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

[tetrasodium]

Legendary resist on a save for half fireball is half damage bot zero. Dave for null spells are zero. Thst was a mistake I made but doesn't significantly change things there is still the if targets exist and those targets politely gather within a 20 foot radius sphere problem

 

[S'mon]

*If we are choosing primal path then let's choose the crappiest one like we did for the Fighter.

What's the crappiest Primal Path? Maybe a non-Bear Totem? They all give special powers though.
IME the Raging Barbarian does similar* damage to the Champion Fighter without Reckless Attack, and has 1 point lower AC as you say, but is much much more durable. That's all without Feats. I know you are sceptical of others' experience without documentary support but I do have text-chat records of several years of play (in my NSFW Wilderlands campaign blog, can PM link) before I went over to 1 week long rests. The Barbarian players were quite disconsolate as with 8 hour LR they were used to dominating play at the expense of the Fighter, Rogue, Cleric(!), Warlock et al.

*If there is only 1 encounter in the day, it's not likely to be an easy 3-round beatdown. 6-8 rounds would be more typical, in which case Action Surge does not make much difference, so it's basically Duellist & very occasional 19 crit vs Rage bonus and the option to go Reckless.

 

[FrogReaver]

What's the crappiest Primal Path? Maybe a non-Bear Totem? They all give special powers though.
IME the Raging Barbarian does similar* damage to the Champion Fighter without Reckless Attack, and has 1 point lower AC as you say, but is much much more durable. That's all without Feats. I know you are sceptical of others' experience without documentary support but I do have text-chat records of several years of play (in my NSFW Wilderlands campaign blog, can PM link) before I went over to 1 week long rests. The Barbarian players were quite disconsolate as with 8 hour LR they were used to dominating play at the expense of the Fighter, Rogue, Cleric et al.

*If there is only 1 encounter in the day, it's not likely to be an easy 3-round beatdown. 6-8 rounds would be more typical, in which case Action Surge does not make much difference, so it's basically Duellist & very occasional 19 crit vs Rage bonus and the option to go Reckless.

Are you talking in a short adventuring day or a long one?

 

[S'mon]

The Barbarian does get a +6 hp advantage.

Minor point: It's 7 hp - 2 at 1st level, +1/level. x2 for Raging.

 

[S'mon]

Are you talking in a short adventuring day or a long one?

We're talking about a single encounter between LR, right? The more encounters & the more SRs, the better the Fighter does and the worse the Barbarian does.

 

[FrogReaver]

We're talking about a single encounter between LR, right? The more encounters & the more SRs, the better the Fighter does and the worse the Barbarian does.

Just making sure. So tell us about the Champion Fighter and Barbarian in one of those single encounter days. How were they built? What actions did they take? How often was the Barbarian reckless attacking? How many rounds did the encounter go? Did they get any assistance from the other party members?

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Agreed. But then we get into the issue that doing a bunch of damage to a single target until it dies and doing some AOE damage to a bunch of targets without killing them doesn't have the same effect in combat. That is total damage caused by an AOE is not directly comparable single target damage numbers.

No, but bear in mind we're not letting the wizard use control spells, which do remove opponents immediately, preventing the damage that they would deal while it lasts.
There was no real way to compare those so I reckoned they were much of a muchness.

You only have 1 level 6 and 1 level 7 spell slot. You can't cast a level 7 animate objects + disintegrate + disintegrate in a single encounter. I chose a level 5 animate objects for that reason.

Also I used 65% to hit and 65% chance for a failed save. That's what yielded the 227.

Whoops. Good save. I get 234 damage which is close enough.
I used 2/3rds chance to hit rather than actual 30%. That is close enough to 65% I think.

Fighter was doing 120 over 4 rounds at level 6. Add on an extra attack and he should be able to easily reach 180 since going from 2 attacks to 3 is a 50% damage upgrade. I anticipate it can be a little higher since comboing maneuvers on your action surge round leads to somewhat increased efficiency.

Though, I think there's been a subtle change from 4 round encounter in my example to 3 round here. So in a 3 round fight I would only expect about 12/15 (80%) as much. So yea, 150 - 170ish in a 3 round encounter is about right.

I'm assuming fighter kicks in their action surge, so they effectively get an extra round of attacks. Hence why they got 10 attacks in a 4-round battle at level 6. In a 3 round fight they would get 4 rounds x 3 attacks = 12 attacks. At level 13 they would have one extra superiority dice, and would be using D10s rather than D8s so I rounded the 144 up to 150.

