I noticed on the TV Tropes page for Pathfinder that the expected number of encounters in a day wasn't established by Paizo until the Remaster. Is this simply referring to the forum post from Michael Sayre, or is there an actual line of text somewhere in Player Core or GM Core addressing the number of encounters in a day?
I don't think so. All of the reasons talked about at the same time as that whole twitter thread and following reddit threads and forum posts of why they wanted to describe the effect of different difficulty encounters on a day instead of giving a set number of encounters still apply.
I think Mr. Sayre's post was the reflection of the internal standard regarding adventure design, not any sort of actual rule or guideline. Since the number of adventures in a day might differ from whatever standard they set for narrative reasons- like if you're on an ocean voyage and are beset by pirates you don't need that to happen multiple times per day. If you're rescuing a hostage from a castle, the GM doesn't need to scale back the number of different guard posts in order to fit whatever standard.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I think Mr. Sayre's post was the reflection of the internal standard regarding adventure design, not any sort of actual rule or guideline. Since the number of adventures in a day might differ from whatever standard they set for narrative reasons- like if you're on an ocean voyage and are beset by pirates you don't need that to happen multiple times per day. If you're rescuing a hostage from a castle, the GM doesn't need to scale back the number of different guard posts in order to fit whatever standard.
Narrative reasons are important, but it does kind of suck to have an internal baseline that people are up in the air about, because it can matter a lot for certain classes.
Like idk I totally get that this is a storytelling vehicle first and foremost but god it's kind of dull to be on hour 4 of casting electric arc because "it doesn't fit the narrative" to take a rest and you ran out of spell slots a session and a half ago.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Is this simply referring to the forum post from Michael SayreMay I ask that you drop a link to that post? I pretty quickly lost track of the various previews and commentary, and that seems pretty useful to read, as "persuasive authority," even if not as "binding authority."
I don't think it was originally posted on these forums. This is what I am remembering and finding.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
I don't think it was originally posted on these forums. This is what I am remembering and finding.Is this simply referring to the forum post from Michael SayreMay I ask that you drop a link to that post? I pretty quickly lost track of the various previews and commentary, and that seems pretty useful to read, as "persuasive authority," even if not as "binding authority."
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I feel that not even Paizo designers know this number.
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
I know the game quite well and still am unable to give a simple answer to this question. If I had to answer:
- Number of encounters per day should vary as otherwise you can too easily metagame your resources. It'd also be boring to have always the same number of encounters.
- At low level, casters have very limited resources and even if cantrips work fine you can end up with the boring experience of casting the same cantrip over and over again. So the number of encounters should be lower at low level.
- 1 or 2 encounters are not enough for any caster to expand all their resources outside the very first levels. It removes the point of certain assets, like good Focus Spells and extra number of spell slots. It should not be a very common number.
- 4-5 encounters a day (once you're at least at mid level) is a very nice number of encounters, very manageable. Also, it very conveniently takes roughly a session to handle.
- 6-7 encounters a day is taxing on casters. It's extremely hard to know if it should never happen (and as such your casters know the hard limit on number of encounters and can plan accordingly in the worst case scenario) or sometimes happen (and as such your casters will buy Scrolls and such in case of).
- When you increase the number of encounters you increase the chance of long rest in the middle of a dungeon (and not only because of casters but very often because of curses, diseases and similar debilitating conditions). Before 6 encounters, it's extremely rare. At 8-10 encounters, it becomes very common. Above 10 encounters you can expect a long rest. Planning a very high number of encounters without any long rest in between will really piss your players, not just the casters (but the casters for sure).
- You need 11 Moderate encounters or 8 Severe ones to gain a level and gaining a level in the middle of an adventuring day is weird. Considering that a significant portion of the party XP gain should be gained outside combat, it seems that 5-6 Severe encounters or 7-8 Moderate ones are hard limits to the encounters the PCs should face.
