5E D&D Alternative Encounter System
Encounters are a central part of Dungeons & Dragons. Whether they take the form of a pit trap, goblin horde or debate between nobles, they are an opportunity to test your players and let them show off all the cool things their characters can do. However, there is a major issue with fifth edition D&D encounter philosophy, namely the number of encounters the game expects a party to run into between long rests — 6-8 — versus the real-world time and effort it takes to plan and run said encounters. The result of this is either a complete absence of minor encounters or a series of uninteresting minor encounters the party slogs through using minimal resources so they can dump those saved resources on whatever unfortunate boss crosses their path. I’m not the first to recognize this issue, folks like Matthew Colville and Nerdarchy’s own Out of the Box Encounters do a great job coming up with ways to make a campaign’s encounters more interesting. However, I’d like to approach this issue from a different direction with an idea for an alternative encounter system.