Help!! Combat encounters for a group of 7

[Ashuan21]

Hello everybody!
I'm DMing for a group of 7 players (now at level 5) and running through some problems, especially in battle.

The point is that combats seem either too easy or too dangerous.
Easy fights have actually been very rare (I avoid fights if they are not a challenge, otherwise the session would become 80% combat with such a big group...), while most of the fights are very dangerous.
With dangerous I don't mean too hard, because they are full of resources and good at building PCs, but I mean that more than one character generally drops to 0HPs per encounter, and some characters drop more than once.
While the encounter as a whole generally seems a proper challenge (and this is what most players want at this table) I'm afraid this is bothering some players (the frontliners, which are constantly at or around 0HPs, which is neither realist nor heroic).

I think the problem is further exacerbated by a Life Cleric, very dedicated to healing and played by a very good player. His ability to restore tons of HPs make encounters trivial unless I take his presence into account, increasing the danger of the fight and therefore exacerbating the first problem...

Maybe creatures imposing conditions instead than damage could help, but I'm afraid forcing players to skip turns (paralyzed, stunned...) in such a big group may be as painful as dropping to 0 for the third time in a fight.
Encounters with many enemies could help spread out the damage but they may bog down the pace...

So... what could be a solution to this problems? Which kind of challenges should I design? Which monsters can be helpful in such a situation?

[Tanarii]

When judging the difficulty of the encounters you are building, are you remembering to reduce the number of enemies multiplier by one step on the table, due to party size?

Edit: Actually, it almost reads like your problem is enemies focus firing the front liners too much. Usually that's something I leave in the hands of the players to attempt to resolve as best they can. But judging creature tactics is something completely under your control. (Of course, if the PCs are outmatched and neither you nor the players are aware of it, that's a moot point.)

[MrStabby]

To be honest I have found this even with a group of 5. There is only a very small range of encounters where it is "hard" but no player falls unconscious.

The usual checklist:
Encounters where the aim isn't to just kill everyone, i.e. the party can fail even if not dying
Lots of AoE flying around - the party can be close to losing even if no one is down
Split the party - even 60ft or so means that every person is important and people can get surrounded. It wont always be the same people taking the hits for everyone.
Have a day that is long so resources are more limited. The encounter can be hard as no one has any spells left. Now the meat-shields are also the most effective offensive tools as well.

[Ashuan21]

When judging the difficulty of the encounters you are building, are you remembering to reduce the number of enemies multiplier by one step on the table, due to party size?

Edit: Actually, it almost reads like your problem is enemies focus firing the front liners too much. Usually that's something I leave in the hands of the players to attempt to resolve as best they can. But judging creature tactics is something completely under your control. (Of course, if the PCs are outmatched and neither you nor the players are aware of it, that's a moot point.)

Honestly we have had several problems with the CR table, and we decided to stop trusting it... It seems to take into account groups with a sinergy close to 0 and with a similar knowledge of their abilities, so that encounters described as very hard turn out to be... very easy.

I guess your edit points to one of the problems... The frontliners (Sorcadin and Knight) drop to 0 because they try to handle overwhelming numbers of monsters and attacks and effects, and are eventually hit badly, only to be healed by the Cleric and hit and dropped once more.
As a group we pay a lot of attention to the choices of the creatures, so that stupid creatures are expected to keep hitting the closest enemies, and it would seem rather strange to have them moving in the backline to endanger the Wizard, Gunslinger, Artificer and Cleric. Unfortunately most creatures encountered so far were quite stupid... and the arrival of more intelligent enemies may actually be sort of a bless for the frontliners.
This gives me hope for an autoresolution of the problem... but for the time being it continues to be hard to be challenging without repeatedly dropping PCs :/

[Unoriginal]

Honestly we have had several problems with the CR table, and we decided to stop trusting it... It seems to take into account groups with a sinergy close to 0 and with a similar knowledge of their abilities, so that encounters described as very hard turn out to be... very easy.


