Encounters Per Day. How many?

[Primitive Screwhead]

That's a nice thought. But consider: Either the PC learn a good strategy, or they die rather often.

I am not disagreeing.. its just a pet peeve of mine when a GM allows PC's to rest up for 8 hours when the logic of the game would interupt them..

For instance, ToEE 1st level. There is a set of 3 rooms connected by wooden doors, guard post, guard shack, leaders office {which has a secret door exit at the back}.

The party assualts, with loud obnoxious things like Fireball, through the first two room slaughtering guards and looting bedrolls. Before they open the next door they decide to rest.

Options:
Handwave,
- everyone rests, heals and memorizes spells while the entire dungeon, including the apparently comatose leader next door, do nothing...odds are the leader is surprised when the party eventually burst through his door

Treat with some respect to a living world.
- Rest in place, allowing the leader to sneak out to get more guards to send the parties way and scooping up valuables
- Retreat, allowing a repopulation of the guards and a more careful security

The former option has PC tactics of throwing all their resources at encounters since they can always heal up afterwards
The latter option has PC tactics that conserve resources and encourages stealthy approaches instead of 'boot the door down'

hard data would be weird. You run into issues like overland travel were a group can go over months of time without 'encounters'

 

[wmasters]

I went with 2-3 as a broad average for when I'm running a combat-focussed adventure,although anywhere up to 6 is realistic from time to time. If it's something political or something more cloak and dagger 1-2 would be more accurate. And, of course, there are many days of no encounters per day, but I don't think these are really of interest for this poll.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

I'd be very surprised to see any DM that reliably keeps the numbers of encounters per day over 3. Seriously.

I am sure you are correct.

If the DM enjoys throwing the occassional EL that is +1 or +2 or even a rare +3 above the party level equivalent, as most DMs do, then more than 3 encounters is going to be murder. The DMG guidelines recommend a mix of ELs. If you followed the guideline to the letter I am not sure your average would be much over 3.

4 encounters per day that are a level equivalent challenge is more of a rough guideline than anything anyone is expected to adhere to. Tougher encounters translate into fewer encounters. And I do not think there is much point in throwing below level challenges at a party, except as story elements that are not really intended to be meaningful obstacles.

 

[el-remmen]

Not sure this thread belongs in "Rules"

Anyway, do you mean only combat encounters?

 

[two]

Not sure this thread belongs in "Rules"

Anyway, do you mean only combat encounters?

This is D&D we are talking about.

Yes.

Only combat encounters.

Non-combat encounters are relatively rare and even more rarely do they consume bunches of spells and/or party resources.

 

[el-remmen]

I should have seen that you chose the "Combat" category for the thread.

It can be so hard to make these kinds of guesses.

The answer I want to give is: "as many as makes sense for where the party finds themselves".

In my last campaign, when the party was traveling through orc territory deep underground there was about 3 to 5 a day.

When they were traveling overland through huge expanses of wilderness, about 1 every three or four days (if that much - though sometimes more).

For me encounter/day should be based on the setting and conditions/environment not on the characters.

 

[Nail]

..its just a pet peeve of mine when a GM allows PC's to rest up for 8 hours when the logic of the game would interupt them..

...and one of mine too.

But PCs can (and do) flee. That, in essense, is a tactic to "lower the # encounters per day".

hard data would be weird. You run into issues like overland travel were a group can go over months of time without 'encounters'

I think we can safely restrict this to "days in which there are encounters for which the PCs can get XP".

I'm looking over my own notes for my last campaign (PCs went from 1st to 10th level, almost 2 years RL game time). I see that the average (given the above restriction) is just over two and a half.

FWIW.

 

[Nail]

The question put another way:

"On a day with Encounters (XP award challenges), how many do you have, on average?"

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

I think it makes sense to include encounters or obstacles that can be reasonably expected to consume resources.

But it is the rare non-combat encounter that consumes a significant or meaningful portion of the party's resources, unless the threat of combat is present. A scary looking chasm the Sorceror chooses to cross by casting Fly on the whole party might count. As might the people the Bard pumps for information with Charm and Suggestion plus Diplomacy checks.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I've only heard of one DM who can actually pull off four encounters per day for adventures they design themselves. None of the other DMs can pull it off - including me when I ran DnD. Things got silly in an Eberron campaign we did recently; it took us like three days to finish this giant ruin set we were exploring, and it was time sensitive. Each day we were doing up to five encounters, but it was just silly. We adventured until we ran out of hit points and spells (we could last longer because of an adventure-imposed DMPC who could cast a few healing spells), and for some reason nothing attacked us during the night. THREE DAYS! I wonder if that adventure was even playtested. In a non time-sensitive situation, we probably would have stopped after three battles just because there's no possible way you could do the whole complex in one day. And to answer any other questions, we fought the two final boss battles late in the day (already low on hit points and spells) and still won, despite the brutality of the bosses.

Even if the DM is "balls to the walls" and ensures that PCs can't skip encounters or rest too early, simply coming up with three reasonable plot-based encounters in a day is too much work*. As it is, I don't want (as a player) to face four wimpy encounters per day. I'd rather face fewer encounters that actually challenge me (as a player) and my character.

* Recent threads indicate that random encounters are very unpopular.