Is the 5-encounters-day model really desirable? [Archive]

King of Nowhere

2021-12-16, 09:03 AM

the game creators assumed 5 level-appropriate (read: very easy, can cause some attrition) encounters for a day of adventuring. the game is supposedly balanced around this idea, with the various limited use abilities centered on the idea that you cannot use them every encounter.
however, common sense and good strategy recommends that you try hard to not fight unless you are at full strenght. players will try to gather intelligence, choose the battlefield, and have a single encounter where they unload all their resources, for maximum power. this is further helped when you access teleportation, and you have the option of popping in, fighting, and popping out. the so-called 15 minutes adventuring day.
many people say that this model is bad, and that a dm should try to provide motivation (usually some sort of time crunch) to avoid this, and enforce the 5 daily encounters. and every edition of d&d is based around the idea that you should have 5 level appropriate encounters, that it's a good and desirable outcome.

I want to challenge this basic assumption.
Because I have a campaign where some missions enable the 15 minutes adventuring day, while other times the characters have to explore areas where teleportation is impossible and monsters are everywhere and they have to have multiple encounters. And it seems they really, really prefer the 15 minutes adventuring day. And while I like throwing some variety, ultimately the resource management game is not as exciting.

After thinking on the how and why, I divide my arguments in two categories

1) 15-minute adventuring day is awesome
in this mode, you have one single encounter. the encounter will be very strong, because your players are not expected to face multiple ones. so you have an exciting fight against powerful enemies, which give a lot more bragging points.
most important, there will be actual suspence in the fight, more real risk. in a strong encounter, there is always a risk of death if the characters do something stupid. which is fine, the game wouldn't have several resurrection spells if they weren't supposed to be used once in a while. I set things up so that death is not desirable, but it's not a tragedy either, and the players know it. they know I won't pull punches, they feel there are real stakes to the fight. it's more exciting, and they feel real accomplishment for winning. "remember that time we failed a saving throw and almost got TPKed" is a lot more exciting than "remember that time the goblin archer scored a critical hit and we had to use up more healing and rest after only 4 encounters".
it's also a lot more fun for me; I can throw powerful monsters and npcs at the party, and even though they are supposed to lose, they can at least look really cool doing it (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0392.html). campaign bosses are a real threat to the party, even when the party is full power, and so it's more believable that they would try to conquer the world.
finally, in this gaming mode, the players are encouraged to scout, explore, gather intelligence, pick their battles, prepare. they will devote a lot of effort to assessing the threat and figuring out preparation against it. And this is good, because it makes them interact more with the world. some of that preparation can be done with divination spells, but the additional informations that can be found by exploring the setting, talking with npcs, doing research, forming relationship, that's very important too. so the players are more encouraged to go around talking to people to discover how the necromances is likely to attack them, and how they can defend against it. in the normal game mode, the players are encouraged to just bash the door and engage another fight.
Turning boss fights into puzzles where the party has to discover the enemy's strenghts and weaknesses and prepare accordingly is much more rewarding. "that guy was really powerful, but we out-strategized him" is better than "we only had troubles fighting this guy because we had to spend resources to deal with mooks earlier."

2) multiple level-appropriate encounters are lame
this is the realization that struck me when i actually managed to create adventures that sort of enforced the multiple level appropriate encounters: those encounters are boring. there is no suspence to it. the players city was being overrun by an army of creatures, and the party was going around the city rescuing their friends and assets, and facing smaller fights along the way. the casters mostly didn't cast, feeling their spells would be wasted on such puny creatures. the martials were just rolling, rolling, rolling damage dice. there was little subtlety involved. and they were being slowly grinded, but the point is, resource grinding is not fun. a fight were the stakes are losing a bit more or a bit less hp is not enticing, and the players clearly weren't engaged.
it was also very time consuming. it was mindless rolling of dice, with little stakes and little strategy; so-called "level-appropriate fights" are a waste of everyone's time.
In the end, when it was clear they had enough resources left to finish all their tasks, i stopped rolling the fights and just narrated the end.
indeed, if they are supposed to have 5 fights, and only the 5th is supposed to actually be dangerous, what's the point of playing through the other four? just say that everyone is at half hp, that the casters have half their spells, and have everyone play only that last encounter, the only one that's interesting.

how many people out there feel the same way, and started purposefully moving away from the multiple encounter and attrition model? and those that do prefer the multiple weak encounters, why do they like that? how do they find suspence in defeating weak enemies that never stood any chance? what are the player traits that make them prefer one way or the other?

Silva Stormrage

2021-12-16, 09:40 AM

I generally prefer a mix. While I agree the general encounters that are just meant to drain PC resources are a slog to get through I find that when PCs know out of the game they only have one encounter they behave differently. They start not worrying about resources and prepare differently than they normally would. I generally find it best when encounters are only run when they are significant but not always limit it to a single encounter before resting. I generally find 2-3 encounters to be a sweet spot though certainly some days there is only a single encounter. This way PCs are left trying to preserve resources as they don't know the number of encounters they will have to face in the future and it adds some significant tension to their decision making as they have to take into account more variables in the environment on whether there will be multiple encounters.

Random encounters are usually pretty terrible though, if I have to have random encounters I almost always try to make them tie into the main plot or add world building or something.

Raven777

2021-12-16, 10:46 AM

Saintheart

2021-12-16, 11:09 AM

and those that do prefer the multiple weak encounters, why do they like that? how do they find suspence in defeating weak enemies that never stood any chance?

A few items:

(1) Because "encounters" does not always mean "combat," for a start. If every encounter in the 5-per-day you throw at the party is a fight, I'd get pretty bored with it pretty fast too, or I would immediately optimise towards the 15 minute adventuring day in order to stay alive.

(2) Because "monster wants to eat you" is a crap goal to put on every monster that the party comes across. You could at least change it up with "Monster only wants to get the hell out of there" or "Monster only wants to stop you killing its babies in its nest" or "Monster is actually a Baleful Polymorphed princess that can't tell you you're killing her for no reason, not that it matters because your default approach to every encounter with a living being out here is the same one Alexander the Great applied to the Gordian Knot, heh-heh-heh."

(3) Because sometimes the party needs to know it's awesome. And one of the best ways you can tell the party it's awesome is by letting it encounter a monster that previously beat the snot out of said party and the party gets to return the favour with one arm tied behind its collective back.

(4) Because 3.5 is built around rewarding a party that recons, scouts, and fully prepares for battle. It's built to encourage people to consider the 15 minute adventuring day. Now, the lazy thing to do is then say "Haw haw haw, WOTC sucks, that's inconsistent with the resource management games you normally have to play in the wild." The less lazy thing to do is remember that it is expected that the party will overcome its low-level issues with resources as it gets past level 6 and certainly once fifth level spells come online bringing in Teleport. If you get a better job and can drive a car to work, I presume you stop putting weekly money aside for your bike tyres, so why shouldn't the party do that too? (Answer: because your DM in real life has started insisting that you account for your petrol purchases.)

Admittedly, what WOTC doesn't do too well is educate DMs that the beating heart of this game is about players making real choices. If they're doing that, then You're Doing It Right. The 15 minute adventuring day is the outcome of players choosing to play cautious, day by day, encounter by encounter. If you're finding that unrewarding to referee as a DM, or you detect the players are getting bored because the 15 minute adventuring day is now S.O.P. rather than a choice they have to make, then it's time to start asking: what other choices can I get these guys to make? Can I make them second-guess whether this is a combat encounter, for example? Can I just screwjob them with losing half their supplies or something? Random stuff happens, and provided you don't go full Thanos with this stuff on the party, random "sorry, you lost 100 gp" encounters are part of the spice of an adventure. Or, to restate the oldest and least subtle way of making the choice of the 15-minute-adventuring day real again: can I grind them with a time limit, so they have to balance their desire to go back and resupply against their need to get to Sour Ron's fortress before Gallium kills Sim and takes the Bun Ring for himself?

gijoemike

2021-12-16, 11:18 AM

The 15 minute adventuring day is absurd as the game has more than a dozen different metrics and systems for resource measurement. Managing resources and not blowing your wad instantly is a MAJOR part of the game. Imagine how much cooler that exact same fight would be as the 2nd fight in a given day. More danger, more bragging points, a much better story to tell.

Imagine this Character story

We were at full hp, full spells, and in perfect formation exploring this massive cave system. Suddenly a dragon falls from a hidden alcove or tunnel in the ceiling of this cavern and 6 gnolls run up from behind us cutting off our escape.

VS this story

We had just killed the last gnoll, a shaman. I was at 3 HP due to a failed reflex save, the cleric just finished using a scroll of resurrection on the paladin, and the rogue was out of poison vials. Our bard was going around tapping a wand of cure light wounds on the party and was not finished working on me. I was at 47 HP at this point. The wizard only had 4 spells in total left to cast for the day. As the paladin opens her eyes from the dirt nap she says "Is that a damn dragon?" BOOM a dragon is dropping into the cavern from a tunnel near the ceiling. 6 more gnoll warriors were running up the tunnel blocking off our escape.

The 2nd story is by far a better story. Use of resources by not starting at full everything, and a sense of urgency as only minutes have passed since the pervious fight.

Not to mention that the entire concept of balance is built around how resources are used. 5th ed has a major issue with this. It would appear the devs really didn't learn much from the 15+ years of 3.X. In 3.X Fighters, Rogues, and Warlocks can just do their thing every round all day. Rangers and paladins have a few cool tricks with limited abilities and spells but can go most of the day. Rest of classes hit a point where they are super weak and just have to stop. This is why we don't see wizards fireballing just 1 enemy or clerics casing a spell to heal 1 or 2 HP damage. Make those spells actually count for something.

Multiple encounters of the proper CR are not boring if resources are tracked properly. HP is a resource, the rangers arrows are a resource, spells are the biggest and most important resource. 6 PCs taking on an entire army in one fell swoop is nonsense. But taking on a scouting party here, a platoon marching through a perfect ambush spot there is a bit more believable and after 5 or 6 encounters like this a sizeable dent can be made.

King of Nowhere

2021-12-16, 12:21 PM

For myself, I just try to run travel/dungeons organically: no set amount of anything, just the creatures that are naturally supposed to be there and how they'd realistically react depending if they become aware of the PCs or not. It's not just the PCs that are moving through the dungeon; so are the monsters.

i fully agree with this approach; the only place where there actually are separate rooms with separate monsters is where magic is enforcing stuff.

The "15 minutes day" can work when the PCs control the pace (say, a raid or assassination scenario), but once they're neck deep in demons I really don't see how it could even realistically work.

the limitation here is that once the party has access to teleportation magic, they can come and go at their leisure, to rest whenever they are low on resources. even at lower level, rope trick can give them a safe place to rest and let them control their pace. sure, there are places where they cannot teleport, other times they are in a time crunch, but by default, an adventuring party can control the pace of their encounters unless the dm is actively putting obstacles on their way to prevent that.

A few items:

(1) Because "encounters" does not always mean "combat," for a start. If every encounter in the 5-per-day you throw at the party is a fight, I'd get pretty bored with it pretty fast too, or I would immediately optimise towards the 15 minute adventuring day in order to stay alive.
(2) Because "monster wants to eat you" is a crap goal to put on every monster that the party comes across. You could at least change it up with "Monster only wants to get the hell out of there" or "Monster only wants to stop you killing its babies in its nest" or "Monster is actually a Baleful Polymorphed princess that can't tell you you're killing her for no reason, not that it matters because your default approach to every encounter with a living being out here is the same one Alexander the Great applied to the Gordian Knot, heh-heh-heh."

that's besides the point. if they meet a monster that won't attack them, the party will ignore it and that's not an encounter. if they encounter some npc to talk to, that's not an encounter, that's a roleplaying part, and possibly a piece of the plot.
certainly those encounters are not supposed to drain resources; the fighter won't lose hp for letting a monster run away from them, nor the wizard will waste spell slots to talk. i'm talking combat encounters here.

(3) Because sometimes the party needs to know it's awesome. And one of the best ways you can tell the party it's awesome is by letting it encounter a monster that previously beat the snot out of said party and the party gets to return the favour with one arm tied behind its collective back.

i could see that as a possible reason to actually roll dice for an encounter with a very weak opponent. I generally don't roll those, just saying "along the way, you face a couple of random monsters, but by now you're strong enough that you win those really easy. now, on with the real adventure"

(4) Because 3.5 is built around rewarding a party that recons, scouts, and fully prepares for battle. It's built to encourage people to consider the 15 minute adventuring day. Now, the lazy thing to do is then say "Haw haw haw, WOTC sucks, that's inconsistent with the resource management games you normally have to play in the wild." The less lazy thing to do is remember that it is expected that the party will overcome its low-level issues with resources as it gets past level 6 and certainly once fifth level spells come online bringing in Teleport. If you get a better job and can drive a car to work, I presume you stop putting weekly money aside for your bike tyres, so why shouldn't the party do that too? (Answer: because your DM in real life has started insisting that you account for your petrol purchases.)

not sure i get your point here.
But, together with 3, it seems you are actually agreeing with me that the 15 minute adventuring day is the desirable standard adventure?

The 15 minute adventuring day is the outcome of players choosing to play cautious, day by day, encounter by encounter. If you're finding that unrewarding to referee as a DM, or you detect the players are getting bored because the 15 minute adventuring day is now S.O.P. rather than a choice they have to make, then it's time to start asking: what other choices can I get these guys to make?
nonono, i find that rewarding to referee as dm, and my players seem to prefer that too. what i was asking was "why do the game expect me to throw 5 weak encounters at them, and what's to gain with that? isn't the single hard encounter much better?"

We were at full hp, full spells, and in perfect formation exploring this massive cave system. Suddenly a dragon falls from a hidden alcove or tunnel in the ceiling of this cavern and 6 gnolls run up from behind us cutting off our escape.

VS this story

We had just killed the last gnoll, a shaman. I was at 3 HP due to a failed reflex save, the cleric just finished using a scroll of resurrection on the paladin, and the rogue was out of poison vials. Our bard was going around tapping a wand of cure light wounds on the party and was not finished working on me. I was at 47 HP at this point. The wizard only had 4 spells in total left to cast for the day. As the paladin opens her eyes from the dirt nap she says "Is that a damn dragon?" BOOM a dragon is dropping into the cavern from a tunnel near the ceiling. 6 more gnoll warriors were running up the tunnel blocking off our escape.

