D&D 5E Combat Encounters Per Dungeon Budget

[FuzzyBunny]

The answer I'm going to give you is 4 to 5.

There's also an involved method in the DMG page 84 where you use the Adventuring Day XP Budget as your "building" points for stocking 1 Day in a Dungeon.

However, what's probably more valuable is actually "getting in under the hood" to sort out factors related to your question. I'll give the summarized version...but you can follow up if anything is unclear...

• "How many" combat encounters is not just a function of combat balance, but also a function of pacing & having a broad spectrum of challenges to appeal to different player tastes and keep things fresh – trap gauntlets, puzzles, cool discoveries or tricks, creatures to talk to, chases, etc.
• It's also a function of the scale/scope of your dungeon – is it meant to fill one 4-hour session? Or be a multi-session delve? Is it mostly linear (e.g. ABCDE)? Or does it present multiple paths (e.g. could go A-D-J-M-S, or A-C-H-M-S, or A-B-F-M-T)?
• What is the high concept of the dungeon? For instance a death trap dungeon like Tomb of Horrors might be lighter on combats whereas a stronghold dungeon like The Sunless Citadel might be heavier on monsters/combats). Similarly, a stronghold might actually have wandering patrols without defined "there's a combat in this room." Got to know your high concept when asking questions about what balance means.
• Not all combats are equal, so if you're concerned about balance, then you want to consider both the difficulty each combat presents to PCs (e.g. you might have 3 extremely challenging encounters in a dungeon, or you might have 5 easy encounters and one moderate one) AND the complexity/difficulty/mental burden of running a given combat (too many complex combats in close proximity can lead to fatigue/drag).

The second time on this thread someone has recommended page 84...I'll go back and take a look at it.

Agreed on the scale/scope question. To my mind, "normal" dungeon is 9-12 rooms. I prefer monsters to traps, so I like my dungeons monster heavy. 4-5 is about what I had in mind for a dungeon of this size.

 

[FuzzyBunny]

When you say "hard or medium", do you mean encounters that are actually hard or medium, or hard or medium as defined by the DMG? I'm saying that because I - and many others - have found that a medium encounter, as defined by the DMG, is usually quite easy.

Because given 2 short rests, absolutely parties should be handle this ( DMG "medium-hard) (well, maybe not level 1-2). In my experience at least.

Now if you mean that many actually medium-hard encounters, that will definitely challenge the party.

I use Advanced 5e encounter rules. In my experience, they line up with my expectation of easy/medium/hard, etc. So 6-8 WOTC "medium" encounters would seem to map nicely to 4-5 A5E "Medium" encounters.

 

[aco175]

I try to figure out how many nights of gaming do I want the dungeon to be first. I can use a 5-room dungeon in a game night, but that world out to about half a daily set of encounters. I find that a 5-room dungeon has about 3 fights with 2 being average and 1 hard, at least for me.

I'll make a larger dungeon with 12-15 rooms for a daily budget. In it is about 6-8 fights with one easy and one deadly and the rest average or hard. I like a trap and a puzzle, but this part is more optional. I also like to place a place where a short rest can be taken relatively safely. This can be something like a hidden temple or secret room

 

[the Jester]

Dungeon size and number of encounters don't necessarily have any connection. Some dungeons are nearly or completely empty; others are very dense. I don't know that there's a real number that's the sweet spot, it really just depends on what the dungeon is, who is there, and what you're doing with the adventure.

 

[Larnievc]

Does anyone have a good rule of thumb for how many combat encounters should be in a dungeon of a given size for it to be an appropriate challenge? I'm trying my hand at homebrewing and I don't have a great sense of how to stock a dungeon with combat encounters. I'm kind of just feeling it out, and hoping that there are some better rules out there for budgeting combat encounters in a dungeon.

I reckon it’s best eyeball it but generally it depends on the tier you’re at. Tier one can only take a few encounters compared with higher tiers.

What tier you at?

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah, the ability to avoid encounters certainly complicates things.

The DMG says 6-8 hard or medium encounters a day. In my experience with Tier 1 and Tier 2 parties, that seems far too taxing.

Well, that is the max limit of what they can probavly handle, so yup it would be taxing. But a good budget for a full dungeon to push the party to the limit from a fresh start.

 

[Parmandur]

In Ye Olden Days, it was recommended that one third of the rooms in a dungeon be empty (with one sixth of those empty rooms containing unguarded treasure), one third contain monsters (with half of those monsters guarding treasure), one sixth contain traps (with one third of those traps guarding treasure), and one sixth contain other environmental features.

Applying those assumptions to 5e’s 6-to-8 encounter adventuring days, you could have an 18-room dungeon with 6 rooms stocked with monsters (with random encounters accounting for the 2 flexible encounters), 3 trapped rooms, and 3 rooms with environmental hazards or other features, and divide a treasure hoard into 5 parcels to be distributed throughout the dungeon.

This gives a sense of a dungeon that’s a largely abandoned ruin with a handful of dangerous creatures still wandering through it. If you want something more heavily populated like an orc stronghold or whatever, you can fiddle with the numbers as feels appropriate.

Sounds like a pretty good time.

 

[Parmandur]

Perhaps it would look more familiar in this form:

View attachment 332151

The book in the background is B/X. The one in the foreground is Labyrinth Lord reproducing the probabilities of B/X’s table (more or less…) with d100s instead of d6s. Old School Essentials also has a version, using d6s as B/X did, which is where I first encountered it.



Well, it needs at least 18 to work evenly. But, using these tables it’ll still work on average over multiple smaller dungeons. And you can always round if stocking manually.

30 years of gaming suggests 2E as the starting point for @Ancalagon , so those recommendations might not have been in place by that point.

 

[Parmandur]

Having gotten the OG OD&D from DMsGuild with the current sale ($not bad for $6!), and the original recommendations were basically the same as @Charlaquin shared from B/X, ut not phrased quite as clearly (kind of the OD&D to B/X relationship across the board)

 

[Clint_L]

I find combat encounters to offer a poor return of fun for the time invested, so most sessions have 0-2, though occasionally there might be a dungeon crawl with 3-4. I’m just not that into D&D’s combat system. And in terms of story, I prefer fewer fights that mean something. I don’t consider dungeon budget at all, I just try to only have consequential fights.

The exception is random encounters. But those usually lead to RP rather than combat.