D&D 5E 6-8 encounters/day - how common is this?

[S'mon]

I often find DMs that dont turn their minds to the 6-8 expectation are also the first ones who complain about class balance being off and encounters being too easy.

I 'turn my mind' to it a lot - I spend a lot of time thinking about it. And my conclusion is that there is no way to force the PCs consistently through 6-8 encounters/day without a level of railroading that I'm not prepared to engage in. In the majority of scenarios, either the natural encounter frequency is far lower (wilderness exploration) or the number of encounters is largely up to the PCs (dungeon
exploration).

There have occasionally been gauntlet-type situations in my games where the PCs have faced 5+ encounters in a day, eg the PCs are being pursued; perhaps a chasing army forces them to take shelter in dangerous ruins. But the important point is that PLAYERS SEEK TO AVOID THESE - they know these situations carry elevated risk. If every session were a gauntlet they'd be undestandably unhappy.

I do wonder if going to short rest = overnight, long rest = 1 week, would result in something closer to designer intent. I have to say though that 5e class balance has not been a huge issue for me at 1-3 encounters per day, so I wonder if it's necessary given that I can see it making players disgruntled. Would maybe have been a better idea in 3e, where balance really was a huge problem.

 

[Flamestrike]

I 'turn my mind' to it a lot - I spend a lot of time thinking about it. And my conclusion is that there is no way to force the PCs consistently through 6-8 encounters/day without a level of railroading that I'm not prepared to engage in. In the majority of scenarios, either the natural encounter frequency is far lower (wilderness exploration) or the number of encounters is largely up to the PCs (dungeon exploration).

Do you time limit you quests? Surely: 'the BBEG has to be stopped before [time X] or else [bad thing Y] happens' isnt unusual.

If there is no reason to stop the BBEG, why are they stopping him in the first place?

Off the top of my head:

• Rescue prisoner before they get sacrificed
• Escape the dungeon before being trapped inside
• Slay the BBEG before he does something with the Macguffin
• You dont get paid unless you bring the NPC the macguffin before [event in 3 days]. Dungeon has three levels, each with 7ish encounter in it.
• Rival NPC group also seeks the macguffin
• Reinforcements are coming. You need to clear the dungeon before they arrive and make your job much harder
• PC given quest by mentor - as a test of his skill he must complete the quest by time Y to get reward X
• The dungeon randomly teleports around the realm every 24 hours. Get in, recover the macguffin, and get out before then or...
• The demon grows in power every day. The longer you take the more dangerous he becomes!
• The PCs are cursed and need to remove it by midnight by bathing in the magic waters of the dungeon (the Cindarella gease)
• If the PCs can bathe in the magical water by midnight, they get a boon. The pools magic only works one night of the year - tonight!

Etc etc etc.

Be creative. Im sure you can think of tons more.

For what its worth, dont use a time limit for every adventuring day. 6-8 is the baseline. Many AD's will be shorter, and the occasional few longer.

As a side note, this gives me an idea for a thread - a list of ideas for quest time limits to help DMs enforce the 6-8 AD (similar to the above).

Remember - a single level dungeon with 6-8 encounters is one AD. I like to throw multi level dungeons at my party occasionally. For example in a dungeon or adventure containing 20 odd encounters, I would give my party a 3 or 4 day limit to complete it.

In scenarios like this you can limit short rest abuse by random monsters. The PCs know they get 2-3 long rests to complete the adventure, and are unsure exactly how many levels or encounters the dungeon has. They'll refrain from nova tactics, and will be able to pace themselves accordingly over a longer time frame, using only the single time limit.

A seven level 'mega-dungeon' that teleports around the multiverse every week to a different location, and has never had its final level defeated would be a pretty awesome idea for an adventure hook in fact.

 

[JonnyP71]

I don't enforce it, neither do I want to enforce it. I try to arrange encounters as logically as possible based on party actions and location. Travelling through the wilderness they might get 1 encounter in 3 days, which can be easily avoided. If they go into a mine infested by Goblins they might get more than 10 encounters without any opportunity for even a short rest - IF they choose to go hacking their way through the caverns - it's up to them! If they want to try to sneak in a bump a few off stealthily I will let them... and the Goblins' own response will depend on the PCs' actions.

It's possible they might complete their current adventure having had just 2-3 fights over the space of a week of game time, spread over 3 gaming sessions of 3 hours - as they are in a roleplay-heavy investigative adventure. Their main peril instead comes from possible arrest and subsequent trial.

Story and realism trumps sticking to some pre-ordained quota!

 

[abirdcall]

A couple things I find that people who don't like the idea of 6-8 encounters/long rest miss are:

It doesn't need to happen every long rest. As long as it could happen you will get the desired results. If the players only expect 1-2 encounters they will play accordingly.

Encounter also doesn't have to mean combat.

Pacing is one of the key jobs of the DM. This does not have to mean railroading. The DM managing pacing is not the same as railroading the PCs. For example, in a recent session the PCs found an exit to the dungeon back to town. They could go back to town and have a long rest or they could continue on. If they take the long rest then time will advance in the dungeon with all manner of consequences. The players had 3 choices, press on and potentially get the big success, take a long rest and come back possibly having missed the big success or find it harder, or go to town and never come back securing a partial success.

