D&D 5E How many combat encounters per adventuring day does your group have?

[Malmuria]

A discussion in a different thread has me wondering. For the purposes of this poll, don't count days that are just spent shopping with no chance of "adventure."

 

[Asisreo]

I tend to do 3-5 because its usually more natural in an adventure environment that isn't a very large dungeon. Places like Manors, Towers, and shallow caves.

Its a slight deviation but usually that's okay. My regulars still get the adventure budget of the full adventuring day. My newer players get a more casual experience so they can maintain a good feel for the game, they're less likely to exploit game mechanics when they don't delve into the deep-end of adventuring day optimization.

I also don't forcefully regulate rests. There's usually time pressures, but its usually the consequence of the story as I can't imagine villains that wait on the players can be considered "realistic."

 

[Yora]

I went with 1 because there is no "less than 1" option.

I count every day on which the party makes wandering monsters checks as an adventuring day, even if no encounter happens or the encounters don't turn into fights.

On three occasions during 19 games played, the players went through a whole dungeon in one go, which I guess would be 5 or 6 fights in one day, but that's been the exception. There's also been a couple of days with 2 or 3 fights.

Though now that the campaign has concluded, I'm not going to run this type ipof campaign with 5th edition again. My unhappiness with 5th edition was the reason I concluded the campaign after the first arc instead of following up with a new arc for the same party.

 

[cbwjm]

I picked 3-5 as the average but there are definitely days where they only have 1. Maybe I should have put 2. Last day was a single encounter but it was also only 2 out of the 5 that were fighting. Before that, I did a long, continuous battle during a siege event where the players had 4 or 5 encounters. I even introduced a new rest mechanic called a breather where they got to spend a hit die after an encounter before moving on to the next as there was no time for short or long rest.

 

[AnotherGuy]

As many as the day calls for.
PCs are currently 12th level and have employed a shield-bearer(4th), a bodyguard (5th) and a chaplain (4th) to descend with them into Undermountain.

In the first almost 4 hours they have encountered a shadow, a gelatinous cube, a pair of bugbears (one of which became a PoW) and a dozen goblins (easy encounters for their level) - nevermind the usually explorative resources spent on other encounters.

They have already found the steps leading to the 2nd level.
We have house-rules that will mean they do not get to refresh their abilities in unsafe environments.

 

[Charlaquin]

I’d say 3-5 is pretty typical for my games.

 

[Azuresun]

3-5 fairly tough ones, as supported by the DMG.

 

[clearstream]

A discussion in a different thread has me wondering. For the purposes of this poll, don't count days that are just spent shopping with no chance of "adventure."

Over our last 30 sessions we have had 8 long rests and 53 combat encounters. So just over 6.

This is with rest rules that make long rests take about 32 hours (and short rests about 8 hours). For us this pacing is working extremely well. The impact of rests on our emergent narrative is meaningful and easy to manage.

 

[Shiroiken]

Mostly 6-8, not counting wilderness travel random encounters. Those tend to be a single, deadly fight, but occasionally 2 hard fights. Since the party usually doesn't know if the random encounter is the beginning of an adventure, they tend not to just nova every time.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I assuming this is asking about 'between long rests' instead of actual days. Because we use gritty rests, and it's 3-5 encounters between long rests but that can be over several days in the game world.