The 2nd story is by far a better story. Use of resources by not starting at full everything, and a sense of urgency as only minutes have passed since the pervious fight.

you can do that. every once in a while.
If you regularly drop a new encounter on the players just as they are recuperating, then you are railroading to enforce the multiple encounters.

but really, your story does not work once teleportation comes online. it would be more like
"We had just killed the last gnoll, a shaman. I was at 3 HP due to a failed reflex save, the cleric just finished using a scroll of resurrection on the paladin, and the rogue was out of poison vials. The wizard only had 4 spells in total left to cast for the day.
So we teleported the hell out of here, and we returned the next day better prepared."
I don't remember every trying that scenario, but I am sure if I were to drop a clearly strong enemy on a clearly spent party, their first tactic would be trying to flee. And I fully expect them to have saved some resouces for it - even at low level, a scroll of teleportation or of invisibility sphere. I'm proud of them for it.

Because another part of the problem is that expecting your players to keep fighting after multiple encounters means teaching them that those encounters will be weak, that they can overcome them with limited effort. which in turn will teach them that they don't have to worry, because i'll go out of my way to not put them in danger. "we're all at low hp and mostly out of spells, shall we flee this encounter" "nah, i'm sure our dm has planned for us to be able to defeat this within the resource management system"

in fact, the story that the players would probably tell afterwards would be
"we won because we played smart and fought on our terms. do you think the dm actually expected us to fight the dragon while so wounded? can't be, he respects our intelligence too much"

PhoenixPhyre

2021-12-16, 12:23 PM

One other issue with the 15-minute day (one big fight) is that it strongly incentivizes rocket tag. Those that can burn all their resources in one big push do much better than those who can't. Which warps the entire game's build environment, making a complete mockery of the idea that you have all of these potential builds...because the only ones that can survive a rocket tag environment are the ones that can nova and nova hard.

In my experience, the best course is
a) get the players involved in the world--they'll set their own deadlines. Make sure there are enough things going on that wasting a day per fight will compromise their plans. Not artificial deadlines, but just the world changing around them.
b) plan for a variety of days. Not every day needs to be a slog of micro-encounters; not every day needs to be a single big solo fight. Variety matters.
c) don't push for challenge over all. The closer you try to walk to the edge, the less room you have to respond when something goes bad. And I'm not just talking TPK (which may or may not be bad), but boring bad. And the less you push, the less players will try to warp their gameplay to compensate. It's the spiral that kills things, not any individual point along the way.

Silly Name

2021-12-16, 12:49 PM

the limitation here is that once the party has access to teleportation magic, they can come and go at their leisure, to rest whenever they are low on resources. even at lower level, rope trick can give them a safe place to rest and let them control their pace. sure, there are places where they cannot teleport, other times they are in a time crunch, but by default, an adventuring party can control the pace of their encounters unless the dm is actively putting obstacles on their way to prevent that.

This is only true if teleporting out, resting and then teleporting back in has zero consequences. You just wasted a day, don't you think your enemies are also going to be better prepared - or even track you down? If you're hunting something or somebody, you don't go take an eight-hour nap because you cast two or three spells.

Once you have access to teleport, so do your enemies. Expecting the Orcus cultists or the drow matriarchs to not come after you after you trashed them but did not deliver a resounding defeat is silly. This is not about putting obstacles to restrict teleportation, it's about offering level-appropriate challenges.

that's besides the point. if they meet a monster that won't attack them, the party will ignore it and that's not an encounter. if they encounter some npc to talk to, that's not an encounter, that's a roleplaying part, and possibly a piece of the plot.
certainly those encounters are not supposed to drain resources; the fighter won't lose hp for letting a monster run away from them, nor the wizard will waste spell slots to talk. i'm talking combat encounters here.

Traps, environmental hazards, falls, etc, can all deplete HP without counting as combat, and many scenarios may be approached by using spells that are in fact instinctively useful in non-combat situations, like many divination, enchantment and illusion spells. Combat is not the only thing that drains a party's resources.

nonono, i find that rewarding to referee as dm, and my players seem to prefer that too. what i was asking was "why do the game expect me to throw 5 weak encounters at them, and what's to gain with that? isn't the single hard encounter much better?"

Not for me. While desiderable, you don't always get to choose the terms of engagment, and those times are much more tense and interesting. A single big fight is either over very fast due to rocket-tag, or is made far more taxing to run as a result of trying to make it last more than two rounds. A couple well-designed but easier encounters before the big fight are more fun to me and my players.

icefractal

2021-12-16, 02:24 PM

Imagine this Character story

We were at full hp, full spells, and in perfect formation exploring this massive cave system. Suddenly a dragon falls from a hidden alcove or tunnel in the ceiling of this cavern and 6 gnolls run up from behind us cutting off our escape.

VS this story

We had just killed the last gnoll, a shaman. I was at 3 HP due to a failed reflex save, the cleric just finished using a scroll of resurrection on the paladin, and the rogue was out of poison vials. Our bard was going around tapping a wand of cure light wounds on the party and was not finished working on me. I was at 47 HP at this point. The wizard only had 4 spells in total left to cast for the day. As the paladin opens her eyes from the dirt nap she says "Is that a damn dragon?" BOOM a dragon is dropping into the cavern from a tunnel near the ceiling. 6 more gnoll warriors were running up the tunnel blocking off our escape.

The 2nd story is by far a better story. Use of resources by not starting at full everything, and a sense of urgency as only minutes have passed since the pervious fight.
It might be a better story, but it depends on how the fight plays out. If the first fight had a lot of interesting tactics, where-as in the second the PCs were forced to use a slow-and-boring-but-efficient kiting/sniping strategy, with like ten rounds of just exchanging attack rolls, then no it's not going to be more exciting.

But also, that example is cheating. Either:
A) The first encounter was actually easy, and could have been tougher, at which point it may be as or more memorable than the second.
B) You're assuming the players get really lucky in the second one.
C) Being depleted of resources don't really make a difference.

A tough fight is a tough fight, regardless of whether it's tough because of powerful foes, depleted resources, unfavorable conditions, or whatever other reason. And for that matter, challenge is not the only ingredient in a memorable game (not the most important ingredient either, IMO).

Quertus

2021-12-16, 02:30 PM

Well, this thread sure has a lot of promise for handing out ideas like candy!

Hmmm… where do I stand on these issues?

Gut reaction: artificial timelines and “classic” 15mwd disconnected from the world are boring.

2nd gut reaction: powning goblins at 15th level is fun! Easily defeating monsters that once challenged you is rewarding. Low challenge encounters provide more opportunity for, and less “stressors” against, roleplaying. Just skipping past such is undesirable, not even including them in the first place even less so.

3rd gut reaction: what do I remember? The big encounters? No. The big encounters that the party powned with righteous planning (yes, I’ll be posting about bees soon), or just good luck (“bang, headshot!”). The weaker foes that were a challenge for *this* party (“what do you mean, nobody thought to bring a light source?”) The noncombat encounters - especially the really cool ones, or the ones the party *turned* noncombat (“you are my quest”).

But, most of all, kudos on letting the party do what they find fun!

Also, I like the idea of letting the party engage the setting, and plan, CaW style, as much (or as little) as they want to.

Maybe later I’ll try and give a more thorough response, if my fever breaks.

gijoemike

2021-12-16, 02:51 PM

you can do that. every once in a while.
If you regularly drop a new encounter on the players just as they are recuperating, then you are railroading to enforce the multiple encounters.

but really, your story does not work once teleportation comes online. it would be more like
"We had just killed the last gnoll, a shaman. I was at 3 HP due to a failed reflex save, the cleric just finished using a scroll of resurrection on the paladin, and the rogue was out of poison vials. The wizard only had 4 spells in total left to cast for the day.
So we teleported the hell out of here, and we returned the next day better prepared."
I don't remember every trying that scenario, but I am sure if I were to drop a clearly strong enemy on a clearly spent party, their first tactic would be trying to flee. And I fully expect them to have saved some resouces for it - even at low level, a scroll of teleportation or of invisibility sphere. I'm proud of them for it.

Because another part of the problem is that expecting your players to keep fighting after multiple encounters means teaching them that those encounters will be weak, that they can overcome them with limited effort. which in turn will teach them that they don't have to worry, because i'll go out of my way to not put them in danger. "we're all at low hp and mostly out of spells, shall we flee this encounter" "nah, i'm sure our dm has planned for us to be able to defeat this within the resource management system"

in fact, the story that the players would probably tell afterwards would be
"we won because we played smart and fought on our terms. do you think the dm actually expected us to fight the dragon while so wounded? can't be, he respects our intelligence too much"

Once Teleport/ scry and die tactics have come online the bad guys have it too. And can set up counters to this. Never expect teleport to *Just* work. I will tell you right now the bad guys will protect the commander, dragon, mcguffin with layers of anti scry and die magics/effects. Dimension anchors will get dropped in one fight with the expectations of you have to fight your way out.

While my example had the encounter start while recouping it didn't need to. It could have been full HP and just a few spells down. I also never stated the party would win that 2nd fight. I agree that fighting back through the gnolls would be a MUCH smarter tactic.

Why would the previous or next fight be easier? A hard fight is a hard fight. The encounters on either side are NOT cakewalks by any means.

Now finally, teleporting away and coming back tomorrow is normally a terrible idea. The enemy will alter tactics, and entrench. They contacted outside help and after you teleported out, they teleported in fresh troops. You could lose all progress on intelligent enemies. They start the scry and die tactics on your party. Or they take the princess and flee to another castle.

Fizban

2021-12-16, 06:52 PM

I haven't read the thread in detail yet, but I have a prediction: the answer when arguing from either direction is that you should actually do both, because only one type of "adventuring day" is boring no matter which kind it is. The game supposed to have variety.

And the DMG does not contradict that, because it does not say "4-5 encounters per day." It says an encounter of equal level should on average use 20% of resources so the party can handle four but a fifth will run them completely dry. And yet, it also has a table which explicitly has X percentage of encounters being above and below equal level. And random encounters are taken as a standard mechanic in the DMG, along with dungeons where the party makes choices about how far they want to proceed.

Playing the game as outlined in the DMG will result in a combination of player-directed adventuring, responses of intelligent foes, random encounters, and a range from fights that should use almost zero resources to fights where you can only win if you use everything, and no guarantees about how they're grouped or ordered. The grouping and ordering of encounters is part of the game design, the level design (more commonly noticed for video game design), of a given adventure. It's a whole separate skill that the DMG fails to teach or even mention IIRC, and is what separates a string of 20' rooms with single monsters from games where the player doesn't even think about it being linear because the freedom and direction and encounters make them want to go that way without even thinking about it, from open world games where the player never runs into a broken un-breachable base because all the bases were hand-crafted to be playable from multiple directions rather than just slapped together at random.

In short, yes, if the DM designs boring games, they will be boring.

Raven777

2021-12-16, 08:40 PM

Saintheart

2021-12-16, 10:35 PM

that's besides the point. if they meet a monster that won't attack them, the party will ignore it and that's not an encounter. if they encounter some npc to talk to, that's not an encounter, that's a roleplaying part, and possibly a piece of the plot.
certainly those encounters are not supposed to drain resources; the fighter won't lose hp for letting a monster run away from them, nor the wizard will waste spell slots to talk. i'm talking combat encounters here.

I'd call that a pretty limited way of considering encounters, honestly. Especially in a roleplaying game. But then if your concept of the RPG is more as combat simulator mode + everything else, well, that's you way of viewing it and I can't argue taste.

not sure i get your point here.
But, together with 3, it seems you are actually agreeing with me that the 15 minute adventuring day is the desirable standard adventure?

What I'm driving at is that as players pass through levels and get stronger, it is normal, expected, and natural that they are less troubled by the problems they used to have at lower levels. Food and water are less of a problem for the party once it has access to Create Food and Water. Travel becomes less of a problem once they have Teleport. There's a fairly rich vein of experience saying that the game at levels 1-6 is not the same game as levels 7-10 is not the same game as levels 10-15 and higher. Part of the problem is that WOTC, at least in 3.5, doesn't explicitly acknowledge this when throwing DMs at the game. (You can see they at least realised it was a problem to be countered in fifth edition by the very fact pages 36-38 of the 5e DMG talks about level ranges and tiers of play in terms very similar to the age-old breakup of 3.5 levels into the four 'quartiles' of power: 1-6, 6-10, 10-15, 15-20.)

How this links back into the "5 per day" problem is: D&D 3.5 is designed at root as a resource-attrition game. And at levels 1 to 6 that's a fairly easy game for the DM, because they can force the party to balance their fighting capacity against their survival resources. If you're prepared to use the random encounter rules as written, it isn't as easy for the players to resort to the 15 minute adventuring day ... or at least not resort to the 15 minute adventuring day without having to compromise on something else, whether that's supplies, risks of getting jumped while in camp, risks of something going wrong or getting lost or whatever.

(Yes, there's Rope Trick, but that, too, has at least a couple of controls designed into it. For one, you can't take all your junk in there: "It is hazardous to create an extradimensional space within an existing extradimensional space or to take an extradimensional space into an existing one." So you can't - or better yet, there is a risk to - take a Bag of Holding, Heward's Handy Haversack, or a Portable Holes in there. If your players want to use it, any DM with any brains should be giving his party a choice: do we leave our ill-gotten and hard-to-carry stuff outside the extradimensional space where it can be taken and where we have to spend resources or time making it safe, or do we take the (high-ish, made up by the DM, rolled in secret, percentile) risk of the whole party imploding the moment the Bag of Holding passes outside the material realms? But then, of course, this choice is only real if you're somewhat tracking encumbrance. Which a lot of DM's don't, like they don't track food and water and rations and the rest, because it's "boring". Or "adds nothing". Because iT's ReSouRce MaNAgeMENT. One good bit of advice I once saw about the game is: before you criticise it, before you hack it by taking stuff out of it, first - first - run it with the stuff you don't like and see what the function of that unlikeable stuff is.)

