2/20/2024 0 Comments Looks that kill ratingThought 2: Lots of Variables that all align for PCs Mostly this is a bad thing, but it does have the silver lining that absorbing the alien energies can lead to very rapid growth of skills, as well as superhuman durability (explaining HP = meat nicely as well). On the speed of leveling, I've had a couple thoughts on how reconcile the rapid pace of PC levels with a world where people aren't all max level by their 30s, without just going "the PCs are special" or "it's a narrative abstraction".ĭungeons (and the creatures that come from them) represent an alien reality invading the world. Like the section about downtime between adventures, which means that generally, no, characters aren't hitting level 20 within 3 months of being generated. Shockingly, there are several sections in a book called the Dungeon Master's Guide, that Dungeon Masters would benefit from reading. You are correct that an ECL=APL encounter is not supposed to be a major challenge it says so right in the book that DMs are supposed to read. A fifth encounter would probably wipe them out. This means, on average, that after about four encounters of the party’s level the PCs need to rest, heal, and regain spells. An encounter with an Encounter Level (EL) equal to the PCs’ level is one that should expend about 20% of their resources-hit points, spells, magic item uses, and so on. ![]() They would have to stop the adventure and rest for an extensive period after every fight, and that slows down the game. So, what counts as a “challenge”? Since a game session probably includes many encounters, you don’t want to make every encounter one that taxes the PCs to their limits. ![]() There's a reason later editions of D&D start out characters at what would be roughly 3rd level capability under 3.5 rules, and even then 5th edition explicitly says that if you're starting at 1st level then you should very rapidly level to 3 or 4 before settling into a more regular pace. The other is low level 3.5 is just notoriously rocket-taggy purely because very low level characters have no HP to absorb hits with, and your casters only have maybe 2 encounters worth of slots to use good spells with. Two things: the standard encounter isn't really meant to be 'challenging' - if you consistently fight over-CR or over-numbered enemies (probably because your DM feels the 'correct' encounter balance is 'too easy' - this is intended! PCs aren't actually supposed to be 'challenged' in most of their fights! But fights also take up a lot of table time, so if your table feels like you spend too much time handling attritional trash fights then you will probably correct in the other direction by having fewer higher- danger combats) then yes, you would expect to get to the point of retreat faster. I feel like at least when I've played from levels 1-5, unless enemies got really unlucky and just didn't hit the frontliners (and the mages called the dices' bluff and saved their good spells), after 1-2 challenging encounters a "normal" party is reaching the point where any more fights carry a serious risk of death. Of course it almost never works out that way - printed CRs often do not accurately reflect a monster's threat level and power levels among PCs can vastly outrange what the CR levels were supposedly calibrated for even when they're right, so any given 2 parties will expend a hugely different amount of resources against the same encounter - but AFAIK that's the genesis of the '4 encounter day' as a system assumption. ![]() So after four of those a party theoretically is at major risk of defeat if they take on a fifth, so that last 20% of resources should be saved for/used for getting the party out to a safe place to rest and recover. Just curious, where does it say that you're expected to have 3-4 encounters per day? I've seen the 13.3 encounters per level thing in the DMG under rewards, but I don't think the DMG was written with the super efficient healing-per-gold of wands of vigor in mind (not to mention, travel time and NPC interaction in most adventures) so surely 3-4 encounters isn't something that you're going to do every day, right?I don't recall where the actual description of this is (probably one of the 'why we did it this way' sidebars in the print DMG?) but the idea is an average encounter (CR = Party Level) 'should' use up about 20% of a party's resources - spell slots/other limited-but-restorable usage effects (/day abilities, items with daily charges) and available HP being the main ones.
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