Combat sucks... for the DM. Tips to make it less so?

[Schwann145]

I don't think, in my heart of hearts, that anyone actually wants to run the "5 minute adventuring day" game.
I think what actually happens is that the DM has a *lot* on their plate just in running the game, and building out multiple combat encounters with multiple enemies in each one... ends up being the straw that broke the camel's back of game prep.
Even DMs who do their DMing for a living seem to fall into this trap! (Critical Role, Dimension 20, etc)

Any experienced DM will tell you that the job is about 20% planning and 80% pulling stuff out of your butt on the fly, because you can never be truly prepared for what players will do.
And pulling a combat encounter out of your butt is even worse than planning one, and probably less likely to be appropriately built out.

So the question is what tips are there for making encounter design, whether planned or not, easier and less of a chore for the DM so that class resources are used appropriately throughout a day rather than dumped on the 1 or 2 poor enemy encounters that make up the, easier but worse, 5 minute day?

[Psyren]

One of the easiest solutions to the 5-minute day problem is to remember that one combat per session doesn't have to mean one combat per day. Simply have a narrative reason the players can't go to bed after every fight, and make sure they're keeping track of their resources. As you get them back into the habit of needing to spread their resources across multiple encounters in a given day, they will naturally stop nova-ing the first fight with their biggest guns as much.

[greenstone]

I have a bunch of common monsters handwriten on 100×150mm index cards. When an on-the-fly combat happens, I can pull out the cards and lay them flat on my desk, instead of having to flip between pages in a book.

It helps that my game (Princes of the Apocalypse) only has a small number of possibly-encountered monsters. A lot of cultists and elementals, a lot of beasts, but few of the other types of monsters.

[Sorinth]

As mentioned every session doesn't have to be a day, and similarly you don't have to complete the dungeon within a single session.

I would also point out Gritty Realism is simply misnamed, it would help a lot of the 5-min days but people are turned away because of the name the name.

[stoutstien]

First suggestion is to breakaway the concept that session=adventuring day. If you only have the time and capacity to handle one major encounter a session then that's ok. All you have to do is match the pacing up.

Second suggestion is if you are new to newish then you will need more material prepared. Probably closer to 90-95%. As you get into a groove you will naturally find your personal sweet spot. Take advantage of pregen material to take the load off. Yes that means the game will be more structured and the players will need to adjust but if they have any idea of the work load involved they won't complain.

Don't think you need to drain resources to maintain tension. All you need is to provide the opportunity for them to expend them. That doesn't always mean combat.

[Kane0]

So the question is what tips are there for making encounter design, whether planned or not, easier and less of a chore for the DM so that class resources are used appropriately throughout a day rather than dumped on the 1 or 2 poor enemy encounters that make up the, easier but worse, 5 minute day?

Have one or more encounters that could feasibly work in most circumstances up your sleeve ready to deploy. That way even if you're improvising you don't have to rely entirely on random encounters or picking something on the fly.

Use smaller, spaced out encounters that aren't necessarily creatures to fight but still might require party resources to deal with. Short range teleporters that are activated by expending spell slots for example.

Traps that are designed to inconvenience and hinder the party rather than kill them.

Compress your encounters to fit more into your gametime. Faster rounds, quick-and-dirty decisions, keep a fast pace so you aren't stuck with one combat taking an hour and only getting one in on game night.

Reasons why the party can't rest whenever and wherever they want without consequence.

Don't just give the party a rest at the end of every session the same way you wouldn't give them a level up at the end of every session.

Consider the DMG variant rules for Gritty Realism, Slow Natural Healing and Healer's Kit Dependency. You can tailor these to suit your table, and even incorporate downtime or a 'safe haven' requirement into it.

[Bovine Colonel]

I don't think, in my heart of hearts, that anyone actually wants to run the "5 minute adventuring day" game.

This isn't directly what you're asking for, but I'll disagree with this one as a narrativist DM. I don't prefer 5 minute adventuring days, but I strongly dislike filler encounters that serve no purpose except to drain PC resources. As a player they feel like a waste of time, so as a DM I'd rather allow 5 minute adventuring days than subject my players to encounters that feel unnecessary. I think this is the idea behind Critical Role/Dimension 20's encounters as well: sometimes there's really no narrative reason for a multi-encounter adventuring day.

