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

[Stalker0]

Got some evidence? Some different numbers? Anything?

I really wish that just once when someone who complained, ‘that is white room’ they would provide some actual fight sequences from their game for the given situation.

Except I am not slamming someone for not providing a "deep analysis". If I was, then yes I would be on the hook to provide some strong evidence and some number crunching.

Providing a few paragraphs of some damage averages is not it. Frankly the only person in this thread that has posted any "hard evidence" is el-remmen, who gave actual numbers from their campaign log where they tracked every day of the party's encounters. D&D 5E - How many encounters per day is YOUR average?

So I look forward to your deep analysis.

 

[Stalker0]

Something that I think commonly gets missed in this search for theoretical class capabilities.... is just the raw "perception of coolness" that certain classes get to portray.

If a paladin smites 2 against a big bad, and crits once (or maybe twice) and does ludicrous amounts of damage, it doesn't matter that the fighter did a nice consistent 20 damage every round in the last 2-3 fights. What is going to make the players go "holy #### that's awesome!" is that 1 super round of glory. That is what the players will talk about for weeks after the session is over.

The fewer encounters per day you have, the more the nova classes will nova, and the more their "coolness level" increases. That's just human optics.


Now one thing that was brought up that I do agree with, is the consistency of how the DM does encounter/day is very important. If a DM throws in a big encounter day after so often.... than that at least keeps the players on their toes. They at least have to go "do I REALLY want to blow my last spell right now?" If players are confident that "this is the final fight of the day and I will get to rest after this", then they will consistently go full fury and nova things to the ground.

So I think for DMs that like the 1-2 encounter per day model, it is important to suck it up once in a while and have the gung ho 5-6 encounter day, to remind players that they can't ever get toooo comfortable.

 

[Malmuria]

The fewer encounters per day you have, the more the nova classes will nova, and the more their "coolness level" increases. That's just human optics.

I don't find 5e combat entertaining enough to slog through medium encounters using 'at-will' powers. I'd rather have one well designed deadly encounter where you can use a bunch of your abilities than 6 'let's throw some monsters at them' medium encounters where you are parceling out your more interesting actions over round after round of combat. Even though the latter, by the end of the adventuring day, might provide more challenge, the former in fact often has greater narrative stakes.

 

[el-remmen]

So I think for DMs that like the 1-2 encounter per day model, it is important to suck it up once in a while and have the gung ho 5-6 encounter day, to remind players that they can't ever get toooo comfortable.

Yeah, while it is certainly possible to sometimes know or have a reasonable guess of how many more encounters you might face in the day, generally speaking the players/characters don't know and have to measure the use of their powers based on speculation/environment.

 

[Xeviat]

5e isn't written for that so it's a poor choice of game. This houserule is no better or worse for realism than the default rules are.

The rules are there to support narrative tropes and story structure. Not for realism. It makes no sense to completely recover after 6 hours of sleep plus 2 hours of rest to begin with. But that's what happens in action movies so it's fine.

If you actually tried to make a functioning simulation your game would grind to a halt.

Alright, cool, thanks.

Or I'll make the concessions I want to make for my games and anticipate what my players will ask me (what do you mean my character can't long rest in the wilderness, she's a Hermit/he was raised by wolves/they're a ranger/etc) based on their backgrounds and skills.

 

[Yora]

The game is designed as a tactical skirmish game.
The deaigners say it can also be a story game.
I think the designers don't know much about RPGs.

 

[Azuresun]

All of this discussion comes from a bad reading of the rules, honestly. The game never advocates a high number of encounters per day. It gives you a daily budget in terms of XPs, and all it says is : "Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day. If the adventure has more easy encounters, the adventurers can get through more. If it has more deadly encounters, they can handle fewer."

After that, the problem is that as most people play with options like feats and multiclass and quite a number (at least on the forums) powergame with this, encounters need to be extra hard to reach the level of difficulty listed in the DMG.

And obviously, it's really hard to balance things with only 1-2 encounters per day especially if the players know about this, as those who can will go nova, and outshine anyone else in every single combat, not even mentioning those recovering on long rests compared to short rests etc.

