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

[Puddles]

Either 1 or 2.

I try to make each battle a set-piece with a unique terrain layout and fun mechanics (usually with bespoke abilities on the enemies). I am also conscious that my players don’t like overly drawn out combats or too many combats in a single session, so set the pace accordingly.

To use a Pokémon analogy, I try to make every battle a gym battle, rather than making them wade through Zubats in the cave. If they did ever go into a Zubat cave, I would make a single interesting encounter around a Zubat nest, rather than give them loads of small fights to play through.

I apologise if I sound dismissive of the 6-8 encounters camp, but I just cannot fathom how I would structure it narratively that would make it compelling for my players. A few really unique fights seems to make for a better playing experience in my eyes.

 

[iserith]

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?

It looks like bold adventurers confronting deadly perils in worlds of swords and sorcery. Tightly framed and paced with interesting characters, played according to their personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws, overcoming challenges across all three pillars, achieving the goals of play - everyone having fun and creating an exciting, memorable story by playing. Also dick and fart jokes.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It looks like bold adventurers confronting deadly perils in worlds of swords and sorcery. Tightly framed and paced with interesting characters, played according to their personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws, overcoming challenges across all three pillars, achieving the goals of play - everyone having fun and creating an exciting, memorable story by playing. Also dick and fart jokes.

But how on Earth you have time for the two other pillars if you have six to eight fights per four hour session? Perhaps you're insanely faster at running combats than me (though I don't think I'm particularly slow), but I simply cannot imagine this...

 

[Oofta]

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.

We do sessions that with actual play time is probably 5-6 hours long, it takes 2 sessions or so to get through 6-8 combats. Occasionally we'll go 3 sessions with no long rest just depending on what's going on.

For @Grendel_Khan and how you make them interesting. Well, I almost never have completely cakewalk fights but there are goals other than find monster, kill monster. There's get the McGuffin and get out, there's protect the ambassador or a running chase/fight because you failed to protect the ambassador and now they've been kidnapped and so on.

But, I don't know, how do you make any fight interesting? Creative tactics, descriptive combat, enemies taunting, there's a lot of ways. I try to mix things up, so what looked like it was going to be an easy fight turns difficult if you don't stop that guy from ringing the alarm and so on.

 

[iserith]

But how on Earth you have time for the two other pillars if you have six to eight fights per four hour session? Perhaps you're insanely faster at running combats than me (though I don't think I'm particularly slow), but I simply cannot imagine this...

The exploration and social pillars are coming from inside the house!

(Include elements of these pillars in your combats in addition to having them stand alone.)

 

[the Jester]

It's extremely variable.

In my most recent sessions: 3, then 1 (a mostly exploration session and very short), then 4, then a session that included part of a major apocalyptic battle that stretched over multiple sessions (so... .5?), then 6, then 0, but with two rp encounters/skill challenges that required initiative, then another session involving a combat in the larger apocalyptic event (again, this would stretch over two sessions; call it .5), then 3, then 2, then 3, then another .5, then 4.

So if you just average the numbers, around 2-3 per session; but that includes three sessions in a huge, world-wide apocalyptic rain of slaadi tadpoles that quickly grow up, as well as two sessions focused on either exploration or skill challenges.

Some groups impact the amount of combat pretty heavily too. My halfling party in 3e definitely had fewer combats, while evil parties that I've run tend to lean in to more.

 

[clearstream]

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?

I use much longer rests (near to Gritty Realism), so we are not packing in cakewalk fights. Rather our rests are much further apart.

When I was using PHB rests, we had far fewer encounters between them!

 

[clearstream]

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.

What rest length are you using?

 

[clearstream]

But how on Earth you have time for the two other pillars if you have six to eight fights per four hour session? Perhaps you're insanely faster at running combats than me (though I don't think I'm particularly slow), but I simply cannot imagine this...

More sessions per rest, for us! Not more fights per session.

Over 30 sessions we had around 50 fights and 8 long rests.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

What rest length are you using?

Gritty. Seems to be working pacing wise OK. I try to make each session it's own 'mini-adventure' so that the long rest basically can be the downtime between the sessions.