Getting back to my point -- the 5-per-day works best at lower levels and is meant to be the second half of a muscle, with basic attrition of survival resources and encumbrance as the first half. The choice the players are meant to be facing with each fight is 'do we press on and risk taking on another fight at less than full capacity, or do we retreat and spend some resources for the privilege of doing so?'

But as said, this choice is harder to impose as you get past levels 1-6. Magic allows you to alleviate survival resource problems and encumbrance issues a lot easier, particularly if you're playing in 'Magic Mart' settings and you allow full splatbook or item access. So you have to come up with other tradeoffs as the levels increase. Which isn't easy for the average DM, and he gets not a lot of help from WOTC on this front.

I don't say the 15 minute adventuring day is the desirable standard adventure. Quite the opposite. I mean, everyone's got different tastes, there are people who eat nothing but McDonalds for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but I see consistent 15 minute adventuring days as a symptom of another problem: for whatever reason, the DM has run out of capacity to oblige his players to make a choice between resource attrition and combat readiness. Or doesn't have a competing consideration to juxtapose against the players' combat readiness.

nonono, i find that rewarding to referee as dm, and my players seem to prefer that too. what i was asking was "why do the game expect me to throw 5 weak encounters at them, and what's to gain with that? isn't the single hard encounter much better?"

And thinking a bit more about the whole question to start with, I think I've been mostly trying to argue against a straw man.

It's one thing to say "The baseline we think a moderate bunch of adventurers should be able to handle is about 5 encounters at level per day."

It's another thing, and entirely wrong, to conclude from that statement that "The game expects me to throw 5 encounters at level per day at the party." If that were the case, there would be zero need for the entire concept of Encounter Level or indeed all the tables that tell you how many encounters of EL X are equivalent to EL Y. The DMG spells out that there is a range of difficulty in fights expected, right down to percentages of easy, at level, above level, and overwhelming. At best, the "5 per day" is a tool to estimate how many harder and easier encounters you can expect to throw at the party without overwhelming them. It has to be a rule of thumb, and like it or not, with the sheer oprtionality of 3.5, there is literally no other way than rules of thumb to estimate how many encounters a party should be able to handle per day. Even CR, the fundamental tool on which XP awards are based, is expressed as an estimate, to be pushed up or down by the DM if he feels it's needed.

Also the reason the '5 per day' has to exist, and likely doesn't work terribly well against a seasoned group of players, is because the system was not designed for experts. It was designed for a low level of player and DM competence: game store casuals, weekend warriors, gaming clubs. If it was designed for optimisers, it wouldn't have been played by more people in the world than any other RPG, even allowing for goodwill and retention from earlier editions.

Mechalich

2021-12-17, 12:58 AM

D&D, in every edition, is built on a resource attrition model, something that's appropriate for its primary milieus, the dungeon crawl and the wilderness expedition. If you break those assumptions the system does not operate properly. At the same time, it is not necessary for a game to operate on a resource attrition model. Many RPG types, such as MMOs, do not. In the average MMO every character recovers to full strength effectively instantly following the completion of a battle, even if they were 'killed.' Even some tactical RPGs treat every battle as a sealed box and all characters come back at full after they finish. Each of these methods can be appropriate, as are intermediate ones. JRPGs, for example, often run on what is effectively single-meter attrition where only MP expenditure matters. It all depends on what is the goals of gameplay are, and also the consequences of failure.

For example, in an MMO if your character dies they stand up at the end of combat (or maybe wait a few seconds to be rezzed) and they move on as if nothing has happened. The player's time is preserved. However, in D&D if a character dies they are either lost forever and a new character must be made, or arrangements must be made for a resurrection, which may take some time in game to arrange, and therefore the player is taken out of the game for a while. And this is bad: having a player at the table who is not gaming is one of those things the game needs to strive very hard to avoid.

Consequently if games go for encounters gauged to challenge the full resources of the party on a regular basis rather than encounters meant simply to reduce those resources, the system needs to accommodate the resulting higher level of death effectively. In video games this is practically quantifiable: greater amounts of character death increase in acceptability the more rapidly the player can reload and the more frequently they can save.

A lot of tabletop games are hesitant to go this route, probably out of a sort of intuitive feeling that it breaks verisimilitude, which considering all of the various ways MMO players exploit things like dying in the right place to bypass encounters, seems justified.

Elkad

2021-12-17, 01:20 AM

Don't put the big fight at the end of the day every time. Put it at the beginning, or in the middle.

Yes, sometimes they'll try to withdraw early. Hit them with an exit ambush. Block their Teleports. Dispel their Rope Trick.

Suck them into an encounter that looks easy but just keeps escalating until they have to dump everything and THEN make them run away.

Not every time. Keep them guessing. The day the mid-level wizard is so out of everything he's reduced to hitting things with his staff and is standing in the front line because the fighter is out of heals and has 4hp, but they still make it through is a day to be proud of.

Mordante

2021-12-17, 06:39 AM

What even is an encounter?

I have been playing D&D for since 2017, so I'm not that experienced. But to me the whole; " in every session X should happen" seems very strange. If the PC spent a session on shopping for clothing and drinking beer and telling tails or what ever there is zero reason to add combat.

Combat is a byproduct of actions and the goal of an adventure.

Railak

2021-12-17, 07:28 AM

My group does the "big encounter" style of play generally. Though, we also rarely have more than 1 encounter in a given in game day. Having more encounters drags down the flow of the game for our group. We've gotten so tired of a week travel taking actual months of play, just because the encounters. they'd rather fight a couple bigger creatures and get the same xp than a bunch of little things. Specially when they aren't part of the campaign's story.

Though I will say dungeons are a different story with the group, lots of little encounters make exploring a dungeon way more enjoyable. I've found that the party can have just as much issues with fighting room to room against just regular zombies and skeletons, as they do against leveled challenges. The party were level 4 going through a dungeon with pretty much just zombies, the barbarian nearly died like 3 times. The party has a really decent healer. The spell casters, well one just used a crossbow on the zombies, rarely did any real damage, and the other was just using cantrips. We play Pathfinder so cantrips can be used infinitely. The party had way more than just 5 encounters a day going through the dungeon. They killed probably 30 zombies in total, I'd have to double-check the actual number. Then they encountered the boss, and basically one shot him with a good critical from the barbarian. Oh yeah, I nearly forgot they encountered like 6 mimics as well in the dungeon.

King of Nowhere

2021-12-17, 08:28 AM

Speaking of Teleport tactics, I was perusing this cool Reddit thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_RPG/comments/rgyunj/in_defense_of_teleport/) yesterday, regarding Teleport and Scrying's baked-in limitations that players tend to disregard when arguing theory. I find it relevant.

Once Teleport/ scry and die tactics have come online the bad guys have it too. And can set up counters to this. Never expect teleport to *Just* work. I will tell you right now the bad guys will protect the commander, dragon, mcguffin with layers of anti scry and die magics/effects. Dimension anchors will get dropped in one fight with the expectations of you have to fight your way out.

yes. all of that, yes. it's taken into account, and it's all part of how my table works.

it's still all in favor of a short adventuring day. the party teleports outside the villain's stronghold, fully buffed, and tries to get in as fast as possible, before the enemy can bring in too many reinforces. if they encounter too much resistance, they get away before being overwhelmed. the enemies will run away from them unless they feel they have the upper hand. I mean, imagine you are one of the villain's minions, and the heroes attack you; you have decent information on how powerful they are and how powerful you are. You certainly do not engage them in combat knowing you have no chance, but hoping to burn them a few spell slots so that after three more encounters like you, they may get in serious danger. so you run away shouting the alarm until you find a few more groups; then, with enough numbers that you think you stand a chance, you attack together - and you have the one big fight.
dimension anchors are dropped liberally and dispelled just as liberally. a very memorable scene involved the party rogue shooting the party druid in the foot with a dispelling bullet, to enable him to use planeshift and get the party to safety.
scrying for the most juicy bits is blocked, hence why mundane spying and information gathering is still used. guesswork is also involved. And the fact that you don't have exact data on how many of the enemy forces are there and how many can come in how much time is just one more reason to try to be fast and retreat if things start going wrong. if you can deal some damage, kill some mid-level mooks, steal their loot, then you dealt a real blow to the enemy, and you can try to win by attrition.
the villains can try to do the same to you, of course. keeping a high level party out of a fortress is extremely hard, but it's much more common to have passive defences made to last a few minutes, so you can get ready, don your equipment, cast some buff spells, or maybe flee before the enemy gets in.

all of that is trying to take into account both the limitations of scry and teleport, and the fact that the enemy has them too. and all of that puts a strong emphasis on preparation and trying to only fight on your own terms.

And thinking a bit more about the whole question to start with, I think I've been mostly trying to argue against a straw man.

Yes, you did. But I did that too in my first post.

My musing started because my table - worldbuilding, optimization level, players attitude - favors the short adventuring day. But there are some settings in it that requires multiple weak encounters, and when the party engaged those missions and had to fight through those multiple encounters - even if all those encounters were part of the plot, not random stuff made up just to throw a fight - it got boring.
even in the "the villain is overrunning your city with an army of summoned creatures, save as much as you can"[not exactly, but a more accurate description would be too long and not relevant], which was an exciting and heartfelt scenario, the combat started feeling stale. "save the friendly dragon that's being swarmed by giant scorpions, gain an ally" "save those npcs you know that are being overrun by swarms, gain more allies" "rescue the war golems who are falling to more giant scorpions, get more minions" "recover important research data from the university (that's being invaded by elementals), gain custom spells later", the scenario was engaging, the mission was engaging, the setting was engaging, but after the third encounter the combat was no longer exciting.
it's probably not helped by the fact that the villain used a lot of beefy critters that made most spells designed against humanoids moot - but hey, the villain was using those kind of critters specifically for that reason. Perhaps if the encounters/challenges were more varied, it would have kept things fresh; I have good memories of other "attrition" scenarios that were built differently. I try to have a variety of "encounters" (situations? challenges? missions?) at my table, but in that specific session the story called for a specific kind of encounter.
So, perhaps I can compromise in saying that the "many weak encounters" don't work if they are just a bunch of linear obstacles, but I accept that they can work in a different context.

Also the reason the '5 per day' has to exist, and likely doesn't work terribly well against a seasoned group of players, is because the system was not designed for experts. It was designed for a low level of player and DM competence: game store casuals, weekend warriors, gaming clubs

yes, that most of all.
when people start to overanalyze and optimize, all the premises around which the game is balanced break. then we pick up the pieces, and we glue them together into something different that fits better with our table.

Crake

2021-12-17, 12:22 PM

Quertus

2021-12-17, 12:39 PM

Raven777

2021-12-17, 03:41 PM

Akal Saris

2021-12-17, 04:16 PM

A well designed "boss" encounter can, in effect, be 5 consecutive combats with little to no downtime between them, effectively combining the pros of a 15 minute adventuring day while incorporating and balancing around the 5 encounters per day expectation.

Yup! As a player, one of my most memorable combats ever was a 2nd edition 'Against the Giants' module where we cleared out nearly the entire dungeons' worth of encounters in one long running fight as more giants steadily arrived to the battle and we killed them almost as quickly as they arrived.

The DM did a great job of adjudicating how long it would take for each roomful of giants to learn about the invaders and make their way over, and rather than retreat we ended up just doing back-to-back fights long past the point when we should have run away.

Ever since then, I've tried to incorporate similar extended 'boss' encounters in my own games.

Maat Mons

2021-12-17, 05:53 PM

I would say it's bad system design for a game to require specific encounter design paradigms in order to function as intended.

For example, in D&D, relative class balance changes depending on number of encounters per day. I suspect the game designers thought this was a good thing. "The DM can adjust for discrepancies in the power of party members by increasing or decreasing the number of encounters per day." But the flip side of that is, the DM isn't free to set the number of encounters per day based on what suits his story, what his players enjoy, and what he personally enjoys. Making encounters per day a lever the DM can pull to adjust balance also turns it into a constraint on how he runs his game.

Really, it should be the job of the game designers to ensure interclass balance. The players, and the DM too, should be able to pick up the game and play, and have things just work. Offloading all the work of creating balance onto the DM sure does make the game designer's lives easier, but it also make the DM's life harder. And not every DM is an experienced veteran.

And this isn't just an issue with encounters per day. Another variable that affects interclass balance is foreknowledge. Some classes are massively helped by knowing ahead of time what they'll need to contend with. Other classes can't do squat with that kind of information. So the availability of information becomes another level for the DM to use to adjust interclass balance, and in so doing, also become another thing he's no longer free to adjust to taste. Information has to be dialed in to whatever point is keeping party power where it should be. Any deviation from that has detrimental effects on the game.

And there's also downtime. Some characters can use it to great effect. Some characters outright need it. And some characters don't care. So how much downtime the DM makes available has disproportionate effects on different part members. And this turns it into a tool for keeping party members comparable in power, and also a variable the DM can't fiddle with without screwing that up. The narrative need to be made to match the required pacing. The pacing can't be made to suit the narrative.

There are numerous instances where the game apparently tries tie class balance to encounter composition, but doesn't really accomplish it. Rangers are supposed to be awesome when up against their favored enemies, but mediocre otherwise. They actually wind up mediocre at all times. But if Rangers were absolute beasts versus their favored enemies, the DM would have needed to keep an eye on how frequently they used those enemies. On the flip side, I think Clerics were only meant to be overpowered against Undead, but wound up being overpowered all the time. Paladin's were meant to be the best class at dealing with Evil enemies. Rogues may or may not have difficulties with Constructs, Elementals, Oozes, Plants, and Undead, depending on how they're built. It looks as though the designers intended every DM to need to carefully weigh how frequently to use enemies of various types and alignments. Ensuring all classes remained equally viable if a DM wanted to, for example, run "and Undead campaign" doesn't seem to have been a priority.

Good system design is creating a game that works well for a variety of different group playstyles. Bad system design is creating a game that forces a very specific playstyle to keep its underlying assumptions intact.

Crake

2021-12-17, 11:15 PM

Really, it should be the job of the game designers to ensure interclass balance. The players, and the DM too, should be able to pick up the game and play, and have things just work. Offloading all the work of creating balance onto the DM sure does make the game designer's lives easier, but it also make the DM's life harder. And not every DM is an experienced veteran.

