@@bradleyhurley6755 You need to add taverns or mystic groves, or friendly dwarven caves etc. It's slightly more work for the GM but adds cool explortaion/social rewards for the players.
@@bradleyhurley6755 Really depends on the campaign's geography. Yes if it's really in the middle of the wilderness a lone tavern is unlikely. But the local rulers may very well set up outposts in and through wilderness areas they're trying to 'tame'. Patrolling forces need to rest and resupply just like adventurers. Maybe followers of a travel deity establish and maintain small shrines which provide shelter (and get semi-regular visits by the clergy) as a matter of faith and worship. Perhaps it's a communication route along the lines of the Pony Express system or even a series of outposts maintained by a coalition of guilds. Maybe there's even a Thieves Guild involved. After all they want commerce to occur so they can 'take their cut'. There's no profit in allowing bandits and disorganized criminals to wipe out trade. Merchants may even turn a blind eye to it, most them anyway. After all they won't lose anything they'll just charge more at the destination ... as long as no one is too greedy.
@@jonathanreece4151 because that's how most of the groups play. Many classes are considered overpower because can deploy all their resources in a single combat and others are considerd underpowered because their resources are less powerful but reset at short rest or they dont rely in expendable resources (like most of the martials).
but I don't really believe that they'll do anything in that regard. But WotC said that they aim for a more "streamable" game, and having only 1-2 hard encounters are way better to watch (and in my opinion, better to play too)
You can run Gritty Realism, so an "adventuring day" is more like an "adventuring week." That way you can have only 1 or 2 encounters per day, and still run the "full adventuring day" worth of encounters.
@@MyLittlePonyTheater but that makes the players hoard their resources. What I'm saying is having one or two encounters where the players can go nova, as they want. Because they will go nova anywat, and than have a long rest, it doesn't matter if it takes a week or a night.
Honestly i've found looking at how many encounters the PC's can take before a short rest, is more important and notable, because it summarizes how the original adventuring day concept was made, and allows you to pay attention to how lethel the immediate fights will be. For example, the math behind 5e makes it so, a Easy encounter just means that in that single fight they can do about 15% of the players HP before going down, Medium means 30%, Hard means 45%, and Deadly means 70%. (And how they get the 6-8 medium or hard encounters is assuming that after 2-3 medium or hard encounters you have to short rest which will give you most of your hp back, for example, 3 medium encounters in a row would take about 90% of the players HP, so they will have the short rest to get most of that back, another 3 encounters takes another 90%, so at this point assuming the rest of the encounters are medium, they cant really go on unless they use resources to make up for the HP lost, which allows them to go about 1 or 2 more.) When you consider this it makes it really easy to design quicker adventuring days, where the idea is before they have to short rest the adventure is done, also makes it easier to design big solo combat encounters, for example if they are fighting on big boss monster, with a lot of resources you can just double the HP and damage of a Hard encounter to make a really intense battle, since it can easily take 90% of the parties HP. My point is, knowing this will allow you to focus on how challenging do you want any number of encounters to be in a day, easily, and amp them up or down depending on the story you wanna tell.
I saw a tweet saying that the """common""" (extra air quotes added for exaggeration) reaction to the OneDND update was 'but why?', and the answer should just be to point to that passage that tells GMs to run 6-8 encounters in a single day.
It's so true. Redoing all the classes like they're doing with one d&d is the only way to really nail this. And if they don't get it right really why bother.
in Tomb of Annihilation, during the hex crawl you roll 3 times for random encounters, so there's 0-3 encounters per day. A 3 encounter day was rare! but our players were entertained and challenged by the variety of the encounters
I am paranoid to mess up the encounters, only 2 hours till I have to dm for the first time. I have 3 encounters, 2 easy and 1 medium I think. I hope it isn’t a bad idea, because the place they’re in, they won’t have time to do any long rests, maybe they could do a short rest, the encounters are very hard to choose between, 2 feels like not enough, 3 feels like ok, maybe 4? but what if its too hard for lvl 1 players? All that is going on in my head is just anxiety haha. This video helped well with boosting my confidence and giving me some great information, thanks❤
I'm glad I discovered the channel. Love these videos and I love your guys' products. I'll drop a link to this to some DM friends, it was worth a watch.
