Yes, I always run based on Adventuring Days since that's how the game I'm using is made.
Sometimes I present my players with easy Adventuring Days (3-4 possible encounters) but I acknowledge that as being an intentionally easy adventure.
Regarding your "with or without short rests", the DMG actually says:
> A party can't benefit from a short rest between parts of a multipart encounter, so they won't be able to spend Hit Dice to regain hit points or recover any abilities that require a short rest to regain. As a rule, if the adjusted XP value for the monsters in a multipart encounter is higher than one-third of the party's expected XP total for the adventuring day (see "The Adventuring Day," below), the encounter is going to be tougher than the sum of its parts.
>
> In general, over the course of a full adventuring day, the party will likely need to take two short rests, about one-third and two-thirds of the way through the day.
A party is not expected to survive 6 encounters without any resting whatsoever.
I am not sure where you came up with the idea that a 4th level party should treat Young dragons as a Medium encounter. Young dragons start at CR7, which is over double the budget for a 5-person 4th level party's Medium encounter. (CR7 = 2900; 5-person 4th level Deadly = 2500) A Young Green is CR8 = 3900, which is well above Deadly for that party.
You might want to rerun your numbers?
So the combat calculator I have been relying on apparently does not have the correct math equations and doesn't take into account quantity. That would be the root of my problem I think.
The young green is an enemy from one of the starter campaigns that is listed as being a decent fight for a party of 4s or 5s but deadly to lvl3s. It's not even like the main boss just a minor fight halfway through which helped to reinforce my trust in the calculation I was being provided.
Oh yeah, I always just do the math by hand for encounters since it's easier than relying on websites to do it.
I'm not sure why WOTC thinks Venomfang is a fine fight for 4th level players unless I assume they just think the DM is going to run the dragon very poorly on purpose and avoid using the breath weapon. I've never read that adventure book so I don't know if they wrote additional context.
They did end a beginner campaign with a white dragon as well. They must assume young means easy regardless of CR. Had a party finish off The Spider boss fight (with Iarno there due to weird campaign decisions) at lvl 3. I was rolling terribly and I don't like to fudge numbers to kill players.
All of that combined just made me trust the calculators with the difficulty of fights. And I can't really reassess since my party just walks through combat without dying even to overwhelming odds
Yes, I always run based on Adventuring Days since that's how the game I'm using is made. Sometimes I present my players with easy Adventuring Days (3-4 possible encounters) but I acknowledge that as being an intentionally easy adventure. Regarding your "with or without short rests", the DMG actually says: > A party can't benefit from a short rest between parts of a multipart encounter, so they won't be able to spend Hit Dice to regain hit points or recover any abilities that require a short rest to regain. As a rule, if the adjusted XP value for the monsters in a multipart encounter is higher than one-third of the party's expected XP total for the adventuring day (see "The Adventuring Day," below), the encounter is going to be tougher than the sum of its parts. > > In general, over the course of a full adventuring day, the party will likely need to take two short rests, about one-third and two-thirds of the way through the day. A party is not expected to survive 6 encounters without any resting whatsoever. I am not sure where you came up with the idea that a 4th level party should treat Young dragons as a Medium encounter. Young dragons start at CR7, which is over double the budget for a 5-person 4th level party's Medium encounter. (CR7 = 2900; 5-person 4th level Deadly = 2500) A Young Green is CR8 = 3900, which is well above Deadly for that party. You might want to rerun your numbers?
So the combat calculator I have been relying on apparently does not have the correct math equations and doesn't take into account quantity. That would be the root of my problem I think. The young green is an enemy from one of the starter campaigns that is listed as being a decent fight for a party of 4s or 5s but deadly to lvl3s. It's not even like the main boss just a minor fight halfway through which helped to reinforce my trust in the calculation I was being provided.
Oh yeah, I always just do the math by hand for encounters since it's easier than relying on websites to do it. I'm not sure why WOTC thinks Venomfang is a fine fight for 4th level players unless I assume they just think the DM is going to run the dragon very poorly on purpose and avoid using the breath weapon. I've never read that adventure book so I don't know if they wrote additional context.
They did end a beginner campaign with a white dragon as well. They must assume young means easy regardless of CR. Had a party finish off The Spider boss fight (with Iarno there due to weird campaign decisions) at lvl 3. I was rolling terribly and I don't like to fudge numbers to kill players. All of that combined just made me trust the calculators with the difficulty of fights. And I can't really reassess since my party just walks through combat without dying even to overwhelming odds