Personally, I think there are other systems that do this far better than 3.5, and the variety and spectrum of options is entirely what appeals to me about 3.5. Kinda a bit of a tangent, but I don't necessarily want a late game fighter to be balanced with a late game wizard.

Quertus

2021-12-18, 10:22 AM

Personally, I think there are other systems that do this far better than 3.5, and the variety and spectrum of options is entirely what appeals to me about 3.5. Kinda a bit of a tangent, but I don't necessarily want a late game fighter to be balanced with a late game wizard.

You know, this might well be the perfect opening to explain something.

There are other systems.

Early editions, the non human races were meant to be “easy mode”. They were your starter characters, meant for noobs. They had all kinds of advantages … but you were meant to graduate to real men (fairly literally, humans) once you had the skills, and this was encouraged with level limits. Even then, amongst just human characters, Fighters were easy mode compared to hard mode Wizards. All in all, it was brilliant design, to allow everyone to enjoy the game with just a few character choices.

I don’t want someone to come along and buff the Wizard to make it balanced - it being hard mode was the point!

3e has such a vast array of unbalanced options, and you can mix and match them to balance to the table, regardless of the table’s concept of balance, the table’s balance range, or your character concept. It’s (accidentally) brilliant design, to allow everyone to enjoy every table with any concept.

And, of course, if your table *wants* imbalance, 3e has you covered there, too.

I wouldn’t want someone trying to “fix the balance” (to their one ignorant concept of what “balance” means) of 3e - that kills the beauty of what 3e actually is!

If you’re too much of a balance noob, or just don’t enjoy that minigame, there are other systems. Just like there were other races in earlier editions.

But, because it accommodates nearly any concept of balance at nearly any range, for nearly any concept, 3e is the best system for game balance in existence. It’s just hard mode. Some assembly required. (See also “in the beginning was the command line”.

I happen to appreciate hard mode, the challenge of the AD&D Wizard, or of 3e balance to the table.

It’s not wrong for these things to exist - especially when there’s a table full of pink ribbons for those who want to play easy mode.

King of Nowhere

2021-12-18, 10:38 AM

Have we really made it this far with no one commenting that 5 encounters, at estimated 20% resource attrition each, equals TPK? That those numbers would better point to a “4 or fewer encounters per day” model?

the correct number is "what the hell", because there's no way actual encounters would actually play into that neat math. "level-appropriate" encounters aren't appropriate, there's no such thing as a general power level for a party of a certain level, and there's a lot of variability on dice rolls.

Is there actually some dm who takes the monsters from the manual, carefully calculates their CR to come up with the encounter CR, and then painstakingly arranges multiple fights according to their encounter CR to exhaust 80% of the party resources in a given day?
is there actually some dm who does that, and it works as intended?

Jack_Simth

2021-12-18, 12:32 PM

Oh, don't forget: Most of the time, your enemies aren't complete idiots (if you ignore 3.X's modules, anyway...), and most of the time, the BBEG is higher level than the party. In a world where Teleport and scrying exist, people are going to set up scrying and/or teleport counters.

So if the party has acccess to Teleport (Sor/Wiz/Travel-5), the BBEG Cleric will have access to Forbiddance (Cleric-6). If the party has access to Scrying (Druid-4, Sor/Wiz-4, Cleric-5, Bard-3) the BBEG Wizard will have Nondetection (Rgr 4, Sor/Wiz 3, Trickery 3) and Mage's Private Sanctum (Sor/Wiz 5). And don't forget, evil doesn't mean "can't work together" - buying services, trading favors, buying and using scrolls, or getting support from 'the boss' are all possible. So that BBEG Wizard might have a Forbiddance over the tower, that BBEG Cleric might have a permanent Mage's Private Sanctum over the temple, and that Dragon could have both in the caves.

You may very well need to fight through the hobgoblin gate guards, the skeleton storage room, and the apprentices having lunch before you even reach the BBEG because other avenues were simply closed off by intelligent actors. If you retreat after slaughtering the guards or the skeletons, they'll just get new ones, and if you've passed those and retreat after you've killed the apprentices, the BBEG will rebuild elsewhere. Oh, wait... that's the 4-ish encounters per day paradigm, isn't it?

the correct number is "what the hell", because there's no way actual encounters would actually play into that neat math. "level-appropriate" encounters aren't appropriate, there's no such thing as a general power level for a party of a certain level, and there's a lot of variability on dice rolls.

Is there actually some dm who takes the monsters from the manual, carefully calculates their CR to come up with the encounter CR, and then painstakingly arranges multiple fights according to their encounter CR to exhaust 80% of the party resources in a given day?
is there actually some dm who does that, and it works as intended?
With the sheer number of people in the world playing D&D? Almost certainly.

Quertus

2021-12-18, 05:53 PM

Silly Name

2021-12-18, 07:14 PM

Is there actually some dm who takes the monsters from the manual, carefully calculates their CR to come up with the encounter CR, and then painstakingly arranges multiple fights according to their encounter CR to exhaust 80% of the party resources in a given day?
is there actually some dm who does that, and it works as intended?

I don't. The way I use CR is mostly along the lines of "ok, I need a metallic construct guarding the door here, but an iron golem is probably too much for a level 6 party, so let me check for something around that CR", or "Need some undead fodder for this level 14 party, a few CR 10 or so undead should do the trick".

In any given adventuring day, I hope the party is having fun and feeling like they're at the sweet spot of being challenged - sometimes they may roll over the opposition, and for important battles it's going to be tougher, but the goal is to mostly avoid focusing every session on pure combat.

jedipilot24

2021-12-19, 05:06 PM

If you tried the "15 Minute Day" in Red Hand of Doom (for example) you will get creamed because the entire module is on a countdown, with all kinds of nasty things happening if you delay or are otherwise late to the action.

There's also the "Delve format" that was proposed late in 3.5's run where a dungeon is transformed into a living system, with everything becoming more difficult every time you leave to rest, which again was designed specifically to discourage the 15-minute day.

For example:

Have a noisy fight with the ogre in Room 1 and then withdraw to rest? When you return the following day, the orcs in room 2 have been buffed by the cleric in room 3 and have used the furniture to create difficult terrain for you and cover for them. What would have been an easy encounter has just become a difficult one, all because you just had to insist on facing each encounter at full strength.

Darg

2021-12-19, 11:34 PM

I don’t want someone to come along and buff the Wizard to make it balanced - it being hard mode was the point!

3e did that though. Impoved QoL changes, easy access to high level spellcasting, and guaranteed spells on level up tend to make it less hard mode.

Quertus

2021-12-20, 01:44 AM

3e did that though. Impoved QoL changes, easy access to high level spellcasting, and guaranteed spells on level up tend to make it less hard mode.

Well, yes, 3e did make Wizards less "hard mode", and that's one of the things I dislike about 3e. But that's not my point.

My point was just, "earlier editions have beauty X; buffing Wizards in those editions ruins that beauty", "3e has beauty Y; trying to balance the individual components ruins that beauty".

It was about appreciating each edition for what it is, and realizing that there's other games / editions out there if that's not what you want.

Fizban

2021-12-20, 02:31 AM

Oh, don't forget: Most of the time, your enemies aren't complete idiots (if you ignore 3.X's modules, anyway...), and most of the time, the BBEG is higher level than the party. In a world where Teleport and scrying exist, people are going to set up scrying and/or teleport counters.

There's also the "Delve format" that was proposed late in 3.5's run where a dungeon is transformed into a living system, with everything becoming more difficult every time you leave to rest, which again was designed specifically to discourage the 15-minute day.
Y'all acting like this was some mysterious thing that the designers didn't already know, but the second major 3.0 module Forge of Fury has programming for the orcs. It's not super sophisticated and full of optimized casters, but it's pretty clear they're supposed to react. RttoEE has notes about replenishing the troops in the Outer Fane, and how the leaders don't really care until the PCs breach the Inner Fane. I'm pretty sure Shadowdale: The Scouring of the Land specified that the Lich will make some Mummies if the PCs break in and then leave. City of the Spider Queen has a series of escalating responses that the main antagonist, a high level Cleric, will make as the PCs interfere. That's four off the top of my head, three of which are very well known and also 3.0. And a quick glance shows mention of kobold reinforcements even in The Sunless Citadel.

The difference is only in degrees, to which it should be no surprise that earlier published content does not char-op its responses, considering the level of char-op expected of the players (which is zero). Obviously they're not going to build and tell you to run adversaries in ways that are guaranteed to crush players that don't know exactly how to deal with them. I would not be surprised at all if later monster manuals and modules which start DM'oping their encounters also stepped up their responses.

But if anything, my recollection of the later modules is the opposite. The switch from presenting dungeons room by room to splitting it into the "dungeon" and the "encounters," with a list of rooms and descriptions but where any room with an encounter is instead detailed in the "encounter" section where they're meant to be runable from just those two pages, means that each encounter is designed with even less connection to the rest of the dungeon. Where the old modules often say that combat in room X can be heard in rooms Y and Z and reinforcements will show up in 1dW rounds, that sort of thing runs counter to the "encounter" format. Which then ironically, still does some of those things in some modules IIRC, requiring you to page from the room list, to the encounter, back to the room list, and off to some other encounter, when the old actual dungeon format would have had all it all right there.

Saintheart

2021-12-20, 02:59 AM

Y'all acting like this was some mysterious thing that the designers didn't already know, but the second major 3.0 module Forge of Fury has programming for the orcs. It's not super sophisticated and full of optimized casters, but it's pretty clear they're supposed to react. RttoEE has notes about replenishing the troops in the Outer Fane, and how the leaders don't really care until the PCs breach the Inner Fane. I'm pretty sure Shadowdale: The Scouring of the Land specified that the Lich will make some Mummies if the PCs break in and then leave. City of the Spider Queen has a series of escalating responses that the main antagonist, a high level Cleric, will make as the PCs interfere. That's four off the top of my head, three of which are very well known and also 3.0. And a quick glance shows mention of kobold reinforcements even in The Sunless Citadel.

The difference is only in degrees, to which it should be no surprise that earlier published content does not char-op its responses, considering the level of char-op expected of the players (which is zero). Obviously they're not going to build and tell you to run adversaries in ways that are guaranteed to crush players that don't know exactly how to deal with them. I would not be surprised at all if later monster manuals and modules which start DM'oping their encounters also stepped up their responses.

But if anything, my recollection of the later modules is the opposite. The switch from presenting dungeons room by room to splitting it into the "dungeon" and the "encounters," with a list of rooms and descriptions but where any room with an encounter is instead detailed in the "encounter" section where they're meant to be runable from just those two pages, means that each encounter is designed with even less connection to the rest of the dungeon. Where the old modules often say that combat in room X can be heard in rooms Y and Z and reinforcements will show up in 1dW rounds, that sort of thing runs counter to the "encounter" format. Which then ironically, still does some of those things in some modules IIRC, requiring you to page from the room list, to the encounter, back to the room list, and off to some other encounter, when the old actual dungeon format would have had all it all right there.

Red Hand of Doom has an interesting kind-of mixture. On one hand it's not written to match serious D&D tacticians, and the last dungeon in the game does have the whole "The boss pays me just to sit in this room and stare at the door, I'm not going outside even if the ogre in the next room is screaming at the top of his voice about what the party is doing to him."

On the other hand, it does have rules around how many reinforcements show up and when. It does spell out what the monsters do in response at a particular location if the party attacks and then retreats. Most interestingly, because the players encounter much the same type of opponent of for 75% of the adventure although it runs from 6-10, it changes the monsters' tactics as the party gets higher level: what start as normal-ish martial assaults become more cautious and finally spin into outright desperation (we're talking literally "all pretence of defence is abandoned, the hobgoblins throw themselves at your party trying to bring them down with Aid Another and grapple checks" -_- )

rel

2021-12-22, 10:42 AM

how many people out there feel the same way, and started purposefully moving away from the multiple encounter and attrition model? and those that do prefer the multiple weak encounters, why do they like that? how do they find suspence in defeating weak enemies that never stood any chance? what are the player traits that make them prefer one way or the other?

I don't feel the same way. I think resource management is a big part of the game and removing it entirely by only ever running unconnected deadly encounters results in the game flowing oddly. Builds with nova potential dominate even more than usual, combat becomes far more lethal, cheapening character death and the sense of gradual progression towards an objective, the feel of achieving something through effort is diminished.

As to your problems of weak enemies, I occasionally encounter such issues in published modules, but even then, not very often. At the tables I play, boring combat always comes down to poor encounter design:
Leaving aside any discussion of resource management, non-combat encounters like puzzles and environmental challenges and so on and focusing purely on the minute to minute combat gameplay there is plenty of interesting things to do with a combat encounter against weaker enemies.
You can have interesting tactics, trick encounters, unique win or loss conditions, novel terrain and so on.
And again, at the tables I play, weaker enemies sometimes get lucky or the players miss a trick or make a poor choice and suddenly what should have been an easy encounter becomes very difficult.
It doesn't happen often, but often enough that a fight is never routine. And if a fight is absolutely guaranteed to be routine, it probably shouldn't be a fight at all.

I don't think I'm qualified to speculate on 'player traits' that result in wanting one big fight each day, but I know of a group that does seem like they would enjoy playing in the way you propose. I don't actually play with them very often but here are the things about the group I find surprising:

They are all always on their laptops and are usually playing computer games at the same time as roleplaying, only stopping to describe their actions.
They seem completely disinterested in anything that isn't combat, literally chanting the words 'I go left' until they reach something they can kill.
They are super into the character creation minigame, their roleplay stories always seem to be about the cool character they built and the massive amounts of damage they managed to deal.
They seem massively unhappy whenever their usual tactics stop working, if an enemy so much as moves past the obviously armoured front line to attack a softer target they whine about it for months. If a monster actually stole a component pouch, greased a weapon, spread some fog or deployed a tactic more complex than moving forward and attacking, they would probably stop playing.

Seward

2021-12-22, 04:01 PM

How much control pc's have over encounter timing varies wildly by plot.

Sometimes you are traveling in hostile terrain (city, wilderness whatever) and get jumped. Sometimes that isn't an accident or opportunistic, these are people hired to kill your party after a prior success who have studied your tactics and capabilities (or at least listened to bardsongs and survivor reports).

