D&D 5E (2024) How many combats do you have on average adventuring day.

[payn]

4-5 felt right for the adventures I played. I went with 4 for average, but for sure some days had 1-2 and others had 6-8.

 

[Minigiant]

6

It's either 1, 5-7, or 20 encounters between long rests.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

20 encounters

What?

 

[billd91]

Over the course of 20 levels of the Age of Worms campaign, it has varied quite a bit. Currently, the 20th level PCs are grinding through 7 or more per long rest because they have so many resources at their disposal.

 

[Minigiant]

What?

What?

You long rest when you get to

 

[Shiroiken]

It depends on the campaign and level. IME, the number of combat encounters the PCs can handle increases significantly with level. In the apprentice tier, more than 4 combats was pretty rare, since there's not that much in the way of resource recovery from short rests (baring monk and warlock). Heroic tier tended to hit the 6-8 margin pretty regularly, but leaned closer to 6 than 8. Paragon tier generally had the same 6-8, because while the players had lots more resources, the opponents tend to dish out a lot more. The little bit of epic tier I've done allowed for a lot more, generally averaging 10-12 (although I ran an epic one shot that was over 20 encounters during the single long rest of the adventure).

Adventure theme makes a pretty big difference too. Dungeons and exploration tend to have more combats, while investigation and social adventures might have half a dozen for the entire adventure, spread out over several long rests.

 

[SteveC]

I was thinking about this as we (again) had some discussions about that 6 encounter adventuring day. I did that in the very early days of 5E and ... never again. I think it's very rare to go over 4 encounters or so, and so far in the poll it seems like 4 is on the higher side.

I definitely would feel that six or more encounters would make the game just not fun for me and my group. I'm not going to yuck on anyone's yum for this but that would make for a very long game with mostly the same actions in my experience. I really do hope that WotC isn't designing for this level of encounters because ... wow.

 

[el-remmen]

The question probably should ask "In adventuring days involving a meaningful amount of combat, how many...."

Because now you have people answering "we have entire days with no combat" skewing the averages for a different kind of question than the one you intended to ask.

I was gonna say this. If the PCs go four days without a combat encounter and then have one on the fifth day, is that an average of .2 per long rest? Or do the 4 days don’t count?

I could go to this thread and figure it out (I may have even already figured it out for that game) but ultimately the question is moot. A combination of the PC’s actions and the way the scenario plays out decides that, I have never stopped to think about coming up with some number I am trying to hit “per day.”

 

[Quickleaf]

Answered 2, but anywhere from 1-3 was typical. But often muuuuch harder than baseline suggestions in 2014 DMG.

 

[ECMO3]

A simple question,
in 10 years of 5E, how many combats did you have per Long rest in 5E?

The question is not that simple. Overland exploration are adventuring days and often go without any encounters. Likewise for days inside a civilized area where you are doing a lot of RP.

If I have 2 ten day to get from Baldur's Gate to Waterdeep a 3 encounter adventuring day for that 20 day journey is going to take 6 months to play out.

On days where I am not traveling and not in civilization I would say it is probably around 6-7 on average, but that drops to less than 1 if you roll those other days in there.