeon contains an adventuring-day worth of encounters for a level X party", and it's totally possible that a sandboxy campaign has dungeons that are dramatically different level from the PCs.
Note that this means limiting long rests to one a week or month or something probably won't actually break most adventures, just slow them down a bit, because components are usually designed to something that can be completed in a single 'day'. Mostly what it does is interfere with spells that you're expected to cast once per day.
For me its never been about the encounters but the disparity in time. As a player a typical in game day has been around 1 maybe 2 encounters, and that is usually 1 occasionally 2, 4hr sessions. I cant imagine squeezing a large number of encounters into a game day it loses a sense of realism unless you are in a dungeon.
Of course, but it's not a combat encounter and uses no resources (or at most a very few in unusual circumstances).
And as some of us have said on this thread, not using resources means it doesn't count as one of the 6-8 encounters per day. Only encounters that use resources can be considered part of that count.
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Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I must say, next time I run I might decide to use a different resting model. Gritty Realism is slightly too annoying for me, but I might go with:
Short Rest -> Night's Rest.
Long Rest -> Two full days in comfort and relaxation (no, you cannot stand guard). This generally requires a civilized area where you are paying lifestyle costs. Not possible more than once per week.
The biggest issue is that it is impossible to have time run ingame and out of game even remotely close to one another. Anyone who has been involved in D&D knows that some monumental 24 or 30 second fight (which is incredibly long) can take an hour, or more, depending on the quality and quantity of players. How many pure conversations in D&D occur in real time, where the players and DM both totally immerse in RP, given that many require some kind of ability check?
As I said earlier, if I played out my guys at the current rate, assuming no-Covid to ruin games, they can go from level 1 to 20 in less than 18 months in-game time. Now, that is some on me as a DM. But it is also part of the problem of allowing players to move up levels at anything like a rate to keep them engaged. Telling a player it will take him 10 or 12 sessions to go from level 5 to level 6 annoys a lot of of them, very much.
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Yes, but the problem is that balancing different mechanics to be equivalent in overall power requires you to come up with the expected use case where they're equivalent, and if your concept of expected use case is wrong, your balancing is also wrong.
If every class needs to be the same, they already have an entire system for that called D&D 4th Edition.
(I’m not hating. That’s just a common complaint of that edition I hear a lot.)
I didn't say they needed to be the same. Just that they need to be balanced against game as actually played. If most people play 'one fight per day', balance for one fight.
The benefit of the 4th edition method is that classes will be balanced against one another whether you have one encounter per day or ten, and there really isn't any way of doing that which doesn't resemble 4th edition. If you're going to declare that different classes consume resources difficulty, you're going to have to decide what an average adventuring day is supposed to be (or change other types of flow so you wind up with the right number of encounters per rest), and if you're wrong the power level gets skewed.
Got it.
Wouldn’t that be the two tables in the DMG then? One table for how much xp “budget” to go through between long rests with short rests at 1/3rd and 2/3rds of that xp budget. And one table showing how much of that xp budget to create encounters of different difficulty.
Dissociating the long rest system from the calendar is a viable option, but it has simulation issues.
I have been using those XP charts and finding them next to useless as playe5r simply breeze through supposedly Deadly encounters without raising a sweat (I discussed this in another thread).
System really does soeen to be based on 6-8 encounter attrition warfare which is a depressing thought.
As for rests,well how do you define them? If they decide to spend an hour resting, then surely that constitutes a short rest?
I’m not one for sports, but I think of a person that plays a sport at a high level, and many times have heard interviews where they something like “I have to practice 2-3 hours a day to stay at this level.” Now I imagine a class in D&D, let’s say a fighter. The fighter gets to level 9 and then just starts phoning in his work like avoiding it, paying someone else to do it, skipping or quitting altogether. The fighter won’t get much worse, but they won’t get any better either. If you tether the mechanical benefits of a short or long rest to having to obtain a set threshold of xp INSTEAD of sitting around (short rest) or sleeping (long rest) it makes more sense (at least to me) to keep at, or improve upon, a peak level of performance. Picture Thor in End Game. He took lots of long rests.
This is a great free online tool for creating combat encounters based on either XP or CR.
https://kastark.co.uk/rpgs/encounter-calculator-5th/
Yep!
Let's take a party of four PCs that are all level 5.
Page 84 of the DMG says that the party should have two short rests (one at 1/3rd and one at 2/3rds) during the time it takes them to overcome 14,000 experience points, and after which they should take a long rest. That's 3,500 xp per character with four characters. Using page 82 of the DMG that would make for about 4 1/2 hard encounters or just a little over 3 deadly encounters.
I'm also suggesting that this math should be hard wired to the rests and completely decoupled form the actual time of day or what they characters are doing. If this same group only overcomes one hard encounter they can short rest all they want, but they don't gain anything from the short rest in regards to spent hit dice, short rest restore abilities, or anything.
The common method, as Lyxen points out, is for the DM to just handle the controlling of rests in the game with time constraints, wandering encounters, environmental hazards, etc.
