So - according to RAW, the mechanics of 5e are designed around the idea of the 7 major encounters per adventuring day ( or 6-8, so 7 ), spaced out by 2 Short Rests on average.
This means that a raw, wet-behind-the-ears, 1st level adventurer can become level 20 in about 30 "adventuring days", if you divide the amount of XP needed for each level, by the XP in a level-appropriate Medium difficulty encounter, divide again by 7, and adding up the results at each level. Farm hand, to fighter, to slayer-of-gods in a month of experience.
Now - a serious caveat! I know that 30 adventuring days and and 30 calendar days are not the same thing at all. Adventures are long periods of down time, or travelling, punctuated with periods of terrifying stress and life-threatening combat.
In my mind an adventuring day is any period between two long rests. If the party is on a long, grueling dungeon slog, that period could span multiple calendar days of combat, horror, depleting resources, and growing exhaustion. And if the long rest between adventures is a time of downtime or travel, that long rest can last weeks.
But I know that many people look at the 6-8, don't feel it fits the pace of their campaign, and so they ignore it. They might fit 1-4 such encounters between long rests - especially if they throw a random encounter or two into a long journey where you might have one encounter at most between long rests.
I don't want to get into a pointless argument about the merits of the 6-8, and whether or not that's what it "should" be. No matter how you feel about it, I think it's pretty clear that a) that's how the game is balanced, and b) it's something that many people change in their campaigns to match the pace and feel that they want: their game, their choice.
But reducing the number of encounters between long rests changes the game balance for some classes. For example, Monks get Ki back with a short rest, while a Fighter gets their uses of Indomitable refreshed, and the Wizard gets their spell-slots back with every long rest. By having only 1-2 encounters between long rests, these latter abilities are now getting refreshed about 2x - 3x faster than written into the class balance ( Ki gets refreshed on the 2 short rests, so about every 2-3 encounters, as opposed to every 6-8 encounters for Long Rest abilities ).
So how does one tune the mechanics to restore balance, if you want to break the 6-8 encounter guideline?
I don't know - which is why I'm asking all of you what you think.
However, here are some ideas that I've been throwing at the wall to see if they stick:
The Extended Rest
This stacks on top of the Long Rest. Hit points, Hit Dice, and Exhaustion recovery would still be tied to the 8 hour Long Rest, but any ability which refreshes with the Long Rest under RAW, now only refresh with the Extended Rest. A Fighter would only get their uses of Indomitable back with an Extended Rest. How long such an Extended Rest would be would depend on how many encounters, on average, you are planning between Extended Rests. If you're planning on 3-4, an Extended Rest might require a full 24-hours of uninterrupted time. If you're planing 1-2, it might take a solid week of downtime.
Scaling Long Rests
The mechanics of Long Rests are unchanged, but the length of time required for such a rest is adjusted upwards. As above, this would scale depending on the average number of encounters between rest periods. This is kind of like the Extended Rest, but doesn't create an exemption for HP, hit dice, or Exhaustion recovery.
This is also how the Gritty Realism variant works - although you're still expected to have the 6-8 encounters between Long Rests under Gritty Realism.
Incremental Long Rest Ability Recovery
The time required for Long Rests is unchanged, but abilities refreshed via Long Rest are now only refreshed partially. Spellcasters might only get some of their spell levels back. A 17th level fighter might only get one use of Indomitable back per long rest, not both. Only a certain percentage of HP would heal per long rest. Again, the proportion of how much would regenerate per rest, would depend on the average number of encounters between rests.
Encounter Thresholds for Long Rests
The mechanics of Long Rests are unchanged, but Characters are only able to gain the benefits of a Long Rest after a certain number of Encounters. This approach seems the most balanced and simple, but also the most unrealistic and artificial.
Monsters never give up! Never surrender!
Another unrealistic approach, but the DM just never lets the Party get a Long Rest until enough major encounters have occurred. Something always interrupts their camping trip. They never get 8 hours uninterrupted rest.
Scaling XP based on number of Encounters since the last Long Rest.
Rest mechanics are unaffected.
Experience points are based around how difficult an Encounter is expected to be. How difficult an Encounter is expected to be, depends on the resources that the Party has on hand to defeat it. The resources that the Party has on hand, is related to how many Encounters they've had since their last Long Rest.
So, Encounter #7 should be a lot harder than Encounter #1 - since the Party should be almost depleted by the time they get to #7.
If they only get to #4, they never have to deal with the most difficult half of the set of Encounters - so maybe that should be reflected in the earned XP.
The first Encounter would only be worth a fraction of its "book value", and each Encounter after that would be worth a larger fraction - until you get to #4 which should be at "book value", and all the following Encounters should be increasingly more than would be calculated through RAW.
The average XP value of the 7 encounters should come out to be straight "book value". The rate at which the encounter scales would be tricky to try and fine-tune. I don't have any solid ideas on this front, yet.
This means that if the Party has it easy, and only deals with 1-2 encounters between long rests, they get much less XP, since they are dealing with much easier encounters, or at least they're facing encounters with many more resources on average than was designed into the game balance. They get easier adventuring, but have to do a lot more of it.
A Party going through the full 7 encounters between rests has to work harder, so they don't have to adventure as much.
IF I were to do this, I'd make the amount of XP for each encounter proportional to the cumulative XP difficulty of all encounters before it, leading back to the last long rest. I.e. If you are only on Encounter #3, but #1 & #2 were Deadly, you get full XP for this one. If #1 and #2 were Easy you would get even less than the normally reduced amount for #3.
This seems the most realistic and most flexible option, as it scales with the adventuring day. If the party has 2 encounters one adventuring day, and 10 on another (!), this adapts.
But, my god, this would be a lot of accounting work!
I actually used a version of Incremental Long Rest Ability Recovery in the campaign I just wrapped up, and it worked pretty well - although I didn't explicitly track the average number of encounters between rests and choose the rate of ability recovery times based on that. I used it to introduce an aspect of Gritty Realism into the campaign, rather than as a mean of trying to tune game balance.
So:
How many encounters do you stuff between long rests? Do you use the 6-8?
If you don't, how do you deal with the balance issues - or do you think it even matters?
What are the problems and pitfalls you can see with each of these approaches for "balance tuning"?
How would you re-balance long rests if you did it?
Do you have any other possible solutions?
What else gets thrown off by ignoring the 6-8 guideline that isn't being addressed here?
Lets keep it civil.
We're not here to complain about the 6-8 written into the game balance, we're not here to debate its validity as a guideline, and we're not here to criticize people who don't adhere to it.
But I am curious how we can "tweak" the rules to restore game mechanic balance if we do bypass it - or whether that's something we need to do at all.
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I have never followed the expected combats per day suggestions, they seem too artificial to me. I plan a session, I put my story beats together, and I open the doors to my players to run rough shod over my creations.
I haven't seen any issues where long/short rests have created a problem with my games. Players have decided to take a short rest after every encounter in one dungeon and the next week they decided to run the entire session without more than a single long rest. Resource management is the responsibility of my players, I have too many things on my table as DM to worry about them having enough spell slots to take on the next encounter that crops up. I'll spend the first few levels giving them encounters and situations that deplete resources, let them get a feel for how their characters work mechanically. After they seem to have a grasp on the basics of their tools I start to stack on more difficulty, trying my best to make it a learning curve. Once they hit about level 5, I take the gloves off, they've had this long to figure out the core mechanics of their characters, they should be able to anticipate what the new features of their class are going to offer.
I can recognize, nine times out of ten, whether a player makes a genuine mistake or if they're just playing poorly, and that will affect how I handle rests as well. The players end up in a fight and the dice are against them, I'll be gracious if they decide to take a rest. If the players are in a fight and decide to blow all their best abilities just because they can, well resting might not be as easy. It's less about punishing them, but about the secondary resources they have to enable a safe rest and the location they choose to rest. There's also the case of where they choose to rest. If they choose to take a long rest in a kobold infested cavern after raising an alarm, you better bet that they could be interrupted. If they decide to leave the cavern and rest at the nearby town, you better bet that the kobolds will be anticipating another incursion. They have all the tools at their disposal to make educated and intelligent choices to ensure their safety when the dice are not a factor.
I do not feel there's a need to tweak rules to make the game balanced around encounter numbers per day. I believe there's a reason to teach the players resource management and tell a good story. The encounters will happen, the resources will be used, and some days will be tougher than others. That is the way of an adventurer.
The point is not whether or not the suggested number of encounters is artificial or not - that is not in question: it's totally artificial and arbitrary.
Personally, I don't agree with it, or use it, either.
But it is the factor around which resource allocation, and class balance is designed.
The idea is not to adhere to an arbitrary and artificial guideline, but rather to understand that guideline's purpose and effect in the game design. That way, if you abandon it ( and I believe most if not all people do ), you understand the effect you're having on your game mechanics. Either you're OK with those effects, or you can devise means of counterbalancing those effects - but at least they're not taking you by surprise.