For an old-school "attack a dungeon" adventure, those adventures nearly always had the assumption that monsters would support each other, at minimum all the off-duty guards would grab a weapon and dive in, more commonly important NPCs would have "where do they go what do they do" sketched out. If they are not supporting each other, it was because of some kind of rivalry PC's might not know about (Temple of Elemental Evil had issues with that, as did some of the Drow encounters in 1st ed, or situations where a visitor might not get involved unless the guest quarters were stormed by PCs).

Normally if you fail to take down such a hard target in one go, they will absolutely retool tactics and watch strategies against what you did to breach them, try to heal and/or replace losses and if they can track your party somehow, usually will put together a kill squad to try to kill you while you are depleted (since you retreated, you must be weak). Savvy PC's could fake such weakness and get an advantage of course. But basically such hard targets typically go better if you have scouted them, maybe learned something about the folks inside and if you are using raiding tactics, have really really really carefully secured your retreat (eg, scry and die should at minimum have a plan for evading scrying by the enemy in response. A contingency for somebody in the party eating a dimensional anchor or the party getting dimensionally locked might also be in order).

Minor RHOD spoilers

RHOD was a mix of sandbox stuff the PCs did with objectives and time limits. If you were really slow you could win the chapter 4 climactic battle and still lose the war. If you charged in blindly to each hardpoint you could get your butt handed to you, but with careful scouting PCs generally could pick their attack times and approaches in the first 3 chapters. The way to save time was to do something faster in overland travel than walking at 20'/round. The climactic encounters of the war happened on the enemy timeline, not yours, and you had no idea how many fights you'd have to do to make the army back off that day, which made resource management tricky.

The chapter 5 stuff was a hardpoint you couldn't overwhelm in one go with most parties. I think most GMs ignored "monsters stay in their room" bull**** except for the ritual room where presumably the participants had to stay there to do their ritual thing. What I remember was ambushes, several last stands with mixed monsters as you penetrate and the outsider support being extremely obnoxious with telepathy, teleportation, etherialness etc to keep an eye on the party and coordinate defenses. Obviously if you manage to whack the folks defending who have the best scouting chops, the defenses are a lot easier to penetrate with a lot worse coordination.

RHOD did feature a variety of adventuring situations, ranging from the wilderness "we can just nova everything in this encounter cause nothing else is likely today" to "hard target where poking it will draw most or all of the monsters there at once, but doable if careful and clever" to "oh hell, this place is larger than we thought, the monsters probably regenerate and if we come back we'll have to fight all over again" to "I sure hope all these butts we're kicking will eventually slow down that army that is rolling over us" to "will somebody please kill that &@#$#@$ monster who keeps plinking us, running and reporting everything we do to the next group of defenders!" Plus a pretty terrifying final boss for most 4 person not terribly optimized parties, especially if fought when resources are low.

King of Nowhere

2021-12-22, 05:46 PM

I don't think I'm qualified to speculate on 'player traits' that result in wanting one big fight each day, but I know of a group that does seem like they would enjoy playing in the way you propose. I don't actually play with them very often but here are the things about the group I find surprising:

They are all always on their laptops and are usually playing computer games at the same time as roleplaying, only stopping to describe their actions.
They seem completely disinterested in anything that isn't combat, literally chanting the words 'I go left' until they reach something they can kill.
They are super into the character creation minigame, their roleplay stories always seem to be about the cool character they built and the massive amounts of damage they managed to deal.
They seem massively unhappy whenever their usual tactics stop working, if an enemy so much as moves past the obviously armoured front line to attack a softer target they whine about it for months. If a monster actually stole a component pouch, greased a weapon, spread some fog or deployed a tactic more complex than moving forward and attacking, they would probably stop playing.

please, any more strawman?
there are a lot of roleplaying and story benefits to that kind of fighting policy, which i detailed in the first post. In fact, I've been arguing that the single fight policy (unless explicitly motivated by story reasons) is best for more roleplaying. because the normal dungeon crawling style encourages you to just kick down doors one after another, while the single conflict encourages you to gather informations and arrange circumstances - roleplaying, using non-combat abilities, engaging with the world - to manage to catch your enemies in that moment of vulnerability and go alpha strike on them.
but of course, if i argued that my style is strictly better, i'd be strawmanning too.

the description of those guys you know couldn't be more far from my group. in fact, my first reaction was mild indignation that you would compare my friends to such obviously disfunctional gamers.
those guys would definitely not like my table. they'd end up dead because they failed to secure some key allies and were therefore left alone when the enemy received reinforces. or maybe they'd win the first fight with a certain strategy, then they'd go again at the same foes with the same strategy and discover that they prepared better this time.

actually, that's exactly what happens to my party a few years ago. they were trading information with a guy they failed to realize was a traitor. so the traitor sold their wereabouts to their enemies, allowing them to set up an ambush. the party was ambushed by overwhelming numbers, but managed to win with because the druid and cleric won initiative and proceeded to firestorm, quickened firestorm, firestorm, quickened firestorm.
the party kept trusting the traitor, and he set them up for another ambush. this time the enemies had learned, and were protected against fire. two party members died, the rest of them barely escaped.
and it wasn't until many months later that they finally discovered the shady guy was selling them. it was a great moment when i could drop the revelation. it had a good payoff.
of course, my players have been trusting me to not have just made an encounter to punish them.

How much control pc's have over encounter timing varies wildly by plot.

Sometimes you are traveling in hostile terrain (city, wilderness whatever) and get jumped. Sometimes that isn't an accident or opportunistic, these are people hired to kill your party after a prior success who have studied your tactics and capabilities (or at least listened to bardsongs and survivor reports).

For an old-school "attack a dungeon" adventure, those adventures nearly always had the assumption that monsters would support each other, at minimum all the off-duty guards would grab a weapon and dive in, more commonly important NPCs would have "where do they go what do they do" sketched out. If they are not supporting each other, it was because of some kind of rivalry PC's might not know about (Temple of Elemental Evil had issues with that, as did some of the Drow encounters in 1st ed, or situations where a visitor might not get involved unless the guest quarters were stormed by PCs).
yes, it basically depends on the plot. some plots inherently put some time pressure on you. but if there is no timed objective, then it's better to try and control the flow of encounters.

i tend to not run many times objectives, because i find them scarcely believable in the kind of plots i tell. the world has been quiet for a century, but suddenly it will end next week unless X? such convenient timing. this lich has been preparing his masterplan to conquer the world for 700 years, and suddenly there's a time crunch? hard to justify. I know, it's a silly stuff to suspend your disbelief over. But time crunch is just not much suited to the kind of adventures i tell.
there's also the fact that my campaigns tend to run the full 1-20 level, and my sense of verisimilitude requires that to justify such a progression, it should last a couple of years. you don't become a world champion when you were a nobody one week ago. and if the campaign is supposed to last years, then it's really hard to make single days matter.

of course, it's not like the players can afford to take one year off to go on a tropical vacation, come back, and expect the villains to not have progressed. but "going today" or "going tomorrow with better preparation", that's unlikely to make a difference.

regarding attacking a fortress specifically, the assumptin that the enemy will replace the losses and bring more if you leave and come back another day fails to take into account how expensive are high level resources. sure, if you kill some mooks it's not a big deal, they can get more. but if you kill some level 10 npcs and flee, or you destroy a couple of iron golems, those don't grow on trees. even the largest, most powerful nations can't replace them easily.
Instead, what I understand to be the best strategy in this context is to keep all such powerful personnel in a safe area, ready to teleport. You invade, they bring everyone against you and try to overwelm. if it does not work, then there's really nothing they can do to stop you, and they surrender or flee. which, again, is part of why in those scenarios i find the single big fight more realistic.
if they allow you to kill some high level people and flee, they're going to lose the attrition war.

Melayl

2021-12-23, 03:13 PM

I don't feel the same way. I think resource management is a big part of the game and removing it entirely by only ever running unconnected deadly encounters results in the game flowing oddly. Builds with nova potential dominate even more than usual, combat becomes far more lethal, cheapening character death and the sense of gradual progression towards an objective, the feel of achieving something through effort is diminished.

As to your problems of weak enemies, I occasionally encounter such issues in published modules, but even then, not very often. At the tables I play, boring combat always comes down to poor encounter design:
Leaving aside any discussion of resource management, non-combat encounters like puzzles and environmental challenges and so on and focusing purely on the minute to minute combat gameplay there is plenty of interesting things to do with a combat encounter against weaker enemies.
You can have interesting tactics, trick encounters, unique win or loss conditions, novel terrain and so on.
And again, at the tables I play, weaker enemies sometimes get lucky or the players miss a trick or make a poor choice and suddenly what should have been an easy encounter becomes very difficult.
It doesn't happen often, but often enough that a fight is never routine. And if a fight is absolutely guaranteed to be routine, it probably shouldn't be a fight at all.

I don't think I'm qualified to speculate on 'player traits' that result in wanting one big fight each day, but I know of a group that does seem like they would enjoy playing in the way you propose. I don't actually play with them very often but here are the things about the group I find surprising:

They are all always on their laptops and are usually playing computer games at the same time as roleplaying, only stopping to describe their actions.
They seem completely disinterested in anything that isn't combat, literally chanting the words 'I go left' until they reach something they can kill.
They are super into the character creation minigame, their roleplay stories always seem to be about the cool character they built and the massive amounts of damage they managed to deal.
They seem massively unhappy whenever their usual tactics stop working, if an enemy so much as moves past the obviously armoured front line to attack a softer target they whine about it for months. If a monster actually stole a component pouch, greased a weapon, spread some fog or deployed a tactic more complex than moving forward and attacking, they would probably stop playing.

please, any more strawman?
there are a lot of roleplaying and story benefits to that kind of fighting policy, which i detailed in the first post. In fact, I've been arguing that the single fight policy (unless explicitly motivated by story reasons) is best for more roleplaying. because the normal dungeon crawling style encourages you to just kick down doors one after another, while the single conflict encourages you to gather informations and arrange circumstances - roleplaying, using non-combat abilities, engaging with the world - to manage to catch your enemies in that moment of vulnerability and go alpha strike on them.
but of course, if i argued that my style is strictly better, i'd be strawmanning too.

the description of those guys you know couldn't be more far from my group. in fact, my first reaction was mild indignation that you would compare my friends to such obviously disfunctional gamers.

I agree wil Rel. When I read a book or watch a movie/TV show, the really good ones don't just have one big nova-type encounter. They have smaller, attrition-style encounters that build up the the climactic encounter. The MC is rarely at full strength going into an important encounter. At least, that's what it's like in the stories I actually like.

That being said, that's what I like. What I like doesn't need to be what you like, or what anyone else likes. If you and your group like the game as you're playing it, that's great. You don't need to change anything. However, if people like the 4-5 encounters per day, they don't need to change anything, either. D&D is a game, and there is no wrong way to play it as long as you're having fun. Your way of play is just as valid as anyone else's, and theirs is just as valid as yours.

Also, I don't believe Rel was trying to compare those gamers to you or your players. Rel was, as I understood it, merely mentioning the only group that they knew of that seemed like they'd like the single encounter per day system. Rel didn't seem to be trying to disparage you or your players/style.

Just my opinions.

Elves

2021-12-23, 03:30 PM

One alternative to explore is "per level" instead of "per day", like Eberron's action points and the artificer's craft reserve. It provides a tempo to resource use without locking your story to a certain schedule.

If you level up with a few tough encounters, you'll spend your per level abilities quickly. If you do it with a lot of weak encounters, you won't need them as frequently. Since you don't level up until the end of the adventure, you'll need to save them for the climactic boss fight. But no hoarding: once you level up, unused ones are gone.

There are a couple issues. If you get de-leveled through rezzing or energy drain, do you get per-level abilities back? And if you spend per-level abilities on an encounter but end up fleeing or losing, does it make it too difficult to progress through the rest of the level. Both of those point to some kind of recuperation mechanism, likely with extended downtime and/or a gp cost.

There's also the question of scaling per-level ability uses when you scale XP to be slower or faster. It's easy enough in itself but implies a unified allotment rubric that can be scaled in parallel, which might be constraining.

rel

2021-12-23, 06:13 PM

the description of those guys you know couldn't be more far from my group. in fact, my first reaction was mild indignation that you would compare my friends to such obviously disfunctional gamers.

that's not very nice, those people are my friends and they seem to enjoy their games of D&D quite a lot. No need to call them 'disfunctional' just because they play in a way you don't agree with.

King of Nowhere

2021-12-23, 07:50 PM

that's not very nice, those people are my friends and they seem to enjoy their games of D&D quite a lot. No need to call them 'disfunctional' just because they play in a way you don't agree with.

fair enough. i misunderstood your tone and thought you were disparaging my group. I apologize

Psyren

2021-12-25, 03:16 PM

You could also try reducing PC resources rather than more / harder encounters. Consider for instance the Simplified Spellcasting Variant (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/variant-magic-rules/simplified-spellcasting/) from Pathfinder, easily ported to 3.5, which reduces the number of spell slots below max level that most casters get in exchange for reduced bookkeeping and added flexibility with those slots. You could also weaken bonus spells and/or remove magic items that increase the party's longevity like Pearls of Power, wands and staves.

RandomPeasant

2021-12-26, 04:33 PM

I don't think you need to choose "5-encounter workday" or "no resource management" like some people seem to be suggesting. Resource management occurs within an encounter, and that can be just as interesting as managing your resources over several encounters. It's true that 3e doesn't do a super great job of doing that natively (though in some respects that's because a lot of classes just don't have resources to manage outside of HP).

That gets to what I see as the big problem with balancing around the 5-encounter workday in 3e, which is that you have some classes that aren't balanced around it. A Crusader or a Warlock, or even a Rogue or Fighter isn't really constrained by a 5-encounter workday. They can simply go on having fights at full capacity for as long as they have HP, and the existence of healing potions and wands mean that HP becomes effectively unlimited relatively early. So to make things work, you have to tune things so that you need both unlimited-resource and limited-resource characters.

