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

[Laurefindel]

1-3, with the occasional 4+ marathons (because that's what 4+ encounters in a day feels for us)

It's a 3-player party with a NPC rogue that mostly fights "off screen", when I don't forget about her completely that is. She's mostly there to provide players with additional bonus action options, but they rarely use them.

Most combats are designed to challenge a fully-recharged party, which is made more manageable since we keep to level 12 and under and we have only three players. It makes for mercurial and swingy combats where the "wind of victory" can change several times during the encounters. I'm satisfied with that. Win or lose, our combats have been memorable.

 

[Vaalingrade]

1-3.

I come from a cinematic storytelling perspective where every fight needs to mean something for the narrative and any more than that starts to get stretched out to the point where I can't find a reason for the fight to exist.

That, plus I'm not really interested the resource minigame.

 

[Yaarel]

Nice.

So far, voters seem to lean toward 4 combats per day.

For me, this means it is ok to aim for a short rest after every one or two combats, depending on plausability.

 

[el-remmen]

See all relevant data in this thread: It's Official! All My Encounters are Deadly!

It will be updated soon(ish).

 

[iserith]

Most of these answers are incredibly wild to me. I've never played or run a game with the volume of low-stakes combat you guys are talking about. How do you set up dramatic tension over time if the game is packed with cakewalk fights? I've never watched Critical Role but I'm guessing Mercer isn't just setting up these kinds of MMO grinds, right?

Are you running dungeons or dangerous hex crawls? If so, one can hit 6 to 8 regularly, particularly if there are time pressures and other incentives to push on.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Are you running dungeons or dangerous hex crawls? If so, one can hit 6 to 8 regularly, particularly if there are time pressures and other incentives to push on.

How long in real time would that span of six to eight encounters take? One session or several? I've been running what I would consider pretty combat heavy recently, and four encounters per sessions seems to be pushing it. Eight could absolutely never happen.

 

[Guest 7025638]

Preferably 1 or less.

 

[iserith]

How long in real time would that span of six to eight encounters take? One session or several? I've been running what I would consider pretty combat heavy recently, and four encounters per sessions seems to be pushing it. Eight could absolutely never happen.

Six to eight is a good 4-hour session's worth. My experience is my games (and some the games of my regular johns run) move faster than most though. Playing on a VTT helps with speed and we're all experienced players.

 

[Asisreo]

How long in real time would that span of six to eight encounters take? One session or several? I've been running what I would consider pretty combat heavy recently, and four encounters per sessions seems to be pushing it. Eight could absolutely never happen.

I think it heavily depends on the size/skill of the group and the type of encounters you present.

I usually present combats where they can be resolved well within 3 rounds because any more can feel like a drag when its not a boss. This means I avoid tedious monsters that prolong the fights or I make sure monster start off with minimal health in the combat.

I couldn't do 6-8 combats ever if they were all 5+ round slugfests of "Hit this guy...cool, uh, no he's still up" Sighs....

 

[Grendel_Khan]

Are you running dungeons or dangerous hex crawls? If so, one can hit 6 to 8 regularly, particularly if there are time pressures and other incentives to push on.

I'm definitely not doing that. And I'm struggling to figure out what that would look like. Seems like just full-on boardgame stuff at that point. Like that's literally Diablo but with dice. Is that what people are doing?