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

[abirdcall]

Would you allow for sufficient survival proficiency to allow for long rests in the wild?

No. And no to leomunds tiny hut.

It doesn't have to be the village or town they will likely return to though. It could be another community as long as they are friendly. A Druidic circle, myconid colony, etc.

So there is room during an extensive trek away from 'regular' civilization to have a long rest.

 

[abirdcall]

Doesn't it depend on what the players want?
In my campaign, encounters are so scarce we might go 3 hours without a single battle.
However, I'm playing as a player a Descent Into Avernus campaign and I feel last time we went on 3 hours ONLY battling.

Play time and encounter days are entirely different things.

 

[abirdcall]

Here is an example of a typical adventuring day. It was the last session we played.

Spoiler for chapter 1 of RotFM.

Objective: rescue on mountain.

4 party members at 4th level.

Encounters:

Possessed town speaker and 3 militia, 20 blood hawks, avalanche, dangerous climb, 2 crag cats, yeti, another yeti.

That's 7 encounters, a mix between easy and hard. The tension rose with every encounter. There were 3 NPCs to rescue. They had the choice to press on to rescue more or to go back to town. They ended up pushing on to rescuing 2 of them and then with fear of something greater out there and possibly losing the ones they have went back to town.

Why is that not a thing in other people's games?

That adventure with only 1 encounter doesn't sound exciting to me even if they face 4 yetis or whatever at the end. And it seems like it is a quick way to end up with a TPK and the end of the campaign.

 

[Bird Of Play]

Play time and encounter days are entirely different things.

Then it's hard to say, since it depends on the plot they're currently on.

 

[Maxperson]

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 listed 5, but that's with the caveat that a "day" is about a week long in my game. It takes a weekish(varies slightly) to get a long rest.

 

[cmad1977]

Varies dramatically.
Sometimes it’s 0.
Sometimes it’s… more.

 

[Xeviat]

No. And no to leomunds tiny hut.

It doesn't have to be the village or town they will likely return to though. It could be another community as long as they are friendly. A Druidic circle, myconid colony, etc.

So there is room during an extensive trek away from 'regular' civilization to have a long rest.

Hu, how do people live in the wilds by themselves then? It's a common enough trope.

 

[Oofta]

Hu, how do people live in the wilds by themselves then? It's a common enough trope.

Coffee. Lots and lots of cowboy coffee.

 

[abirdcall]

Hu, how do people live in the wilds by themselves then? It's a common enough trope.

Your game involves the PCs living in the wild by themselves?

Every campaign can have its house rules. I don't think that campaign appeals to me but if I wanted something like that I would just come up with a different rule to represent it.

 

[NaturalZero]

And you don't have issues with pacing? Could you go into that more because having 1-3 encounters per adventuring day would be a big problem of it were to happen in my campaigns. (Noted that it could happen and be okay, the thing is that the players wouldn't know there would be few encounters that day as there are usually more)

I didn't create this thread because I'm personally have pacing problems when running games. My reason for posting this is that I've never played in a game that had the recommended number of combats as presented in the DMG and it seems like the developers balanced things around a sense of pacing that most people just do not follow, from my experience. I've never been in a game with more than 4 combats in a day, and it's generally a lot less. I'm running a rune knight in a campaign now and we're at level 7 and I've i played all of the way through Rime of the Frost Maiden from level 1 to finish with a fighter -> RK. After getting the subclass at level 3, I have yet to participate in a 5e fight as a rune knight where I did not have Giant's Might up and it's a power you only get twice a day to start out. I'm curious if they tried to balance the game around a pacing structure that (most?) tables do no follow.