And that's really hard to do. If you tune things too low, you can stomp through as many encounters as you want with a party of unlimited-resource characters, making anyone who plays a limited-resource character a sucker. If you tune things too high, you can't economize using the powers of unlimited-resource characters at all, making any who plays a limited-resource character a sucker. And you still have all the regular game balance concerns on top of that, like how at even relatively modest levels of optimization, a Cleric or a Druid makes a better unlimited-resource character than a Fighter or a Warblade.

If you tried the "15 Minute Day" in Red Hand of Doom (for example) you will get creamed because the entire module is on a countdown, with all kinds of nasty things happening if you delay or are otherwise late to the action.

IIRC, the timers in RHoD have a bunch of slack because of travel time. If you have a way to recoup that time as adventuring time to a significant degree (which is difficult, but not impossible, in the relevant level range), you can get away with throwing a couple of adventuring days at a lot of the individual challenges. The big thing the timer does is prevent long-term downtime, like magic item crafting.

Fizban

2021-12-26, 09:24 PM

you have some classes that aren't balanced around it. A Crusader or a Warlock, or even a Rogue or Fighter isn't really constrained by a 5-encounter workday. They can simply go on having fights at full capacity for as long as they have HP, and the existence of healing potions and wands mean that HP becomes effectively unlimited relatively early. So to make things work, you have to tune things so that you need both unlimited-resource and limited-resource characters.
Sure they are- they're balanced as part of a party (insert the usual argument about standard party roles vs "tier/solo/etc" evaluation). If you had some highly limited "mundane" characters to use alongside the Warlock, you could completely flip the usual while still maintaining two limited and two unlimited use classes. It's a bit difficult when much of the expectations tie magical offense and status removal to limited and the unlimited to weapon combat, but a Warlock and some sort of unlimited mundane healer*, along with say a Ninja (daily limit on their easy damage+defense boost) and a Factotum (1/day limit on free use of skills and small number of spells), would flip the role/use limit/power source pairings on their heads.

The hp thing is particularly notable, as there is evidence in the text that the designers originally intended the actual full hit points of a character to be a resource, so even the mostly unlimited characters were still given one (and boosting AC is equivalent to increasing your daily resource).

*Doable in part with various abilities, but by design there's lots of status removal you just can't get like that.

And that's really hard to do. If you tune things too low, you can stomp through as many encounters as you want with a party of unlimited-resource characters, making anyone who plays a limited-resource character a sucker. If you tune things too high, you can't economize using the powers of unlimited-resource characters at all, making any who plays a limited-resource character a sucker.
And then the unlimited characters specifically invest in limited resources such as Meta-SLA feats (and even just actual SLA feats) and daily charged items, while the limited characters with some respect for the unknown start being given things like Reserve feats. Or so it goes as you progress through the edition.

And you still have all the regular game balance concerns on top of that, like how at even relatively modest levels of optimization, a Cleric or a Druid makes a better unlimited-resource character than a Fighter or a Warblade.
Except they don't. The Cleric's lower BAB and lack of bonus feats mean that outside of free Persistent Spell, they cannot match a Fighter in unlimited use abilities (well until "War Domain Reserve" of all things :smallsigh:). The low AC of animals means that Wild Shape is not nearly as effective at replacing the Fighter as claimed either. What makes them better "unlimited" resource characters is not that they're better at it, but that they're given a measure of it in BAB and HD capacity and armor while also being limited resource characters, all in the base class. Unlike a Wizard, they don't need to make a multiclass gish build or wait for Reserve feats to be printed in order to effectively have both styles (with a huge helping of "limited" duration buffs that last for lol duration). The designers quite intentionally made the status/hp/defensive casters capable of minoring in unlimited combat so that those players wouldn't get bored (their resources non-aggressive even when not being conserved).

IIRC, the timers in RHoD have a bunch of slack because of travel time. If you have a way to recoup that time as adventuring time to a significant degree (which is difficult, but not impossible, in the relevant level range), you can get away with throwing a couple of adventuring days at a lot of the individual challenges. The big thing the timer does is prevent long-term downtime, like magic item crafting.
Not a huge amount. IIRC, even making the expected delays and following the expected route, I had calculated that if they hadn't got the Giant Owls my PCs would have still been tight on time. I think it's got just enough to do the run with standard horses, but if the party ends up doing any amount of traveling on foot and doesn't get the owls (which to be fair, if the DM doesn't give them a hint and they don't just happen to do the right things, are entirely missable), they very well can run out of time. RHoD gives the PCs the opportunity to succeed, but if they screw up and don't figure out a way to recover, it is tight enough to punish them for it (which is sadly a rare enough balance that it deserves praise). But on the other hand, this does mean that if they're proactive in using splatbook or optimal use of abilities such as by gaining exotic mounts, riding in bags of holding, spamming Phantom Steed, discovering Traveler's Mount or Wind at Back, then yeah they can end up weeks ahead instead of merely able to recover after losing a week.

Interestingly, it also takes place in a level band where the amount of cash gained vs the times involved also manages to be pretty reasonable. You can't have a single crafter rebuild the entire party's gear, but they shouldn't be able to do that anyway, and if you get those couple of weeks ahead that's enough time to craft 7-14,000 gp of items per available crafter, vs a maximum given WBL per character of 36,000 at 9th, only 25,000 of which should have been found during the adventure, with quite likely less than half of that available in craftable cash. So with good time use, it's quite likely you've got enough time for each crafter to craft one PC's worth of items.

Maat Mons

2021-12-27, 02:00 AM

On the subject of Druid armor class, I'm not sure what you mean.

Starting at 5th level, Crocodile (core) and Cheetah (core) have AC 15, Deinonychus (core) has AC 17, and Fleshraker (MM2) has AC 20. Add on some Hide barding, and you're up to 18, 20, and 23, respectively. Bump the barding up to Chitin (Storm), a Scorpion Breastplate (RoE), or a Wildwood Breastplate (RotW), and you're up to 19, 21, and 24, respectively. Those are pretty decent numbers.

As you get on in levels, you can buy Wild armor (core) or Beastskin armor (CAdv / MIC) to eliminate the inconvenience of asking your allies to help you into your barding. But if you're going to be spending that kind of money (16,000 gp or 9,000 gp), try to score a suit of Dragoncraft Fullplate (Drac). It's non-metallic and treated as medium armor, well worth the 12,500 gp if you can find a set for sale.

If you're playing core-only, your ultimate Druid armors are Dragonhide Breastplate (700 gp) or Dragonhide Fullplate (3,300 gp), but that second one necessitates gaining proficiency with heavy armor. Then again, if you're playing core-only, there aren't that many must-have feats anyway, just Improved Initiative and Natural Spell.

RandomPeasant

2021-12-27, 08:05 AM

Sure they are- they're balanced as part of a party (insert the usual argument about standard party roles vs "tier/solo/etc" evaluation).

Are they? What is your expected "party balance point", and can you show that a party of Fighter/Rogue/Cleric/Wizard hits it while a party of Warlock/Crusader/Totemist/Binder or Druid/Dread Necromancer/Sorcerer/Archivist does not? Because my experience, and basic tests like "run characters against monsters from the MM at rates the DMG says you should" show that A) the second party is generally capable of beating the same encounters the first one can (making the Wizard's player a sucker if the DM plays to standard encounter guidelines) and B) the third party is capable of beating encounters the first two can't (making the Fighter's player a sucker if the DM plays to the limit of character performance).

And then the unlimited characters specifically invest in limited resources such as Meta-SLA feats (and even just actual SLA feats) and daily charged items, while the limited characters with some respect for the unknown start being given things like Reserve feats. Or so it goes as you progress through the edition.

I mean they can, but mostly they don't. Insofar as a Warlock is investing in limited resources, he's doing it by buying scrolls, and that's not really a daily limit because you get gold after every fight.

Except they don't. The Cleric's lower BAB and lack of bonus feats mean that outside of free Persistent Spell

And animate dead, particularly if you can convince your DM to let you buy or find powerful corpses. But saying "outside of the thing that lets them do it, they can't do it" is not really a compelling argument. DMM: Persistent on divine power alone means the Fighter is staking one HP per level and bonus feats against (nearly) full Cleric casting, which is not remotely a compelling trade, and doing that requires very little optimization.

The low AC of animals means that Wild Shape is not nearly as effective at replacing the Fighter as claimed either.

Why does that matter, exactly? The Fighter doesn't have any zone control, and he doesn't have any way of forcing enemies to attack him. His high AC just means that he can last slightly longer after the monsters that walked past him ate the rest of the party alive. The Druid also has a totally-replaceable animal companion, which more than makes up for any difference in AC (and makes him better at body-blocking).

Fizban

2021-12-27, 04:52 PM

Clearly I should not have responded to anything specific about characters themselves, since I have no interest in fighting two or more people through all the same old arguments for the Nth time (at this time, I'm sure I'll end up doing it again some months from now as usual). You may presume that at the end it all boils down to a disagreement in game expectations, which is already what the entire basic premise of the thread was in the first place. If you're assuming something you consider basic means X, I (and everyone else who would disagree with you) am probably disagreeing with your base assumption that X is basic rather than the result when X is true.

Though I will remark on how the moment things move from the nebulous DM and the most generalized statements about classes to anything remotely specific on the player side, suddenly a 100% bog standard argument about character builds appears. This is why the game can't be taken at "face" value and only be spoken of in the widest terms without a given DM and group of players, because no reading of the rules survives contact with four other people's reading of the rules.

Seward

2021-12-27, 06:32 PM

Clearly I should not have responded to anything specific about characters themselves,

Yeah, that is one way to get an argument derailed by opinions on tiers.

Honestly my take on this is I enjoy a mix over the course of a game.

I sometimes want total agency where PC's drive the plot and get annoyed if you have the kind of GM you have to keep plans secret from because he'll make them fail if he hears of it.

But I also want actions to have consequences. Which means as PCs become noticed, they should start to attract allies and enemies that will consider interfering with or killing or distracting PCs a worthwhile effort and then it is the PCs that are the target of a carefully thought out, thoroughly scouted and researched attack of the sort the OP described in a single-encounter-day.

And both as GM and player what I really enjoy is when plots and plans collide. Various NPC organizations or individuals or perhaps events (like dragon mating season or something) all have a way they might interact without PCs, then you toss PCs in the middle and see what happens. That leads to some pretty fun noncombat and combat interactions and tends to showcase more types of characters, although you are a bit mean if you see your party is mostly uninterested in a type of encounter (eg, romance subplots) and you force it on them.

Note that a party being unsuited for a challenge can be a lot of fun if the price of failure doesn't end the campaign. But it is a pretty rare campaign I've played in that wasn't designed as a one-off where PCs are free to act in the world as they choose without bumping into somebody else executing their own plan, and if PCs have any success, they attract attention, good and bad.

It isn't so much time limits that drive reactive encounters as consequences, in my experience. Or sometimes bad luck. You are riding down the road and trigger the ambush intended for the local lord because you guys are obviously rich and maybe the ambushers are idiots, or maybe all humanoids look alike to them. That sort of thing can be fun if PCs start to think everything is about them, especially if they never learn it was an accident and posit lizardfolk assassins are now working with their enemies, instead of just trying to stop the local Baron from draining the swamp.

Gnaeus

2021-12-28, 07:41 PM

On the subject of Druid armor class, I'm not sure what you mean.
.

What he means is that he is flat wrong and he doesn't want to have rules cited at him again. You are spot on, and to the degree that you are wrong, it is only in so far as that you understated the defensive advantages of the druid, once you factor in mid duration buffs like barkskin, resist energy, blindsight, neutralize poison and the like, or the significant advantages item crafting gives in any campaign in which downtime is allowed pretty much at all.

Fizban

2021-12-28, 10:08 PM

What he means is that he is flat wrong and he doesn't want to have rules cited at him again. You are spot on, and to the degree that you are wrong, it is only in so far as that you understated the defensive advantages of the druid, once you factor in mid duration buffs like barkskin, resist energy, blindsight, neutralize poison and the like, or the significant advantages item crafting gives in any campaign in which downtime is allowed pretty much at all.
No, what I mean is what I said, that I don't find the idea of spending a weekend being ganged up on and derailing a thread in order to argue what constitutes "basic optimization"/normal use/etc of the swingiest class in the game, and the basic definition of the premise "unlimited use," to be a fun use of my time. I disengaged as strongly as I could once I realized the path my response started*, and if you persist in taunting? Flaming? Bringing up baggage from other threads? at me, I will report you as is appropriate.

*My main goals were pointing out that the standard party has both limited and unlimited use characters, which is more evidence that the game clearly does not expect such a strict number of encounters per day (because it wants to have a range including all points on the curve and both types of characters to matter), and to mention that RHoD's travel times were surprisingly well calibrated IIRC.

To that end, I will respond to these points-

Are they? What is your expected "party balance point", and can you show that a party of Fighter/Rogue/Cleric/Wizard hits it while a party of Warlock/Crusader/Totemist/Binder or Druid/Dread Necromancer/Sorcerer/Archivist does not?
Sure. The expected party balance point is the standard party, which as you are aware is Cleric/Fighter/Rogue/Wizard, spelled out directly in PHB2 (or the 3.0 Starter Kit). The first party doesn't have the status removal the game expects, so If I run something with lots of that they're going to have a problem (and there are lots of standard monsters with those abilities). The second party has some of it from the Druid and is probably expecting to cover the Trapfinding role with the Archivist's use of the Find Traps spell, but if I run something with lots of traps, they'll have a problem unless that's all they're preparing (even if they set off a deadly room trap with a summoned animal, that might very well leave them unable to access that room- hope it had nothing critical inside!). Both can be fairly easily accounted for as long as I wasn't planning on running a module that they really don't match up with, but if the foes/dungeons/etc were already set I would tell them what they're missing. But I also find it highly unlikely a group I managed to put together would actually form either of those polarized parties without me knowing beforehand.

The question of limited/unlimited is secondary in this instance, however the first party will be severely lacking in crowd control/magical offense (I know quite well how limited the Totemist and Binder really are), needing to hope that when each character brings to bear what they have simultaneously it all works against whatever they're fighting and rely more heavily on tanking and chokepoints to limit groups of foes- I would consider this party underpowered until seeing proof otherwise (though the Warlock and Crusader put them much ahead of a doomed "generalist" party I once evaluated). The second party is most likely overpowered, because they have four primary casters, giving them double the focus-fire ability and double the staying power the game normally expects from those characters. This means that yes, an all-caster party can fight more of the normal monsters per day than the standard party, because they're probably still using a lower overall percentage of resources per encounter thanks to that doubling of their daily resources. They can use 3-4 spells per encounter for every 2 the standard party might use, and that's the big question.