It might be one of the reason of your current problem.


Could you please describe, let's say, the ennemies for the last two or three combat encounters the PCs had to face, to give us an idea what they're dealing with currently?

[Ashuan21]

To be honest I have found this even with a group of 5. There is only a very small range of encounters where it is "hard" but no player falls unconscious.

The usual checklist:
Encounters where the aim isn't to just kill everyone, i.e. the party can fail even if not dying
Lots of AoE flying around - the party can be close to losing even if no one is down
Split the party - even 60ft or so means that every person is important and people can get surrounded. It wont always be the same people taking the hits for everyone.
Have a day that is long so resources are more limited. The encounter can be hard as no one has any spells left. Now the meat-shields are also the most effective offensive tools as well.

AoE seems to be a good strategy!! I'm waiting forward to the levels when the PCs will be able to resist a bunch of them, right now they would probably be very lethal.

[MrStabby]

AoE seems to be a good strategy!! I'm waiting forward to the levels when the PCs will be able to resist a bunch of them, right now they would probably be very lethal.

Don't feel the need to be constrained by spells in the PHB. Have enemies throw flasks of alchemists fire or acid, new monsters with breath weapon attacks for 3d6 damage (con save for half).

Traps are also good. A personal favourite of mine is the pressure plate trigger that will only trigger when a certain mass is on top of it so you can catch multiple intruders with one trigger.

[Phoenix042]

With a group that size, keeping them all engaged and challenged may be difficult. I'd try to split the parties focus during encounters, creating a couple of separate problems that demand simultaneous attention to solve. An easier example might be...

A cult of the flaming skull (undead and fire are the themes here) have captured a damsel and are trying to summon a demon.

When they arrive at the ritual chamber, the cultists have almost finished summoning the demon and are guarded by powerful undead minions with deadly mundane weapons. Meanwhile, the damsel is in a steel cage being lowered into the middle of a river of lava, on the other side of the huge underground chamber. She'll be burning in just a few rounds unless someone can cut through the young red dragon that's blocking the way.

Notice that I'm trying to distinguish the types of threats facing whoever is going to save the damsel vs whoever is going to stop the ritual. Someone who can resist fire (red dragonborn, casters with resist elements, etc) can more easily deal with the damsel and dragon, as well as those who have access to flight or cold damage. Meanwhile, anyone with an edge against undead (clerics, casters with spells that are better against undead, etc) or frontline melee characters (barbarians will take half damage from the undead minion's mundane weapons) will shine against the cultists minions and can more easily disrupt the ritual.

This is just an example, and it honestly would be really hard to do this all the time. I'd recommend against trying to, and instead just pull this out every once in a while to give the party multiple spheres of battle to engage in. With 7 PC's, you could even go crazy and introduce 3 or even 4 different problems to deal with at once, although you obviously have to scale down the challenges relative to the party's split strength.

And don't make every single problem world / campaign ending in big split encounters like that. Make partial failure and partial success possible and meaningful. Maybe if the demon is summoned, he won't TPK the party, but he will go murderlate the nearby town full of people the PCs like and have helped before. Maybe if the damsel dies, the PC's earn the undying enmity of her father, who was once they're staunchest ally. The PC's don't completely fail the campaign, but bad things happen to the world they live in, and they develop new and bigger problems to deal with later.

[Ashuan21]

With a group that size, keeping them all engaged and challenged may be difficult. I'd try to split the parties focus during encounters, creating a couple of separate problems that demand simultaneous attention to solve. An easier example might be...

This is a very good idea!! Two different focuses, both of them bearable by a smaller group; very cool but probably time or Race/Class specific theats must be an element, otherwise they could deal with one threat at a time with little difficulties by focusing all their power on this relatively weak danger.
For example Ranged PCs VS Ranged creatures / Melee PCs VS Melee creatures... cool! Thank you!

