D&D 5E The 6-battle adventuring day, does it even exist?

[doctorbadwolf]

My players were panicking last session that they were starting the third encounter in a day without any rests.

 

[ECMO3]

My players were panicking last session that they were starting the third encounter in a day without any rests.

In one of my games as a player I am close to panicking right now and we have only had three fights and 1 short rest since our last long rest.

We have had 3 combat encounters - well actually 2 but one of them we were getting our butt handed to us and we ran, managed to escape, short rested and then came back and assaulted the bad guys. We are a 5 person 7th level party and the bad guys in question in the 2nd/3rd fight were 15ish CR1/8, 1 CR3, 2 CR5 and 1 CR13 all in the same fight. We managed to barely win the second time, but I (bladesinger) have only a handful of spell slots left and I'm out of bladesong uses. I think we are also out of healing and our Barbarian is low on hps and he used most of his hit dice the last short rest. Our Monk is low on hps too, but I think he still has all his hit dice because he was the one person who did not get severly banged up the first time we fought them.

We are really not at a place where we can long rest. I find it is rare that we are in these circumstances (which is probably why I am close to panicking) ....

As a DM I never seem to panic.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

No, that’s why I’ve abandoned the standard long rest/ short rest rules in my games for gritty.

 

[the Jester]

I think the largest number of encounters I've run in one game day was about 16. Several of these were very minor encounters, though- a single scouting enemy, that kind of thing- and this was in a megadungeon.

So yeah, the 6(+) encounter workday can exist, but it requires a high-encounter-density environment- a dungeon, enemy outpost, dangerous wilderness, lawless city, etc.

 

[Lanefan]

Does the 6-battle adventuring day really exist?

Yes; but almost without exception it's because the PCs (whether wisely or not) proactively sought those battles out, either by pushing ahead with their exploring or by good old-fashioned face-charging. Even then, it's uncommon.

If parties were generally more careful and-or cautious, a 6-fight day would be very rare indeed.

 

[Ovinomancer]

As I was listening to D&D live they mentioned the wild beyond the witchlight. Apparently it will be possible to complete that entire adventure without a single combat.

That is fine thematically, although doing away with a game pillar makes me question if it is actually a pillar. The bigger issue though is the 6 fights per long rest and 2 per short rest which is designed into the game balance. They clearly are not going to come anywhere close to this target if you have an adventure with no necessary combat at all.

To be honest I think the 6 fights per long rest is not really that common to start with in official content. In all the WOTC adventures I have played and DMed I think I have only had a handful of days that met that threshold.

Yup. WotC ignores the way their own game is structured with the published adventures. It's very odd.

The 6-8 encounters is a bit of a red herring, though. 6-8 medium and hard encounters usually meets the daily adventuring XP budget, which is the actual important bit, not the number of encounters. 6-8 encounters is a rough shorthand, you can string it together however you actually like -- 3 deadlies generally work, for instance. I like to use staggered encounters, where it opens with X combatants, and then adds more as it goes along. This keeps the danger level consistent while burning through the budget efficiently. Also, making encounters that have alternate goals that 'reduce the other side to zero hitpoints' works really well for getting in a number of encounters without the slog.

 

[Burnside]

Inside dungeon environments or when running other site-based adventures, 6 or so encounters between long rests is quite common in games I run or play in. Either the plot involves a deadline or time crunch, or the location is inherently too hostile to allow for a long rest, and exiting, resting elsewhere, and then re-entering the location would allow enemies the time to either escape, complete their goals, or reinforce their positions.

If the party is travelling, 6 encounters between long rests is very unlikely. So the fewer encounters they DO have tend to be more intense.

 

[mrpopstar]

I only see six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day if I'm rolling for random encounters every hour, so it really only happens in dangerous environments (most often dungeons).

 

[Charlaquin]

As I was listening to D&D live they mentioned the wild beyond the witchlight. Apparently it will be possible to complete that entire adventure without a single combat.

That is fine thematically, although doing away with a game pillar makes me question if it is actually a pillar. The bigger issue though is the 6 fights per long rest and 2 per short rest which is designed into the game balance. They clearly are not going to come anywhere close to this target if you have an adventure with no necessary combat at all.

To be honest I think the 6 fights per long rest is not really that common to start with in official content. In all the WOTC adventures I have played and DMed I think I have only had a handful of days that met that threshold.

The 6-8 medium or hard encounter adventuring day is built into combat balance. If the adventure doesn’t focus on combat anyway, it won’t really matter if the classes are balanced in combat or not.

 

[Charlaquin]

Yup. WotC ignores the way their own game is structured with the published adventures. It's very odd.

The 6-8 encounters is a bit of a red herring, though. 6-8 medium and hard encounters usually meets the daily adventuring XP budget, which is the actual important bit, not the number of encounters. 6-8 encounters is a rough shorthand, you can string it together however you actually like -- 3 deadlies generally work, for instance. I like to use staggered encounters, where it opens with X combatants, and then adds more as it goes along. This keeps the danger level consistent while burning through the budget efficiently. Also, making encounters that have alternate goals that 'reduce the other side to zero hitpoints' works really well for getting in a number of encounters without the slog.

Yeah, also if you break down the math, it’s more like 6-8 medium encounters or about 3 hard encounters to hit the recommended XP budget, depending on party level. If you use a mix of both, 3 medium and 2 hard gets you pretty pretty close to the mark at most levels.