How many encounters in a day?

[cptkevin]

Hi, I'm a DM and I'd need a clarification. It seems that every two encounters a party gains a milestone to "compensate" the power previously used.
I'd know how many standard encounters a party is supposed to face before a long rest?
In other words, if I'd separate a chunk of 10 encounters in "encounters per day", how many group of these encounters I'd need?

TY

 

[Boarstorm]

As many as the group can handle.

Most of the time, the decision to rest for the day is in the player's hands, not the DM's.

This can change, of course, if they happen to be in the middle of an invasion or some such, but for the most part don't count on them getting through X encounters in a day -- they'll throw you for a loop most of the time.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The limitting factors are daily abilities & healing surges. A party out of daily abilities is below it's full effectiveness and will have more trouble with another encounter. A party ouf of surges is in greater danger of character deaths. The party can obviously decide when it needs to rest, but, a decent rule of thumb to keep things interesting might be a number of encounters equal to the number of characters. This would encourage them to use thier daily abilities with restraint - ideally, with each encounter giving one player a chance to shine with his daily ability.

More logically, it would depend on the situation. The exploration of an ancient crypt could procede at a cautious pace, as the party only needs to face the next trap, golem, entombed undead, or whatever when it proceeds deeper into the crypt - unless there was an outside time contraint. A raid on a castle OTOH, would have the entire complex up in arms against the party eventually - even short rests might not always be an option.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

How many encounters happen in a day depends heavily on your style. However, I should note that the game was designed to do at least SOME resource management. Any day that has less than 2 encounters won't have to play the resource management game at all.

It has been advised to me that creating some story concerns that put the PCs on some sort of urgency is almost always the best way to go. That will encourage players to fight 2 or 3 encounters(possibly more) in a day.

 

[Ryngard]

In KotS my group went through the Ambush 2, outside kobold Lair and inside kobold lair in one day. Due to travel time they did the Dragon Burial Ground in one day by itself.

We're gearing up to go into the Keep so I'm not sure how it'll play out inside the dungeon.

I will say that by the time the inside lair kobolds attacked they were wishing they had their daily powers!

 

[Aegir]

One minor detail to point out about milestones: you're right that they occur after two encounters, but only if they're two consecutive encounters not separated by an extended rest (short rests to regain encounter powers are fine).

Minor thing, but there you go. Basically, you need at least three encounters between extended rests to benefit from milestones (two to gain the milestone AP, one to use it, as all APs are lost during an extended rest and you start over with one).