But of course, the efficacy of those characters depends entirely on how they're used and allowed to be used. Remember that you asked for my expected balance point, and since any commentary will turn into an argument I won't go further into specifics on why (and while you say you've run tests and have experience, that's not any stronger than my own). This should make it pretty clear we work from different starting points.

Because my experience, and basic tests like "run characters against monsters from the MM at rates the DMG says you should" show that A) the second [unlimited] party is generally capable of beating the same encounters the first [standard] one can (making the Wizard's player a sucker if the DM plays to standard encounter guidelines) and B) the third party is capable of beating encounters the first two can't (making the Fighter's player a sucker if the DM plays to the limit of character performance).
You'll need to define what "rates the DMG says you should" means, and specify which MM, and what levels, and ideally which monsters, and what character builds, and you get the idea, and then we could argue about all of those, but I'd rather not (and believe me I've cut dozens of sentences by now trying to avoid it). Instead let's talk about player choice and DM response.

So, the standard party wizard is a sucker because a different party could do unlimited daily encounters, even though they're still able to do all their wizard things and the game does not demand they fight unlimited encounters? And the standard party fighter is a sucker because the game isn't balanced for all-caster parties? The answer should be that no one is a sucker, because everyone is playing something they're interested in as part of a group and gameplay naturally gravitates towards whatever suits their characters, with a DM to make sure there's always an appropriate amount of risk. If you make someone who wants to play a Wizard play a Warlock because the rest of the group wants to have infinite daily encounters then sure, sure they're a sucker: because by definition they got suckered into playing something they didn't want to, same if you make someone play Druid instead of Fighter to match the rest of the group, etc.

You're making a false dichotomy of "play to standard encounter guidelines" vs "play to the limit of character performance." The DM is supposed to do both as necessary, and the players are supposed to play what they want, while also being reasonable about filling out enough party roles and matching the rest of the group that the DM can run the game they want and they can all play together. The very phrasing of "X player is a sucker" is how you know something is wrong with this hypothetical premise.

The standard party contains all roles and a mix of limited and unlimited characters. It's supposed to be average, no crippling weaknesses, no unstoppable advantages, tries to conserve resources but can unload them when necessary. The standard is the standard. Whether or not some polarized party can handle the "same" challenges doesn't even really matter, because they shouldn't be fighting the same challenges. The polarized party can't unfairly be dumped into something the DM knows they can't handle, nor can the DM simply let them walk over everything by using stuff they're extra effective against. The polarized party inherently demands that the DM adjust the game to fit them, moreso than the standard party, so is it any wonder that they will perform better?

You can dump a polarized party into a status-quo, even published, scenario, and say that you're not adjusting anything to match them, but going full-status quo voids the warranty just as much as the polarized party did. If you pick a module as proof that X works just fine, and I pick one that proves it doesn't, who's right? The game never expects, and does in fact warn multiple times all over the place, that if you mess with party composition and refuse to adjust things to match the PCs then you can (and most likely will) have some sort of problem. Because when the people playing the game abdicate their responsibility to the game, there's nothing to hold the rules together. It becomes just as broken and buggy as an unpatched video game with dozens of unpatched dlc addons, because that's exactly what it is at that point. So either the party is getting encounters that suit them whether they're polarized or standard so it doesn't matter what they are, or they're getting status quo, and in the latter case it's better to not be polarized and risk an impossible task.

I mean they can, but mostly they don't. Insofar as a Warlock is investing in limited resources, he's doing it by buying scrolls, and that's not really a daily limit because you get gold after every fight.
Speak for yourself? I know I look at meta-SLAs and charged items, I remember one particular thread where a poster complained about their DM banning Maximize-SLA (thus showing quite obviously that they want it), and people bring up Mortalbane all the time, so clearly my experience shows otherwise. So like all the other detailed points, if we disagree on basic premises. . .

RandomPeasant

2021-12-29, 11:40 AM

What he means is that he is flat wrong and he doesn't want to have rules cited at him again.

My experience of Fizban is that he ranges more into "not even wrong" territory, where he has defined his position around a set of axioms where the game works "if played as the designers intended" and therefore anything that makes it not work is not intended and can therefore be ignored.

No, what I mean is what I said, that I don't find the idea of spending a weekend being ganged up on and derailing a thread in order to argue what constitutes "basic optimization"/normal use/etc of the swingiest class in the game, and the basic definition of the premise "unlimited use," to be a fun use of my time.

This is not an airport, you don't have to announce your departure. If you're done with a conversation, stop then, not after a "I know you're wrong but it's not worth my time to tell you why" post.

The first party doesn't have the status removal the game expects

Sure they do. The Warlock gets Deceive Item at 4th, letting him semi-reliably use scrolls and (Eternal) wands for status restoration. The Binder gets summon monster starting at 12th, which provides a passable range of utility. I think there's some relevant stuff in Incarnum, but honestly I never really cared about Magic of Blue, so I couldn't tell you.

The second party has some of it from the Druid and is probably expecting to cover the Trapfinding role with the Archivist's use of the Find Traps spell, but if I run something with lots of traps, they'll have a problem unless that's all they're preparing (even if they set off a deadly room trap with a summoned animal, that might very well leave them unable to access that room- hope it had nothing critical inside!).

It'd be easy enough to stick an Artificer or Beguiler in there. I think there's even a Domain that gives you Trapfinding.

I would consider this party underpowered until seeing proof otherwise

Part of what I was asking you was to provide a context in which that "proof" could be provided. Simply saying "I think X unless you prove Y" provides no useful avenue for further discussion.

The second party is most likely overpowered, because they have four primary casters, giving them double the focus-fire ability and double the staying power the game normally expects from those characters.

Isn't that a concession that limited-resource and unlimited-resource characters aren't balanced? If simply having double the pool of limited resources makes you overpowered, then it's hard to see what the nominal justification for carrying an Incarnate or Scout around is.

So, the standard party wizard is a sucker because a different party could do unlimited daily encounters, even though they're still able to do all their wizard things and the game does not demand they fight unlimited encounters?

You're a sucker if you play a slot machine, because you'll lose more than you win. Doesn't mean you won't have fun doing it. The point is that, from a game theory perspective, playing characters without resource limits is a dominant strategy against standard (e.g. monsters from the MM at EL==APL) challenges.

same if you make someone play Druid instead of Fighter to match the rest of the group, etc.

I would disagree with that pretty strongly. Just as it is appropriate to ban Dragonmarked characters in a Forgotten Realms campaign because they're not appropriate, it is entirely reasonable to tell someone that their sword and board Fighter is a bad fit for a party of a Wizard, a Dread Necromancer, and a Cleric and they should at least play a Warblade. You're not forcing them to game with you, letting them play a character that isn't appropriate for the campaign just means everyone has less fun.

The DM is supposed to do both as necessary

And we're supposed to be talking about power levels. If the only paradigm you'll accept is "rubber-band challenges to the party as it exists", of course you'll discover that the game is balanced. But you'll "discover" that in the same way you discover that controlling for rainfall makes it seem like storms don't cause puddles.

Darg

2021-12-29, 01:03 PM

I would disagree with that pretty strongly. Just as it is appropriate to ban Dragonmarked characters in a Forgotten Realms campaign because they're not appropriate, it is entirely reasonable to tell someone that their sword and board Fighter is a bad fit for a party of a Wizard, a Dread Necromancer, and a Cleric and they should at least play a Warblade. You're not forcing them to game with you, letting them play a character that isn't appropriate for the campaign just means everyone has less fun.

A fighter is perfectly viable in such a party. The game was designed around expenditure of daily resources to improve party members. A polymorph on a fighter is going to do a lot more than on that wizard and is going to perform much better than the animated undead the dread necromancer is controlling. The only reason such a party would outshine the fighter is if you used free persistent spell shenanigans and and didn't challenge the party to expend an appropriate amount of resources on a regular basis.

RandomPeasant

2021-12-29, 01:07 PM

Darg

2021-12-29, 01:34 PM

Once again "this is true except for the thing that makes it false" is not the compelling argument you seem to believe it to be. Furthermore, I am deeply skeptical that there is any consistent power level standard by which a use of polymorph that puts a Fighter on par with a full caster is legitimate, but DMM: Persistent qualifies as "shenanigans".

Not every character is appropriate for every party. That's fine. I don't roll up to every table assuming I can play my crazy Wizard/Incantatrix build with a list of buffs longer than my arm. The entitlement Fighter fans feel in insisting that their character must be allowed in every game is bewildering.

DMM persistent spell isn't all that powerful. Baseline you aren't going to get more than 1-3 a day by level 20. It's abusing misreadings of items like nightsticks that cause it to become "shenanigans."

PRCs as is aren't even RAW according to the DMG. Your incantatrix should be adjusted to the campaign. If that means nerfing it to be of an appropriate level for the player and the campaign it should be done. You should also be burning through an appropriate amount of resources for the challenges you face. Which means the DM will probably be throwing a lot of dispels at you.

I'm not saying that a fighter has to be allowed to participate in such a party, just that they aren't as weak of an option to include in such a party as you have made them out to be. If you compare the weaknesses of the fighter and require the warblade/crusader/swordsage to be as unsupported by the party and DM as your hypothetical implies, they are going to be just as unusable and not fun as the fighter.

RandomPeasant

2021-12-29, 01:50 PM

DMM persistent spell isn't all that powerful. Baseline you aren't going to get more than 1-3 a day by level 20. It's abusing misreadings of items like nightsticks that cause it to become "shenanigans."

Setting aside the fact that "RAW says something that makes me wrong" does not qualify as a "misreading" by most standards, a couple of buffs is all the Cleric really needs to out-compete the Fighter as a polymorph target. divine power already puts the Fighter on pretty thin ground, and there are plenty of buffs that naturally last all day.

You should also be burning through an appropriate amount of resources for the challenges you face. Which means the DM will probably be throwing a lot of dispels at you.

This argument was bad when Fizban made it, and it wasn't because I have something against him. Arguing that challenges should be tuned to the party may be valid DMing advice, but in the context of a balance discussion it serves to make it impossible to draw meaningful conclusions.

I'm not saying that a fighter has to be allowed to participate in such a party, just that they aren't as weak of an option to include in such a party as you have made them out to be.

Of course not. They're much weaker. At least the Warblade can do something to support the rest of the party (in white raven tactics). The Fighter just sits there demanding buffs, meaning that his "contribution" is that the Cleric sees less of the future and the Wizard summons less angels. That's what he brings to the table.

Darg

2021-12-29, 02:49 PM

Setting aside the fact that "RAW says something that makes me wrong" does not qualify as a "misreading" by most standards, a couple of buffs is all the Cleric really needs to out-compete the Fighter as a polymorph target. divine power already puts the Fighter on pretty thin ground, and there are plenty of buffs that naturally last all day.

Effects that do the same thing don't stack with themselves and it increases your capacity, not increases the number of times you can use the ability the moment you get it as determined by the "per day" clause. Reading it another way is misreading it as outlined by the text of the rules. A chameleon picking the extra turning feat isn't going to benefit from the feat twice nor get immediate extra uses that day.

A cleric with divine power, divine favor, and righteous might might be a power house, but they don't have the feats the fighter has, nor the lesser vulnerability to dispels. All day spells are generally not as strong as round/level spells and can be cast on others most of the time.

This argument was bad when Fizban made it, and it wasn't because I have something against him. Arguing that challenges should be tuned to the party may be valid DMing advice, but in the context of a balance discussion it serves to make it impossible to draw meaningful conclusions.

Arguing that comparisons should be done within the confines of the system instead of an abstract theoretical optimal environment is a bad argument? The DMG tells you to balance the rewards and challenge to the party composition and other factors. It's not impossible to draw meaningful conclusions. It's just harder to have such a dramatic difference in ability to point out flaws when flaws are covered by the intended use of the system.

Of course not. They're much weaker. At least the Warblade can do something to support the rest of the party (in white raven tactics). The Fighter just sits there demanding buffs, meaning that his "contribution" is that the Cleric sees less of the future and the Wizard summons less angels. That's what he brings to the table.

So the warblade's contribution is hugging the casters and increasing their action economy? Thank you for proving my point.

RandomPeasant

2021-12-29, 04:44 PM

Effects that do the same thing don't stack with themselves and it increases your capacity, not increases the number of times you can use the ability the moment you get it as determined by the "per day" clause.

Bonuses don't stack with each-other. "You have more uses of this ability" is not a bonus, and therefore "stacks" in much the same way that multiple castings of summon monster produce multiple monsters or multiple fireballs stack their damage.

A chameleon picking the extra turning feat isn't going to benefit from the feat twice nor get immediate extra uses that day.

Do you have a rules citation to that effect? Because when you gain e.g. an increased strength score, that applies immediately. Where does it say that a bonus feat or a Nightstick does not?

A cleric with divine power, divine favor, and righteous might might be a power house, but they don't have the feats the fighter has, nor the lesser vulnerability to dispels. All day spells are generally not as strong as round/level spells and can be cast on others most of the time.

And the Fighter doesn't have the Cleric's other twenty spell slots. Or army of undead. Or the ability to go in on turning if that happens to be what he wants. And, yes, all day spells can be cast on other people. But the Fighter doesn't get any spells, so having him instead of a Cleric means you get less all-day buffs.

Arguing that comparisons should be done within the confines of the system instead of an abstract theoretical optimal environment is a bad argument?

No, arguing that you should control for the effect you're trying to study is a bad argument. If you want to make an argument like "in practice, Wizards don't seem very powerful because they mostly use support spells" that would be a reasonable position to argue for. But saying "Wizards aren't very powerful because Wizards face harder challenges", you have missed the entire point.

sreservoir

2021-12-29, 04:59 PM

Bonuses don't stack with each-other. "You have more uses of this ability" is not a bonus, and therefore "stacks" in much the same way that multiple castings of summon monster produce multiple monsters or multiple fireballs stack their damage.