For what concerns AoE: yes of course!! I really enjoy homebrewing monsters and spells and it's quite easy to scale down the power of the existing effects! I was simply referring to the fact that a level 3 party could have members with 20HPs... they are quite unlikely to resist more than 3 hits xD

For what concerns the previous fights: Actually all the fights of the last session were inside a dungeon (this exacerbated the danger on the frontliners, which faced the most threats) and involved several homebrewed monsters. The final fight was balanced, they won quite easily but the 2 frontliners went down because of AoE attack and bad Dex saving throws.
To give you an idea of the problem anyway I can tell you that the first fight was against 2 Black Puddings, a trivial encounter which only had to work as on opener. Well the Sorcadin and the Knight ran into melee, the Knight divides one of the Oozes with his sword (he knew the trap but wanted to roleplay his dumb fighter xD), now the Puddings are 3 but the encounter is still trivial... Well the Sorcadin gets hit twice and here we are! Dropped to 0...

[BurgerBeast]

This advice may sound weird, so hear me out: don't change anything. My main reason for saying this is that it sounds like you have an intelligent group. They will be (or should be) changing their tactical approach in response to some of what's happened, and in response to the consequences of bounded accuracy, specifically. If you start to change things up, it will only provide further complications as the players try to "figure this out."

Oddly enough, rather than changing the encounters/tactics, the best thing you could do (in theory - not in practice) would be to run them to repeated iterations of the exact same battles. Then they could adjust their approach and "learn" more effective strategies.

Aside from this I have two pieces of advice: (1) they might not be as interested in being challenged as you think. It's a subtle distinction (but an important one), but they might be interested in facing challenging encounters. In other words, they might still get satisfaction from easy fights that are supposed to be difficult for a party like theirs. In fact (and I know this is true for me), they might get the most satisfaction from easy fights precisely because they were (objectively, by the encounter rules) double- or triple- deadly encounters that ended up extremely quick and easy fights because of tactical choices.

(2) this may or may not be important, but you could alter initiative so that the two sides, as much as possible, alternate in the order. Particularly in large battles, if many enemies act in a row, it robs the party of the ability to act before it's too late.

[TrinculoLives]

Nothing screws over a party's efficacy more than liberal usage of the exhaustion mechanic. Just sayin'. :P


Are you consistently using creatures of a CR higher than the party's level? Fewer creatures of a higher CR could definitely focus the damage into one spot more than many creatures of lesser-or-equal CR.

I only have 5 PCs, but in my recent experience the hardest combats for them that didn't simply involve tons of damage being thrown there way were:

-A fight inside a spider's lair. The party was slowed, harassed by a homebrew AoE poison from above, hit by restraining webs from giant spiders, and had to split up to various points in the cave to cut down the central webbing.

-A sudden fall into the catacombs left them separated by about 30 feet across this chamber with ghouls coming in from all sides. Being split up like that made their AoEs inefficient, and there were enough ghouls and ghasts for each of them to be attacked. It was a total ****-show with the cleric being paralyzed and dragged off at the start of the fight and the bard forgetting that several of his spells didn't work against Undead.

In both cases, none of the PCs hit 0 hitpoints, but they were definitely difficult fights that used up a lot of their resources.

[TrinculoLives]

<snip>
Maybe creatures imposing conditions instead than damage could help, but I'm afraid forcing players to skip turns (paralyzed, stunned...) in such a big group may be as painful as dropping to 0 for the third time in a fight.
Encounters with many enemies could help spread out the damage but they may bog down the pace...

So... what could be a solution to this problems? Which kind of challenges should I design? Which monsters can be helpful in such a situation?
Not all conditions completely skip over a PC's turn. Poisoned for example, blinded, etc.

As for encounters with too many enemies, have you read the Handling Mobs section of the DMG?

It suggests that you can handle the attacks of large groups of monsters without actually rolling any dice. You take the AC of the PC in question and reduce it by the to-hit modifier of the monsters to see the minimum d20 roll that is required to hit. Take that number and compare it to this chart:

MOB ATTACKS
d20 Roll Attackers Needed
for One to Hit
1-5------------------------------1
6-12-----------------------------2
13-14---------------------------3
15-16---------------------------4
17-18---------------------------5
19------------------------------10
20------------------------------20

Once the number of creatures dwindles, you can go back to rolling normally.