My issue is that all of a sudden the rest doesn't equate to the narrative concept of a rest. If they want to sit there for the prescribed hour and tend their wounds, patch their gear and have a cup of tea, then who am I to say "no, that doesn't count as a short rest" ?
Sure there are instances where that rest could be interrupted BUT if I keep doing it, the players will get unhappy especially given the rules. Indeed in one AD&D campaign we had major problem with DM making magical gear non-effective when it suited him or the narrative. I can see the players getting agitated if all a sudden I am repeatedly not allowing them to take short rests .
6-8 encounters in a day doesn't have to all combat encounters, a discussion with an NPC is still an encounter... an RP encounter.
The 6-8 encounter figure comes from 'daily xp budget / medium encounter budget', so it really is intended as 6-8 combat, as RP encounters don't have an xp budget.
For the purposes of dealing with "# of encounters per long rest," I would argue that an "encounter" may not have to be combat, but it does have to be something on which the party must spend at least some resources. If they don't have to spend any resources on it, then it may be an interesting period of the session, but it's not an "encounter" as we would care about for the purposes of the 6-8 number. You can have 100 "events" (not encounters) that take 0 resources and not need a long rest. The only time the party needs long rests, is after they have spent a considerable number of resources (and I include h.p. in the list of resources).
So... a social RP situation can be counted as an "encounter" in the "DMG 6-8" sense if it takes up resources. If the sorcerer had to cast charm person, and the paladin had to Lay On Hands, and the cleric had to cast Sending and Channel Divinity, say, as part of the social interaction, then it's an encounter. If all the party had to do was make a couple of persuade checks, then it may have been an interesting part of the RP, but it was not "an encounter," because it used up no resources.
Therefore, if I were trying to go with a rule that said, "You must have at least 6 encounters before taking a long rest" (and that any "rests" taken before the 6 don't count for the purposes of the rest mechanics), then I would equally rule that any discrete "happening" in the session, be it disarming a trap with lockpicks that don't have any limited uses, or convincing someone using the persuade skill, or searching a room and finding a secret door -- these things are not "encounters" for the purpose of counting them, because they didn't use up any resources.
I actually think the DMG should have been clearer about this. They define an encounter like this in Chapter 3: "Encounters are the individual scenes in the larger story of your adventure." I would re-write it to say, "Encounters are the individual scenes in the larger story of your adventure, that cause one or more party members to expend consumable resources -- either item resources such as potions or arrows, or character resources such as spell slots, hit points, or special abilities."
I also think it borders on criminal that in the entire section on encounters, they only have rules for combat encounters. They say that encounters can be almost anything, but then they don't help the DM with anything but combat. And people wonder why everyone thinks "encounter = combat."
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I find that fascinating, because I have run across some very similar issues. How many levels has the group gone up in that time? What level did they start at? Are you using milestones or XP?
I was running a campaign that started at level 1, and used a combo of milestones and a general rule of thumb of a level up every 5 sessions. But the players were leveling up very rapidly in relation to time passing in the game. I liken it to a player being a totally green soldier landing on the beaches of Normandy. The ones that survive learn VERY quickly the basics of survival (say levels 1-3 in D&D). But after that, how does one marry time passing in the game with leveling? A real-life general (equivalent to say level 16 in D&D) that worked his way up through the ranks does not go from a low end lieutenant to general in a matter of months, or even a couple years. Someone that was a lieutenant in the British Army in 1939 was not a general in 1945. But if time passes slowly in the game (as it does in yours and mine), that is the end result.
While it kind of got lost, I think the original concept was "a level X dungeon contains an adventuring-day worth of encounters for a level X party", and it's totally possible that a sandboxy campaign has dungeons that are dramatically different level from the PCs.
Note that this means limiting long rests to one a week or month or something probably won't actually break most adventures, just slow them down a bit, because components are usually designed to something that can be completed in a single 'day'. Mostly what it does is interfere with spells that you're expected to cast once per day.
For me its never been about the encounters but the disparity in time. As a player a typical in game day has been around 1 maybe 2 encounters, and that is usually 1 occasionally 2, 4hr sessions. I cant imagine squeezing a large number of encounters into a game day it loses a sense of realism unless you are in a dungeon.
Not all encounters are combat, chatting with a barkeep is an encounter.
And as some of us have said on this thread, not using resources means it doesn't count as one of the 6-8 encounters per day. Only encounters that use resources can be considered part of that count.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I must say, next time I run I might decide to use a different resting model. Gritty Realism is slightly too annoying for me, but I might go with:
The biggest issue is that it is impossible to have time run ingame and out of game even remotely close to one another. Anyone who has been involved in D&D knows that some monumental 24 or 30 second fight (which is incredibly long) can take an hour, or more, depending on the quality and quantity of players. How many pure conversations in D&D occur in real time, where the players and DM both totally immerse in RP, given that many require some kind of ability check?
As I said earlier, if I played out my guys at the current rate, assuming no-Covid to ruin games, they can go from level 1 to 20 in less than 18 months in-game time. Now, that is some on me as a DM. But it is also part of the problem of allowing players to move up levels at anything like a rate to keep them engaged. Telling a player it will take him 10 or 12 sessions to go from level 5 to level 6 annoys a lot of of them, very much.