If you ignore the guideline, and run fewer encounters, you are making the game easier on your Players than designed. That's probably not a huge deal, except that you are making it disproportionately easier on some Players than others. The same holds true, in the other direction, if you run more.
I'm all for customization, home brew rules, streamlining, and dialing in the kind of game you and your Players want - but I still want my game to be fair across all my Players, and I want my world to be consistent.
Ironically - what you are describing as your approach ( if I understand you correctly ), sounds suspiciously exactly like tweaking your encounters around balance, only you're doing it by the seat-of-your-pants, rather than systemically, and via metagaming rather than through rules - scaling encounter difficulties manually to address the hole that's been blown in the designed game balance, and how your Players having been rolling.
I suspect this is why the practice of throwing Encounters at an adventuring Party, for the sole meta-gaming purpose of depleting Party resources before they reach the BBEG has become "a thing" with some DMs - it redresses the imbalance in Party abilities and resources caused by them getting to Long Rest every few encounters. I guess that works - but stuffing creatures and combats into an adventure design where they make marginal sense, for purposes of meta-gaming balance, seems completely artificial and arbitrary as well.
I suspect this wouldn't be needed, and that how your Players are rolling would matter less with balanced mechanics - and thus eliminate much of the manual juggling and effort that many DMs are doing.
I agree that Players need to understand resource management, and how the mechanics work. That's their responsibility, but how much more difficult is that for them to learn when the mechanics are inconsistent, or the DM stuffs resource depleting encounters into the game to change the playing field at the last moment?
DM judgement and intuition will always be needed, but - ironically - by not redressing the balance, with what I think are pretty minor rule changes ( for most of those options, not all ) - I believe we end up adding more workload on the DM than is needed. You end up with more "things on [your] table" to manually adjust, and your Players end up with a world that behaves inconsistently.
Let's not tell ourselves that we're too busy bailing water out of the boat, so that we can't make the effort fix the hole in the side.
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I've mostly done pre-made adventures so far in 5e, but I have definitely gotten a bit sick of "sandbag" encounters (relatively easy encounters whose only purpose is to exhaust the PCs a bit before a proper encounter). I think a better structure would be a total of 2-3 encounters in an adventuring day, but more significant ones and with the opportunity to short-rest in between. I mean, sometimes a classic dungeon slog can be fun for its own sake, but I don't think it's a good thing to base the game around. In some cases you can use a classic dungeon but merge encounters - if a fight breaks out in room 1, reinforcements will arrive from room 2 after two rounds and from room 3 after a third round. That's a way to embiggen the encounter without overwhelming the PCs.
IMC, I have a house rule that reduces the time needed for the first two short rests in a day, to 10 and 30 minutes respectively. In most scenarios, I find the one-hour requirement for a short rest to be rather unworkable - if you can get an hour's rest in hostile territory, the territory ain't that hostile. This lets short-rest abilities get some more uses in.
I understand where you're coming from, and I don't think I explained myself well.
I have times at my table where I'll have 2/5 players saying "I'm out of X ability, I'll be worthless in the next fight" while the other 3 will be in a decent state. I have times at my table where they have one fight in the entire night, between long rests. I have times where the players will take 4 short rests, one between each battle, and then finish off with a long rest after the last battle. I leave those decisions up to the players, it's their adventure and they'll do what they feel they need to to survive the adventuring day. My goal in the beginning of the game is to introduce the idea that resource management is something they have to consider, I'm not going to cater to them when it comes to the unfolding story and the encounters that go with it.
I don't throw random encounters at them for the sake of resource depletion, that seems like a screw job nine times out of ten. I build encounters based on the situation, story, or location, whether or not the players will be able to handle it. You're in a town infested by rats, ruled by a wererat druid, and at war with a shade, then it's going to be a very dangerous place. You could potentially fight all night, you could potentially find a sanctum where you get a full nights rest uninterrupted, it all depends on the choices you make. They could find ways to combat this chaotic place using the resources of the town and barely touch their own, they could blow their resources and use rests to augment that, or they could feel so completely overwhelmed that they abandon the city and go elsewhere, it's up to them. I only create the situation and react to their choices.
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The only problem I really have come across when it comes to reducing the number of encounters as is suggested, the "30 adventuring days to hero" gets to be increasingly longer. It has made some of my players antsy because they want their new shiny toy at level 8, but others have embraced it and started focusing more on RP and story. However, now that I look at it have have made my own adjustment to this by changing the approach to be less about encounters per day and more toward an XP per session and augment encounters to suit that.
From current level to the next the players need 11,000 xp. I use milestone leveling so I choose a time frame, or story beat, to indicate when they level up. In this example we'll say every 8 sessions they should level. With that I have a 1,375 xp per session budget, so I generate encounters to award that pool, whether they be combat, social or something else.
Some nights I'll be able to hit that mark, some nights I'll be short, some I'll be over. I'll note the results of the night, it's not an exact figure, but something close. If they're starting to fall behind, I'll give them a way to recover the xp, if they're starting to get ahead of the curve, I'll slow it down a touch.
I think that might work toward your "how do you tweak it" question :)
I agree with that vast majority of what you're saying.
Resource management is the domain of the Player - agreed.
Encounter frequency, type, and placement should match what makes sense in the world, and the player actions - agreed
"Sandbag" encounters aren't fair - agreed, and I have never seen you give any indication that you use them
Player actions and tactics are their responsibility - agreed
I disagree, however, that the only effect that reducing the number of encounters between Long Rests is that it draws out leveling time.
Consider I have a Wizard character with a ( totally arbitrary number ) of 30 spell levels in his quiver. I know they're not interchangeable - let's just go with it for simplicity.
If I know there's a good chance I'll get to Long Rest soon, I'll blow through those 30 in the next encounter or two, as I know ( or at least I believe ) that I'll get them back for the encounter after that - so I can blow through those encounters easily as I can just brute force it with the magic. The encounter lacks most of its impact and danger.
If - on the other hand - I believe that my abilities need to stretch out over many encounters, now I'm going to be more selective, tactical, and creative, and the encounter is going to be harder.
If can rest every 2-3 encounters, I have 2-3 times as much magic that I can bring to bear against any one encounter than the designer of the mechanics intended. They're easier. But the Monk doesn't get 2-3 times as much Ki to bear on those encounters - so the Monk gets screwed compared to me.
Not only do I get a benefit that the game mechanics were never written to account for, I get it and the Monk doesn't ( or the Warlock. Or the Warlock/Shadow Monk ... :D ).
It's probably not about the encounters per day, bur rather the XP of challenge overcome between long rests - completely agreed! That's kind of the thrust behind the Scaling XP based on number of Encounters since the last Long Rest idea in the OP. If the baseline is 6 Medium encounters per long rest, and there are 3 Deadly encounters between long rests, that's equivalent, as I have to burn through twice as many resources to get through those. The XP budget is the same over all those encounters. The number of encounters only matter in relation to average encounter challenge.
So - if we want to target the amount of XP of challenge the Players burn through between rests, so that Party still feels challenged, then we either have to crank up the intensity of the encounters, space out the rests, or recognize that the Players are having an easier time of it than intended in the game design and scale the awarded XP accordingly ( although that last one does not redress the power imbalance between the Wizard and the Monk ).
I suspect that many DMs end up doing the first. Encounters become deadlier, in order to keep the Party challenged, and Characters die.
The other option - spacing out the rests - is the thrust of my OP. However, you cannot predict when the Party will put themselves in a situation where it's totally reasonable for them to to rest, so you can't control circumstances. So, alternatively, I'm looking at ways of adjusting the nature of those rests - making them less beneficial, to try and dilute the rest-benefit vs. encounter-frequency ratio.
Total side-note!
Your comment visa-vis social/RP encounters. I'm still really struggling with that, as a) It's the Players solving an encounter so it should gain them XP but, b) They do so often without depleting any resources ... so I gotta think on that more.
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I'd like to point out that there's no intended or recommended number of encounters per day. There's no built in assumption that monks have to go through 2-3 encounters before getting their resources back or that the party has to go through 7 encounters every day or else the game has somehow gone wrong.
Unless you know for sure that your adventure will consistently feature a very low or very high number of encounters per day and that this bothers a player any solution that changes the rules on them is more trouble than it's worth. It's fine for the wizard to go nova on a day with only 1 or 2 encounters. It feels good to let loose every now and then.
Most of these options don't seem to do anything about the timing or frequency of short rests. On a day with fewer encounters the short rest classes can nova harder if they can get a short rest between all of them, compared to a day where they have to fight multiple times between short rests. Warlocks can easily output more than regular spellcasters if afforded more than 2 short rests, too.
In the DMG under Creating A Combat Encounteryou have this little gem, which I think is the source of all our woes.
The Adventuring Day
Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day. If the adventure has more easy encounters, the adventurers can get through more. If it has more deadly encounters, they can handle fewer.
In the same way you figure out the difficulty of an encounter, you can use the XP values of monsters and other opponents in an adventure as a guideline for how far the party is likely to progress.