[Ashuan21]

This advice may sound weird, so hear me out: don't change anything. My main reason for saying this is that it sounds like you have an intelligent group. They will be (or should be) changing their tactical approach in response to some of what's happened, and in response to the consequences of bounded accuracy, specifically. If you start to change things up, it will only provide further complications as the players try to "figure this out."

Oddly enough, rather than changing the encounters/tactics, the best thing you could do (in theory - not in practice) would be to run them to repeated iterations of the exact same battles. Then they could adjust their approach and "learn" more effective strategies.

Aside from this I have two pieces of advice: (1) they might not be as interested in being challenged as you think. It's a subtle distinction (but an important one), but they might be interested in facing challenging encounters. In other words, they might still get satisfaction from easy fights that are supposed to be difficult for a party like theirs. In fact (and I know this is true for me), they might get the most satisfaction from easy fights precisely because they were (objectively, by the encounter rules) double- or triple- deadly encounters that ended up extremely quick and easy fights because of tactical choices.

(2) this may or may not be important, but you could alter initiative so that the two sides, as much as possible, alternate in the order. Particularly in large battles, if many enemies act in a row, it robs the party of the ability to act before it's too late.

Great advices! Yes they are very clever, they should be able to adapt, especially by favoring control over sheer damage sometimes, or by defending their tanks somehow... For what concerns point 1 I'll try to figure that out! Point 2 may be a very good point!!! More than once the initiative screwed the party, putting some of the players in hard situations they didn't really deserved to be into... We generally let the dice decide everything, but I could work on this one!


Blindness is a pretty heavy condition... but yes poisoned, restrained and exhausted could be used more!! Conditions are a wonderful source of non HP related damage, I totally agree!
The Mob Attacks rules may be interesting! But I think they mostly apply to a theatre of the mind setting (which we don't use), it is very rare to be surrounded by all those enemies!

[djreynolds]

Hobgoblins CR1/2 AC 18 11HP and martial advantage.

These guys are great fodder because they are tough for martials to clean out with the high 18AC and eat up spell slots

Seriously, I often have roaming bands of monsters like this as in between to either encourage or discourage short rests.

And 10 of them as the guard of a baddies eats up resources and they are tough for 11HP to kill

[Geodude6]

Try using Kobold Fight Club to design encounters. It's a really great tool.

Maybe talk to your players. Ask them if they feel they are being adequately challenged. If the answer is "no," ask them to help you help them, and ask them for advice on what they consider an adequate challenge.

[Arkhios]

Have you tried this?

http://tools.goblinist.com/5enc

Easy to use and easily adjustable encounter builder.

You could start at medium difficulty. If that seems too easy, change it to hard.

[Tanarii]

Honestly we have had several problems with the CR table, and we decided to stop trusting it... It seems to take into account groups with a sinergy close to 0 and with a similar knowledge of their abilities, so that encounters described as very hard turn out to be... very easy.The CR Table & Difficulty of encounters tables are based around the idea that you'll be slowly wearing the group down over the adventuring day, and there will be 2 short rests in the day, each after 1 Deadly - 3 Easy encounters (average 2 encounters). Or thereabouts. In other words, the encounters are supposed to be very easy. Even the ones rated 'Difficult' are pretty easy, you're supposed to be able to fight three of those in a day without your characters dying, but maybe one or more of them going to 0 hit points.

If there is a significant chance of character death or characters dropping to 0 hps regularly, then there is a good chance for PCs to die. If they had instead assumed a 5% chance of character death per Deadly fight (for example), that character only has something like a 46% chance of making level 5 (.9515). Now I don't have a problem with that personally, as long as it's advertised to the players before the campaign / adventure arc begins. But that's not the way the majority of D&D players want the game to play nowadays.

