D&D (2024) What Improvements Would You Want with 6E?

[Parmandur]

I'm saying that the constant low-level discussion of issues caused directly or indirectly by the 5-8 encounters a day format is the evidence.

People aren't saying "I hate 5-8 encounters a day!". I agree there. They're saying "Paladins are overpowered", or "My encounters aren't very threatening!" or "My encounters are too deadly!" or "I can't really challenge the PCs, they just breeze through stuff!", or "I feel like I'm a bad DM even though I've been running stuff for 30 years!" or "long rests are too powerful, they should happen less often!" or "Let's make healing slower, this is ridiculous!" and so on. They don't realize the reason is 5-8 encounters/day. They don't make the connection. But that's basically the (narrow) majority of design-complaints about 5E right there.

As I noted in an edit, I have two friends who DM who don't follow the 5-8 encounters thing, because they've been DMing for 30 years and it's never worked like that (definitely would be fair to say through all of 2, 3.XE and 4E, somewhere between 3-4 encounters per day was the average, with plenty of 1-2 encounter days or the like - and 4E it was clear 1-2 was already a problem, but again, only I seemed to actually follow the guidelines). I tried explaining it to one of them once, and he didn't quite get it. He's not thick. He's a long-time DM. He just didn't really think it could have that much effect. But you and I both agree that it does. Further, he's happy with 5E. He's in that 90%. So am I! That's what you're not getting. But I'd be a lot happier if they had designed either around 3-5 encounters/day, or gone with a system that didn't rely on a fixed number of encounters/day. And the only people who'd be unhappy with that are the A2s of the world, and I'm not even sure all of them would be, because resource-drain stuff can work with lower numbers of encounters too - indeed, it's much easier to tune for that than vice-versa. What we have is a system that is not quite outside the acceptable margin of design.

Just as a personal aside, I find it totally obnoxious because it's very hard to tell a story which makes sense and isn't set in a dungeon which includes 5-8 resource-draining encounters in 16 hours. I'm not sure you even disagree there. But if I don't, everything is a breeze and whilst the players like that occasionally, I can see that, long-term, after 4E, which was balls-to-the-wall hard because of the 3-4 encounter/day design and the far, far, far superior ability to gauge monster threat inherent to the system (5E is terrible at that, though not as bad as 3.XE which was ACTIVELY misleading - using the numbers in 3.XE would leave you with a worse understanding of threat than eyeballing the monsters), they miss it if I don't at least try to challenge them with the stupid 5-8 thing. But it feels so naughty word weird - and their instinct, honed over decades of D&D, is to long rest way sooner than 5E wants them to.

And let me re-iterate the most cogent point here:

You keep saying WotC would just change if this was really a problem.

To that I say, no, because they can't change this. This is baked into the very most basic mathematical assumptions of the system. It does not play well with anything less than 5 encounters/day. It plays "okay", acceptably.

But WotC can't change that because it's baked in. They'd need to re-bake the cake. Make a 6th edition. With different classes, spells, recovery options, monster design, and so on. So that WotC stick with it is only evidence, by any means, that it's not enough of problem to cause massive badwill by going to a new edition already.

You make some intriguing points, but when push comes to shove, tuning the game around a maximum threat rather than minimal seems best suited to purpose.

And as for how things used to be...the older modules I've seen seem to fit the criteria of the 5E workday?

 

[ad_hoc]

I'm saying that the constant low-level discussion of issues caused directly or indirectly by the 5-8 encounters a day format is the evidence.

That's just showing that some people are.

There are somewhere around 20 million people playing the game.

You need bigger numbers than some people on internet forums discussing their issues with the adventuring day over and over again.

I only play WotC published adventures and most of the chapters are written around the standard adventuring day laid out in the books.

The system is flexible too, not every day has to be the standard length. The players should not have the assumption of a short day every day, that's all.

The area where WotC adventures get this wrong is with overland travel. There are often random encounter tables for traveling great distances which if followed would be a slog of 1 encounter per long rest incidents.

Personally, I would dislike it if it were the other way around. I want rules written for dungeon crawling (or their equivalent) in my Dungeons and Dragons game. I want a game that provides cinematic action stories. Stopping for a rest after every encounter is not exciting. I would not watch those action movies.

 

[Tony Vargas]

There are somewhere around 20 million people playing the game.

I believe that stat was /had/ played the game. Like, at least once, anytime in the last 45 years.
Might have just been for the US. That's still pretty awesome.
Like, everyone hasn't played D&D, but, hey, you pretty likely know someone who has. That's getting pretty mainstreamish.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

And as for how things used to be...the older modules I've seen seem to fit the criteria of the 5E workday?

What edition? What modules? I was going through my 2E stuff trying to see what would fit 5E one afternoon when I'd forgotten to write an adventure for the next day and couldn't be arsed to draw maps or come up with a plot (I had a migraine, sue me!) and barely anything was even close. There were some dungeons which could potentially fit, but they were all over the road, from having basically 1-3 encounters which would definitely waste resources, to having over 12 which would potentially be in pretty quick succession. Overland adventures and city adventures universally didn't fit - the vast majority of them featured 1-2 encounters/day - 5 in a city adventure was the highest I think I came across, though if the PCs went into the sewers it would go up to like 15 haha. So that's 2E. Some stuff fits, some really doesn't.

4E was designed for 3-4 day so that definitely doesn't fit 5-8.

3.XE is all over the road like 2E is. Dungeons do tend to at least potentially fit the 5-8 model, but again overland/urban adventures, investigations (much more common in 3.XE than 2E!) and so on usually do not. Some encounters are clearly designed for the PCs to rest before attempting (admittedly this is from memory - I don't have much 3.XE stuff to hand).