That may - or may not - be an "intended or recommended number of encounters per day". I think this has mostly become a word-of-mouth tenant these days that this is the intended target; that may not be accurate.
Regardless, I agree that it's the long term average of encounters between long rests that is/might be important. Two on Tuesday, and wave after wave of Orc skirmishers on Thursday - if it all evens out, there isn't an issue. If you're averaging 2 per long rest, I still maintain that mechanically favors some classes over others - but that may not matter to your party either :)
I really don't see ( most of ) these as being large rule changes from the Player perspective, so I'm not sure the it's-more-trouble-than-it's-worth argument holds - but I'm paying more attention to this because my group is transitioning to a new setting and new campaign, so I can do some remodeling right now, with minor impact.
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Yes - few of the proposed changes affect rest timing - this is because, as DMThac0 pointed out, rests happen when the are narratively appropriate. It's hard to control timing without it being artificial.
What they do try and do is change the effectiveness of those long rests, or spread their effects out over longer periods of time.
You're 100% correct that the OP fails to address Short Rests - I thought the topic was overly complex enough - but in my application of the Incremental Rest Ability Recovery that I had in my last campaign, I did restrict Ki and Sorcery Points recovery to a set amount per hour of rest. I didn't need to consider Warlocks - so maybe there's a hole there I'm not addressing.
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The only problem I really have come across when it comes to reducing the number of encounters as is suggested, the "30 adventuring days to hero" gets to be increasingly longer. It has made some of my players antsy because they want their new shiny toy at level 8, but others have embraced it and started focusing more on RP and story. However, now that I look at it have have made my own adjustment to this by changing the approach to be less about encounters per day and more toward an XP per session and augment encounters to suit that.
Another option is to just not use XP, and instead have the PCs level up at appropriate intervals. This seems like an easier solution than budgeting XP per session.
In the DMG under Creating A Combat Encounteryou have this little gem, which I think is the source of all our woes ... That may - or may not - be an "intended or recommended number of encounters per day". I think this has mostly become a word-of-mouth tenant these days that this is the intended target; that may not be accurate.
Yup, sorry about that. I was hoping I could squeeze it in quickly but I guess not!
Ultimately I think it's too hard to try to perfectly balance each class's power level since:
Different classes and subclasses aren't necessarily equal in power even with 7 encounters and 2 short rests, since combat is only one facet of the game and the design of subclasses varies wildly even within a single class.
Not all short rest or long rest abilities have equal value, and related to that, different classes have different levels of free and resource-based output. Getting ki points back is a much bigger deal to monks than getting Action Surge is to fighters, and getting spell slots back is much more important to spellcasters than getting Indomitable back is to Fighters. Champion Fighters are barely affected by resource management compared to other classes.
Long rest resources are fixed per 24 hour cycle but short rest resources aren't. Some days it might be possible to get 3 or 4 short rests and then warlocks literally double their output that day.
And it's not necessarily a productive goal to chase since different classes are supposed to feel different and equalizing resource management still doesn't guarantee that everyone's going to have a chance to shine over the course of the campaign.
And it's not necessarily a productive goal to chase since different classes are supposed to feel different and equalizing resource management still doesn't guarantee that everyone's going to have a chance to shine over the course of the campaign.
They tried equalizing resource management. It was called 4th edition and did not work out so well.
I do like that they brought the idea of the short rest into 5e though (even though it takes far too long), and gave various classes a spectrum of short/long rest abilities. For example, wizards are extremely long rest-based (they can recover a spell slot on a short rest, but only once per long rest), clerics are mostly long rest-based (with Channel Divinity being the main short rest ability), all the way to monks (ki), battle master fighters (superiority dice, action surge, second wind), and warlocks (pact magic, some invocations) which are extremely short rest-based.
Another option is to just not use XP, and instead have the PCs level up at appropriate intervals. This seems like an easier solution than budgeting XP per session.
I have really come to not like the idea of Session Based Advancement, as I've seen it lead to really bad game design, really bad playing, and no real attention paid to whether the Party is succeeding, proposing good solutions, or even trying.
Basically, they level up for not being dead.
I think it too often becomes - "Do what you want, I'll throw some random cool sounding encounters at you, when I miscalculate I'll fudge the bad guys dice rolls so no one is in danger, and hey, when I think enough time has passed, you'll all level up!" - and then we get threads out here like "My Players won't engage with my storyline". Of course not, they don't have to - they know they'll succeed and level up without even paying attention.
That's not the same as well executed Milestone Advancement - which can work if it's done right. You see it in Module design where they say "If the Players defeat the Therblings, all Party members get 500 XP" - which I believe is just a bunch of XP pre-calculation. It is, at least, not any worse than standard XP calculations, in any case.
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I'm not trying to make all classes equally powerful, or equally effective, in all situations. That's not obtainable, and not even a worthwhile goal, as there then would be no point in specialization. The Rogue has their area and time to shine, as does the Barbarian, etc. - and that's desirable.
I agree that "combat is only one facet of the game", which is why I'm talking about resolving encounters, and not winning battles. I'm not trying to stuff 7 combats between long rests; encounters or obstacles resolved through non-combative means, where the solution still depletes resources ( such as the use of spells, or of Ki with Step of the Wind, and the 9th level Unarmored Movement ability to move over obstacles ) would still count.
However, what I'm trying to do is tweak the rest mechanic so that the classes are only as powerful as they were designed to be when adventures are structured as the game designers envisioned - since I've been operating under the assumptions that:
The game designers actually tried to build some sort of mechanical balance into the system, and...
That many of us have been building adventures in a manner other than that which the designers had envisioned, and have throwing the game balance off ( otherwise there would be no need to tweak anything - it would just work as designed ).
Better yet, I'd like to figure out how to tweak the rest mechanic, so that if and when I structure adventures in a way that violates the designers' assumptions, I can adjust things so that I don't hopelessly break the game balance. That would give me the flexibility to build the an adventure structure that suits me and my group, without hopelessly breaking the system mechanics.
In a game which contains resource management, the number of resource depleting encounters before a resource refresh has an effect.
Tell me that you wouldn't see a huge shift in how powerful the Wizard class becomes, for example, if they get to Long Rest after each and every encounter. While that scenario is ludicrous, the question is: where does it stop being ludicrous? 2 encounters per long rest? 3? 4? 7? Where is the balance point? Where does the amount of resource depletion before refresh set the average effectiveness of the classes over that time period, to be in the same general ballpark - even though there will never be perfect equality. Where is the point where a Powergamer isn't going to say "man, when wouldn't I take a __________ or a _________ they kick ass over everything else, each and every time!"
I accept that not all classes scale equally with the number of resource depleting encounters before reset - but that doesn't matter. If the Champion Fighter has a constant effectiveness of 5 ( on some made up and arbitrary scale ), while the Wizard varies in effectiveness from 8 in Encounter #1 to 2 in Encounter #7, the average effectiveness over that span is still 5, the classes are balanced, and 7 encounters per long rest is your balance point.
Either there is such a designed balance point, or there isn't.
If there is, then it seems in those tweet threads that Crawford doesn't know it, or doesn't want to admit where they drew the line, or doesn't want to defend a bad or inconsistent balance point where some mechanics are built around one idea, and some around another. I hope it's not the last one.
If there isn't such a balance point, then the designers are just making shit up without regard for balance, which is just baddesign. I would like to think better of WoTC than that, so I'll hold onto the idea that there is an balance point that the designers intended ( even if Crawford doesn't want to admit where it is ) - at least for now.
Assuming that such a point exists, I have been aiming for the point determined by that 6-8 Encounters between long rests, as that seemed to be the intention of the designers.
I'm no longer sure that's the balance point - or that a balance point even exists in RAW - but I'm willing to work on the assumption that the designers at WoTC are better than that, for now.
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I have really come to not like the idea of Session Based Advancement, as I've seen it lead to really bad game design, really bad playing, and no real attention paid to whether the Party is succeeding, proposing good solutions, or even trying.
Basically, they level up for not being dead.
That's not what I'm suggesting. But for example, look at Princes of the Apocalypse. The module suggests eleven points at which the PCs would gain a level as they progress through the module, with each point being connected to a particular achievement. The PCs still need to succeed in their endeavors, but you don't have to worry about actual XP. You can put whatever challenges seem appropriate in the PCs' path without worrying about whether it will cause them to level faster than intended because they don't level based on individual challenges, but on overall milestones. The same with side quests - do them because they're fun to play and break up the monotony, not because you need the XP to keep up with the main quest (or alternately, don't worry about the side quests leveling the PCs above what's intended).
I mean, it's not like leveling up based on fighting things is particularly logical in the first place, unless you're some sort of vampire who gains power by slaying or defeating your foes.
The only problem I really have come across when it comes to reducing the number of encounters as is suggested, the "30 adventuring days to hero" gets to be increasingly longer. It has made some of my players antsy because they want their new shiny toy at level 8, but others have embraced it and started focusing more on RP and story. However, now that I look at it have have made my own adjustment to this by changing the approach to be less about encounters per day and more toward an XP per session and augment encounters to suit that.
