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

[Minigiant]

Because that is terribly boring.

Even 1 encounter per short rest as it was in 4e was a boring assumption.
Combat felt as if you had to always spend everything in the right order or you did something wrong.
Felt kinda like CRPGs where often you had a standard routine of oressing buttons.

I know I will get pushback for this comment. But that feeling grew by playing 4e for several years, not by just reading the rules.

4e wasn't even balanced around encounters per day. 4e was balanced around healing surges.

The point was that you need some sort of resource change or attrition or every combat would become repetitive as you said an action CRPG.

----

Here's the thing I do get?

The median on the poll is 2-4.
5e was not designed to only have 3 combats regularly. Sometimes. But not common.

 

[Blue]

I'm fond of how 5e is flexible enough and balanced enough around the encounters that if I have 1 or if I have 7, the PC's can feel a bit of a squeeze in each encounter. Multiple encounters tend to add to a feeling of struggle and fatigue, but even one encounter can be a potential party-killer.

Wow, we are not playing the same game at all. I don't recognize your game.

Sure, I can increase the challenge so that fewer encounters can feel tough, but those never feel balanced. That's the part that boggles my mind you feel. An at-will character like a rogue provides a steady output regardless if it's the first or seventh encounter, while a long-rest recovery character like a full caster has so much more output in a single 10 round combat adventuring day then in seven 3-4 round combats.

It really comes down to how much can a character do per turn, and frankly when you only have a few combats per day so casters can fill every Action with one of their highest level of spells they average so much more efficiency per turns than when those turns are a mix of their highest level spells, mid level spells, and cantrips.

Heck, even the fact that more challenging encounters are longer are in their favor, as an Action to cast a high level spell that lasts for 3 rounds has less effect then an Action to cast that same spell which has a duration of 8 rounds.

So no, I never feel that 5e is balanced enough to run one encounter per day or seven. It's not, and the PCs absolutely feel it.

 

[Moonmover]

Technically, on most days there is no combat. Especially in my current campaign, where we all our PC's are pirates and most sessions include several hand-waived days worth of uneventful sailing.

But, I'm sure that doesn't count. So, I'd say or or two combats per day. We like to conclude an adventuring day by the end of a session, and there simply isn't enough real-world time for more than three fights. There is also rarely a reason that three or more fights in the same day would make narrative sense.

Keeping that in mind, when I'm the DM, I make sure all the encounters are what the DMG calls "deadly," since the encounter-building guidelines seem to assume that the PC's will be in several more fights per day than they actually are.

 

[SteveC]

I just had a session last night of Feng Shui 2, and it highlighted how games with combat have a huge variety in what they expect the impact to be. We did a combat last night where three of the six characters almost died. It was crazy. At the end of the combat we all recovered all of our resources and were ready for the next fight.

In FS2 the fights are what you are looking forward to in the game. You're enjoying the experience even though it can be dangerous to your character. And after the fight, you're ready for the next one. There is a larger story building here, but the fight scenes are the main event.

Compare that to Original Edition D&D or BECMI. In those cases, you feel like when you roll initiative, you've sort of done something wrong. You want to get through them as fast as possible so you can get back to trying to get rich.

And 5E is all over the place. I never really feel like there is an assumption of where characters will be at the start of a fight. In PF2, you have the assumption that characters will enter a combat at full HP, and the game is balanced in that light. In 5E, with hour-long short rests, you don't know if the group will be able to get there for any particular battle after the first day. With the resources the way they are, the game tells you it's balanced for a play style that not a lot of people use.

It seems to me that the 5E DMG has the opportunity to set expectations for what an adventuring day should look like, along with how a DM should manage it. I'm just not sure if, within the rules of the game we've seen so far, there are mechanical tools to make that easily happen.

 

[ezo]

Frankly I am amazed at how low most of the votes are. When I voted 3 I was sort-of low-balling it due to the travel and town adventuring days where long rests aren't needed in the absolute sense of resource recovery.

I know many people who use fewer encounters ramp up the difficulty to routinely hard or even deadly, but that sort of thinking has never really set well with me.

The thing I am doing right now is basing encounters on the game-world concept of creature rarity based on CR primarily.

