D&D (2024) How many combats do you have on average adventuring day.

How many combats per Long rest?


So if you only can get through 3 fights in a session that's the adventure day. They long rest.

My group often stops mid-combat! (but we have long combats). The session we have planned tomorrow takes up where we ended, in round 2 of a combat that started (in-game) minutes after the previous one that took 6 or 7 rounds.

We definitely don't let our real world end time effect game time, except occasionally during downtime or other periods were time can be fastforwarded. For us, combat is not one of those times.

But yeah, I get that different people play differently. It is the #1 lesson of ENWorld.
 

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My point is groups aren't splitting up adventure days into multiple sessions.

When the session is getting late in many tables I've heard and read, either the DM wraps up the party to create a safe spot to long rest or the party "forced" it.

"It's 9 o clock. Let's look for somewhere to long rest"

So if you only can get through 3 fights in a session that's the adventure day. They long rest.
See, this isn't my experience at all---neither in the games I play in or run. Long rests are driven by the story / adventure, not for the convience of the group.

Which I could see it as more common simply as a convenience for some groups, but that feels "articial" to me.

No, I’m implying that the number of encounters per adventuring day is very likely to be equal to the number of encounters per session, whatever than number might be.
So similar to @Minigiant then?

If it fits with what the DM happens to plan and manages to run and works within the story, that is fine I suppose, and in such a way I generally plan encounters to work out with leveling at key points during an adventure or at its conclusion.
 

This is where you lost me. I don't think "the adventuring day" is a design feature. I think it's a plot element.
I can see that. I expect that a lot of people feel that way. The easiest thing I can say about it is to look at other similar games to see how they work with it, since most of them talk directly to the GM about it.

A D&D "adventure", and this is something that's been in the game since the White Box. Starts with characters having all of their resources. For a long time this meant hit points and spell slots, but we've added more of them since the beginning.

They do a number of things, which you might call scenes, or other people would call encounters. The expectation is that they are going to succeed with them but at some cost. Gradually, over the course of the day, those resources dwindle until the group can't do anymore. Depending on the situation of the adventure, they may be able to stop there, or have to press on.

Eventually, though, the group can't do anymore. We hope they have completed everything they needed to do that was time sensitive by then.

And then they attempt to rest and recover some of those resources. Over time, that recovery has been more automatic and faster, but they need to get those resources back to do more. And more importantly, to do more in a fun way. That's an adventuring day. That's part of the core game loop for D&D.

Over the years, the design of the game has made that more explicit, to the point where you get everything back with a long rest in 5E. That's something that might take a week or more in AD&D.

Way back in the day, this was largely a problem for spellcasters. I remember playing as a low-level magic user and having to portion out my spells over many encounters and not contributing much during most of them. I suppose that's why we have at-will cantrips now.

With 5E, I also play spell-casting characters. I have to figure out how many encounters we're likely to have, how much we need to press on, and how likely we're even going to be able to spend that one hour on a short rest. That's part of the challenge of playing a character with limited resources: knowing when to use them.

I've played with GMs who didn't worry too much about the adventuring day, and that usually meant they were longer. It just meant that I had to be more judicious about using my spells. And that's because the adventuring day is part of the design of the game, part of the core game loop, whether we think about it or not.
 


That’s the thing, if you had 8 combat encounters per adventuring day, in the real world a day would last months!

My point is groups aren't splitting up adventure days into multiple sessions.

Just to be that guy: my main group rarely covers a single adventure day in one session. It's not common for a single day to last more than a month, but it's definitely happened before.
 

It doesn’t always work out that way, but it makes book keeping a lot easier when it does. Some of my players find it hard enough to keep track of spell slots between sessions, never mind the plot!

(We play once a fortnight.)
I guess if you play rarely it might make things easier.

However, since players typical track all that stuff on their character sheet... I have never found it necessary to implement such a policy. After all, if you write down your current HP, expended spell slots, used features, etc. during the session, you just leave it until you pick it up again. The player can use their own time to review the information prior to the actual session, so you don't lose any game time. And the DM can email/text/post a story recap to keep the plot refreshed in the players' minds as well.

None of these things are so difficult to manage IME that "artificially" imposing a long rest at the end of a session is necessary at all.

As a player, it would irk me quite a bit--but if it works for you than go with it of course.
 

However, since players typical track all that stuff on their character sheet... I have never found it necessary to implement such a policy. After all, if you write down your current HP, expended spell slots, used features, etc. during the session, you just leave it until you pick it up again. The player can use their own time to review the information prior to the actual session, so you don't lose any game time. And the DM can email/text/post a story recap to keep the plot refreshed in the players' minds as well.
I suspect your players take the game more seriously than mine do…
 

My group often stops mid-combat! (but we have long combats). The session we have planned tomorrow takes up where we ended, in round 2 of a combat that started (in-game) minutes after the previous one that took 6 or 7 rounds.

We definitely don't let our real world end time effect game time, except occasionally during downtime or other periods were time can be fastforwarded. For us, combat is not one of those times.

But yeah, I get that different people play differently. It is the #1 lesson of ENWorld.
I've watched many podcasts/videos and heard accounts that they do all their combats in one session and longest before meeting up again.

Characters don't enter sessions on partial resources.
 

I am pretty much in a bubble. I regularly run either one-shots for strangers or a long serialized home game. In the former, of course, we have to wrap up. But for the latter, we just make sure to stop at the top of a new round if we are mid-combat. I take a quick photo of initiative order and mini position on the mat, and then I have that ready to go before game time at the next session.

Here are photos I took at the end of last session, including where we jot down everyone's current HP/HD and that stays on the eraseboard between sessions:

458140008_302640086267141_1070244209984735182_n.jpg
458661631_887727046601898_6357029475032957715_n.jpg
459027854_1030089005510627_2029099433443205484_n.jpg
 


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