D&D 5E How many encounters per day is YOUR average?

[dave2008]

To be clear, I'm talking about homebrew classes and subclasses, not DMing. Running down resources in a session isn't exactly the issue, it's making it seem fair across the level progression between classes.

In my current group we have 2 fighters, 2 rogues, and a wizard. I think we average 3 combats per day, but only 2 is not unusual and 1 or 5-6 happens sometimes too (1 more likely than 5-6). I just haven't seen an issue with "fairness" regardless of how many encounters I throw at them. Everyone gets to shine at some point

 

[dave2008]

This doesn't happen if there as so few combat actions in a day that the casters still have slots left.

Of course you are not compensating for encounter difficulty. Now, I know in theory that skews the numbers to the nova classes, but at the table it plays our pretty fairly IMO.

 

[NaturalZero]

I just haven't seen an issue with "fairness" regardless of how many encounters I throw at them. Everyone gets to shine at some point

That's great in theory but if you design a class that shines the same for each encounter for any number of encounters at any level and you have another class that scales wildly with level and the number of encounters and with the number or resources per day, it makes balancing new classes more of a challenge. I've played a ton of tables that only run 1 encounter per day with pretty big contribution differentials among PCs and while it's generally fun and it seems like everyone is fine, the differences are pretty clear.

 

[AtomicPope]

Difficult to say so I'll lowball it and say 3 encounters per day. If I have them in a dungeon situation it's closer to 7 but averages around 5. Typically what I try to do is tie the work day to a narrative, and let that decide the pace. Outdoor exploration is usually just one, maybe two with a few dangerous non-combat encounters to bring the location to life. Here's some examples of narrative pacing I've used:

• Countdown Timer - Underwater adventure where each PC was given a sip from a Potion of Water Breathing. They had 1 hour to get in and out of the sunken Spelljammer ship.
• Chase - hunting an Orc raiding party that has a day's head start. Several Skill Challenges and non-combat encounters that led them into Orc territory.
• Invasion - The Keep on the Borderlands was besieged by Goblins of the Pomarj. The PCs took part in defenses. Each phase was a Skill Challenge followed by several combat encounters.

 

[aco175]

My group tends to have 5-7 per day. There may also be 1-2 short rests in there as well, so the problem is mostly casters who cannot recharge daily spells. Right now there is a fighter, cleric, rogue, and warlock. Only the cleric slows them down each fight be needing to save spells for the whole day. The warlock has the encounter spell recharge so falls into this some if there are a few encounters before being able to rest. The group tends to run out of spells or rooms in the dungeon before running out of healing 'surges' in a typical day, unless 1-2nd level.

Some of the pacing may be my fault. I tend to develop dungeons that can be played in one night or maybe two. These tend to have only 3-5 combats with 1-2 encounters with traps or puzzles or such. There is generally a place to take a short rest and larger places have someplace, maybe hidden, that PCs can take a long rest. I also like to have sections of the dungeons where reinforcements come if the PCs are not as careful. What started as 3 easy encounter becomes 1 hard encounter when the whole section of the dungeon arrives to aid the monsters.

 

[Blue]

Of course you are not compensating for encounter difficulty. Now, I know in theory that skews the numbers to the nova classes, but at the table it plays our pretty fairly IMO.

Actually, I address encounter difficulty in the second paragraph, talking about how it is an entirely different aspect. Most of us are familiar with it, I didn't delve into deep explanation.

Here's what I wrote:

There are two aspects to number of encounters per day. Of of them is tension and risk, and that can be balanced by making encounters more deadly. However, the other one is attrition of resources, and that one needs a number of actions - usually broken out into a good number of encounters - to balance out.

 

[Krachek]

I can’t tell!
Sometime we hope for our long rest, and even we hope for our short rest, and sometime there is the big fight of the day.
Unpredictable for sure.

 

[clearstream]

I've been playing or running 5e pretty consistently since launch across multiple groups, stores, and states. One thing that seems pretty regular across all of those tables though, and that's the number of average combats per day. If I had to give an integer, I'd say that the average I've seen is only around 2 per day and the most I've probably ever seen is 4 fights in a day. In some campaigns, we regularly have one combat per day and that's it. The recommended number of encounters per day in the DMG seems completely bonkers, to me.

I've gotten a consistent six per day, but then I have heavily modified the short and long rest rules to make that more likely.

That said, my players are so good at dividing their resources out over encounters that it would be easier if they just had fewer uses to start with! Signs point to 6th ed having one rest type, but I wonder where they will land with feature uses per rest?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I've been playing or running 5e pretty consistently since launch across multiple groups, stores, and states. One thing that seems pretty regular across all of those tables though, and that's the number of average combats per day. If I had to give an integer, I'd say that the average I've seen is only around 2 per day and the most I've probably ever seen is 4 fights in a day. In some campaigns, we regularly have one combat per day and that's it. The recommended number of encounters per day in the DMG seems completely bonkers, to me.

I think that this is accurate, from what I've seen. Which leads to two general conclusions:

1. This greatly disadvantages classes and abilities that are short rest.

2. It makes the healing rules and general attrition rules (w/r/t hit point, encounter balance, and so on) unworkable.

For those reasons, I don't police encounters per day. Instead, I modify the short rest / long rest and healing rules.

 

[Puddles]

My main reason for ignoring the encounter recommendations is for pacing of sessions. We play once every 2 weeks for 3-4 hours and a combat encounter usually takes at least an hour to play through. If we were to fight 6-8 encounters in a "day" it would take probably 2 months of real-world time to get through. I much prefer having 1-2 encounters so the story can move at a fairly regular pace.