Every encounter should contribute somehow to the wider story. One way to do that is to create consequences down the road depending on how the encounter plays out. That has to go beyond "win by killing all the enemies"/"lose by TPKing", since the players already know they're expected to win nearly every encounter. Consequences should come from some other victory or defeat condition: maybe the guards sound the alarm because the PCs missed too many attacks, or an allied NPC is killed in combat, or a plague cult unleashes their virus because the Rogue chose to fight the cult's minions rather than making a beeline for the vials in which the virus is stored.

Alternatively, the PCs' actions are the direct cause of the encounter. Maybe the players chose a specific time and place to intercept a group of enemies, or they've reached the villain's inner sanctum, in which case they've already met their win condition by making sure the encounter happens so now they just need to win the fight. Or maybe they committed some crimes and now law enforcement is hunting them down.

Finally, it's possible for an encounter to contribute to the story by revealing some aspect of the setting rather than creating immediate consequences for the PCs to deal with. One giant spider fight in a dungeon tells the players something about the location, but going through Environment: Underdark's Greatest Hits to meet an encounters-per-day quota gets old really quickly. Or maybe the encounter introduces a completely new enemy faction, so now the players know they're competing with the Red Wizards of Thay or whoever else to achieve some objective.

--

As for your actual question, I like having a couple of premade enemies and assigning them to premade encounters for each enemy faction, as well as for whatever location I expect the PCs to explore. A minor tyrant's castle might have one patrol encounter (which can be copypasted as necessary) consisting of 2 guards and a bandit reskinned as a crossbowman, one main gate encounter with a bunch of bandits led by a bandit captain, the tyrant's second in command (maybe a knight or priest) plus a small retinue, and the tyrant (a custom NPC) with guards and caster support.

If the PCs assault the main gate they're at first opposed by the main gate encounter, but soon the patrols will join the fray. If they sneak their way in they could get all the way to the throne room undetected, but if a patrol sounds the alarm the second-in-command will gather all the other patrols and confront the PCs with a huge numbers advantage. Dividing the tyrant's forces into piecemeal groups gives enough flexibility to account for whatever the PCs do: maybe they use the hidden entrance but then go in guns blazing, so they end up fighting the patrols one by one as the defenders scramble to figure out where the intruders are. Or maybe they somehow convince the second-in-command to betray the tyrant, which opens a direct path to the boss fight.

[Kurt Kurageous]

I've posted this before.

Use Excel to create and print out several hundred (I think I get four) prerolled d20 results on one sheet of paper.

This makes it much easier and faster to resolve the monsters turn, aka the waiting around to die phase of combat. Multiattacks? Advantage? Disadvantage? As easy as reading the numbers off. Circle ADV/DIS pairs, checkmark hits/fails, and then apply to the table.

It is massively helpful when resolving AoE saves on multiple monsters, and rapidly assigning initiative numbers if you give each foe a number.

Tracking HP of monsters done on 3x5 card. I write down A# H# for AC and HP. Underneath I write the attack bonus and damage + mod for the mundane monsters. I record each monster HP by a letter written on the token if and only if they survive the first hit.

[JellyPooga]

I would also point out Gritty Realism is simply misnamed, it would help a lot of the 5-min days but people are turned away because of the name the name.

It's not misnamed, it's used incorrectly.

Run a regular adventure (as published and expected) but with GR rest rules. It gets pretty damn gritty, a lot less "heroic fantasy" and a great deal more characters conscious of their mortality.

Using GR the way it's often touted, by having the same number of encounters between rests, etc. literally achieves nothing. Run that way, what's the point of using the rule? Running the GR rules alongside the regular expectations of encounter frequency actually changes the dynamic of the game.

Try it sometime.

[Sorinth]

It's not misnamed, it's used incorrectly.

Run a regular adventure (as published and expected) but with GR rest rules. It gets pretty damn gritty, a lot less "heroic fantasy" and a great deal more characters conscious of their mortality.

Using GR the way it's often touted, by having the same number of encounters between rests, etc. literally achieves nothing. Run that way, what's the point of using the rule? Running the GR rules alongside the regular expectations of encounter frequency actually changes the dynamic of the game.

Try it sometime.

That's a fair point though I would consider that more of tactical heavy mode rather then gritty realism as gritty realism implies much more then just less resources/healing. But regardless the main point still stands, the name gritty realism turns people away from it even though mechanically it would solve the issue without changing the heroic fantasy.

[sithlordnergal]

There are a two very simple things I do to help stop the 5 minute adventuring day:

1) End of Session does not mean you get a Long Rest. You get a Long Rest when you successfully sleep.