 

[meshon]

I'm running a really big cave delve for my group and I decided early on to award XP for finding new areas. Just a small amount for each new location, but it adds up. Since my realization that the Adventuring Day is a useful benchmark, I've decided to adjust those awards higher with a multiplier after four encounters. A long rest resets the multiplier. By pushing beyond what's "safe," the characters get to learn the extents of their power (and gain more XP).

It works well in this adventure, which is primarily about exploring a vast underground realm, and the players know the system, so they're able to use it. They've also used the word "compelling" more than once to describe the caves, so that, combined with the escalating XP awards, acts as an incentive to drive then onwards, and make a considered assessment about their resources.

Also, turns out that 50' lengths of rope is one of those resources...

I'm stoked to hear more, some good ideas here. In my experience the AD works with the encounter building guidelines. It is, perhaps, arbitrary, but it's part of the design and that seems like a pretty good reason to work with it.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

6-8 encounters per day is only achieved on some days. The standard reaction to PCs retreating is making the encounters harder. But if you do this, of course PCs retreat after every and each. Instead assume that PCs win most fights easily and the challenge is not spending more resources than necessary. And then start thinking about the enemy's reaction. Let them retreat and get reinforcements. This way a single easy encounter will turn into two encounters and after that, a short rest is in order. Also after your PCs try to full rest after that encounter let the enemies actually chase the PCs and attack them before they can have their or even better, in the middle of it.

 

[ThirdWizard]

I actually have the all data for my current campaign.

Session 01 - 1 combat encounter
Session 02 - 3 combat encounters + long rest + 5 combat encounters
Session 03 - 4 combat encounters
Session 04 - 3 combat encounters
Session 05 - 4 combat encounters + long rest + 1 combat encounter
Session 06 - 3 combat encounters
Session 07 - 4 combat encounters
Session 08 - 1 combat encounter + long rest + 2 combat encounters
Session 09 - hex crawl, no more than 2 combat encounters back to back
Session 10 - 5 combat encounters
Session 11 - 1 combat encounter + long rest + 1 combat encounter
Session 12 - 2 combat encounters
Session 13 - 1 combat encounter (escort mission!)
Session 14 - 2 combat encounters
Session 15 - 2 combat encounters
Session 16 - no combat encounters
Session 17 - 5 combat encounters
Session 18 - 1 combat encounter
Session 18 - 4 combat encounters

To juxtapose this against experiences of the most deadly and exciting sessions, combat-wise instead of just making this an information dump, I'll say that the most satisfying combats were session 3 (a hair away from a TPK), 6 (dead PC), 8 (near TPK), and 9 (difficult random encounter), and 17 (all party resources used up).

It looks like half my combats have been memorable because of incredible difficulty in a single encounter for the day (or very few) and half because many encounters have worn down the PCs so that by the end there's a sense of danger. Both are satisfying, and I wouldn't just want to go one way or the other. Overall, though, I focus on less combats per session because there's so much to go through, and it's easier to do lots of non-combat encounters when you have few encounters. Design-wise, I don't think one is necessarily better than the other, just different.

 

[iserith]

I haven't read every post in this thread, but there are a couple of ways to hit the 6- to 8-encounter adventuring day mark that work well in my experience: (1) Include time pressures in your game. (2) Do an XP multiplier for every challenge overcome above the fifth.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Well, maybe I'm being overly skeptical (again), but a case that pushes the Warlock to blow spells aggressively while the Wizard waits in fear and never spends them, consistently, seems...unstable, I guess?

Yeah, the key is nothing should be consistent to the point of being predictable. You keep the pressure on the resource-management meta-game, otherwise, it dominates play. If players don't end the day with some resources unused in essence 'wasted,' some of the time, and endure several encounters with no resources left, at others, we're making it too easy on them.

The Warlock is going to have a lot of days where the latter half is spent doing nothing at all (and is going to be really hurting on long days if rests are hard to come by), and the Wizard is going to be keenly aware that day after day passes with most of her spell list unspent. Do typical players not reflect on that very much?

They do, and they try to find ways around it, which is why it needs to be a 'living world' - always adapting to what the PCs do, and also always changing unpredictably in ways unrelated to what they do.

THats because cpmbat is fast and simple in those games. I have run a few of the classics in ecent years using AD&D/BECMI and clones and in a 4 hour sesison you can.

I found it odd when short sessions came into vogue (relatively, to a grognard) recently. Back in the day, we played 6, 8, 12 hour sessions.

The only way I can squeeze in 6-8 encounters is in something like a dungeon crawl with most of the session devoted to it.

There's no need to map long rests to the end of sessions.

After 5E I would say the rules do not work at all.

If the rules aren't working for you (and, hey, they work for a lot of other people), you just need to adjust the rulings you make such that they do. ;P

 

[Sacrosanct]

I don't plan it, but that's probably the average. Most of our combat encounters are in a dungeon or stronghold though, where 10+ encounters per day is not uncommon, largely because there isn't an opportunity for the party to really rest for that long. Once the area is alerted, they are alerted. Sort of balances out the the times when we are wilderness or urban and there might only be a couple of encounters.

Also, the # or difficulty of the encounter is not correlated with quality or fun. That's largely up to the DM and the gaming table. Not every encounter has to be some big epic fight in order to qualify as a quality encounter.