Another option is to just not use XP, and instead have the PCs level up at appropriate intervals. This seems like an easier solution than budgeting XP per session.
I don't want to hijack the thread with this topic, since it is tangential to the OP's intent, but I will address it in short:
The idea behind making an XP budget isn't so much as to shoe-horn in the "appropriate amount" of encounters as it is to give a general idea of how difficult the adventuring day could be. With modules, you're given both XP and Milestone options for the DM allowing for the two styles to be used based on preference. I had a difficult time doing milestone leveling since, at the time I started, it was nothing more than a concept that was being tossed around by the community. So I came up with an idea to take the total XP necessary to level up and evenly distribute it per session to create a feeling of natural growth. That ended up failing due to the fact that some sessions could go an entire night without once leaving town as the group RP'd the entire time. So, over time, it became an abstract target that gave me an idea of the difficulty of challenges when they did occur, using milestone/goal oriented leveling as the true mechanic.
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@Vedexent: It would be interesting to play with each individual class and start mathing their combat prowess per the book using CR calculators, the adventuring day model mentioned earlier, and how they line up with long/short rests. Maybe it could be possible to graph their effectiveness by encounters per day, per short rest, per long rest and see if there is a base line to meet.
I think what you're describing is close to what I described as "well executed Milestone Advancement".
I suspect that such entries in published module design are not actually a different kind of Advancement - I suspect it's still based on XP - but rather the designer pre-calculates ( or guesstimates ) the XP that an average sized Party would earn, using standard tactics, and just jots it down for the DM so they don't have to do any of the XP calculations.
I don't see a problem with that kind of Milestone'ing ( or at least not much beyond the fact that it fails to take in the possibility of XP bonuses for exemplary playing ).
I think there is a problem in your line "You can put whatever challenges seem appropriate in the PCs' path without worrying about whether it will cause them to level faster than intended because they don't level based on individual challenges, but on overall milestones" - which isn't the same as pre-calculation of XP based on the expected encounters between point A and point B.
First of all - what is "intended", when do you determine when a Party should level up, if it's not based on their actions or encounters? If you're saying "OK, when they get to the castle, and discover the Princess is actually in a different castle, they'll get a level" - then you're assuming that they'll get to the castle. What happens if they don't get there? What it they decide to settle down in Whitestone and open a Bakery? You are pre-scripting your Player events. You have to railroad them down a narrative path so they can level up. If instead of that you now try and now move the Milestone out in front of your Players actually are, where do you put it? Ideally after a certain amount of action and problem solving and success in the overcoming of obstacles. How do you determine that? XP.
This is one reason I'm trying hard to find a fair ( or better ) way to implement XP. If leveling is tied to character actions, then it doesn't matter where they go and what they do, so long as they are overcoming challenges. You have complete Player freedom, and they still get rewarded for making progress. Plus you can reward individual Players for exemplary play and problem solving, without disrupting your Milestone.
If you're using abstract Milestones ( not XP pre-calculation ), and not pre-scripting events, then what the Players do doesn't matter, and you have devolved to Session Based Advancement - it literally has become "do what you want, and when the spirit moves me, you'll level up". Your comment about the side-quests speaks to that - it doesn't matter if they side-quest, or not - they still go up at the same time.
And I think this screws your Players. If they overcome obstacles, solve problems, save dragons from evil princesses, they should be rewarded. Under abstract Milestones, if they do the side quest, or you threw in 4 more combat encounters than would fit under an XP budget - they're being asked to expend effort and resources to no reward. Sure - it's fun, and that's always part of the reward, but if humans didn't like seeing a progress meter, we wouldn't have so many stats and progress bars in video games. We like to be able to point to concrete progression numbers. How many video games are still every bit as fun once you hit level cap, and your character stops progressing?
I think this is a huge flaw with Milestone advancement - and why, in online discussions, you'll see most people who like Milestones being DMs ( it's easier for us ), and most people who want XP being Players ( they get to see their progression in real time ). This is the other primary reason I'm trying to shift to XP
P.S. Combat is a whole collection of skills. Skills get better with practice. So yes - leveling up and become more skilled with fighting makes sense.
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@Vedexent: I'm of a mind to play with each individual class and start mathing their combat prowess per the book using CR calculators, the adventuring day model mentioned earlier, and how they line up with long/short rests...not like I have don't enough on my plate already... Maybe it could be possible to graph their effectiveness by encounters per day, per short rest, per long rest and see if there is a base line to meet.
That would be awesome, I agree that would be a very useful thing to be able to see the concrete math. Knowing is better than estimating.
Be careful though ... you may end up being a game designer! :D
Sadly, I think it may be slightly more complex than that. As InquisitiveCoder pointed out ( I think ), it's not about combat per se, it's about resource expenditure.
The monster that causes the Party to expends spells and HP, the chasm the Monk uses Ki to cross by running along the wall, and even the negotiation with the Thieves guild which causes the Party to lose Reknown with the local magistrate when she find outs ( if you use that rule variant ) are all resource costs.
I also think there's Risk vs. Safe to consider.
Breaking it down into into buckets, I think problems the Players face break down along 3-axis: Opposed vs. Passive, Cost vs. Free, Risk vs. Safe ( welcome, my friend, to semiotics! ). I think that any block to Player action that they overcome is worth XP reward. I think that only blocks to Player action that consume resources should be figured into the budget of opposition that fits in the adventuring day between long rests.
So I guess we're really divorcing the concept of XP/leveling and resource refresh. The Party can theoretically run into an infinite number of puzzles (Passive, Free) between long rests and still be rewarded with XP, but not infinite numbers of Encounters ( Opposed, Cost, Risk ), or even Obstacles ( Passive, Cost ).
Cost is the magic factor to consider between long rests.
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They tried equalizing resource management. It was called 4th edition and did not work out so well.
Yeah, I realized that after I finished typing my post. And Mike Mearls admitted that approach wasn't great for two reasons: it made every class feel mechanically similar to the others, and it raised every single character to a high level of complexity. Martial classes and spellcasters had the same mechanics and no matter which class you picked you'd have to make a ton of choices from a huge list of powers.
However, what I'm trying to do is tweak the rest mechanic so that the classes are only as powerful as they were designed to be when adventures are structured as the game designers envisioned...
...Better yet, I'd like to figure out how to tweak the rest mechanic, so that if and when I structure adventures in a way that violates the designers' assumptions, I can adjust things so that I don't hopelessly break the game balance.
What I'm trying to say is that you're starting from a faulty premise. Having 1 or 2 encounters in a day doesn't mean abilities refresh x2 or x3 as fast as they were "designed for" or that certain classes are "more powerful than they were designed to be." You're not violating the designers' assumptions because they didn't assume you'd try to hit X encounters per day and Wizards's own adventure writers don't design official adventures that way.
Trying to scale the balance of all classes so it remains close to what it's like at 7 encounters per day is an extrinsic goal you're chasing, not something that's built into the design of the game or that the designers expect you to do. That doesn't make it a wrong way to play the game, but it's important to understand that you're not expected to.
If the Champion Fighter has a constant effectiveness of 5 ( on some made up and arbitrary scale ), while the Wizard varies in effectiveness from 8 in Encounter #1 to 2 in Encounter #7, the average effectiveness over that span is still 5, the classes are balanced, and 7 encounters per long rest is your balance point.
Either there is such a designed balance point, or there isn't.
If there is, then it seems in those tweet threads that Crawford doesn't know it, or doesn't want to admit where they drew the line, or doesn't want to defend a bad or inconsistent balance point where some mechanics are built around one idea, and some around another. I hope it's not the last one.
If there isn't such a balance point, then the designers are just making shit up without regard for balance, which is just baddesign. I would like to think better of WoTC than that, so I'll hold onto the idea that there is an balance point that the designers intended ( even if Crawford doesn't want to admit where it is ) - at least for now.
The vast majority of players simply don't care about having all of the classes perfectly balanced against each other and the game's designers know it. Cross-class balance is not nearly as important in a co-op storytelling game as it is in a competitive PvP game. They do have some rough targets that they expect classes to hit, but that's done because they need classes to feel right and for the mechanics to support the story and fantasy of those character archetypes, not because making sure every class is perfectly balanced against each other is a priority for them.
Wizards' own adventure writers don't write official adventures according to 7 encounters per day. They prefer a story-first, sandboxy approach and that automatically means some days are going to be easy, some days are going to be hard, and the number of encounters will vary wildly with what the players decide to do and how they decide to do it. You're absolutely not going outside of how the game is intended to be played by not having X encounters in a day.
I suspect that such entries in published module design are not actually a different kind of Advancement - I suspect it's still based on XP - but rather the designer pre-calculates ( or guesstimates ) the XP that an average sized Party would earn, using standard tactics, and just jots it down for the DM so they don't have to do any of the XP calculations.