So no, there is no recommendation, just a simple statement of what COULD be handled IF you only threw medium to hard encounters are a really typical group (which no one ever does anyway). It would be nice if people who are bent on criticizing the system (yes, it's not as precise as 4e because the overall system is more fuzzy, but also way more open-ended, as D&D should always have been) would actually read the rules and stop repeating hearsay that has no ground in the rules themselves...

THANK YOU.

Whenever this topic comes up, I feel increasingly certain that most people never read that page for themselves and just took someone else's word for it. It's a complete and utter strawman and even a cursory read of the relevant part would make it obvious that the DMG does not mandate 6-8.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

IMO. I've played plenty of 1 encounter days. When it comes to combat, classes tend to balance differently, but they still mostly balance.

• A level 6 Battlemaster even without feats and multiclassing can on average do over 120 Damage in 4 Rounds vs 16 AC (Using GWF style, Trip Attack, Precision Attack, Action Surge)
• A level 6 Paladin without feats using all slots he can on divine smite will do fairly similar (vengeance with channel divinity can do a bit more to a single target)
• A level 6 Zealot Barbarian with no feats, using a greatsword and reckless attacking every turn will also do similar.
• A level 6 monk using 4 Ki on flurry of blows will do 80 in 4 rounds vs 16 AC. 2 Ki can then be used on stunning strike (increasing his DPR and possibly the teams as well, while simultaneously shutting down the enemy).
• A level 6 evoker Wizard using similar assumption can use 3x fireballs + 1x shatter for about 78 party friendly AOE Damage. It's hard to compare AOE to single target damage directly, but this seems reasonable enough. Though it should also be noted that this wizard can have mage armor up and shield every single round yielding a higher effective AC than the Greatsword Fighter.

The 3 major issues that arise in short adventuring days - 1) Pure at will classes like rogues get hosed, 2) lots of spell slots left over for out of combat and 3) versatility in combat as sometimes the best tactic isn't direct damage but instead control or healing or buffing. It's pretty amazing though that combat parity is still mostly intact. I suppose the bigger issue is that because everyone can do so much damage in combat that in order to challenge the PC's, encounters really have to start to feel like rocket tag. I suppose that leads me to the conclusion that if you are optimizing for short adventuring days, you probably should focus more on defense than offense.

and I don’t believe that. I believe you’ve never really deeply analyzed what happens in your game when short adventuring days are the norm. I believe that in light of the evidence I am providing that you are relying on a flawed perception of your experiences to protect your previous assertions.

In fact, you’ve provided no evidence of how your short adventuring day games actually run and so all we have is your potentially flawed perception about them. You’ve not told me about what actions the fighters are taking, the Paladins, the wizards, etc. if you did we could actually come away with some idea of their contributions relative to each other.

And really without that, why should I believe your potentially flawed perception?

Maybe their party has a Rogue and/or an less highly-optimised Fighter?

In light of your evidence, those would seem to not be well balanced for single-encounter days compared to the classes that can dump long-rest resources at will.

 

[Willie the Duck]

The game is designed as a tactical skirmish game.
The deaigners say it can also be a story game.
I think the designers don't know much about RPGs.

I always hate this notion that the designers 'don't know' stuff. I'd hazard a guess that they are well familiar with most everything that comes up on these forums (certainly anything that keeps coming up one each and every forum, and isn't exactly deep or hard-to-fathom concepts). However, they also know that 1) forumgoers are not representative of the overall game-buying public; 2) D&D (and D&D-alikes) are far and away the biggest TTRPG (compared to your or my favorite alternative system); and 3) the last time D&D tried to stretch what it tried to do too far, it did not end well for the bottom line. I think they know darn well what the games' limitations are, just not what to do about it (in a way that won't please 1/Xth of their buyer base and alienate the rest), much less how to pitch that to Hasbro.

 

[FrogReaver]

Maybe their party has a Rogue and/or an less highly-optimised Fighter?

In light of your evidence, those would seem to not be well balanced for single-encounter days compared to the classes that can dump long-rest resources at will.

The fighter i listed was a basic half orc battlemaster fighter than used a great sword with corresponding style and maxed str. No feats. That’s not a highly optimized fighter.

i already called out the rogue as not balanced in short adventuring days.