D&D 5E Basic question - how many encounters per day

[CleverNickName]

Well sure, but for my upcoming session, how feasible is it for the party to handle that number of encounters?

The DM isn't the only person at the table who has control over the number of encounters that occur in a day, or how many of the party's resources get spent per encounter. The players can also decide to take safer routes, avoid certain areas, spend a day or two in camp to recover, etc., to reduce the overall number of encounters they have. And when combat occurs, they control how many spell slots get used, how many potions get drank, how many wand charges get spent, and--depending on their willingness to use the Dodge, Disengage, and Help actions--they have some control over how many hit points get lost.

As the DM, you can only do so much to manage the party's resources. At least half of that responsibility should be pushed back onto the players in my opinion.

 

[dave2008]

"The amount of fun we have had nothing to do with the number of encounters or resources spent." - absolutely agree. Which is why it's confusing when you use the amount of fun your group has to talk about resources spent.

You can have a lot of fun even if the classes are unbalanced. You mention coming from 1e, it might just feel the natural way when you've had so many years of quadratic wizards and linear fighters. Coming from Red Box Basic myself, it was eye-opening how things that felt natural turned out to have a much worse inter-class balance that I expected between martials* and casters once I started pushing more encounters. If 6-8 is the average, that means aiming high as often as you go low. Do you know how casters feel after 13 encounters? That's the same distance over 8 and 1 encounter per day is below 6. At 13 encounters casters feel drastically different.

(Martials* in a broad sense. But classes like the barbarian do very well in a low-encounter-per-day environment. No one considers spending a rage on a tough fight going nova, but it adds a heck of a lot to the class.)

My problem is I don't DM to this number of encounters per day naturally, I have multiple threads about rebalancing around fewer encounters because now that I've experienced it it's noticeable.

Your experience is just different than mine, and that is OK. We can play the same game and have completely different experiences. Also, to further clarify we came directly from 4e (the edition that brought us back to D&D) before 5e. So we have experience with a completely "balanced" system too. I just find that the play style we developed in our formative years has held through 4e (we didn't play 2e or 3e) and into 5e. Short and long rest are not an issue, and haven't been since 4e introduced the encounter (short rest) model to us.

 

[Blue]

Your experience is just different than mine, and that is OK. We can play the same game and have completely different experiences. Also, to further clarify we came directly from 4e (the edition that brought us back to D&D) before 5e. So we have experience with a completely "balanced" system too. I just find that the play style we developed in our formative years has held through 4e (we didn't play 2e or 3e) and into 5e. Short and long rest are not an issue, and haven't been since 4e introduced the encounter (short rest) model to us.

I have no idea if our experiences are the same or not. Because I have been talking about resources, and you have never talked about your party's resource usage outside that you "don't nova".

Are casters able to use slots for their action most rounds, or if they do a mix of slots and cantrips what is the ratio? Do barbarians not rage for some combats? Are the answers to these the same when you do 1 combat, your usual 3, and your top end 6-7? Do casters run out of slots?

 

[dave2008]

I have no idea if our experiences are the same or not. Because I have been talking about resources, and you have never talked about your party's resource usage outside that you "don't nova".

When I am talking about resources I am talking about HP, HD (which is a much bigger deal for us), class features, money, equipment, ammunition, etc. My group typically doesn't use all of their resources in one or two encounters. That is what I would call a nove (if they did)

Are casters able to use slots for their action most rounds, or if they do a mix of slots and cantrips what is the ratio? Do barbarians not rage for some combats? Are the answers to these the same when you do 1 combat, your usual 3, and your top end 6-7? Do casters run out of slots?

We don't have a barbarian. Our group is (15th lvl): Fighter, Ranger, Thief, Fighter, Wizard.

At this point our wizard tends to always have a spell slot available if he needs it, but that wasn't always the case. However, cantrips or magic items were always available if needed. I can't remember the wizard ever running out of magic to use, but I could be wrong. No idea of the ratio, I don't keep track of my players that closely.

Without a dedicated healer, our biggest resource usage tends to be HD. Arrows somewhat of a limiting factor for the ranger too, but he just adjusted his tactics when he was low or out of arrows.

 

[Blue]

When I am talking about resources I am talking about HP, HD (which is a much bigger deal for us), class features, money, equipment, ammunition, etc. My group typically doesn't use all of their resources in one or two encounters. That is what I would call a nove (if they did)

The resources under discussion were class resources. Specifically ones that return with along rest, short rest, and the at-will ones that never go away.

And HP attrition - HP, HD and the like - was explicitly excluded. That was under the deadliness part of the discussion, where things work just fine. Those were distinctly excluded from the discussion.

At this point our wizard tends to always have a spell slot available if he needs it, but that wasn't always the case. However, cantrips or magic items were always available if needed. I can't remember the wizard ever running out of magic to use, but I could be wrong. No idea of the ratio, I don't keep track of my players that closely.

Great, we have determined that you have no information to actually have an informed opinion about the inter-class resources we were talking about, and that you didn't even grasp which resources were under discussion.

 

[dave2008]

The resources under discussion were class resources. Specifically ones that return with along rest, short rest, and the at-will ones that never go away.

I specifically mentioned class resources (I said "features").

And HP attrition - HP, HD and the like - was explicitly excluded. That was under the deadliness part of the discussion, where things work just fine. Those were distinctly excluded from the discussion.

I had previously noticed you said those work fine and excluded them. I was just clarifying that I consider all resources when look at characters and adventures.

Great, we have determined that you have no information to actually have an informed opinion about the inter-class resources we were talking about, and that you didn't even grasp which resources were under discussion.

That may be your opinion, but I think you might be dismissing my insight because it doesn't line up with your story. And you were rude to boot! Our group has classes with at-will, short rest, and long rest resources. They balance fine for our group, whether it is 1 encounter or 6 encounters per long rest. Furthermore, it seems to me that if you look at just those resources (class resources) outside of other resources (HP, HD, & equipment) your are ignoring a huge part of what makes the game work well. It is the complex interaction of all the resources that makes it work.

Listen, I imagine we both have more important things to do than bicker on this forum. I wish you the best of luck. This discussion as not impact on anything and is actually a a waste of my time, I'm moving on. Regardless - your my boy Blue!

 

[cbwjm]

Recently, my players have been having around about 2 encounters per day of travel in the last few sessions. They could have ended up with more had they went one way or another but they stayed focused on what they needed to do and so just had the two main encounters. It was actually surprising that the sorcerer still had spell slots left (they were level 4), he often burnt himself out in early encounters leaving him with just a couple of slots left for later encounters. He may have learned some restraint after being burnt out a couple of times.

 

[Fenris-77]

Travel is different. Every campaign has peaks and valleys. When things are ramping up, whether that means exploration in the woods, or social interaction in the city, things are slow, from a resource standpoint. But no one needs to nova that shizz either. Once things start to get hairy is when resource management matters. If the players don't feel the pinch of HP loss, or spell expenditure, or SR ability expenditure, or whatever, they aren't being challenged, and it's boring. The players need to feel like they just barely managed it, when 'it' is the big thing, whatever that is. It doesn't even matter what kind of campaign it is, or what the party mix is, the sense of holy eff we just barely managed to pull that off is key.

 

[cbwjm]

In my case it was less travel between locations with maybe a random encounter or two and more an overland dungeon. Granted there weren't 6-8 encounters set up, but they still could have had more than 2 depending on which way they went.