I don't see a problem with that kind of Milestone'ing ( or at least not much beyond the fact that it fails to take in the possibility of XP bonuses for exemplary playing ).
I kind of doubt it, at least in this case, since you can deal with various bits of the adventure in any order.
I think there is a problem in your line "You can put whatever challenges seem appropriate in the PCs' path without worrying about whether it will cause them to level faster than intended because they don't level based on individual challenges, but on overall milestones" - which isn't the same as pre-calculation of XP based on the expected encounters between point A and point B.
First of all - what is "intended", when do you determine when a Party should level up, if it's not based on their actions or encounters? If you're saying "OK, when they get to the castle, and discover the Princess is actually in a different castle, they'll get a level" - then you're assuming that they'll get to the castle. What happens if they don't get there? What it they decide to settle down in Whitestone and open a Bakery? You are pre-scripting your Player events. You have to railroad them down a narrative path so they can level up. If instead of that you now try and now move the Milestone out in front of your Players actually are, where do you put it? Ideally after a certain amount of action and problem solving and success in the overcoming of obstacles. How do you determine that? XP.
Well, in that case you revise the milestones. In the particular case of settling down and open a bakery, I probably wouldn't have any leveling up at all, because by that point they're no longer adventuring (unless opening a bakery is unexpectedly difficult). But let's say that the PCs instead decide on some other goal, I'd use that for milestones. Or if I'm running a more episodic campaign, level up every few adventures.
If you're using abstract Milestones ( not XP pre-calculation ), and not pre-scripting events, then what the Players do doesn't matter, and you have devolved to Session Based Advancement - it literally has become "do what you want, and when the spirit moves me, you'll level up". Your comment about the side-quests speaks to that - it doesn't matter if they side-quest, or not - they still go up at the same time.
And I think this screws your Players. If they overcome obstacles, solve problems, save dragons from evil princesses, they should be rewarded. Under abstract Milestones, if they do the side quest, or you threw in 4 more combat encounters than would fit under an XP budget - they're being asked to expend effort and resources to no reward. Sure - it's fun, and that's always part of the reward, but if humans didn't like seeing a progress meter, we wouldn't have so many stats and progress bars in video games. We like to be able to point to concrete progression numbers. How many video games are still every bit as fun once you hit level cap, and your character stops progressing?
I see your point, though I disagree with it. With the side quests, they can bring different rewards - perhaps a sweet magic item, or gold, or the gratitude of a rescued noble who may send reinforcements at a later stage.
IMC, keeping track of different XP for different characters would be unworkable because people keep popping in and out on account of life. If a player needs to stay home with their kids because their spouse is off doing something else on game night, that's just how things are and not being in the game is punishment enough. I don't want them to also fall behind on XP/levels. By the same token, I don't like giving out permanent benefits (like XP) as in-game rewards for doing cool things. That's what Inspiration is for.
P.S. Combat is a whole collection of skills. Skills get better with practice. So yes - leveling up and become more skilled with fighting makes sense.
Not at the rate it happens in D&D, it doesn't. And it particularly doesn't for classes that aren't primarily about fighting, like bards or clerics. It's just a thing you go with because it works in the game.
BTW, did you see the Unearthed Arcana a while back with a different XP system? In it, you get XP based on all three pillars of adventuring. In short:
Exploration: 10 XP for finding a location or item appropriate to your tier, +10 XP for each tier above.
Social: 10 XP for swaying an important NPC appropriate to your tier, +10 XP for each tier above, 5 XP for one tier below.
Combat: 5 XP per monster, 15 XP if its CR is twice your level or above, 2 XP if half your level or less.
A controversial topic here.
So - according to RAW, the mechanics of 5e are designed around the idea of the 7 major encounters per adventuring day ( or 6-8, so 7 ), spaced out by 2 Short Rests on average.
This means that a raw, wet-behind-the-ears, 1st level adventurer can become level 20 in about 30 "adventuring days", if you divide the amount of XP needed for each level, by the XP in a level-appropriate Medium difficulty encounter, divide again by 7, and adding up the results at each level. Farm hand, to fighter, to slayer-of-gods in a month of experience.
Now - a serious caveat! I know that 30 adventuring days and and 30 calendar days are not the same thing at all. Adventures are long periods of down time, or travelling, punctuated with periods of terrifying stress and life-threatening combat.
In my mind an adventuring day is any period between two long rests. If the party is on a long, grueling dungeon slog, that period could span multiple calendar days of combat, horror, depleting resources, and growing exhaustion. And if the long rest between adventures is a time of downtime or travel, that long rest can last weeks.
But I know that many people look at the 6-8, don't feel it fits the pace of their campaign, and so they ignore it. They might fit 1-4 such encounters between long rests - especially if they throw a random encounter or two into a long journey where you might have one encounter at most between long rests.
I don't want to get into a pointless argument about the merits of the 6-8, and whether or not that's what it "should" be. No matter how you feel about it, I think it's pretty clear that a) that's how the game is balanced, and b) it's something that many people change in their campaigns to match the pace and feel that they want: their game, their choice.
But reducing the number of encounters between long rests changes the game balance for some classes. For example, Monks get Ki back with a short rest, while a Fighter gets their uses of Indomitable refreshed, and the Wizard gets their spell-slots back with every long rest. By having only 1-2 encounters between long rests, these latter abilities are now getting refreshed about 2x - 3x faster than written into the class balance ( Ki gets refreshed on the 2 short rests, so about every 2-3 encounters, as opposed to every 6-8 encounters for Long Rest abilities ).
So how does one tune the mechanics to restore balance, if you want to break the 6-8 encounter guideline?
I don't know - which is why I'm asking all of you what you think.
However, here are some ideas that I've been throwing at the wall to see if they stick:
The Extended Rest
This stacks on top of the Long Rest. Hit points, Hit Dice, and Exhaustion recovery would still be tied to the 8 hour Long Rest, but any ability which refreshes with the Long Rest under RAW, now only refresh with the Extended Rest. A Fighter would only get their uses of Indomitable back with an Extended Rest. How long such an Extended Rest would be would depend on how many encounters, on average, you are planning between Extended Rests. If you're planning on 3-4, an Extended Rest might require a full 24-hours of uninterrupted time. If you're planing 1-2, it might take a solid week of downtime.
Scaling Long Rests
The mechanics of Long Rests are unchanged, but the length of time required for such a rest is adjusted upwards. As above, this would scale depending on the average number of encounters between rest periods. This is kind of like the Extended Rest, but doesn't create an exemption for HP, hit dice, or Exhaustion recovery.
This is also how the Gritty Realism variant works - although you're still expected to have the 6-8 encounters between Long Rests under Gritty Realism.
Incremental Long Rest Ability Recovery
The time required for Long Rests is unchanged, but abilities refreshed via Long Rest are now only refreshed partially. Spellcasters might only get some of their spell levels back. A 17th level fighter might only get one use of Indomitable back per long rest, not both. Only a certain percentage of HP would heal per long rest. Again, the proportion of how much would regenerate per rest, would depend on the average number of encounters between rests.
Encounter Thresholds for Long Rests
The mechanics of Long Rests are unchanged, but Characters are only able to gain the benefits of a Long Rest after a certain number of Encounters. This approach seems the most balanced and simple, but also the most unrealistic and artificial.
Monsters never give up! Never surrender!
Another unrealistic approach, but the DM just never lets the Party get a Long Rest until enough major encounters have occurred. Something always interrupts their camping trip. They never get 8 hours uninterrupted rest.
Scaling XP based on number of Encounters since the last Long Rest.
Rest mechanics are unaffected.
Experience points are based around how difficult an Encounter is expected to be. How difficult an Encounter is expected to be, depends on the resources that the Party has on hand to defeat it. The resources that the Party has on hand, is related to how many Encounters they've had since their last Long Rest.
So, Encounter #7 should be a lot harder than Encounter #1 - since the Party should be almost depleted by the time they get to #7.
If they only get to #4, they never have to deal with the most difficult half of the set of Encounters - so maybe that should be reflected in the earned XP.
The first Encounter would only be worth a fraction of its "book value", and each Encounter after that would be worth a larger fraction - until you get to #4 which should be at "book value", and all the following Encounters should be increasingly more than would be calculated through RAW.
The average XP value of the 7 encounters should come out to be straight "book value". The rate at which the encounter scales would be tricky to try and fine-tune. I don't have any solid ideas on this front, yet.
This means that if the Party has it easy, and only deals with 1-2 encounters between long rests, they get much less XP, since they are dealing with much easier encounters, or at least they're facing encounters with many more resources on average than was designed into the game balance. They get easier adventuring, but have to do a lot more of it.
A Party going through the full 7 encounters between rests has to work harder, so they don't have to adventure as much.
IF I were to do this, I'd make the amount of XP for each encounter proportional to the cumulative XP difficulty of all encounters before it, leading back to the last long rest. I.e. If you are only on Encounter #3, but #1 & #2 were Deadly, you get full XP for this one. If #1 and #2 were Easy you would get even less than the normally reduced amount for #3.