The main problem I have with the CR table is it doesn't take into account groups of 8-10 PCs & henchmen. Other than that I've found it to be reasonably okay for judging difficulty for groups of 5-6 within the assumptions of the system above.

[Ashuan21]

The CR Table & Difficulty of encounters tables are based around the idea that you'll be slowly wearing the group down over the adventuring day, and there will be 2 short rests in the day, each after 1 Deadly - 3 Easy encounters (average 2 encounters). Or thereabouts. In other words, the encounters are supposed to be very easy. Even the ones rated 'Difficult' are pretty easy, you're supposed to be able to fight three of those in a day without your characters dying, but maybe one or more of them going to 0 hit points.

If there is a significant chance of character death or characters dropping to 0 hps regularly, then there is a good chance for PCs to die. If they had instead assumed a 5% chance of character death per Deadly fight (for example), that character only has something like a 46% chance of making level 5 (.9515). Now I don't have a problem with that personally, as long as it's advertised to the players before the campaign / adventure arc begins. But that's not the way the majority of D&D players want the game to play nowadays.

The main problem I have with the CR table is it doesn't take into account groups of 8-10 PCs & henchmen. Other than that I've found it to be reasonably okay for judging difficulty for groups of 5-6 within the assumptions of the system above.

I get what you say, I know the system expects you to face around 6 encounters per day, but I think everyone here understands how impossible is it to keep the story flowing and to have all those fights in a group of 7 players...

I only see this as a stronger reason to abandon the cr table, we have limited amount of time and we cannot dedicate 5/6ths of it because the table requires 2 more fights to keep everything balanced.

My group loves hard challenges, I know this well enough, it's just a matter of them being dangerous but not a matter of being constantly healed from 0 to 10HPs by the party Cleric...

I've read some very good ideas on this thread, you guys are always helpful!!

[Tanarii]

Nothing says you have to use the default rest variant (see DMG), nor get in a Long Rest in every session. (Personally I don't have a problem with being able to get in 6 encounters / long rest, but I know it's a somewhat common complaint.)

But if you're doing less than 3 Deadly fights in an adventuring day (ie before a long rest), you're outside of 5e's designed balance. You're going to need to hack the system a fair amount to make it work the way you want it to. It's going to take more than changing tactics or specific enemies or , you probably need to start house-ruling Class Features at that point.

[Ruslan]

I think the problem is further exacerbated by a Life Cleric, very dedicated to healing and played by a very good player. His ability to restore tons of HPs make encounters trivial unless I take his presence into account, increasing the danger of the fight and therefore exacerbating the first problem...

Here's one trick that helps: allow a short rest after every encounter. You may think this is insane - how does it help to make more challenging encounters if the party is always rested?

Well, it makes encounter design predictable. You know exactly in which state the party will be at the start of the encounter. You don't need to play a guessing game whether they arrive at the encounter rested (in which case it may appear to easy) or not (you may overcompensate and make it too hard).

[Ashuan21]

Nothing says you have to use the default rest variant (see DMG), nor get in a Long Rest in every session. (Personally I don't have a problem with being able to get in 6 encounters / long rest, but I know it's a somewhat common complaint.)

But if you're doing less than 3 Deadly fights in an adventuring day (ie before a long rest), you're outside of 5e's designed balance. You're going to need to hack the system a fair amount to make it work the way you want it to. It's going to take more than changing tactics or specific enemies or , you probably need to start house-ruling Class Features at that point.

Yes it's a big deal, I get what you say... Nova builds tend to outshine classes focused on short rests, this is quite evident, the system is not built to support 1 - 2 big fights per session.
Anyway I try to keep things balanced through magic items and by giving opportunities to shine to everybody.