- PCs often avoid encounters, through diplomacy, intelligence or just luck. Roughly 25% of your encounters won't be fought. So you need more encounters than what the PCs will actually face.
- Non-combat encounters can cost resources, especially if they are long and expected. If you are supposed to go to the King's court, you can expect a proper number of social spells and elixirs in your casters/alchemists preparation. If a dungeon ensues, it should be shorter.
- Don't use always the same encounter difficulty as it's rather boring. Moderate and Severe encounters should be the most common ones (be careful on Severe encounters to be sure you are not involuntarily preparing a TPK).
- Avoid putting the toughest encounters always at the same position in your dungeons. Having the last encounter being always super hard gets quickly old. Tough first encounters are very nice because PCs have all their tools so it stresses them without too much danger.
So, all of that considered, I'd say:
- 2-3 encounters a day at low level is a good number.
- 3-5 encounters a day at mid to high level is a good number.
- 1-2 encounters a day should be rare after the very first levels.
- 6-7 encounters should happen, but only a couple of times in a career (and preferably at high level).
- Never go above 7 encounters a day.
- Consider that the PCs will avoid 25% of encounters in dungeon environments (and make sure they can).
- Reduce the number of encounters by a third if the PCs don't expect a day with a lot of fights or if there are many non-combat encounters on top of combat encounters.
- Mix encounters difficulty and avoid any pattern in their distribution.
The number of random encounters for Remastered Pathfinder can be found on page 209, under Random Encounters.
You roll at the beginning of the day, it lists the flat check DC you roll against. If you get a critical success, they have another encounter. You roll for the type of encounter (harmless, hazard, or creature). You use the table of encounters you made, or you choose/make on up.
I take this to mean you have one encounter per day, and a second encounter if the result is a critical success.
It does not address factors such as the time of day, nor if the characters are in a civilized area or the wilderness. I used their rules as a base idea, then modified it according to other factors such as the region (realm, wilderness) further subdivided those areas, and modified by the time of day.
The number of random encounters for Remastered Pathfinder can be found on page 209, under Random Encounters.
You roll at the beginning of the day, it lists the flat check DC you roll against. If you get a critical success, they have another encounter. You roll for the type of encounter (harmless, hazard, or creature). You use the table of encounters you made, or you choose/make on up.
I take this to mean you have one encounter per day, and a second encounter if the result is a critical success.
It does not address factors such as the time of day, nor if the characters are in a civilized area or the wilderness. I used their rules as a base idea, then modified it according to other factors such as the region (realm, wilderness) further subdivided those areas, and modified by the time of day.
I think what you're saying there is a correct answer... but not the answer to the same question that the OP was asking about. This wasn't about Random Encounters in Hexploration, but about a more general "how many encounters should you plan on a party being able to handle in a day?"
That's been a number not given in rulebooks, that people commonly ask about. Back around this last September, when talking about the balance of wizards, Michael Sayre referred to an assumed baseline of about 3 encounters. In between the Twitter posts it all started on, some Reddit threads that started spawning about "the official number of encounters per day" and the posts in this forum that spawned off of it all, there was some clarification that this baseline is something that shifts a lot based on the type of encounters used, how the party manages their resources, etc and that not listing an Official Expectation of the number of encounters per day, but instead listing the expected impact of different types of encounters, was a deliberate choice, not an oversight.
Unsurprisingly, many people ignored those later parts and started repeating the "official baseline" through a number of different online spaces.
The original question was about whether they'd changed positions and put a baseline expectation on number of encounters into Player Core 1 or GM Core.
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I like SuperBidi's analysis. But I think there's a few more points to consider.
Encounters per day is like adding salt to a dish;
- too few, it tastes flat
- too much, it ruins the dish, and you can't really get it out again
- not everyone like the same amount
- prepackaged food has more salt in it than health authorities would recommend
- even with all those caveats, we want recipes to give an indication of what is sort of the normal amount of salt to add
As you get more GMing experience you also get a better feeling for how much salt/acid slime monsters you want in your adventuring day, and how that'll vary depending on what kind of adventure you're running and who you're running it for.