2) I have a very harsh reading of rest interruptions. If any fighting occurs during a long rest, even if its for a single round, that rest is automatically interrupted and you will not gain any benefits from said rest. Now, you can go ahead and cast Ritual spells like Identify, or other utility spells during a Long Rest, that I'm fine with. But if you get attacked, you lose your rest.


Because of that, my party can't really do the "5 minute adventuring day", even though I know for a fact they want to. Hell, I'm running ToA and several party members got multiple levels of Exhaustion right before entering the Tomb of the 9 Gods. They were thinking they could just rest for 5 days, and I warned them that the enemies out here know where they are, want their heads, and they'd be able to get a single Long Rest before the tribe of Yuan-Ti start using hit-and-run tactics to ruin all of their Long Rests. They grumbled, weren't happy they had to deal with Exhaustion in the Tomb, but it got the point across. And it helped that I was very consistent with that ruling.

[Keravath]

Lots of great replies and so much to agree with.

1) Don't have combat encounters unless they mean something or add something to the story. Throwing in "random" encounters just to fill out an adventuring day or because the module says "roll every 10 minutes on the random encounter table" is not a good reason to add an encounter. The DM can roll a die if they want to keep the players guessing but otherwise just insert whatever sort of encounter makes sense.

The encounter could serve to emphasize the dangers of travel or the environment. It could advance one of many possible plots (ideally an adventure doesn't just have one plot, one bad guy, one thing going on ... the DM is creating a world and real worlds are complex and messy likely with multiple good, bad and neutral groups ... sometimes organized and other times working at cross purposes). The encounter could be an obstacle the PCS have to overcome. Either way, the PCs get dropped into a possibly complex world and only see the cross section that they have encountered.

2) Have a number of encounter "concepts" ready to go. Have an idea of the types of creatures that would be present in these encounters. If the PCs make an appropriate or relevant choice you can put these plot relevant encounters somewhere in their path. The key is that the players don't know the world the way the DM does, they don't know what is going on, and they don't know whether they would have the same encounter if they turned right or left at the cross roads or not.

3) I think "gritty realism" is just a mechanism to try to scale 5e to a more realistic time scale. In most of the games I have played, where characters are out adventuring and exploring almost every day - the characters could often advance to level 20 in no more than a month or two of in game time. "Gritty realism" just lets the DM spread the adventuring days worth of encounters over a week of in game time so that 60 days of adventuring becomes at least more than a year (maybe closer to 2 years if a long rest takes a week). Many folks may think such a time scale feels more "realistic".

4) Adventuring days vary - some will be one encounter (or none even) while others could be 6+. The key to longer adventuring days is to have circumstances where characters who have spent some resources can't just say "Hey! I'm tired. Let's hit the pub for the afternoon, have a good meal and a rest then come back tomorrow feeling refreshed." ... good approaches to this are typically timers or some reason why their mission needs to be completed sooner than later (rescue etc). In addition dynamic encounter chains also help with this so that the character interactions will affect other encounters especially if they decide to postpone them - a few negative outcomes may encourage the characters to keep going rather than stopping for the day. PC actions should have consequences and it is up to the DM to fairly and impartially impose them.

[Demonslayer666]

It's not misnamed, it's used incorrectly.

Run a regular adventure (as published and expected) but with GR rest rules. It gets pretty damn gritty, a lot less "heroic fantasy" and a great deal more characters conscious of their mortality.

Using GR the way it's often touted, by having the same number of encounters between rests, etc. literally achieves nothing. Run that way, what's the point of using the rule? Running the GR rules alongside the regular expectations of encounter frequency actually changes the dynamic of the game.

Try it sometime.

You can increase the frequency and/or difficulty of encounters and achieve the same thing. That's why people say it's misnamed, because it has nothing to do with the length of time it takes to rest.

If your players don't have a doom clock over their heads, you still have a 5 minute work day even with GR, it just becomes a 5 minute work week. Not gritty or realistic.

[Gtdead]

So the question is what tips are there for making encounter design, whether planned or not, easier and less of a chore for the DM so that class resources are used appropriately throughout a day rather than dumped on the 1 or 2 poor enemy encounters that make up the, easier but worse, 5 minute day?

My suggestion requires Excel, some homebrew and abstractions.

By abstractions I mean that while the narrative is different, the actual tactics/mechanics stay mostly the same.
A level 2 party may face goblins/bandits.
A level 5 party may face orcs/enemy adventurers.
A level 10 party may face giants/enemy special forces in a war.