@@bradleyhurley6755 lol, you misunderstand. I am purely talking from a time angle. My Sunday three hour session group can normally deal with interacting as a group with about 3-4 different things.
Philosophically this sounds great, to have number and strength of encounters entirely determined by the scenario and setting, completely heedless of any guidelines. In practice though, the regular and widespread common practice of the 1 or 2- encounter day is the cause of a lot of major complaints people have about D&D 5th edition, including the problem of super-powered tough to kill PCs who don't break a sweat in encounters that should be hard, and the so-called martial/caster disparity. These issues are fixed by increasing encounters per day. Of course some times it makes sense to have few encounters, but if you don't also give them long and hard adventuring days with 6 to 8 fights or more, you are in fact missing out on a designed aspect of the game, and that will have an impact at your table.
Your advice is really good, but for other systems, not 5e. 5e was made for 6-8 encounters per day. Classes' abilities were balanced for 6-8 encounters per day. All resource management and all rules were invented for 6-8 encounters per day. It just works that way. And if you try to move away from that number of encounters, something will break and will require you (the dm) to fix it. Fixing stuff you understand requires additional work and may be exhausting. It's even more exhausting if you don't understand what you are fixing and how it may affect your gameplay. If you have trouble running 6-8 encounters in a dungeon (which is in the name of the game), then maybe try another system that suits your playstyle or fix your storytelling in 5e to include enough encounters.
I disagree with the premise that it's impossible to build an encounter that can challenge players with full resources. DMs are omnipotent, it's impossible for players to be overpowered. I understand that some DMs don't believe in balancing encounters, but for those who do, one of the easiest ways to do it for a full strength party is to use multiple waves/phases. Multiple waves/phases also allows the DM to re-evaluate after each wave/phase and balance on the fly.
While I'm all for this sort of diegetic world design, if you never develop 5e content that is likely to push players toward the end of their resources, you are going to have a consistently tensionless, easy, boring, caster-heavy game. OSR games are better at this sort of design because the characters have so few resources comparatively that ANY fight might end up being a problem for one or more of them. But 5e characters are just too padded and too powerful too early to have any tension in the game at all unless you find ways to shape the world or the mechanics toward a lack of resources. Personally I do this by balancing all content around a Hard difficulty, with some deadly and some medium, in 3 level chunks at levels 1,3,6,9, etc. And by limiting Long Rests to Safe Havens only.
How do you define a Safe Haven? I am convinced the Martial-Caster debate is really a long Rest issue. I am trying to come up with a better mechanic for my next campaign.
@@jacobbutts6109 Wherever their starting town usually is, and then any settlement that is relatively safe (i.e. there are guards) and friendly to them. It can change over time, they might earn new towns being safe havens or lose others if they piss them off, maybe a roaming barbarian village isn't just in one spot, but it can still be a Safe Haven. Basically anywhere that they can shop to refill on supplies and equipment and get a safe-ish night's sleep. I also use "Slower Natural Healing" from the DMG, so on a long rest they don't get all of their HP, but they get all their Hit Dice back, and can spend any spares they had. These two rules together I have found hit a nice balance for the types of expedition adventures I want to have.
You can’t have one medium or hard encounter per long rest and complain that the monsters are too weak. The monsters in 5e are balanced around the characters have multiple encounters per long rest. And don’t start with: “it doesn’t specify that it’s combat encounters”. It actually does, it’s in the section for combat encounters. But I agree with Mike that not all adventuring days has to have “your daily recommended dose” of combat, and all combat should serve the story or world building.
I'll never understand why DM's want to grind players resources down to nothing before getting them to a long rest. What is it about characters not having their powers makes the combat more fun for anyone, including the DM?