The examples I was discussing with you were the 4-round single combat at 6th level you gave as your example. The three round fight at 13th level is something Tetrasodium has suggested.

Wizards have pulled ahead a little here, however - Add in a single +1 magical weapon and that goes up quite a bit - which is all but guaranteed by that level. Add in a single level multiclass dip into warlock for hex and the damage ramps up even higher. Add in feats and damage ramps up even higher. It's pretty easy to push Fighter damage at this level much higher. Wizard's 227 damage is all but capped and relies on concentration - which can easily be disrupted, especially without feats and it also relies on enemies not having magical/legendary resistance.

Indeed, but bear in mind that we're comparing the thing the Fighter is best at with something that is tertiary for the Wizard (after control, AoE, exploration).
You can add further Benefits on to your example fighter, and further restrictions to your example wizard, but at some point you have to consider whether you're still talking about the original examples.

So I go to some trouble to show how I expect a 4 round adventuring day to play out at level 4 and all I got back is - 'that's not my experience'. No additional explanation or clarification. You don't see how incredibly dismissive that was?

They weren't responding to your in-depth analysis post. They were responding to the post where you said the classes were balanced over a one-encounter day.

I picked evoker wizard in my example for that reason. He's generally party safe.

Indeed. How many opponents are generally featured in your 1/day encounters?

 

[S'mon]

Just making sure. So tell us about the Champion Fighter and Barbarian in one of those single encounter days. How were they built? What actions did they take? How often was the Barbarian reckless attacking? How many rounds did the encounter go? Did they get any assistance from the other party members?

I'm not digging through the last 6 years of 5e fights I've run for you, but if you want to do so there are a ton of text chat game logs at Forgotten Realms Campaigns & Varisia: Rise of the Runelords & NSFW Sensitive Content Warning - the latter has the early years games 2015-16 before I went over to 1 week long rests.

My impressions: Typically Champions are played by the less minmaxy players to start with, while most Barbarians are Bear Totem for maximum survivability. The Champions don't always Action Surge straight off. The Bear-Barians tend not to Reckless much, preferring to keep a good AC and wear down the enemy over a large number of combat rounds (say 6-8 like I said), by which time the Champions are usually badly bashed up. There's usually some support from other squishy PCs eg in Wilderlands the early group was typically Berserker Barbarian, Champion Fighter, Assassin Rogue and a Warlock of the Fey. The Rogue & Barbarian players were quite skilled, the other two not.
In my current Faerun games one group has a Goliath Champion Fighter and a Berserker Barbarian. The Barbarian is higher level, the Fighter player having lost two other PCs so far, so cannot compare directly esp as it's currently Barb-5 vs Fighter-4 so the Barb has x2 offence right off. Having lots of encounters between LRs definitely helps though.

Edit: My current Faerun Adventures PC groups are:
(1)
Greeba of Soravia (Jelena) Half-Orc female Barbarian-5 (Berserker) XP 10,375/14,000 AC 18 (scale, shield, DEX+2) HP 50 (14+9/level), +1 warhammer; flametongue longsword P-PER 10 P-INV 9 P-INS 13
Gorlock the Warlock (Tony) Half-Elf male Celestial Warlock-5 XP 10,375/14,000 AC 15 HP 43 (11+8/level) P-PER 11 P-INV 11 P-INS 11.
Wisteria of Skullspire (Jelly) Moon Elf female Grave Cleric-5 XP 9,791/14,000 AC 17 HP 38 (10+7/lvl) P-PER 16 P-INV 12 P-INS 16. MI: +1 longbow
Eamon of the Yellow Rose (Bill) Human male Monk-5 (Kensai) XP 9,321/14,000 AC 16/18 HP 33 (9+6/lvl) P-PER 12 P-INV 10 P-INS 15 MI: +1 longsword
Nathia Truefist (Kim) Goliath female Fighter-4 (Champion) XP 5,549/6,500 AC 16/18 HP 36 (12+8/lvl) P-PER 12 P-INV 9 P-INS 10
Joell Elderberry (Max) Aasimar male Paladin-4 (Oath of Conquest) XP 3,149/6500 AC 21 (plate & shield) HP 32 (11+7/lvl) P-PER 11 P-INV 9 P-INS 11
Blurb (Phil) Firbolg male Forest Druid-3 XP 900/2700 AC 16 HP 24 P-PER 13 P-INV 9 P-INS 13
Mac (Matt) Hill Dwarf male Hunter Ranger-3 XP 1,922/2,700 AC 17 HP 34 (14+10/lvl) P-PER 14 P-INV 9 P-INS 12
Quasi-PC
Trystan, the Bard of Leth (Jelly) Half-Elf male Bard-4 XP 2,700/2,700 AC 15 HP 31 P-PER 10 P-INV 11 P-INS 10