I think there's an element SuperBidi didn't cover so much though - encounters per in-game day, and encounters per game session. Of course if your game session represents one in-game day then that's the same. That happens in a lot of PFS scenarios. But not always.
Sometimes the party is moving a 1000km to a different country for a different adventure, and that trip is going to take weeks of in-game time but only one game session. You do want some encounters along the way, to kind of paint the scenery the party is traveling through .
Sometimes the party is exploring a dungeon, which has more than 4-5 encounters, but it does make sense to do it all at once. Actually, maybe the party can even guess there's more encounters to come. For example, there's all these claw marks and soot stains, but so far the party hasn't encountered any creature capable of doing that. So they'll be holding back some spells for a dragon or something. They don't expect the dungeon is done until the fat lizard sings. But this might be a two-session escapade that takes only one in-game day.
Encounter difficulty has to be balanced with encounter quantity. If you're doing eight encounters in a day, they can't all be hard things that burn through your spells. If you have one encounter during a week of travel, maybe it should be a bit on the spicier side, but not quite dip into boss-fight XP budgets. In both cases, the players have a bit of a ballpark idea about how many encounters they're likely to face that day. That's fine - informed players get to have the fun of trying to make good choices, instead of pure gambles.
I do think, comparing published adventures to these analytical figures, that they're kinda heavy on the salt. I'd rather see adventures have more obvious midway breakpoints, than dungeon floors with 11ish encounters that XP you a whole level.
I know the game quite well and still am unable to give a simple answer to this question. If I had to answer:
- Number of encounters per day should vary as otherwise you can too easily metagame your resources. It'd also be boring to have always the same number of encounters.
- At low level, casters have very limited resources and even if cantrips work fine you can end up with the boring experience of casting the same cantrip over and over again. So the number of encounters should be lower at low level.
- 1 or 2 encounters are not enough for any caster to expand all their resources outside the very first levels. It removes the point of certain assets, like good Focus Spells and extra number of spell slots. It should not be a very common number.
- 4-5 encounters a day (once you're at least at mid level) is a very nice number of encounters, very manageable. Also, it very conveniently takes roughly a session to handle.
- 6-7 encounters a day is taxing on casters. ...
SuperBidi left out how difficult those encounters are. Are the counted encounters all Moderate Threat? I usually limit Severe-Threat and Extreme-Threat encounters to two per dungeon, and I go up to two only because my players are very good at recovery.
In my own experience as a GM, the only control I have over the number of encounters the party faces in a day is setting up the total number of threats in the area. My players decide how far they push themselves. And they like variety. Sometimes they carefully scout and avoid encounters. Other times they dive into an enemy stronghold and make a mad dash through many rooms toward the big boss, stopping only for an occasional ten-minute Treat Wounds and Refocus rest break. Balancing the dungeon means throwing in a few good places for that rest break.
For a mad-dash example, in Vault of the Onyx Citadel they cleverly bypassed the lower levels of the Onyx Citadel through trickery that used up a few spells, and then had to fight through Upper Terrace H28, the Mess Hall, Dueling Academy H29, Hadregash, Azaersi’s Chambers H33, and Ritual Room H34 to reach the bosses in Transposition Engine H35. Then they had an emergency run over to Control Altar H7 to deactivate the Transposition Engine. That was 8 encounters, all Low and Moderate Threats except Hadregash at Extreme and Transposition Engine at Severe and Control Altar as a skill challenge, in a single day. The party started at 19th level and reached 20th by defeating the avatar of the barghest hero-god Hadregash. The Onyx Citadel and its 35 rooms are a 17th-level adventure, but I rewrote it for 19th level.