It might be an attempt to deal with the fact that many player powers after a certain point are of the “skip challenge” variety. If a lot of challenges are basically locks to which players have a key for written somewhere on their character sheet, gameplay becomes a rather bland “use (metaphorical) key with lock”. That feels awesome once or twice as a player, but may get boring, and considering the huge amount of keys for every possible situations that especially spellcasters have at hand (in 5e, virtually everyone is a spellcaster and that’s looking to get even more pronounced in onednd where species get tons of spells and even get 2nd level spells later on), it can be tricky for DMs to create interesting challenges and situations.
Totally agree with the approach to just do what the story demands, as long you don't provoke a TPK. Problem is, the game is not balanced around that. The game is stupidly balanced around those 6 - 8 encounters still. Having a brawl with a few bandits and after just long rest is completely tensionless and therefor boring to the players of they can just long-rest after. It's important to keep the gameplay side auf D&D engaging, too, and not sacrifice it for the story. Had to completely rework the resting - system for this approach to at least kinda work in my campaign. Also, I came to the conclusion that D&D is just not the system I want it to be. I'll do the best I can with house-rules, slowly building another system out of it, for the remainder of my current campaign, but after, I will switch to a roleplay-focussed system like FATE or Cthulhu, not a video-gamey power-leveling and combat-focused one like D&D, where the players grow to become gods in a few levels that can just easily murder a whole settlement if they choose to because humans are just not a threat after a few levels. Also, the economy makes zero sense. All this kills RP for me.
I really like the idea of having long rests require an actual safe haven such as a tavern. It solves the pacing problems.
@@bradleyhurley6755 You need to add taverns or mystic groves, or friendly dwarven caves etc. It's slightly more work for the GM but adds cool explortaion/social rewards for the players.
@@bradleyhurley6755 It depends on the setting and campaign. And yeah, those spells invalidate that mechanic.
@@bradleyhurley6755 Really depends on the campaign's geography. Yes if it's really in the middle of the wilderness a lone tavern is unlikely. But the local rulers may very well set up outposts in and through wilderness areas they're trying to 'tame'. Patrolling forces need to rest and resupply just like adventurers. Maybe followers of a travel deity establish and maintain small shrines which provide shelter (and get semi-regular visits by the clergy) as a matter of faith and worship. Perhaps it's a communication route along the lines of the Pony Express system or even a series of outposts maintained by a coalition of guilds. Maybe there's even a Thieves Guild involved. After all they want commerce to occur so they can 'take their cut'. There's no profit in allowing bandits and disorganized criminals to wipe out trade. Merchants may even turn a blind eye to it, most them anyway. After all they won't lose anything they'll just charge more at the destination ... as long as no one is too greedy.
These quick, thought provoking videos are my favorite. Chock full of actionable wisdom. Please keep up the good work :)
Thanks, will do!
My only wish for one d&d is that they tune the resource management and monsters to fit into a 1 to 2 combat encounters per adventuring day
That's an interesting take -- I'm curious as to why?
@@jonathanreece4151 because that's how most of the groups play. Many classes are considered overpower because can deploy all their resources in a single combat and others are considerd underpowered because their resources are less powerful but reset at short rest or they dont rely in expendable resources (like most of the martials).
but I don't really believe that they'll do anything in that regard. But WotC said that they aim for a more "streamable" game, and having only 1-2 hard encounters are way better to watch (and in my opinion, better to play too)
You can run Gritty Realism, so an "adventuring day" is more like an "adventuring week." That way you can have only 1 or 2 encounters per day, and still run the "full adventuring day" worth of encounters.
@@MyLittlePonyTheater but that makes the players hoard their resources. What I'm saying is having one or two encounters where the players can go nova, as they want. Because they will go nova anywat, and than have a long rest, it doesn't matter if it takes a week or a night.
Honestly i've found looking at how many encounters the PC's can take before a short rest, is more important and notable, because it summarizes how the original adventuring day concept was made, and allows you to pay attention to how lethel the immediate fights will be.
For example, the math behind 5e makes it so, a Easy encounter just means that in that single fight they can do about 15% of the players HP before going down, Medium means 30%, Hard means 45%, and Deadly means 70%.
