0:00
Why can't we solve D and D's pacing
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problems by just using harder
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encounters? Very simply, we can. We
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absolutely can do that. The 6 to8
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encounter day gives us an experience
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budget that we are expected to use over
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the course of an adventuring day to
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adequately challenge our players to
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adequately deplete their resources so
0:19
that they feel some kind of resource
0:21
strain. You want the hit points low. You
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want the spell slots used. like you want
0:26
them to go through their limited
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resources, otherwise they just blow up
0:29
every single encounter in the first
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round. And that's really just not what
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we want from the game. But that XP
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budget doesn't actually limit us to six
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to eight encounters. In the 2014 rules,
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the XP budget was big enough that you
0:41
could do three deadly encounters with
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the expectation of two short rests per
0:46
long rest. So you could very much go
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deadly encounter, short rest, deadly
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encounter, short rest, deadly encounter,
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and then end the day and take a long
0:53
rest. That's a perfectly fine way to run
0:55
your games. And I try to run my games
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that way because all of my players have
0:59
learned from me and they like good hard
1:02
combat, but that isn't always the
1:05
experience you want from the game.
1:07
Having nothing but incredibly difficult,
1:10
grueling combat for a lot of groups like
1:13
that is exhausting. A lot of groups
1:15
don't want that. Sometimes you need the
1:17
encounters to be a little gentler, and
1:19
that's perfectly fine. But if your group
1:22
is down for like real hard combats every
1:26
time initiative is rolled, yeah,
1:28
absolutely do it. It can be really fun
1:30
and you get to like do crazy stuff, use
1:34
the hard monsters, throw in the
1:36
legendary monsters and minions and all
1:38
the things and like make it really fun
1:40
and interesting and instead of building
1:42
a bunch of filler encounters, you can
1:44
just focus on the really cool ones. I
1:47
like it, but it's not for every