There are some similarities between certain groups. For example giants and orcs are similar. Hardy melee warriors. You can easily create an Orc by scaling down a Giant.
Bandits can be similar to goblins. Adventurers similar to enemy special forces. You can abstract away these groups as High Tactics Specialist Party, Low Tactics All Melee Brutes, Opportunistic Medium Tactics etc.

So lets say that your group is hiking a mountain in search for treasure. You want to throw an encounter. You can try a High Tactics Specialist Party with an Arcane Caster, a Divine Caster and a couple of Martials, or try a Low Tactics Brutish party with Giants.

Instead of using all these unique monsters as they are in the MM, find something that's easily scalable and use that. You will need to figure out some model to do this and generic enough monsters that have good scalability.

For example, the Archmage is a CR12 level 18 spellcaster with a passive which scales with party prowess.
If you need a generic CR4 Caster, then do (4/12)*18=6 level spellcaster with 6d8+6 hit points and use the spell list provided.
For DC, the MM tends to follow a CR = Level pattern for Proficiency.
For Main Offensive stat you can try something like adding or subtracting 1 per 2 CR. ((12-4)/2 = 4, 20-4 = 16 INT)

So your new CR4 Wizard will look something like this:
AC 12 or 15 /w Mage Armor
HP 33
Speed 30
Int 14
DC (8+2+3) = 13
Spell attack (2+3) = +5
Spells as described in the MM up to level 3.
Passives as described in the MM.


If you need a generic bruiser, take something really bland like a Hill Giant and scale it up and down.
Hill giant is a CR5 with 10HD. An Orc is a CR1/2. If you scale the Hill Giant down to CR1/2 you get

AC 11 (Hide Armor)
HP 11
Speed 30
STR 18
Attack +6
Damage d12+4

Not perfect but servicable.
For strictly martials you can also try using the DM monster creation guide and choose something inside the proposed ranges. It's as generic as it gets.

With some basic excel formulas you can easily generate generic monsters on the fly.
You can also use https://koboldplus.club/ to easily manage budget if you don't want to get too heavy into the math.

Start by throwing a couple of normal generic encounters per day. If the group can handle it, throw some hard instead, or even deadly, or increase the frequency. If you get comfortable with it, you should be able to make adjustments on the fly and make them more interesting in time.

[JellyPooga]

You can increase the frequency and/or difficulty of encounters and achieve the same thing. That's why people say it's misnamed, because it has nothing to do with the length of time it takes to rest.

If your players don't have a doom clock over their heads, you still have a 5 minute work day even with GR, it just becomes a 5 minute work week. Not gritty or realistic.

Then I contend that you are still not using it properly.

A clock doesn't have to be a doom clock in order to precipitate a sense of urgency or otherwise impose a limit. Merely the players wanting to progress the narrative is sufficient if they buy in to the game being, for want of a better term, both gritty and more realistic than the standard "heroic fantasy" of the regular rules.

If the players insist on a 5 minute work day, then make every clock a doom clock until they take the hint. Once the hint sinks in, you have the luxury of relaxing those reins and giving them greater agency to work at their own pace. The very same you'd have to do using any other variant.

As for rest length, pacing has everything to do with the length of a rest. Yes, you can increase the frequency of encounters and achieve a similar result, but at the end of the day it doesn't have the same effect, if only because of the psychological and narrative impact of doing so. Not to mention the impact GR has on the dynamic between Short and Long Rests. Under standard rules, Short Rests are entirely optional while Long Rests are a "gimme". Using GR this is reversed, with a "mandatory" Short Rest every night and the very real possibility of never having opportunity for a Long Rest until large parts of the adventure are complete.

Take any published adventure and remove the possibility of resting for its duration. What's going to maintain a sense of verisilimitude better? Forcing the entire module into a single day of adventure (to preserve the standard rules) OR introducing a longer rest period (gritty realism) that gives the players the illusion of choice whether to complete the adventure before they rest?

That's what GR does. It's not about frequency of encounters compared to the standard rules, it's about preserving and grounding the narrative elements into something that more closely resembles a facsimile of "realism" (slower healing, no overnight "max power" reset, etc.) as well as increasing the difficulty without having to change anything in a given adventure that could as easily be run using the standard rules if a more heroic, loose and easy with reality, fantasy narrative is wanted. It's about changing a small thing with as large an impact on playstyle as possible.

It's not something I've done (yet) but I can imagine taking an adventure like The Sunless Citadel or Forge of Fury and running the same players with the same characters through it and having two very different outcomes with the only difference being the rest variant used. It'd be an interesting experiment, I imagine.