(And how they get the 6-8 medium or hard encounters is assuming that after 2-3 medium or hard encounters you have to short rest which will give you most of your hp back, for example, 3 medium encounters in a row would take about 90% of the players HP, so they will have the short rest to get most of that back, another 3 encounters takes another 90%, so at this point assuming the rest of the encounters are medium, they cant really go on unless they use resources to make up for the HP lost, which allows them to go about 1 or 2 more.)
When you consider this it makes it really easy to design quicker adventuring days, where the idea is before they have to short rest the adventure is done, also makes it easier to design big solo combat encounters, for example if they are fighting on big boss monster, with a lot of resources you can just double the HP and damage of a Hard encounter to make a really intense battle, since it can easily take 90% of the parties HP.
My point is, knowing this will allow you to focus on how challenging do you want any number of encounters to be in a day, easily, and amp them up or down depending on the story you wanna tell.
I love the fact that you just started with a question and then right to the topic! I love it.
I saw a tweet saying that the """common""" (extra air quotes added for exaggeration) reaction to the OneDND update was 'but why?', and the answer should just be to point to that passage that tells GMs to run 6-8 encounters in a single day.
It's so true. Redoing all the classes like they're doing with one d&d is the only way to really nail this. And if they don't get it right really why bother.
in Tomb of Annihilation, during the hex crawl you roll 3 times for random encounters, so there's 0-3 encounters per day. A 3 encounter day was rare! but our players were entertained and challenged by the variety of the encounters
I am paranoid to mess up the encounters, only 2 hours till I have to dm for the first time. I have 3 encounters, 2 easy and 1 medium I think. I hope it isn’t a bad idea, because the place they’re in, they won’t have time to do any long rests, maybe they could do a short rest, the encounters are very hard to choose between, 2 feels like not enough, 3 feels like ok, maybe 4? but what if its too hard for lvl 1 players? All that is going on in my head is just anxiety haha.
This video helped well with boosting my confidence and giving me some great information, thanks❤
I'm glad I discovered the channel. Love these videos and I love your guys' products. I'll drop a link to this to some DM friends, it was worth a watch.
Thank you!
My group only meets for three hour sessions. That's about three encounters of any kind timewise.
@@bradleyhurley6755 it's all types of encounters. From roleplay, combat, exploring, shopping etc. If it's a boss combat maybe one encounter.
@@bradleyhurley6755 lol, you misunderstand. I am purely talking from a time angle. My Sunday three hour session group can normally deal with interacting as a group with about 3-4 different things.
So what do you do when your players DO want a game that's about resource management and strategic challenges?
Play an OSR game. There is more mechanical support for resource management and combat is much faster.
@@Stephenmcabrera Thanks, I'll look into that!
Philosophically this sounds great, to have number and strength of encounters entirely determined by the scenario and setting, completely heedless of any guidelines. In practice though, the regular and widespread common practice of the 1 or 2- encounter day is the cause of a lot of major complaints people have about D&D 5th edition, including the problem of super-powered tough to kill PCs who don't break a sweat in encounters that should be hard, and the so-called martial/caster disparity. These issues are fixed by increasing encounters per day.
Of course some times it makes sense to have few encounters, but if you don't also give them long and hard adventuring days with 6 to 8 fights or more, you are in fact missing out on a designed aspect of the game, and that will have an impact at your table.
Said perfectly in his first line!
😀
@@SlyFlourish may I send you a free copy of something I have on the guild? Your content works perfect with it.
Your advice is really good, but for other systems, not 5e. 5e was made for 6-8 encounters per day. Classes' abilities were balanced for 6-8 encounters per day. All resource management and all rules were invented for 6-8 encounters per day. It just works that way. And if you try to move away from that number of encounters, something will break and will require you (the dm) to fix it. Fixing stuff you understand requires additional work and may be exhausting. It's even more exhausting if you don't understand what you are fixing and how it may affect your gameplay.
If you have trouble running 6-8 encounters in a dungeon (which is in the name of the game), then maybe try another system that suits your playstyle or fix your storytelling in 5e to include enough encounters.
Exactly!