(2)
Norrin Son of Thorin (Geoff) Human male Fighter-6 (Champion) PB+3 XP 19,936/23,000 AC 22 (plate +1 & shield +1) HP 58 (13+9/level) P-PER 15 P-INV 12 P-INS 15 MI: +1 Nar 'hero sword' longsword, +1 plate armour, +1 shield, +1 Duergar greatsword
Strohm of Leth (Muiz) Sun Elf male Fighter-6 (Eldritch Knight) XP 18,167/23,000 AC 19 (orog plate, defence style) HP 52 (12+8/lvl) P-PER 12 P-INV 12 P-INS 9. MI: +2 Greatsword - Excruciator, the Sword of Amaul, aka the Sword of the Sorcerer (sheds light as per spell on command)
Malied Edicast (James) Half-Elf male Wizard-6 XP 17,318/23,000 AC 13/16 mage armour HP 26 (6+4/lvl) P-PER 14 P-INV 18 P-INS 11. Blessing: +2 INT from Gina the Gynosphinx
Fraener ap Durgeddin (Chris) Mountain Dwarf male Forge Cleric-5 XP 13,927/14,000 AC 22 (AC19 plate armour +1, +3 for shield blessed to +1) HP 48 (12+9/lvl) E: Durgeddin's own +1 full plate armour (+0/+1 at 5th level), +1 Duergar warhammer, +2 Mace. P-PER 12 P-INV 10 P-INS 15
Ted (Matt) Half-Orc male Rogue-5 (Thief) XP 7,465/14,000 AC 15 (studded) HP 38 (10+7/lvl) P-PER 15 P-INV 9 P-INS 11 MI: Ostrikka's/Jack's gauntlets of ogre power STR 19, +1 Durgeddin Rapier from Tenho, Barbara's Rope of Climbing
Queale (Keelia) Half-Elf female Horizon Walker Ranger-4 XP 7,096/6,500>14,000 AC 16 HP 40 (13+9/level) P-PER 15 P-INV 12 P-INS 15 MI: cute rabbit fur slippers of elvenkind
Shivers (Rich), Human male Rogue-3>4 (Assassin) XP 3,999/2,700>6,500 AC 14 HP 21>29 (9+6/lvl, rolled 8 hp for 4th) P-PER 13 P-INV 13 P-INS 11

With an open sandbox style, 1 hour SR and 1 hour LR, no Feats or Multiclassing, the classes seem pretty balanced to me. Without Feats, Humans are definitely weak - esp as there's a lot of dungeoncrawling where darkvision helps.

 

[FrogReaver]

I'm not digging through the last 6 years of 5e fights I've run for you, but if you want to do so there are a ton of text chat game logs at Forgotten Realms Campaigns & Varisia: Rise of the Runelords & NSFW Sensitive Content Warning - the latter has the early years games 2015-16 before I went over to 1 week long rests.

My impressions: Typically Champions are played by the less minmaxy players to start with, while most Barbarians are Bear Totem for maximum survivability. The Champions don't always Action Surge straight off. The Bear-Barians tend not to Reckless much, preferring to keep a good AC and wear down the enemy over a large number of combat rounds (say 6-8 like I said), by which time the Champions are usually badly bashed up. There's usually some support from other squishy PCs eg in Wilderlands the early group was typically Berserker Barbarian, Champion Fighter, Assassin Rogue and a Warlock of the Fey. The Rogue & Barbarian players were quite skilled, the other two not.
In my current Faerun games one group has a Goliath Champion Fighter and a Berserker Barbarian. The Barbarian is higher level, the Fighter player having lost two other PCs so far, so cannot compare directly esp as it's currently Barb-5 vs Fighter-4 so the Barb has x2 offence right off. Having lots of encounters between LRs definitely helps though.

And you expect me to? LOL. Basically you've got nothing.

I will say both my experience and numbers back up barbarians being way tankier - but that's because the barbarians I see don't reckless attack every round. Their tankiness skyrockets when they don't give enemies advantage. When they don't do that on short adventuring days their damage drops pretty low. Both the white room numbers and my experience shows that.

 

[S'mon]

And you expect me to? LOL. Basically you've got nothing.

No, I only expect you to not be a d*ck about demanding to see other people's documentation while happily spewing white room assertions yourself.