Rebalance Random Encounters

Well, I did too, and the only actual reason I went down is because the game does not automatically grant short rest benefits when long rest is interrupted but you spent more than one hour, as with the actual tabletop rules.

So my party was also level 3 but out of everything barring a Fog Cloud on my Ranger (Hunter Ranger, Champion Fighter, Survival Monk, Tree Warlock), not even full life... And I did manage to survive 10 rounds.

That encounter is a dual lesson: always take a short rest before starting travelling if you're missing resources / HP (at least until game fixes aforementioned problem) AND *think tactical*.

Unless you happened to be ambushed in the "plain plains map" in which case yeah, indeed you're screwed.

As long as you have *any* kind of elevation point requiring climbing, you can win this. Dodge/Dash your way ASAP until everyone is up and blocking access points, then focus fire with highest AC people while Doding/healing with those who are critical. It's costly, and you'll end up completely empty of everything possibly, but it's doable. ^^ 

If you're lucky to have a vantage point which is not opened on all sides even easier although I didn't meet any such map in random encounters to be honest. Same if you have any AOE spells (Fog Cloud to force them to fire from one direction or make them waste a full round moving away, Spike Growth of course to kill a few, Entangle to stop a handful, or just plain old Shatter to weaken them).

Monks also shine here, if you have a few Ki points you can aggro several of them to split them, then Disengage and Dash to backtrack when you are on the verge of getting surrounded. Otherwise, putting it as the easiest target for ranged attacks and Dodging ensures he can sustain a LOT of attacks with nearly 0 damage (Deflect Missile is great).

The problem with allowing short rest benefits during an interrupted long rest is the fact that normally you get all HP back without using any hit dice.  The long rest also restores half of your hit dice to be used during short rests.  It could be presented as a choice or done automatically during wandering encounters.  For example one option would be to present a popup asking if the party members want to use any hit dice to heal at the beginning of a wandering encounter.  The other option is to apply it automatically.  Why does this make a difference?  If you use all of your hit dice to heal rather than complete the long rest you could risk only having half of your hit dice available for the next short rest.  In my opinion it should be automatic otherwise it appears too contrived making the decision of how much you have already healed prior to an encounter.
Another option would be after the first hour of a long rest present an option asking if the party wants to use hit dice to heal or instead risk finishing the long rest to heal fully. I always thought of short rest healing as bandaging whereas long rests is a giant freebie.
The truth is I don't really like 5e healing as it is too easy and too much like video game healing. Personally I prefer the optional "gritty" healing rules.

I would like to have options for random encounters on battle maps.  Also an option to reset mobs after a certain period of time.

That's the toughest fight in the entire game.

I personally think that there isn't something to fix about random encounters, except implementing an ESCAPE/FLEE option.

Unforgiving encounters happen less during real tables for a myriad of reasons, but I don't see why a lot of people is considering that it needs to be fixed. 

Does everyone expect that gods in Solasta need to be adjusting its world perils so that your party should only face lesser dangers? I mean I have faced these thugs on various occasions, all of them were really hard, some of them I failed hard because of tactics/bad luck/party composition. Sh1t happens, what do you hope for when traveling uncharted areas named BADLANDS?

These are all serious questions, no rage or contempt here.

I personally think that there isn't something to fix about random encounters, except implementing an ESCAPE/FLEE option.

Unforgiving encounters happen less during real tables for a myriad of reasons, but I don't see why a lot of people is considering that it needs to be fixed. 

Does everyone expect that gods in Solasta need to be adjusting its world perils so that your party should only face lesser dangers? I mean I have faced these thugs on various occasions, all of them were really hard, some of them I failed hard because of tactics/bad luck/party composition. Sh1t happens, what do you hope for when traveling uncharted areas named BADLANDS?

These are all serious questions, no rage or contempt here.