One thing worth considering is that dungeons fit the 5-8 model well because PCs usually determine when to rest. So if they can handle 5 encounters comfortably, they will, and go on to the 6th, and so on. This includes (in fact is even more true of) "outdoor dungeons" like ruined cities inhabited by monsters (a sadly less-common trope now than it was in 2E!).

Whereas in outdoor and urban and investigation-type adventures, the PCs usually cannot control the encounters/day, and they're usually designed to a much, much lower number than 5E assumes.

I have a question though - how often do you run dungeons (including "outdoor dungeons", which are very different from wilderness or overland adventures - and even underdark, which tends to be closer to overland than dungeons a lot of the time), as opposed to running city or wilderness or other adventures? Because like, in 2E, it was "mostly dungeons". But since 3.XE it's been "barely ever dungeons", for every group I've played in or DM'd for (obviously I may be biasing the latter!). And how hard is it to make non-dungeons have 5-8 encounters/day? Because I find it very hard to do it without making it seem super-contrived, and I know I'm not a bad DM, and not a bad adventure-writer.

I agree, as discussed above, for simple "Okay now we rest!" reasons make dungeons easy to do 5-8 encounters/day with.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

That's just showing that some people are.

There are somewhere around 20 million people playing the game.

You need bigger numbers than some people on internet forums discussing their issues with the adventuring day over and over again.

Well that doesn't stand up to basic logic. You're essentially saying no number could ever be sufficient. That's not an argument.

The area where WotC adventures get this wrong is with overland travel. There are often random encounter tables for traveling great distances which if followed would be a slog of 1 encounter per long rest incidents.

Personally, I would dislike it if it were the other way around. I want rules written for dungeon crawling (or their equivalent) in my Dungeons and Dragons game. I want a game that provides cinematic action stories. Stopping for a rest after every encounter is not exciting. I would not watch those action movies.

The system is inherently badly designed for overland travel and the like. You claim it is "flexible", but you are here admitting it's not THAT flexible. As for "cinematic" and "dungeon crawl", that's literally a contradiction in terms. 4E was vastly more "cinematic" than 5E is, too, with 3-4 encounters/day.

 

[Eric V]

Mearls wanted to make the Warlock Int based, but the playtest results demanded a Charisma Warlock.

The people aren't always right...

 

[Parmandur]

I believe that stat was /had/ played the game. Like, at least once, anytime in the last 45 years.
Might have just been for the US. That's still pretty awesome.
Like, everyone hasn't played D&D, but, hey, you pretty likely know someone who has. That's getting pretty mainstreamish.

No, that number was 40 million.

 

[Tony Vargas]

No, that number was 40 million.

Thanks, don't know how I coulda gotten those confused.

Where's the 20mil from? (link wouldn't hurt, even)

 

[Don Durito]

The thing with open playtests is that while they avoid drastic mistakes, they also make it difficult to implement improvements that people may initially dislike but eventually get used to and find they actually prefer.

Of course push too far and you get the kind of backlash that 4E got, but I'm far from convinced that 5E hit the sweetspot.

(And if they hadn't made 4E some of the elements in 5E that come from 4E, and which most 5E players take for granted - such as relatively swift healing - may not have made it through open playtest).

 

[Parmandur]

What edition? What modules? I was going through my 2E stuff trying to see what would fit 5E one afternoon when I'd forgotten to write an adventure for the next day and couldn't be arsed to draw maps or come up with a plot (I had a migraine, sue me!) and barely anything was even close. There were some dungeons which could potentially fit, but they were all over the road, from having basically 1-3 encounters which would definitely waste resources, to having over 12 which would potentially be in pretty quick succession. Overland adventures and city adventures universally didn't fit - the vast majority of them featured 1-2 encounters/day - 5 in a city adventure was the highest I think I came across, though if the PCs went into the sewers it would go up to like 15 haha. So that's 2E. Some stuff fits, some really doesn't.

4E was designed for 3-4 day so that definitely doesn't fit 5-8.

3.XE is all over the road like 2E is. Dungeons do tend to at least potentially fit the 5-8 model, but again overland/urban adventures, investigations (much more common in 3.XE than 2E!) and so on usually do not. Some encounters are clearly designed for the PCs to rest before attempting (admittedly this is from memory - I don't have much 3.XE stuff to hand).

One thing worth considering is that dungeons fit the 5-8 model well because PCs usually determine when to rest. So if they can handle 5 encounters comfortably, they will, and go on to the 6th, and so on. This includes (in fact is even more true of) "outdoor dungeons" like ruined cities inhabited by monsters (a sadly less-common trope now than it was in 2E!).

Whereas in outdoor and urban and investigation-type adventures, the PCs usually cannot control the encounters/day, and they're usually designed to a much, much lower number than 5E assumes.

I have a question though - how often do you run dungeons (including "outdoor dungeons", which are very different from wilderness or overland adventures - and even underdark, which tends to be closer to overland than dungeons a lot of the time), as opposed to running city or wilderness or other adventures? Because like, in 2E, it was "mostly dungeons". But since 3.XE it's been "barely ever dungeons", for every group I've played in or DM'd for (obviously I may be biasing the latter!). And how hard is it to make non-dungeons have 5-8 encounters/day? Because I find it very hard to do it without making it seem super-contrived, and I know I'm not a bad DM, and not a bad adventure-writer.

I agree, as discussed above, for simple "Okay now we rest!" reasons make dungeons easy to do 5-8 encounters/day with.

1E and Basic. Never seen a 2E adventure, and my exposure to 3E published adventures is limited to 2/7 of Tales from the Yawning Portal.

I had a friend in college who dropped in on our game describe it as feeling like a Tolkien character who found his way into a Joseph Conrad novel. Hoard of the Dragon Queen, Lost Mines of Phandelver and the 5E DMG encounter guidelines changed how I played, for the better.