6 fights a day (or the variants) could fix all my problems, but it would be not only a heavily combat oriented adventure, but also an adventure sacrificing a pace wich I find more natural in order to get a mechanically balanced game, an exchange not totally fair from my point of view.
Many times the PCs will only have that one big fight on that day, and all the possible previous skirmishes would probably only look like artificial tools to balance things out :/

How do you manage fitting 6 encounters/rest? Doesn't it feel a little bit forced both during session preparation and during actual play? How many days does one of your sessions lasts in game?

[Ashuan21]

Here's one trick that helps: allow a short rest after every encounter. You may think this is insane - how does it help to make more challenging encounters if the party is always rested?

Well, it makes encounter design predictable. You know exactly in which state the party will be at the start of the encounter. You don't need to play a guessing game whether they arrive at the encounter rested (in which case it may appear to easy) or not (you may overcompensate and make it too hard).

Yes this is useful!! At least before the final fight (if there is one) it may help a lot to know the condition of your party at the start of the encounter! Thanksss

[Ruslan]

How do you manage fitting 6 encounters/rest? Doesn't it feel a little bit forced both during session preparation and during actual play?
I once played an adventure where the party was to rescue some hostages. When they finally arrived, and defeated the hostage-takers, as the last thing in the adventure, I asked: "How many long rests did you take to get here?"
"Two"
"Ok, roll 2d4"
"Got 5"
"Five hostages, unfortunately, have expired while waiting for deliverance. You rescue the rest"

My players are now very mindful of the passage of time. They know that, even if its results are not visible immediately, you have to pay the piper in the end.

[Breashios]

This advice may sound weird, so hear me out: don't change anything. My main reason for saying this is that it sounds like you have an intelligent group. They will be (or should be) changing their tactical approach in response to some of what's happened, and in response to the consequences of bounded accuracy, specifically. If you start to change things up, it will only provide further complications as the players try to "figure this out."

Oddly enough, rather than changing the encounters/tactics, the best thing you could do (in theory - not in practice) would be to run them to repeated iterations of the exact same battles. Then they could adjust their approach and "learn" more effective strategies.

Aside from this I have two pieces of advice: (1) they might not be as interested in being challenged as you think. It's a subtle distinction (but an important one), but they might be interested in facing challenging encounters. In other words, they might still get satisfaction from easy fights that are supposed to be difficult for a party like theirs. In fact (and I know this is true for me), they might get the most satisfaction from easy fights precisely because they were (objectively, by the encounter rules) double- or triple- deadly encounters that ended up extremely quick and easy fights because of tactical choices.

(2) this may or may not be important, but you could alter initiative so that the two sides, as much as possible, alternate in the order. Particularly in large battles, if many enemies act in a row, it robs the party of the ability to act before it's too late.

You seem to have taken these thoughts to heart. I just want to second the suggestions in it and add that a large number of easy fights are not so bad from the player's side of things. As long as the story is interesting and there is some kind of challenge; a race against the clock, a hope of improved social standing, fame, style points, whatever, the players may be more than satisfied. I wouldn't worry too much on the easy side of things unless they are telling you it is all too easy.

[Tanarii]

How do you manage fitting 6 encounters/rest? Doesn't it feel a little bit forced both during session preparation and during actual play? How many days does one of your sessions lasts in game?I run Epic Rest variant (ie super short rests) in Dungeons, and players still manage to get in the expected number of combats (or typically more) between each rest. In dangerous wilderness I use normal rests. In civilized areas I usually don't need to worry about rests because that's not where adventures generally occur but the few times I have needed to worry about it I use the slow resting variant. It probably helps I use wandering monster checks.

So I always find complaints about the number of encounters the game is balance around kind of weird. Like .. how do you keep the number that low to have less? :smallwink:

[Specter]

Yeah, basically increase the number of encounters, increase the CR or simply put the attackers at an advantage (flying, for instance).

But another thing you need to control is the pace: make it quick or make it boring. Tell players to hurry up their decisions, roll attack and damage together, keep the initiative order neat and encourage speed in general.