This seems the most realistic and most flexible option, as it scales with the adventuring day. If the party has 2 encounters one adventuring day, and 10 on another (!), this adapts.
But, my god, this would be a lot of accounting work!
I actually used a version of Incremental Long Rest Ability Recovery in the campaign I just wrapped up, and it worked pretty well - although I didn't explicitly track the average number of encounters between rests and choose the rate of ability recovery times based on that. I used it to introduce an aspect of Gritty Realism into the campaign, rather than as a mean of trying to tune game balance.
So:
Lets keep it civil.
We're not here to complain about the 6-8 written into the game balance, we're not here to debate its validity as a guideline, and we're not here to criticize people who don't adhere to it.
But I am curious how we can "tweak" the rules to restore game mechanic balance if we do bypass it - or whether that's something we need to do at all.
Looking forward to your ideas.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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I have never followed the expected combats per day suggestions, they seem too artificial to me. I plan a session, I put my story beats together, and I open the doors to my players to run rough shod over my creations.
I haven't seen any issues where long/short rests have created a problem with my games. Players have decided to take a short rest after every encounter in one dungeon and the next week they decided to run the entire session without more than a single long rest. Resource management is the responsibility of my players, I have too many things on my table as DM to worry about them having enough spell slots to take on the next encounter that crops up. I'll spend the first few levels giving them encounters and situations that deplete resources, let them get a feel for how their characters work mechanically. After they seem to have a grasp on the basics of their tools I start to stack on more difficulty, trying my best to make it a learning curve. Once they hit about level 5, I take the gloves off, they've had this long to figure out the core mechanics of their characters, they should be able to anticipate what the new features of their class are going to offer.
I can recognize, nine times out of ten, whether a player makes a genuine mistake or if they're just playing poorly, and that will affect how I handle rests as well. The players end up in a fight and the dice are against them, I'll be gracious if they decide to take a rest. If the players are in a fight and decide to blow all their best abilities just because they can, well resting might not be as easy. It's less about punishing them, but about the secondary resources they have to enable a safe rest and the location they choose to rest. There's also the case of where they choose to rest. If they choose to take a long rest in a kobold infested cavern after raising an alarm, you better bet that they could be interrupted. If they decide to leave the cavern and rest at the nearby town, you better bet that the kobolds will be anticipating another incursion. They have all the tools at their disposal to make educated and intelligent choices to ensure their safety when the dice are not a factor.
I do not feel there's a need to tweak rules to make the game balanced around encounter numbers per day. I believe there's a reason to teach the players resource management and tell a good story. The encounters will happen, the resources will be used, and some days will be tougher than others. That is the way of an adventurer.
The point is not whether or not the suggested number of encounters is artificial or not - that is not in question: it's totally artificial and arbitrary.
Personally, I don't agree with it, or use it, either.
But it is the factor around which resource allocation, and class balance is designed.
The idea is not to adhere to an arbitrary and artificial guideline, but rather to understand that guideline's purpose and effect in the game design. That way, if you abandon it ( and I believe most if not all people do ), you understand the effect you're having on your game mechanics. Either you're OK with those effects, or you can devise means of counterbalancing those effects - but at least they're not taking you by surprise.
If you ignore the guideline, and run fewer encounters, you are making the game easier on your Players than designed. That's probably not a huge deal, except that you are making it disproportionately easier on some Players than others. The same holds true, in the other direction, if you run more.
I'm all for customization, home brew rules, streamlining, and dialing in the kind of game you and your Players want - but I still want my game to be fair across all my Players, and I want my world to be consistent.
Ironically - what you are describing as your approach ( if I understand you correctly ), sounds suspiciously exactly like tweaking your encounters around balance, only you're doing it by the seat-of-your-pants, rather than systemically, and via metagaming rather than through rules - scaling encounter difficulties manually to address the hole that's been blown in the designed game balance, and how your Players having been rolling.
I suspect this is why the practice of throwing Encounters at an adventuring Party, for the sole meta-gaming purpose of depleting Party resources before they reach the BBEG has become "a thing" with some DMs - it redresses the imbalance in Party abilities and resources caused by them getting to Long Rest every few encounters. I guess that works - but stuffing creatures and combats into an adventure design where they make marginal sense, for purposes of meta-gaming balance, seems completely artificial and arbitrary as well.
I suspect this wouldn't be needed, and that how your Players are rolling would matter less with balanced mechanics - and thus eliminate much of the manual juggling and effort that many DMs are doing.
I agree that Players need to understand resource management, and how the mechanics work. That's their responsibility, but how much more difficult is that for them to learn when the mechanics are inconsistent, or the DM stuffs resource depleting encounters into the game to change the playing field at the last moment?
DM judgement and intuition will always be needed, but - ironically - by not redressing the balance, with what I think are pretty minor rule changes ( for most of those options, not all ) - I believe we end up adding more workload on the DM than is needed. You end up with more "things on [your] table" to manually adjust, and your Players end up with a world that behaves inconsistently.
Let's not tell ourselves that we're too busy bailing water out of the boat, so that we can't make the effort fix the hole in the side.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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I've mostly done pre-made adventures so far in 5e, but I have definitely gotten a bit sick of "sandbag" encounters (relatively easy encounters whose only purpose is to exhaust the PCs a bit before a proper encounter). I think a better structure would be a total of 2-3 encounters in an adventuring day, but more significant ones and with the opportunity to short-rest in between. I mean, sometimes a classic dungeon slog can be fun for its own sake, but I don't think it's a good thing to base the game around. In some cases you can use a classic dungeon but merge encounters - if a fight breaks out in room 1, reinforcements will arrive from room 2 after two rounds and from room 3 after a third round. That's a way to embiggen the encounter without overwhelming the PCs.
IMC, I have a house rule that reduces the time needed for the first two short rests in a day, to 10 and 30 minutes respectively. In most scenarios, I find the one-hour requirement for a short rest to be rather unworkable - if you can get an hour's rest in hostile territory, the territory ain't that hostile. This lets short-rest abilities get some more uses in.
I understand where you're coming from, and I don't think I explained myself well.
I have times at my table where I'll have 2/5 players saying "I'm out of X ability, I'll be worthless in the next fight" while the other 3 will be in a decent state. I have times at my table where they have one fight in the entire night, between long rests. I have times where the players will take 4 short rests, one between each battle, and then finish off with a long rest after the last battle. I leave those decisions up to the players, it's their adventure and they'll do what they feel they need to to survive the adventuring day. My goal in the beginning of the game is to introduce the idea that resource management is something they have to consider, I'm not going to cater to them when it comes to the unfolding story and the encounters that go with it.
I don't throw random encounters at them for the sake of resource depletion, that seems like a screw job nine times out of ten. I build encounters based on the situation, story, or location, whether or not the players will be able to handle it. You're in a town infested by rats, ruled by a wererat druid, and at war with a shade, then it's going to be a very dangerous place. You could potentially fight all night, you could potentially find a sanctum where you get a full nights rest uninterrupted, it all depends on the choices you make. They could find ways to combat this chaotic place using the resources of the town and barely touch their own, they could blow their resources and use rests to augment that, or they could feel so completely overwhelmed that they abandon the city and go elsewhere, it's up to them. I only create the situation and react to their choices.
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The only problem I really have come across when it comes to reducing the number of encounters as is suggested, the "30 adventuring days to hero" gets to be increasingly longer. It has made some of my players antsy because they want their new shiny toy at level 8, but others have embraced it and started focusing more on RP and story. However, now that I look at it have have made my own adjustment to this by changing the approach to be less about encounters per day and more toward an XP per session and augment encounters to suit that.
From current level to the next the players need 11,000 xp. I use milestone leveling so I choose a time frame, or story beat, to indicate when they level up. In this example we'll say every 8 sessions they should level. With that I have a 1,375 xp per session budget, so I generate encounters to award that pool, whether they be combat, social or something else.
Some nights I'll be able to hit that mark, some nights I'll be short, some I'll be over. I'll note the results of the night, it's not an exact figure, but something close. If they're starting to fall behind, I'll give them a way to recover the xp, if they're starting to get ahead of the curve, I'll slow it down a touch.
I think that might work toward your "how do you tweak it" question :)
I agree with that vast majority of what you're saying.
I disagree, however, that the only effect that reducing the number of encounters between Long Rests is that it draws out leveling time.
Consider I have a Wizard character with a ( totally arbitrary number ) of 30 spell levels in his quiver. I know they're not interchangeable - let's just go with it for simplicity.
If I know there's a good chance I'll get to Long Rest soon, I'll blow through those 30 in the next encounter or two, as I know ( or at least I believe ) that I'll get them back for the encounter after that - so I can blow through those encounters easily as I can just brute force it with the magic. The encounter lacks most of its impact and danger.
If - on the other hand - I believe that my abilities need to stretch out over many encounters, now I'm going to be more selective, tactical, and creative, and the encounter is going to be harder.