[Sorinth]

To get back on topic a bit, I tend to plan out the possible encounters so this might not be that helpful for overloaded DMs, but I try to include a unique terrain/battlefield element that way even if the encounter is the same they play out differently. In theory if doing random/semi-random encounters you could also roll for a random terrain element, things like a fast moving river, cliff face, scattered boulders, pit trap, hunter's perch in trees, even just weather elements like a heavy fog that limits visibility to 15ft. They don't even all have to be used by/for the monsters, giving the players the option to try and use something and get some kind of tactical/mechanical advantage can help.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

I'd say 2 things, both of which are easier to employ at low to moderate levels.

First is that not all resource using encounters need to be combat related. I found a good source for traveling around Avernus that gave the 'Weather of the Day'; some days characters had to take action to avoid damage to themselves or their gear. Some days it impacted other encounters, and in all cases it helped set the scene. Tricks and traps can also be good, as can social encounters depending on the group.
Second, I don't think it's necessary for every combat encounter to be a unique whiz-bang affair. Sometimes if you're in a lair of goblins, you're going to run into a goblin patrol... 10 goblins and a single goblin spellcaster. You might run into a similar patrol more than once, and that's ok

[Sorinth]

One other thing I would add is you can always throw something that disrupts combat. Say the players are travelling through territory that has purple worms and are not at a level where they can take them on. Have them face a level appropriate combat and then have a purple worm show up in round 2-3 and cause chaos as the enemy they were facing high tails it in every direction.

[kebusmaximus]

Given the board this might be heresy, but you could also try playing a different rpg. I'm a particular fan of whitehack, because it's more heroic than most other games of its type (osr), but 13th age, worlds without number, and dungeon world are all also d&d with different mechanics.

[Pex]

The solution to the 5 minute adventuring day is not never let the players rest, always interrupt one. It's not Gritty Realism rest rules either. The solution is the world doesn't stop when the party rests. NPCs and bad guys react to what the party does. If they attack the orc patrol then go back to town to rest, the orc camp will notice the patrol didn't return and will investigate. They may not know it was the party, but they'll know the town got help they didn't have before. The orcs have 23 extra hours to alter their plans to accommodate the new threat because the party chose not to pursue the matter further, such as finding and defeating another patrol or find the near empty camp because everyone is on patrol and do some damage there.

If the party enters the goblin caves, encounter several then leave to rest back in town, when the party returns the next day either 1) the remaining goblins led by their bugbear/hobgoblin leader have fortified the caves with extra dangerous traps or 2) the goblins completely abandoned the caves taking their treasure with them including the McGuffin if any.

Still, that does not mean the party must never rest. Let them have their short rests when they need them. Let them have their long rest after an eventful day. PCs are supposed to use their stuff and get them back. That's a feature, not a bug. Let them already.

[Anymage]

Gritty Realism is good for five minute workdays because everybody likes contextual combats and there often isn't much reason to fight multiple times within 24 hours. That's a thematic/pacing thing, although it does somewhat mandate bookkeeping and consequently either making sure that everybody takes notes or that somebody is in charge of tracking resource expenditure. The bookkeeping thing is clutch and I'll get into it more in a bit.

Consequences counteract the five minute workday if it boils down to the players thinking that they can leave an adventure in progress and expect the whole thing to stay paused.

I do think that there's value to acknowledging the amount of real life time that D&D fights take to adjudicate. Sometimes you're hard pressed to fit more than one or two into a night. Sometimes people have to call it a night mid fight. At best, this requires much more active resource tracking between nights. At worst, you have unreliable players and who is present might change night to night. Having the party begin and end each session at a safe base and start each session fresh does simplify a lot of things, but it does feed five minute workdays as a consequence.

[Demonslayer666]

...

As for rest length, pacing has everything to do with the length of a rest. Yes, you can increase the frequency of encounters and achieve a similar result, but at the end of the day it doesn't have the same effect, if only because of the psychological and narrative impact of doing so. Not to mention the impact GR has on the dynamic between Short and Long Rests. Under standard rules, Short Rests are entirely optional while Long Rests are a "gimme". Using GR this is reversed, with a "mandatory" Short Rest every night and the very real possibility of never having opportunity for a Long Rest until large parts of the adventure are complete.

Take any published adventure and remove the possibility of resting for its duration. What's going to maintain a sense of verisilimitude better? Forcing the entire module into a single day of adventure (to preserve the standard rules) OR introducing a longer rest period (gritty realism) that gives the players the illusion of choice whether to complete the adventure before they rest?