It's not about them being unforgiving, but about many of them being completely unreasonable. Some highlights of encounters I've run into include:

- 10 thugs at lvl 3. 32 hp per unit, advantage on all attacks with Pack Tactics.
- Young Black Dragon at lvl 4
- Goblin party with a shaman spamming lightning bolt (avg 28 dmg, 14 on save) at lvl 3 (20-30 hp party members on avg)
- Party with Evil Priest spamming lightning bolt at lvl 3

Some of these encounters are borderlien impossible even with highly optimized parties if you lose initiative, let alone get surprised. A Young Black Dragon's breath weapon deals 11d8 acid damage, with an avg of 49. That's 24 avg dmg if you succeed the saving throw. A lvl 4 character usually has between 26 and 40 hp. A failed save doesn't just mean getting knocked out, but likely an instant game over due to the excess dmg bypassing death saves.

The lightning bolt spammers aren't quite as brutal, but can still completely ruin your party. Especially if there is more than one shaman / priest, which can happen. I've literally gotten surprised by a goblin party, lost initiative and gotten a game over before even getting a turn. This is not okay design, because "you die without recourse" isn't a challenge. It's just luck. 

I feel you, I've lost dozens of Iron Man saves in situations like you described and I despise goblin shamans and evil priests as much as you seem to, I just don't agree that they're always unwinnable, except being surprised by an Young Black Dragon at those levels, which means game over 100%. But why couldn't that happen? I mean.. wilderness encounter rules are fair and simple.. if you don't want to be ganged by these mfers early on, have someone with good Perception skills and travel slowly, I really mean: do your job as an adventurer trying to survive in a post-cataclysmic world.

My take is that most of these can be overcomed using smart tactics, having a synergic party composition, or both, so for me it's not a design problem and it would be A LOT better if we could at least flee from the fights we don't want to have.

But well. I may be wrong, and its possible that I'm mostly alone with this opinion, but it is the one I stick to atm.

Thanks for the conversation.

This has been brought up a lot, but it still needs to be fixed. I just ran into 10 Thugs at level 3. 10 enemies with 32 hp and advantage on their attack rolls (Pack Tactics) at level 3. While random encounters at lvl 5 and up can be brutal, the ones you run into lvls 1-4 are often insane and completely unreasonable for most any party to take on.

Short of having 2 raging Barbarians, a healer and a Spike Growth Druid, I don't see any way for a party to take on this encounter without ungodly amounts of luck. And it is not fair to expect the player to have specific party compositions to deal with random encounters.

Please, TA, fix the random encounters. 

To illustrate his point, even though I was disagreeing with him about the overall discussion.

Just started a fresh Lost Valley run. Scavenger difficulty. 

Party composition: Berserker Barbarian, Life Cleric, Heroism Bard and a Shadoweaver. All humans. Point Buy. Lv3.

Just after defeating the Gorillas in the way out of the Redeemer's Nest, the party travelled at a slow pace to the Valley, in the first random encounter of the campaign, they got ambushed by "Badland Eagles" (4x matriarch 4x giant eagle). Result: another Iron Man save lost.

Screenshot: https://imgur.com/LiZmOzI.

. But why couldn't that happen? 

Because this isn't a roguelike videogame, where the intended experience is to live and die on the randomness of it all. And even a roguelike would be rightly criticized for including options where you have no recourse. Which can happen a surprising amount of time with low level encounters when spellcasters get involved.

Are the encounters from lvl 5 and above any less brutal? Not really, except now your party typically have enough of an hp buffer to make it to your turns at least once and you have enough abilities that good play can compensate for a lot. 

Encounters need serious rebalancing for low level parties. That highly optimized parties can be just obliterated on a bad intiative roll is very frustrating design, which bodes terribly for any party where someone added the characters they wanted instead of the ones that would be good. 

The problem with allowing short rest benefits during an interrupted long rest is the fact that normally you get all HP back without using any hit dice.  The long rest also restores half of your hit dice to be used during short rests.  It could be presented as a choice or done automatically during wandering encounters.  

I entirely agree on that. For me it would be a popup like "Long rest was interrupted but you gained the benefits of the short rest" followed by the usual screen, with a "validate" button taking back to the "Enemies spotted" screen. That way everyone is glad.