If can rest every 2-3 encounters, I have 2-3 times as much magic that I can bring to bear against any one encounter than the designer of the mechanics intended. They're easier. But the Monk doesn't get 2-3 times as much Ki to bear on those encounters - so the Monk gets screwed compared to me.
Not only do I get a benefit that the game mechanics were never written to account for, I get it and the Monk doesn't ( or the Warlock. Or the Warlock/Shadow Monk ... :D ).
So - if we want to target the amount of XP of challenge the Players burn through between rests, so that Party still feels challenged, then we either have to crank up the intensity of the encounters, space out the rests, or recognize that the Players are having an easier time of it than intended in the game design and scale the awarded XP accordingly ( although that last one does not redress the power imbalance between the Wizard and the Monk ).
I suspect that many DMs end up doing the first. Encounters become deadlier, in order to keep the Party challenged, and Characters die.
The other option - spacing out the rests - is the thrust of my OP. However, you cannot predict when the Party will put themselves in a situation where it's totally reasonable for them to to rest, so you can't control circumstances. So, alternatively, I'm looking at ways of adjusting the nature of those rests - making them less beneficial, to try and dilute the rest-benefit vs. encounter-frequency ratio.
Total side-note!
Your comment visa-vis social/RP encounters. I'm still really struggling with that, as a) It's the Players solving an encounter so it should gain them XP but, b) They do so often without depleting any resources ... so I gotta think on that more.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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I'd like to point out that there's no intended or recommended number of encounters per day. There's no built in assumption that monks have to go through 2-3 encounters before getting their resources back or that the party has to go through 7 encounters every day or else the game has somehow gone wrong.
Unless you know for sure that your adventure will consistently feature a very low or very high number of encounters per day and that this bothers a player any solution that changes the rules on them is more trouble than it's worth. It's fine for the wizard to go nova on a day with only 1 or 2 encounters. It feels good to let loose every now and then.
Most of these options don't seem to do anything about the timing or frequency of short rests. On a day with fewer encounters the short rest classes can nova harder if they can get a short rest between all of them, compared to a day where they have to fight multiple times between short rests. Warlocks can easily output more than regular spellcasters if afforded more than 2 short rests, too.
In the DMG under Creating A Combat Encounter you have this little gem, which I think is the source of all our woes.
The Adventuring Day
Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day. If the adventure has more easy encounters, the adventurers can get through more. If it has more deadly encounters, they can handle fewer.
In the same way you figure out the difficulty of an encounter, you can use the XP values of monsters and other opponents in an adventure as a guideline for how far the party is likely to progress.
That may - or may not - be an "intended or recommended number of encounters per day". I think this has mostly become a word-of-mouth tenant these days that this is the intended target; that may not be accurate.
Regardless, I agree that it's the long term average of encounters between long rests that is/might be important. Two on Tuesday, and wave after wave of Orc skirmishers on Thursday - if it all evens out, there isn't an issue. If you're averaging 2 per long rest, I still maintain that mechanically favors some classes over others - but that may not matter to your party either :)
I really don't see ( most of ) these as being large rule changes from the Player perspective, so I'm not sure the it's-more-trouble-than-it's-worth argument holds - but I'm paying more attention to this because my group is transitioning to a new setting and new campaign, so I can do some remodeling right now, with minor impact.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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Hey! You added a paragraph while I was replying!
Yes - few of the proposed changes affect rest timing - this is because, as DMThac0 pointed out, rests happen when the are narratively appropriate. It's hard to control timing without it being artificial.
What they do try and do is change the effectiveness of those long rests, or spread their effects out over longer periods of time.
You're 100% correct that the OP fails to address Short Rests - I thought the topic was overly complex enough - but in my application of the Incremental Rest Ability Recovery that I had in my last campaign, I did restrict Ki and Sorcery Points recovery to a set amount per hour of rest. I didn't need to consider Warlocks - so maybe there's a hole there I'm not addressing.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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Another option is to just not use XP, and instead have the PCs level up at appropriate intervals. This seems like an easier solution than budgeting XP per session.
It's not meant to be a recommendation or target. "In the DMG, there is no rule or even suggestion that an adventuring day should include 6+ encounters. There is, however, text where we tell DMs that groups will start getting tuckered out after that many encounters."
Related: "Some classes have the special ability of being better at facing multiple encounters a day than other classes do. Having that ability doesn’t make those classes less effective if they face one or two encounters. All D&D classes have a variety of ways to be effective.
Yup, sorry about that. I was hoping I could squeeze it in quickly but I guess not!
Ultimately I think it's too hard to try to perfectly balance each class's power level since:
And it's not necessarily a productive goal to chase since different classes are supposed to feel different and equalizing resource management still doesn't guarantee that everyone's going to have a chance to shine over the course of the campaign.
They tried equalizing resource management. It was called 4th edition and did not work out so well.
I do like that they brought the idea of the short rest into 5e though (even though it takes far too long), and gave various classes a spectrum of short/long rest abilities. For example, wizards are extremely long rest-based (they can recover a spell slot on a short rest, but only once per long rest), clerics are mostly long rest-based (with Channel Divinity being the main short rest ability), all the way to monks (ki), battle master fighters (superiority dice, action surge, second wind), and warlocks (pact magic, some invocations) which are extremely short rest-based.
I have really come to not like the idea of Session Based Advancement, as I've seen it lead to really bad game design, really bad playing, and no real attention paid to whether the Party is succeeding, proposing good solutions, or even trying.
Basically, they level up for not being dead.
I think it too often becomes - "Do what you want, I'll throw some random cool sounding encounters at you, when I miscalculate I'll fudge the bad guys dice rolls so no one is in danger, and hey, when I think enough time has passed, you'll all level up!" - and then we get threads out here like "My Players won't engage with my storyline". Of course not, they don't have to - they know they'll succeed and level up without even paying attention.
That's not the same as well executed Milestone Advancement - which can work if it's done right. You see it in Module design where they say "If the Players defeat the Therblings, all Party members get 500 XP" - which I believe is just a bunch of XP pre-calculation. It is, at least, not any worse than standard XP calculations, in any case.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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InquisitiveCoder
I'm not trying to make all classes equally powerful, or equally effective, in all situations. That's not obtainable, and not even a worthwhile goal, as there then would be no point in specialization. The Rogue has their area and time to shine, as does the Barbarian, etc. - and that's desirable.
I agree that "combat is only one facet of the game", which is why I'm talking about resolving encounters, and not winning battles. I'm not trying to stuff 7 combats between long rests; encounters or obstacles resolved through non-combative means, where the solution still depletes resources ( such as the use of spells, or of Ki with Step of the Wind, and the 9th level Unarmored Movement ability to move over obstacles ) would still count.
However, what I'm trying to do is tweak the rest mechanic so that the classes are only as powerful as they were designed to be when adventures are structured as the game designers envisioned - since I've been operating under the assumptions that:
Better yet, I'd like to figure out how to tweak the rest mechanic, so that if and when I structure adventures in a way that violates the designers' assumptions, I can adjust things so that I don't hopelessly break the game balance. That would give me the flexibility to build the an adventure structure that suits me and my group, without hopelessly breaking the system mechanics.
In a game which contains resource management, the number of resource depleting encounters before a resource refresh has an effect.
Tell me that you wouldn't see a huge shift in how powerful the Wizard class becomes, for example, if they get to Long Rest after each and every encounter. While that scenario is ludicrous, the question is: where does it stop being ludicrous? 2 encounters per long rest? 3? 4? 7? Where is the balance point? Where does the amount of resource depletion before refresh set the average effectiveness of the classes over that time period, to be in the same general ballpark - even though there will never be perfect equality. Where is the point where a Powergamer isn't going to say "man, when wouldn't I take a __________ or a _________ they kick ass over everything else, each and every time!"
I accept that not all classes scale equally with the number of resource depleting encounters before reset - but that doesn't matter. If the Champion Fighter has a constant effectiveness of 5 ( on some made up and arbitrary scale ), while the Wizard varies in effectiveness from 8 in Encounter #1 to 2 in Encounter #7, the average effectiveness over that span is still 5, the classes are balanced, and 7 encounters per long rest is your balance point.
Either there is such a designed balance point, or there isn't.
If there is, then it seems in those tweet threads that Crawford doesn't know it, or doesn't want to admit where they drew the line, or doesn't want to defend a bad or inconsistent balance point where some mechanics are built around one idea, and some around another. I hope it's not the last one.
If there isn't such a balance point, then the designers are just making shit up without regard for balance, which is just bad design. I would like to think better of WoTC than that, so I'll hold onto the idea that there is an balance point that the designers intended ( even if Crawford doesn't want to admit where it is ) - at least for now.
Assuming that such a point exists, I have been aiming for the point determined by that 6-8 Encounters between long rests, as that seemed to be the intention of the designers.