I disagree with the premise that it's impossible to build an encounter that can challenge players with full resources. DMs are omnipotent, it's impossible for players to be overpowered.
I understand that some DMs don't believe in balancing encounters, but for those who do, one of the easiest ways to do it for a full strength party is to use multiple waves/phases. Multiple waves/phases also allows the DM to re-evaluate after each wave/phase and balance on the fly.
While I'm all for this sort of diegetic world design, if you never develop 5e content that is likely to push players toward the end of their resources, you are going to have a consistently tensionless, easy, boring, caster-heavy game.
OSR games are better at this sort of design because the characters have so few resources comparatively that ANY fight might end up being a problem for one or more of them. But 5e characters are just too padded and too powerful too early to have any tension in the game at all unless you find ways to shape the world or the mechanics toward a lack of resources.
Personally I do this by balancing all content around a Hard difficulty, with some deadly and some medium, in 3 level chunks at levels 1,3,6,9, etc. And by limiting Long Rests to Safe Havens only.
How do you define a Safe Haven? I am convinced the Martial-Caster debate is really a long Rest issue. I am trying to come up with a better mechanic for my next campaign.
@@jacobbutts6109 Wherever their starting town usually is, and then any settlement that is relatively safe (i.e. there are guards) and friendly to them. It can change over time, they might earn new towns being safe havens or lose others if they piss them off, maybe a roaming barbarian village isn't just in one spot, but it can still be a Safe Haven. Basically anywhere that they can shop to refill on supplies and equipment and get a safe-ish night's sleep.
I also use "Slower Natural Healing" from the DMG, so on a long rest they don't get all of their HP, but they get all their Hit Dice back, and can spend any spares they had. These two rules together I have found hit a nice balance for the types of expedition adventures I want to have.
@@connormccloskey7580 Thanks for the reply. What about slots? Or Tiny Hut?
Thank you. The people saying “do whatever you like”
Sure but there are consequences.
Tension and class balance.
I like those non-combat encounters
You can’t have one medium or hard encounter per long rest and complain that the monsters are too weak. The monsters in 5e are balanced around the characters have multiple encounters per long rest. And don’t start with: “it doesn’t specify that it’s combat encounters”. It actually does, it’s in the section for combat encounters.
But I agree with Mike that not all adventuring days has to have “your daily recommended dose” of combat, and all combat should serve the story or world building.
Thank you, correct.
I'll never understand why DM's want to grind players resources down to nothing before getting them to a long rest. What is it about characters not having their powers makes the combat more fun for anyone, including the DM?
It might be an attempt to deal with the fact that many player powers after a certain point are of the “skip challenge” variety. If a lot of challenges are basically locks to which players have a key for written somewhere on their character sheet, gameplay becomes a rather bland “use (metaphorical) key with lock”.
That feels awesome once or twice as a player, but may get boring, and considering the huge amount of keys for every possible situations that especially spellcasters have at hand (in 5e, virtually everyone is a spellcaster and that’s looking to get even more pronounced in onednd where species get tons of spells and even get 2nd level spells later on), it can be tricky for DMs to create interesting challenges and situations.
It balances the classes and makes the game actually challenging.
The truth is this video is really a half truth
Totally agree with the approach to just do what the story demands, as long you don't provoke a TPK. Problem is, the game is not balanced around that. The game is stupidly balanced around those 6 - 8 encounters still. Having a brawl with a few bandits and after just long rest is completely tensionless and therefor boring to the players of they can just long-rest after. It's important to keep the gameplay side auf D&D engaging, too, and not sacrifice it for the story.
Had to completely rework the resting - system for this approach to at least kinda work in my campaign. Also, I came to the conclusion that D&D is just not the system I want it to be. I'll do the best I can with house-rules, slowly building another system out of it, for the remainder of my current campaign, but after, I will switch to a roleplay-focussed system like FATE or Cthulhu, not a video-gamey power-leveling and combat-focused one like D&D, where the players grow to become gods in a few levels that can just easily murder a whole settlement if they choose to because humans are just not a threat after a few levels. Also, the economy makes zero sense. All this kills RP for me.