Effects that do the same thing don't stack with themselves and it increases your capacity, not increases the number of times you can use the ability the moment you get it as determined by the "per day" clause. Reading it another way is misreading it as outlined by the text of the rules. A chameleon picking the extra turning feat isn't going to benefit from the feat twice nor get immediate extra uses that day.

Hold up, Extra Turning (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#extraTurning)'s benefits explicitly stack.

RandomPeasant

2021-12-29, 05:36 PM

Hold up, Extra Turning (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#extraTurning)'s benefits explicitly stack.

That's true, but Darg's original point was about Nightsticks, so it's not really relevant. Unless he wants to advance the position that because Extra Turning has that language, anything else that grants turn attempts does not stack unless it also has that language. I find that somewhat dubious, as it's easy to get into states where the rules are simply not internally consistent following that type of logic (e.g. the language around pre-reqs in Fighter, Monk, and Rogue bonus feats).

Quertus

2021-12-30, 06:49 AM

I’m really not sure how one could make a meaningful argument about balance if you change the target. It’d be like arguing between a pound of feathers and a ton of bricks, and saying that, because the bricks are lifted by Superman, while the feathers are lifted by a baby, the feathers are heavier.

Now, you could argue about how easy or hard the *game* becomes, if the game allows you to take Superman if you choose the bricks, but requires you to take the baby if you choose the feathers.

But the game doesn’t even have such hard, fast rules, so at best, you can talk about how bad *you* are at balancing the game.

All that said, IMO, the fact that there are different schedules of powers means that, yes, the 5-encounter-day model is desirable. As is the 15 minute adventuring day. As is the 50 encounter slog. It’s that variety that really allows you to demonstrate the full range of your character.

Fizban

2022-01-03, 01:13 AM

My experience of Fizban is that he ranges more into "not even wrong" territory, where he has defined his position around a set of axioms where the game works "if played as the designers intended" and therefore anything that makes it not work is not intended and can therefore be ignored.
Link to forum rules (https://forums.giantitp.com/announcement.php?f=59&a=1). I actually added the response to you because upon a second look it seemed like we could continue engaging on about half of your post, though you have also continued to disregard half of mine, but I suppose that's only fair.

This is not an airport, you don't have to announce your departure. If you're done with a conversation, stop then, not after a "I know you're wrong but it's not worth my time to tell you why" post.
And yet, if I suddenly vanished without a word, people would start saying I left because I "know I'm wrong" or somesuch (I know this because I've been around the block before). Text is not visual, people can't see you intentionally dropping an argument and slamming the door on your way out unless you tell them you are. Which of course usually invites them to continue taunting, and is why I'll take a break from the thread for a few days at least. I'm pretty sure I'm also allowed to object if someone is putting words in my mouth, and remind them that there are forum rules if they're harassing me, see previous link.

Sure they do. The Warlock gets Deceive Item at 4th, letting him semi-reliably use scrolls and (Eternal) wands for status restoration. The Binder gets summon monster starting at 12th, which provides a passable range of utility. I think there's some relevant stuff in Incarnum, but honestly I never really cared about Magic of Blue, so I couldn't tell you.
I do find it remarkable how strongly you're leaning on magic items and web article content as proof of how the classes themselves and underlying game expectations work. Usually people will argue the other direction that magic items and ultra obscure content don't magically fix a broken class.

It'd be easy enough to stick an Artificer or Beguiler in there. I think there's even a Domain that gives you Trapfinding.
Which has nothing to do with giving a response to the party you selected. There is a domain that gives Trapfinding though- in one of those obscure online bits.

Part of what I was asking you was to provide a context in which that "proof" could be provided. Simply saying "I think X unless you prove Y" provides no useful avenue for further discussion.
I think you thought there was more in your question than there was. You asked about my "expected party balance point," and I gave it.

You can't bait me into giving a context that can be turned around to invalidate the standard party because it turns out I define my context by the standard party. If the game makes sense with my context and not with yours, which makes more sense overall? (Obligatory reminder that games do not have to make sense.)

I think what you mean by "context" is that you wanted me to "prove that X or Y does not" meet my balance point, so that you could char-op your way out of that "context" and "prove" that it does. But since I'm arguing from the standard party viewpoint, I see the burden of proof being on you. I said that the unlimited use classes are balanced as part of a party, so you need to prove that they aren't.

There's room for some misunderstanding here, since I meant as part of a mixed limited/unlimited party, but you might not have noticed this and assumed I meant the opposite. In the very last sentence of what I quoted from you, you said you need to tune things to require both limited and unlimited resources in the party, which is the same thing I'm saying (and I think should have been obvious based on my suggestion of flipping the role/resource ties and further statements)- so the initial blame could be on me for misreading your post in the first place. But then later you're saying that X player is a sucker for playing the wrong class, which goes against your earlier statement that you need to tune for both.

So, who's arguing for what here?

Isn't that a concession that limited-resource and unlimited-resource characters aren't balanced? If simply having double the pool of limited resources makes you overpowered, then it's hard to see what the nominal justification for carrying an Incarnate or Scout around is.
Because it makes you overpowered right up until it doesn't, breaking game expectations in both predictable and unpredictable ways. Because some people don't want to play limited resource characters. Because there is supposed to be more to the game than combat power. Also you're pulling in yet more classes you didn't mention before- it's clear you're counting everything as equivalent, when they aren't. I would say there is in fact little justification for carrying an Incarnate around as written, because the class is broken/underpowered and needs fixing, but you'd carry a Scout around for the same reason you'd bring a Rogue (as long as the game isn't expecting full attack-sneak attacks).

I also pretty explicitly said that the limited/unlimited portion was a secondary concern in my evaluation of of those parties, which you seem to have ignored. And I also explicitly said all of that evaluation was extremely subject to further assumptions, to which you immediately revealed yours: You think that Decieve Item+scrolls will do the job and that the Binder has automatic access to an obscure web article vestige. So what about games where you can't just buy whatever scrolls you want whenever you want, or there are so many statuses you can't afford it, or the one person who can activate them is now petrified/etc, or where the DM doesn't allow "web articles"?

You asked for my evaluation, and it seems you thought to bait me into giving some context that you could char-op your way out of, without acknowledging that in my game, I am the one who determines what is available. And the same goes for anyone else. If you want to claim that your stance is widely applicable, you need to lower your expectations so that they can actually apply widely to all games, not just your own. And once those expectations are lowered, a lot of things work far more "as intended."

If you want to go back and forth on X complication Y optimized response haha Z game is no longer "normal," that would be its own thread, but we don't agree on normal so it's not going to be productive either.

You're a sucker if you play a slot machine, because you'll lose more than you win. Doesn't mean you won't have fun doing it. The point is that, from a game theory perspective, playing characters without resource limits is a dominant strategy against standard (e.g. monsters from the MM at EL==APL) challenges.
I tend to tune out once people start trying to talk about game theory because it's usually less applicable than they think it is. Just reading the first sentences of the wikipedia page as a refresher finds us talking about "rational agents" when as you've just acknowledged no one in the game is perfectly rational, and "zero-sum games." DnD is not a zero-sum game, nor is it ruled by "rational" decisions, so game theory perspective has no place aside from trying to sound important.

Alternatively, it just sounds like you're trying to back-walk out of calling people "suckers" for not playing what you think is the appropriate "dominant strategy." Is fun the important part and thus "game theory" doesn't matter, or is the "dominant strategy" the important part?

When I speak of what classes I expect players to/should choose, it's not because X is going to win at DnD, it's because Y's presence puts pressures on player choice. X isn't inherently bad because it's underpowered, but Y can be inherently bad because it's overpowered and makes anyone who doesn't want to use Y feel bad for using X. And before you ask "what about the person who wants to use Y feeling bad because the X user is dragging them down"- well that's what happens if you tie your expectations to the higher end of a game that is supposed to have a huge range. There are things I do consider too underpowered- for example I've said that Incarnate and Binder are underpowered and if someone wanted to play one while refusing my buffs to get them to match the rest of the party, they would not be allowed. But generally people are far more accepting of buffs than nerfs, so it's easy to accept all inherently underpowered material and buff as necessary than it is to set expectations far higher and then tell people that a bunch of the game is just too weak.

I would disagree with that pretty strongly. Just as it is appropriate to ban Dragonmarked characters in a Forgotten Realms campaign because they're not appropriate, it is entirely reasonable to tell someone that their sword and board Fighter is a bad fit for a party of a Wizard, a Dread Necromancer, and a Cleric and they should at least play a Warblade. You're not forcing them to game with you, letting them play a character that isn't appropriate for the campaign just means everyone has less fun.
You disagree with something I didn't say. I said forcing someone to play a Druid is wrong, not that rejecting a character which won't fit in the game is wrong. And I'm pretty sure I made it explicit in one of those posts that rejecting characters in either direction was fully appropriate as the purview of the DM for making sure the game will work/be fun/etc.

You didn't say that you would force someone to play a character they didn't want either of course, but by drawing up polarized parties and calling someone a sucker for wanting to play X you implied a focus on situations tailored for polarized parties, and if I assume the DM is both dictating a nonstandard encounter dynamic and rejecting characters that don't match it, that leaves no room for the would-be "sucker" to negotiate. Similarly, the word sucker implies that this person is not going to walk away, else they would not be suckered.

And we're supposed to be talking about power levels. If the only paradigm you'll accept is "rubber-band challenges to the party as it exists", of course you'll discover that the game is balanced. But you'll "discover" that in the same way you discover that controlling for rainfall makes it seem like storms don't cause puddles.
(Actually we're supposed to be talking about encounter rate models.) The same way that a stance of "optimize the game until whatever I want to work works and decide anything that breaks was inherently unbalanced" will always find that the game is inherently unbalanced.

The difference is I've chosen to calibrate my game expectations to what the designers intended (and tailoring encounters is set for as the default in the DMG rather than status-quo only), and you categorically reject that. Yeah, it turns out it's pretty easy for me to claim the game works when I want it to work and set my expectations at a point where it does work, rather than making up a new set of expectations and then complaining when they don't match.

If you have a game with the build power levels and playstyle it originally expected (which as evidenced by Enemies and Allies is the sort of thing most char-op forumites can't stomach, but also includes an amount of basic tactics that many seem unaware of or can't fathom), then the monsters work mostly as written. If you have a nonstandard party or nonstandard monsters, you need to be ready to adjust as needed. This should not be a radical position.

CopperElfCleric

2022-01-03, 01:21 AM

3.5 has better mechanics and skill driven encounters. 5ED is lame in many ways compared to 3.5

CopperElfCleric

2022-01-03, 01:23 AM

Plus... 5Ed lore doesn't jive with 3.5ED lore.

Scots Dragon

2022-01-03, 04:57 AM

Plus... 5Ed lore doesn't jive with 3.5ED lore.

To say the least. The lore discrepancies are my own main reason for sticking with earlier editions.

Sure the lore changed in bits and pieces over the years, but 5E has entire bits of 4E stuck to it, and that one basically decided that its idea of a lore update was 'let's explode every setting we update'.

This is in the wrong thread, though.

RandomPeasant

2022-01-03, 07:21 AM

And yet, if I suddenly vanished without a word, people would start saying I left because I "know I'm wrong"

I find very little difference between being unwilling to defend your position and admitting that you're wrong.

I do find it remarkable how strongly you're leaning on magic items and web article content as proof of how the classes themselves and underlying game expectations work. Usually people will argue the other direction that magic items and ultra obscure content don't magically fix a broken class.

You find it remarkable that I'm suggesting that the class with two separate class features dedicated to using magic items would use magic items? Do you think the expected play pattern for the Warlock is to pretend that Deceive Item and Imbue Item don't exist? I'll grant that the web enhancement content is somewhat obscure, but I cite it mostly because I'm too lazy to dig through the book vestiges to figure out which ones provide answers (and some do provide at least a little, like Naberius).

Which has nothing to do with giving a response to the party you selected. There is a domain that gives Trapfinding though- in one of those obscure online bits.

Anyone can find an encounter that counters some particular fixed party. Saying "ah ha, you forgot Trapfinding" is not a good argument when you can present a party that hits the exact same target which does have Trapfinding.

I said that the unlimited use classes are balanced as part of a party, so you need to prove that they aren't.

How am I supposed to do that when you consider providing a framework in which balance claims can be proven to be "baiting you"? What is it that I'm supposed to engage with when you've defined your position as "anything that would prove I'm wrong is charop-ing your way out of the problem"?

Because some people don't want to play limited resource characters.

Some people don't want to play 12th level characters. Doesn't mean CR 12 monsters need to be balanced against 3rd level PCs. The game needs to be balanced for the things that are in it. If you want those things to be both unlimited-resource and limited-resource characters, you need to balance it for both of them. Simply asserting that people like one or the other doesn't fix anything.

I would say there is in fact little justification for carrying an Incarnate around as written

And yet you object to me calling people who carry around other classes that are underpowered "suckers". It's becoming increasingly unclear to me what it is you're defending, and your refusal to explicitly describe what you're defending in terms that can be engaged with doesn't help.

So what about games where you can't just buy whatever scrolls you want whenever you want, or there are so many statuses you can't afford it, or the one person who can activate them is now petrified/etc, or where the DM doesn't allow "web articles"?

What about games where the DM introduces a Healing Touch invocation or a Zalgatrax, Voice of Resurgence vestige that solve those problems? If you want to specify a particular set of rules, you can do that. But as I've said before, moving the target until you're right is not a persuasive argument.

And once those expectations are lowered, a lot of things work far more "as intended."

What you are describing is the Oberoni Fallacy.

Alternatively, it just sounds like you're trying to back-walk out of calling people "suckers" for not playing what you think is the appropriate "dominant strategy." Is fun the important part and thus "game theory" doesn't matter, or is the "dominant strategy" the important part?

The point is that "but what if the other thing is fun" is not a valid objection to a balance argument. Players should not need to choose between mechanically effective options and options they enjoy, and you pivoting to "fun" is a concession of the point at hand.

implied a focus on situations tailored for polarized parties

I think I was pretty explicit in rejecting your attempt to assume that things would be "tailored" at all. You can try to define away the problem all you want, but all that does is make me think you understand that your claim that there isn't a problem is entirely incorrect.