That's what GR does. It's not about frequency of encounters compared to the standard rules, it's about preserving and grounding the narrative elements into something that more closely resembles a facsimile of "realism" (slower healing, no overnight "max power" reset, etc.) as well as increasing the difficulty without having to change anything in a given adventure that could as easily be run using the standard rules if a more heroic, loose and easy with reality, fantasy narrative is wanted. It's about changing a small thing with as large an impact on playstyle as possible.

It's not something I've done (yet) but I can imagine taking an adventure like The Sunless Citadel or Forge of Fury and running the same players with the same characters through it and having two very different outcomes with the only difference being the rest variant used. It'd be an interesting experiment, I imagine.

If the players are allowed to set the pace, they would still rest when they felt they needed it. Other factors besides the length of the rest must be there to persuade them not to rest. That alone will not do it. Overnight max power becomes over-week max power. The players do not care about in-game time spent unless there are consequences.

Maybe your players are different, and if you tell them to keep adventuring, they listen. Mine don't. They care way more about being able to handle the next encounter.

Do The Sunless Citadel and Forge of Fury have doom clocks? If they do, I could see your point on different results, but without a doom clock, I don't see different results happening other than taking more time in game.

The solution to the 5 minute adventuring day is not never let the players rest, always interrupt one. It's not Gritty Realism rest rules either. The solution is the world doesn't stop when the party rests. NPCs and bad guys react to what the party does. If they attack the orc patrol then go back to town to rest, the orc camp will notice the patrol didn't return and will investigate. They may not know it was the party, but they'll know the town got help they didn't have before. The orcs have 23 extra hours to alter their plans to accommodate the new threat because the party chose not to pursue the matter further, such as finding and defeating another patrol or find the near empty camp because everyone is on patrol and do some damage there.

If the party enters the goblin caves, encounter several then leave to rest back in town, when the party returns the next day either 1) the remaining goblins led by their bugbear/hobgoblin leader have fortified the caves with extra dangerous traps or 2) the goblins completely abandoned the caves taking their treasure with them including the McGuffin if any.

Still, that does not mean the party must never rest. Let them have their short rests when they need them. Let them have their long rest after an eventful day. PCs are supposed to use their stuff and get them back. That's a feature, not a bug. Let them already.

This.

But you have to admit, published adventures are pretty static without a creative DM.

[Sorinth]

The solution to the 5 minute adventuring day is not never let the players rest, always interrupt one. It's not Gritty Realism rest rules either. The solution is the world doesn't stop when the party rests. NPCs and bad guys react to what the party does. If they attack the orc patrol then go back to town to rest, the orc camp will notice the patrol didn't return and will investigate. They may not know it was the party, but they'll know the town got help they didn't have before. The orcs have 23 extra hours to alter their plans to accommodate the new threat because the party chose not to pursue the matter further, such as finding and defeating another patrol or find the near empty camp because everyone is on patrol and do some damage there.

If the party enters the goblin caves, encounter several then leave to rest back in town, when the party returns the next day either 1) the remaining goblins led by their bugbear/hobgoblin leader have fortified the caves with extra dangerous traps or 2) the goblins completely abandoned the caves taking their treasure with them including the McGuffin if any.

Still, that does not mean the party must never rest. Let them have their short rests when they need them. Let them have their long rest after an eventful day. PCs are supposed to use their stuff and get them back. That's a feature, not a bug. Let them already.

Yes the bad guys can and should do stuff while the players rest, but for example the orcs don't have 23 extra hours, it's more likely they have at most 8-10 hours, and probably much less since it could easily take 3-4 hours for the orcs to figure out the missing patrol was killed. It's also a strategy that doesn't work for every situation, and much like interrupting rests trying to force it becomes old hat very quickly.

I'd also point out your plan of the orcs/goblins fortifying up so that the PCs end up facing a harder/deadlier fight then you haven't actually discouraged the 5min work day you've implemented it. Whether you planned one big deadly fight from the beginning or make it one big deadly fight because the players rested the end result is the same, a 5min work day with one big deadly fight. And having them run away with the McGuffin is just as likely to lead to other worse problems then fixing the 5min adventure day.

[CapnWildefyr]

To get back on topic a bit, I tend to plan out the possible encounters so this might not be that helpful for overloaded DMs, but I try to include a unique terrain/battlefield element that way even if the encounter is the same they play out differently. In theory if doing random/semi-random encounters you could also roll for a random terrain element, things like a fast moving river, cliff face, scattered boulders, pit trap, hunter's perch in trees, even just weather elements like a heavy fog that limits visibility to 15ft. They don't even all have to be used by/for the monsters, giving the players the option to try and use something and get some kind of tactical/mechanical advantage can help.