How did they manage the mad dash? They had planned it in advance. They had obtained the floor plans of the Onyx Citadel from a xiomorph Vault Keeper who had lived in the Onyx Citadel, so they knew exactly where to go. The druid in the party burned through his area-of-effect primal spells quickly to take out Low-Threat troops so that the other party members could save their resources for the Moderate and tougher Threats.
Give narrative clues to experienced players, and they will determine the number of encounters per day themselves.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Encounter difficulty has to be balanced with encounter quantity.
SuperBidi left out how difficult those encounters are.
I covered it: Mix encounters difficulty and avoid any pattern in their distribution.
I think this is important. Because even if you know your players will face only 2 encounters today, they don't have this information. So in general they will tend to use resources as if they will face a classical 3-5 encounter day. So putting 2 Severe encounters back to back because they are supposed to be the sole encounters of the day may be a far tougher challenge than it looked like at first glance.
If you're doing eight encounters in a day, they can't all be hard things that burn through your spells.
Having a stream of Moderate encounters can be boring. Having a stream of Severe encounters can be taxing. So I would not change the encounter difficulty based on the number of encounters. I'll just alternate Moderate (a lot), Severe (often), Low (sometimes) and Trivial (rarely) encounters with no real considerations about the length of the adventuring day.
That's why I say to never go above 7 encounters: Either it will be far too hard or you'll have to dial encounter difficulty down and end up with some bland dungeon where every encounter is easy and martials are doing all the job. Remember that Severe encounters are extremely important for casters: They are the encounters that justify using top rank spells. If you remove them the casters will feel unimpactful.Sometimes the party is exploring a dungeon, which has more than 4-5 encounters, but it does make sense to do it all at once. Actually, maybe the party can even guess there's more encounters to come. For example, there's all these claw marks and soot stains, but so far the party hasn't encountered any creature capable of doing that. So they'll be holding back some spells for a dragon or something. They don't expect the dungeon is done until the fat lizard sings.
The boss at the end of the dungeon is really a problematic design that is repeated far too much. First, it tends to push casters into a hoarding strategy that is not funny. But it is also so basic... Put the boss as the third encounter of the dungeon and look at your player's face when they realize that the evil lich is right there in front of them when it shouldn't be. The fight will be much more memorable and your players will feel they have much more agenda: Once the lich is dead, the remaining rooms are filled with prisonners, treasures, information, etc... So they can potentially leave the dungeon whenever they want (and as such are not forced to push beyond their capability) but are still very much interested in cleaning everything.
If you want to establish it by rule just apply the Stamina rules from GMG, as it is clearly made for that IMO.
Stamina doesn't help casters with their spells.
Stamina doesn't help casters with their spells.
It does. After party runs out of stamina, advancing with less than half HP is not recommended, so the party will look for a long rest, replenishing the spells.
It is probably the balance step wanted by designers, as easy fights spend few stamina and spells, while hard ones get much from both.
Having a stream of Moderate encounters can be boring. Having a stream of Severe encounters can be taxing. So I would not change the encounter difficulty based on the number of encounters. I'll just alternate Moderate (a lot), Severe (often), Low (sometimes) and Trivial (rarely) encounters with no real considerations about the length of the adventuring day.
When a story calls for a lot of moderate encounters or a lot of extreme ones those extremes are a good place to break the encounter mode and go into narration. This speeds things up for predictable outcomes or allows for more dramatic scenes that encounter rules make harder to do.
If a severe stream use dramatic narration incorporating a few rolls to guide outcomes. Leaving the last encounter to actually go into encounter mode. This way you can story tell the fighting for more than usual tough enemies but still get a balanced day.
For a stream of moderate or low encounters do the opposite, roll initiative for the first one or two, then use narration to allow players to say how cool they are as they basically trounce their way through (because they've already proven they can do it in the first two encounters.) This may culminate to a harder fight which you would go back into encounter mode to finish.
The effect is actually keeping the encounter numbers the same but story telling a more drawn out day of fighting to get the feeling of it.