[Phoenix042]

I once played an adventure where the party was to rescue some hostages. When they finally arrived, and defeated the hostage-takers, as the last thing in the adventure, I asked: "How many long rests did you take to get here?"
"Two"
"Ok, roll 2d4"
"Got 5"
"Five hostages, unfortunately, have expired while waiting for deliverance. You rescue the rest"

My players are now very mindful of the passage of time. They know that, even if its results are not visible immediately, you have to pay the piper in the end.

I like this idea, but it's always seemed too linear to me. I try to add dimension; not only is one problem getting worse for every rest you take, but there are actually multiple problems to solve that each get worse if you leave them to rest, and you almost definitely can't do them all without resting in between, AND which ones you've done affect the others and your adventure in some way.

For example, in the first segment of one of my campaigns, the players were trying to help a small company of militia deal with an invading goblin tribe.

The militia was facing several problems at once: Their most recent supply shipment with three carts of food, ammo, and equipment was waylaid, and the goblins were carrying it off into the forest a little at a time. A group of militia had been captured and were being tortured for information one at a time, a process that none of them survived. A nearby abandoned fort was being fortified as a safe-haven for the goblins; each day, the defenses grew stronger and more goblins garrisoned it. And finally, a group of goblins was bringing gifts to a usually peaceful half-ogre each day, trying to convince him to join them.

Basically, I set up degrees of success for every quest, present several at once, and allow the PC's to prioritize and strategize however they want. It's possible that they could do two of these quests in a day, but since each one is multiple parts, they'd be stretching their resources to try it, and every time they rest, everything that isn't done yet gets knocked down a step.

Then, as they begin completing quests, I start adding new ones. The supplies are recovered and the captured soldiers rescued? Well now the goblins are spreading a foul disease among their dire rat warren; the place is uniquely vulnerable to attack, but each day more rats get the disease and become even deadlier.

I also add new benefits. If the PC's recovered the supplies before half of them were carried off, there are a few healing potions hidden in one of the crates, and the militia leader gives them to the PCs, allowing them to last a little longer between rests at some point. If the PC's rescue the captured soldiers before they lose too many people and their morale is crushed, they haven't revealed any secrets and the PC's can ask them to go help take care of one of the other problems, possible solving two issues at once. If the half-ogre is approached soon enough, he not only won't help the goblins, he might actually help against them (with a good enough persuasion check and maybe the promise of food or a nice shiny axe or something).

Now I'm trying to figure out how to set that up in a different setting, an untamed wilderness with no NPCs to tell the players everything that's going on.

[Ashuan21]

I run Epic Rest variant (ie super short rests) in Dungeons, and players still manage to get in the expected number of combats (or typically more) between each rest. In dangerous wilderness I use normal rests. In civilized areas I usually don't need to worry about rests because that's not where adventures generally occur but the few times I have needed to worry about it I use the slow resting variant. It probably helps I use wandering monster checks.

So I always find complaints about the number of encounters the game is balance around kind of weird. Like .. how do you keep the number that low to have less? :smallwink:

xD good for you!! I see you found a nice method to keep things balanced, but I think you cannot deny that it is quite elaborate!! The epic variant seems just odd to me, with Rope Trick destroying every dungeon without a countdown element.
The gritty realism is wonderful and we took it into account, but it requires a specific kind of adventure and excludes other modalities, it's not acceptable to relax for a week when the dangerous plans and schemes of many characters are developing in the background, or when you are hunting down a creature.

[Strill]

Honestly we have had several problems with the CR table, and we decided to stop trusting it... It seems to take into account groups with a sinergy close to 0 and with a similar knowledge of their abilities, so that encounters described as very hard turn out to be... very easy.

You aren't supposed to base encounters on CR. CR just tells you whether the monster has abilities that are uncounterable for a lower-level party. You base encounters on Exp.

[Ashuan21]

You aren't supposed to base encounters on CR. CR just tells you whether the monster has abilities that are uncounterable for a lower-level party. You base encounters on Exp.

Yeah clearly... the CR table links cr to exp and to the number of adventurers