In a similar vein, I tend to try to plan several ways encounters can go -- or at least to think about them. I think about dumb tactics, smart tactics, what if the players do X, or Y, or Z? I find pre-planning helps a lot, saves on-the-fly confusion and double-takes. In Shadowrun (or was it star wars) this used to be the "Staying on track" section -- what is the important point that the PCs need to learn, or do? What do different outcomes lead to? You don't have to plan everything, but keeping in mind an idea of what you really want to occur due to the encounter is good, it helps you keep things on target and helps you handle the inevitable unplanned-for situation in a more useful way. (If you don't know where you're going, it's hard to get there.)

Also, I've taken to writing everything up in a "word" doc. I make disposable printouts for myself with important stats and HPs. Then I can copy between adventures & re-use. I swipe stat blocks from the internet or type in abbreviated versions. For spellcasters and spell effects I make sure I have the ref. pages written down if I don't know it all cold. The hardest part for me is keeping the figs straight - which one of my 20 miscellaneous figurine-peeps has 4 hp damage, and which has 32?

As I think now about that last comment, I'm thinking I should simply wait till my guys take damage, then jot down the fig vs the HP for the next one in line on my page. I used to try to write it down ahead of time (gnoll fig with spear = 12 hp, gnoll fig with ax = 15 hp).

PS - I also vary the hp around the mean, I don't roll, I just write it down. Ex: Hill giants are I think ~105hp avg (10d12+40), that's a range of 10-120+40 (50-160), so 6 of them might be 87, 125, 111, 97, 103, 108. I wouldn't max unless there's a boss giant. Keeps the players guessing.

[Sorinth]

In a similar vein, I tend to try to plan several ways encounters can go -- or at least to think about them. I think about dumb tactics, smart tactics, what if the players do X, or Y, or Z? I find pre-planning helps a lot, saves on-the-fly confusion and double-takes. In Shadowrun (or was it star wars) this used to be the "Staying on track" section -- what is the important point that the PCs need to learn, or do? What do different outcomes lead to? You don't have to plan everything, but keeping in mind an idea of what you really want to occur due to the encounter is good, it helps you keep things on target and helps you handle the inevitable unplanned-for situation in a more useful way. (If you don't know where you're going, it's hard to get there.)

Also, I've taken to writing everything up in a "word" doc. I make disposable printouts for myself with important stats and HPs. Then I can copy between adventures & re-use. I swipe stat blocks from the internet or type in abbreviated versions. For spellcasters and spell effects I make sure I have the ref. pages written down if I don't know it all cold. The hardest part for me is keeping the figs straight - which one of my 20 miscellaneous figurine-peeps has 4 hp damage, and which has 32?

As I think now about that last comment, I'm thinking I should simply wait till my guys take damage, then jot down the fig vs the HP for the next one in line on my page. I used to try to write it down ahead of time (gnoll fig with spear = 12 hp, gnoll fig with ax = 15 hp).

PS - I also vary the hp around the mean, I don't roll, I just write it down. Ex: Hill giants are I think ~105hp avg (10d12+40), that's a range of 10-120+40 (50-160), so 6 of them might be 87, 125, 111, 97, 103, 108. I wouldn't max unless there's a boss giant. Keeps the players guessing.

Good advice. Setting a goal is good even if that goal is not an enemy goal but trying to set the mood/tone of an area. Also most fights shouldn't be to the death, most enemies should try to retreat if things start going poorly.

For bookkeeping I tend to print out an abbreviated stat block on notecards and then use the back of the card for the in game notetaking like damage (Tracking damage taken instead of current HP is easier for a lot of people). But yeah keeping track of what notes correspond to which figurine can be tough but I don't actually own a large figurine collection so when dealing with larger numbers I often use tokens which are numbered which helps a lot.

[JellyPooga]

If the players are allowed to set the pace, they would still rest when they felt they needed it. Other factors besides the length of the rest must be there to persuade them not to rest. That alone will not do it. Overnight max power becomes over-week max power. The players do not care about in-game time spent unless there are consequences.

