Flamestrike
Legend
Do you do dungeons?
Im just confused as to how a dungeon level can be cleared out in 4-6 encounters.
D&D 5E How many combat encounters per adventuring day does your group have?
- Thread starter Malmuria
- Start date
Im just confused as to how a dungeon level can be cleared out in 4-6 encounters.
Zardnaar
Legend
Not often no.
A dungeon might have more encounters but you're not expected to do the lot in one day. I don't really do large dungeons or megadungeons.
I often condense things down as well.
Flamestrike
Legend
How does one storm a dungeon, and then come back the next day to do it again?
That's a death sentence (or a mission fail because everyone leaves) surely?
Can you imagine soldiers storming a Taliban cave, falling back when they run out of ammo, and them coming back the next day once they resupply?
The enemy would either be gone, the hostages dead or moved, or they'd be reinforced and lying in ambush (and the hostages dead).
Or can you imagine the Avengers getting halfway through storming Thanos' home base, before leaving for the night to refresh and replenish, before returning the next day?
Zardnaar
Legend
I would say 0-2 combats per adventuring day is the norm at my table, with a very high variance. The variance stems largely from two factors: how willing the PCs are to resort to violence against particular foes, and how organized the opposition is. I think the highest number of combat encounters in one adventuring day was nine or ten, but that involved the PCs knowingly assaulting a prepared enemy who had layered fortified positions to fall back to and the discipline to pull off orderly withdrawls.
Combats at my table tend to last much longer than is the norm, however, with 6-7 rounds being a short fight. It's not unheard of for some combat encounters at my table to last 20 or more rounds. The main reasons combats take longer at my table are that they often take place at much longer ranges than I typically see at other tables, and because just about every fight is far beyond "Deadly" in DMG terms. Anything less usually either means it's a stupid, mindless, or fanatic foe willing to fight without overwhelming odds, or the PCs managed to corner an inferior foe and opted to annihilate them rather than accept a surrender.
But despite being long and ostensibly Deadly+, my encounters tend to not be particularly dangerous, as the PCs do a good job of only engaging when they have an insuperable advantage. Indeed, despite the comparative rarity of combat, a great deal of table time is spent by the PCs trying to get such a strategic or tactical advantage in case achieving their goals does require violence.
Combats at my table tend to last much longer than is the norm, however, with 6-7 rounds being a short fight. It's not unheard of for some combat encounters at my table to last 20 or more rounds. The main reasons combats take longer at my table are that they often take place at much longer ranges than I typically see at other tables, and because just about every fight is far beyond "Deadly" in DMG terms. Anything less usually either means it's a stupid, mindless, or fanatic foe willing to fight without overwhelming odds, or the PCs managed to corner an inferior foe and opted to annihilate them rather than accept a surrender.
But despite being long and ostensibly Deadly+, my encounters tend to not be particularly dangerous, as the PCs do a good job of only engaging when they have an insuperable advantage. Indeed, despite the comparative rarity of combat, a great deal of table time is spent by the PCs trying to get such a strategic or tactical advantage in case achieving their goals does require violence.
I've had anywhere from 1 to 15 (The 15 was a dungeon the PCs completely outleveled but they were under a time constraint so it was still exciting). Mixing it up really keeps the PCs on their toes. The key to doing lots of fights is to have all the prep done (so if using minis or tokens you have them ready to go) or use Theater of the Mind as it's faster to get going. And ensure players execute their turns quickly and are rolling initiative before you finish asking for it.
Raise your expectations of your players and they'll respond.
EDIT: I should add I use one week long rests so it's really easy to pack lots of fights in an adventuring "day". By the end of a "day" the PCs were all bruised and battered and running on fumes and they always felt like they worked for everything they ever got.
Raise your expectations of your players and they'll respond.
EDIT: I should add I use one week long rests so it's really easy to pack lots of fights in an adventuring "day". By the end of a "day" the PCs were all bruised and battered and running on fumes and they always felt like they worked for everything they ever got.
Whereas I have a hard time imagining how a party can pull off separating the dungeon inhabitants' combatants into six different groups that can be defeated in detail. Maybe if the party has access to a permanent Silence effect and a lot of wall spells that lack verbal components? Or a dungeon that consists only of summoned monster traps?
Otherwise, if the PCs manage to kill the guards at the entrance without raising the alarm, they can ambush a second group inside for two encounters. But unless it's a vast, very sparsely populated dungeon, that second encounter is going to become (or at least subsequently lead to) a chaotic mess of a combat involving the remaining enemy combatants with (since you're already inside the living space) the non-combatants mixed in. So that's, at best, three encounters. Maybe you can technically get more if the enemy combatants are so quick to defeat and so disorganized that you repeatedly drop out of initiative only to reroll it moments later when another combatant stumbles into range?
clearstream
(He, Him)
As @Flamestrike said - 'adventuring days', not calendar days. I can add a concrete example to help picture it.
In my current ToA campaign, meeting weekly, with six players. We have had about 50 encounters over 30 sessions with 8 long rests. So that is 8 adventuring days. We use the calendar of Harptos, and those sessions have spanned from Eleasis 15th to Marpenoth 26th. About 70 calendar days. So our ratio of 'adventuring days' to calendar days has been nearly 1:9. Note that we use longer rests, and characters can sleep without necessarily gaining a long rest.
The PCs know that a Thayan lich is due to arrive in Omu with reinforcements sometime in mid-Uktar. They are trapped inside the Tomb of Nine Gods now, and hope to find the soulmonger within the next twenty calendar days so as to be gone before the red wizards arrive. They opened the Tomb on Marpenoth 19th so they have been exploring it for about seven calendar days and had two long rests in that time. So two 'adventuring days' in the dungeon, spaced over seven calendar days.
Our session zero was Tarsakh 3rd, 1499, and we've played 43 two to three hour sessions so far. Very roughly, that's 21 tendays or about 5 calendar days passing per session. My OOTA campaign took 75 sessions, running from Ches 1489 to Alturiak 1490 - almost exactly a full year. Unfortunately I only started tracking encounters and rests partway through ToA.
Flamestrike
Legend
Youre assuming your average dungeon isn't full of sounds and combat on a relatively regular basis.
I can't think Orcs would think too much of rhe sounds of violence down a hallway even if we assume they hear it.
Crimson Longinus
Legend
Level? That's a lot for an entire dungeon.
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