I'm no longer sure that's the balance point - or that a balance point even exists in RAW - but I'm willing to work on the assumption that the designers at WoTC are better than that, for now.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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That's not what I'm suggesting. But for example, look at Princes of the Apocalypse. The module suggests eleven points at which the PCs would gain a level as they progress through the module, with each point being connected to a particular achievement. The PCs still need to succeed in their endeavors, but you don't have to worry about actual XP. You can put whatever challenges seem appropriate in the PCs' path without worrying about whether it will cause them to level faster than intended because they don't level based on individual challenges, but on overall milestones. The same with side quests - do them because they're fun to play and break up the monotony, not because you need the XP to keep up with the main quest (or alternately, don't worry about the side quests leveling the PCs above what's intended).
I mean, it's not like leveling up based on fighting things is particularly logical in the first place, unless you're some sort of vampire who gains power by slaying or defeating your foes.
I don't want to hijack the thread with this topic, since it is tangential to the OP's intent, but I will address it in short:
The idea behind making an XP budget isn't so much as to shoe-horn in the "appropriate amount" of encounters as it is to give a general idea of how difficult the adventuring day could be. With modules, you're given both XP and Milestone options for the DM allowing for the two styles to be used based on preference. I had a difficult time doing milestone leveling since, at the time I started, it was nothing more than a concept that was being tossed around by the community. So I came up with an idea to take the total XP necessary to level up and evenly distribute it per session to create a feeling of natural growth. That ended up failing due to the fact that some sessions could go an entire night without once leaving town as the group RP'd the entire time. So, over time, it became an abstract target that gave me an idea of the difficulty of challenges when they did occur, using milestone/goal oriented leveling as the true mechanic.
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@Vedexent: It would be interesting to play with each individual class and start mathing their combat prowess per the book using CR calculators, the adventuring day model mentioned earlier, and how they line up with long/short rests. Maybe it could be possible to graph their effectiveness by encounters per day, per short rest, per long rest and see if there is a base line to meet.
@Staffan
OK, fair enough :)
I think what you're describing is close to what I described as "well executed Milestone Advancement".
I suspect that such entries in published module design are not actually a different kind of Advancement - I suspect it's still based on XP - but rather the designer pre-calculates ( or guesstimates ) the XP that an average sized Party would earn, using standard tactics, and just jots it down for the DM so they don't have to do any of the XP calculations.
I don't see a problem with that kind of Milestone'ing ( or at least not much beyond the fact that it fails to take in the possibility of XP bonuses for exemplary playing ).
I think there is a problem in your line "You can put whatever challenges seem appropriate in the PCs' path without worrying about whether it will cause them to level faster than intended because they don't level based on individual challenges, but on overall milestones" - which isn't the same as pre-calculation of XP based on the expected encounters between point A and point B.
First of all - what is "intended", when do you determine when a Party should level up, if it's not based on their actions or encounters? If you're saying "OK, when they get to the castle, and discover the Princess is actually in a different castle, they'll get a level" - then you're assuming that they'll get to the castle. What happens if they don't get there? What it they decide to settle down in Whitestone and open a Bakery? You are pre-scripting your Player events. You have to railroad them down a narrative path so they can level up. If instead of that you now try and now move the Milestone out in front of your Players actually are, where do you put it? Ideally after a certain amount of action and problem solving and success in the overcoming of obstacles. How do you determine that? XP.
This is one reason I'm trying hard to find a fair ( or better ) way to implement XP. If leveling is tied to character actions, then it doesn't matter where they go and what they do, so long as they are overcoming challenges. You have complete Player freedom, and they still get rewarded for making progress. Plus you can reward individual Players for exemplary play and problem solving, without disrupting your Milestone.
If you're using abstract Milestones ( not XP pre-calculation ), and not pre-scripting events, then what the Players do doesn't matter, and you have devolved to Session Based Advancement - it literally has become "do what you want, and when the spirit moves me, you'll level up". Your comment about the side-quests speaks to that - it doesn't matter if they side-quest, or not - they still go up at the same time.
And I think this screws your Players. If they overcome obstacles, solve problems, save dragons from evil princesses, they should be rewarded. Under abstract Milestones, if they do the side quest, or you threw in 4 more combat encounters than would fit under an XP budget - they're being asked to expend effort and resources to no reward. Sure - it's fun, and that's always part of the reward, but if humans didn't like seeing a progress meter, we wouldn't have so many stats and progress bars in video games. We like to be able to point to concrete progression numbers. How many video games are still every bit as fun once you hit level cap, and your character stops progressing?
I think this is a huge flaw with Milestone advancement - and why, in online discussions, you'll see most people who like Milestones being DMs ( it's easier for us ), and most people who want XP being Players ( they get to see their progression in real time ). This is the other primary reason I'm trying to shift to XP
P.S. Combat is a whole collection of skills. Skills get better with practice. So yes - leveling up and become more skilled with fighting makes sense.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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That would be awesome, I agree that would be a very useful thing to be able to see the concrete math. Knowing is better than estimating.
Be careful though ... you may end up being a game designer! :D
Sadly, I think it may be slightly more complex than that. As InquisitiveCoder pointed out ( I think ), it's not about combat per se, it's about resource expenditure.
The monster that causes the Party to expends spells and HP, the chasm the Monk uses Ki to cross by running along the wall, and even the negotiation with the Thieves guild which causes the Party to lose Reknown with the local magistrate when she find outs ( if you use that rule variant ) are all resource costs.
I also think there's Risk vs. Safe to consider.
Breaking it down into into buckets, I think problems the Players face break down along 3-axis: Opposed vs. Passive, Cost vs. Free, Risk vs. Safe ( welcome, my friend, to semiotics! ). I think that any block to Player action that they overcome is worth XP reward. I think that only blocks to Player action that consume resources should be figured into the budget of opposition that fits in the adventuring day between long rests.
So I guess we're really divorcing the concept of XP/leveling and resource refresh. The Party can theoretically run into an infinite number of puzzles (Passive, Free) between long rests and still be rewarded with XP, but not infinite numbers of Encounters ( Opposed, Cost, Risk ), or even Obstacles ( Passive, Cost ).
Cost is the magic factor to consider between long rests.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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Yeah, I realized that after I finished typing my post. And Mike Mearls admitted that approach wasn't great for two reasons: it made every class feel mechanically similar to the others, and it raised every single character to a high level of complexity. Martial classes and spellcasters had the same mechanics and no matter which class you picked you'd have to make a ton of choices from a huge list of powers.
What I'm trying to say is that you're starting from a faulty premise. Having 1 or 2 encounters in a day doesn't mean abilities refresh x2 or x3 as fast as they were "designed for" or that certain classes are "more powerful than they were designed to be." You're not violating the designers' assumptions because they didn't assume you'd try to hit X encounters per day and Wizards's own adventure writers don't design official adventures that way.
Trying to scale the balance of all classes so it remains close to what it's like at 7 encounters per day is an extrinsic goal you're chasing, not something that's built into the design of the game or that the designers expect you to do. That doesn't make it a wrong way to play the game, but it's important to understand that you're not expected to.
The vast majority of players simply don't care about having all of the classes perfectly balanced against each other and the game's designers know it. Cross-class balance is not nearly as important in a co-op storytelling game as it is in a competitive PvP game. They do have some rough targets that they expect classes to hit, but that's done because they need classes to feel right and for the mechanics to support the story and fantasy of those character archetypes, not because making sure every class is perfectly balanced against each other is a priority for them.
Wizards' own adventure writers don't write official adventures according to 7 encounters per day. They prefer a story-first, sandboxy approach and that automatically means some days are going to be easy, some days are going to be hard, and the number of encounters will vary wildly with what the players decide to do and how they decide to do it. You're absolutely not going outside of how the game is intended to be played by not having X encounters in a day.
I kind of doubt it, at least in this case, since you can deal with various bits of the adventure in any order.
Well, in that case you revise the milestones. In the particular case of settling down and open a bakery, I probably wouldn't have any leveling up at all, because by that point they're no longer adventuring (unless opening a bakery is unexpectedly difficult). But let's say that the PCs instead decide on some other goal, I'd use that for milestones. Or if I'm running a more episodic campaign, level up every few adventures.
I see your point, though I disagree with it. With the side quests, they can bring different rewards - perhaps a sweet magic item, or gold, or the gratitude of a rescued noble who may send reinforcements at a later stage.
IMC, keeping track of different XP for different characters would be unworkable because people keep popping in and out on account of life. If a player needs to stay home with their kids because their spouse is off doing something else on game night, that's just how things are and not being in the game is punishment enough. I don't want them to also fall behind on XP/levels. By the same token, I don't like giving out permanent benefits (like XP) as in-game rewards for doing cool things. That's what Inspiration is for.
Not at the rate it happens in D&D, it doesn't. And it particularly doesn't for classes that aren't primarily about fighting, like bards or clerics. It's just a thing you go with because it works in the game.
BTW, did you see the Unearthed Arcana a while back with a different XP system? In it, you get XP based on all three pillars of adventuring. In short:
You can check it out here if you haven't already.