If you're not enacting consequences for literally every decision the players make...then you need to consider going back to GM basics. Rest too often? Bad guys have time to prepare. Don't rest enough? Gonna get attritioned. Take too long arguing over how to open the next door? Monsters hear you. Too quick to open that door? The boss that was just leaving is still present. Every player decision should have a consequence, from the big ticket decisions like whether to rest, down to whether or not thet offered to buy the barmaid a drink and thus influencing her opinion of them when it comes to her testimony at their trial for breaking into the governers mansion. Every. Single. Decision.

That's why Gritty Realism offers greater incentive to push on without resting because there's a world of difference between what the bad guys can achieve in an evening compared to an entire week. This isn't doom clocking or anything to do with rules, it's just making the players decision points actually matter. If they nova their first encounter and go wait a week, they roll the dice on what they'll encounter next; it sure as hell isn't going to be the undisturbed remains of the last encounter and the rest of the dungeon blissfully unaware of what happened a week ago.

[Pex]

Yes the bad guys can and should do stuff while the players rest, but for example the orcs don't have 23 extra hours, it's more likely they have at most 8-10 hours, and probably much less since it could easily take 3-4 hours for the orcs to figure out the missing patrol was killed. It's also a strategy that doesn't work for every situation, and much like interrupting rests trying to force it becomes old hat very quickly.

I'd also point out your plan of the orcs/goblins fortifying up so that the PCs end up facing a harder/deadlier fight then you haven't actually discouraged the 5min work day you've implemented it. Whether you planned one big deadly fight from the beginning or make it one big deadly fight because the players rested the end result is the same, a 5min work day with one big deadly fight. And having them run away with the McGuffin is just as likely to lead to other worse problems then fixing the 5min adventure day.

The worse problems is what the problem has really been about all along - a metagame problem of a clash of playstyles between the DM and players. If the players complain about the consequences of resting after every fight nothing in game you do as DM will solve the problem. At that point talk to your players. Show them that not resting after every fight will not mean a TPK. Teach them how to conserve resources.

[Hytheter]

The true solution to players taking long rests after every encounter is to just restock the dungeon every day. After fighting the exact same encounter in the same place 2 or 3 days in a row I'm sure they'll get the message.

[Kane0]

The true solution to players taking long rests after every encounter is to just restock the dungeon every day. After fighting the exact same encounter in the same place 2 or 3 days in a row I'm sure they'll get the message.

Works really well with skeletons, brooms arent standard in explorer's packs

[Martin Greywolf]

I don't think, in my heart of hearts, that anyone actually wants to run the "5 minute adventuring day" game.
[...]
Even DMs who do their DMing for a living seem to fall into this trap! (Critical Role, Dimension 20, etc)
[..]
Any experienced DM will tell you that the job is about 20% planning and 80% pulling stuff out of your butt on the fly, because you can never be truly prepared for what players will do.
And pulling a combat encounter out of your butt is even worse than planning one, and probably less likely to be appropriately built out.

So the question is what tips are there for making encounter design, whether planned or not, easier and less of a chore for the DM so that class resources are used appropriately throughout a day rather than dumped on the 1 or 2 poor enemy encounters that make up the, easier but worse, 5 minute day?

The problem is this: I have a story in mind and don't want to waste time on pointlessly fighting bandit camp number seventeen, I want to get to the good stuff. So do the players, because doing things that are realted to the plot they are invested in is infinitely more engaging.

But DMG doesn't give you the tools to design this properly. You have encounters that are individual fights and have to be not overwhelming, and then you have adventuring days and adventures. You need something between those two. Since DnD combat has so much in common with XCOM, my advice is to take a page out of XCOM's book.

You see, your XCOM squad of 4-6 cannot possibly handle the amount of aliens that are on the combat map at once - well, not before the endgame tech and psionics are on the field. The three sargeants and a rookie will get destroyed by ten mutons, two berserkers, a dozen different exalts and a sectopod. So XCOM divides those aliens into smaller groups called pods and spreads them out. But that doesn't mean they will stay that way, it is very possible, and very quick load inducing, to run into a second pod while still fighting the first one, the pods not in combat will move towards the sound and will even move towards the XCOM squad after long enough time has passed (persumably simulating them wondering why the radio chatter is so silent all of a sudden).

If you design your fights in this way, then storming that corrupt guard's HQ isn't a series of several encounters, it's one combat map that has several stationary and several roaming pods. All of those pods do their own thing, like patrol, sleep, train and so on and will react if something happens, very likely reinforcing the current fight PCs are in. And your job as a DM is now easier, because you don't have fifty individuals, you have 7 pods and only have to track what six (at most) mechanical entities are doing while in combat.