Spoiler: My encounter system

In short, each encounter has a base of tier 1. A d6 roll of 6 ramps it up to tier 2, another 6 to tier 3, and a final 6 to tier 4. I don't care what tier the PCs are... If they encounter something below their tier it will be easier, and something above their tier they might have to avoid or flee from, etc.

I live in rural upstate NY, so I explain it like this:

If I see a squirrel, that is tier 1 (basic creature seen/encountered all the time)
If I see a deer, that is tier 2 (common enough that I seem them often, but not all the time)
If I see a black bear, that is tier 3 (something I see once in a great while, but I know they are out there... so I am always cautious while hiking, etc.)
If I see a rattlesnake, that is tier 4 (I know they are around here, but I have only ever seen one in my life)

Now, I try in use sufficient numbers, terrain, etc. to make the encounters at least minimally challenging when the PCs are higher level and things from tier 1 would not otherwise be much of a threat, but when you consider tier 4 includes CR 4 creatures, it isn't too hard to manage.

It does mean, however, that tier 4 PCs will not always be encountering tier 3 and 4 creatures (just to make it a challenge) like most games... they will often encounter tiers 1 and 2 when they get there.

 

[Mistwell]

Frankly I am amazed at how low most of the votes are. When I voted 3 I was sort-of low-balling it due to the travel and town adventuring days where long rests aren't needed in the absolute sense of resource recovery.

I know many people who use fewer encounters ramp up the difficulty to routinely hard or even deadly, but that sort of thinking has never really set well with me.

The thing I am doing right now is basing encounters on the game-world concept of creature rarity based on CR primarily.

Spoiler: My encounter system

In short, each encounter has a base of tier 1. A d6 roll of 6 ramps it up to tier 2, another 6 to tier 3, and a final 6 to tier 4. I don't care what tier the PCs are... If they encounter something below their tier it will be easier, and something above their tier they might have to avoid or flee from, etc.

I live in rural upstate NY, so I explain it like this:

If I see a squirrel, that is tier 1 (basic creature seen/encountered all the time)
If I see a deer, that is tier 2 (common enough that I seem them often, but not all the time)
If I see a black bear, that is tier 3 (something I see once in a great while, but I know they are out there... so I am always cautious while hiking, etc.)
If I see a rattlesnake, that is tier 4 (I know they are around here, but I have only ever seen one in my life)

Now, I try in use sufficient numbers, terrain, etc. to make the encounters at least minimally challenging when the PCs are higher level and things from tier 1 would not otherwise be much of a threat, but when you consider tier 4 includes CR 4 creatures, it isn't too hard to manage.

It does mean, however, that tier 4 PCs will not always be encountering tier 3 and 4 creatures (just to make it a challenge) like most games... they will often encounter tiers 1 and 2 when they get there.

I think it's because he asked the wrong question and didn't have people eliminate days with little to no combat in their averaging. It should have been "In days where combat is a meaningful portion of encounters..."

 

[ezo]

I think it's because he asked the wrong question and didn't have people eliminate days with little to no combat in their averaging. It should have been "In days where combat is a meaningful portion of encounters..."

I agree, but you still have a number of people talking about only doing a couple encounters daily when it is a "meaningful portion of encounters". I personally don't count non-conflict encounters into the equation... no resources are used, you could have an infinite number of them in theory without issue.

 

[Xetheral]

Wow, we are not playing the same game at all. I don't recognize your game.

Sure, I can increase the challenge so that fewer encounters can feel tough, but those never feel balanced. That's the part that boggles my mind you feel. An at-will character like a rogue provides a steady output regardless if it's the first or seventh encounter, while a long-rest recovery character like a full caster has so much more output in a single 10 round combat adventuring day then in seven 3-4 round combats.

It really comes down to how much can a character do per turn, and frankly when you only have a few combats per day so casters can fill every Action with one of their highest level of spells they average so much more efficiency per turns than when those turns are a mix of their highest level spells, mid level spells, and cantrips.

Heck, even the fact that more challenging encounters are longer are in their favor, as an Action to cast a high level spell that lasts for 3 rounds has less effect then an Action to cast that same spell which has a duration of 8 rounds.

So no, I never feel that 5e is balanced enough to run one encounter per day or seven. It's not, and the PCs absolutely feel it.

I think campaign style is a confounding variable that heavily impacts whether unusually low or unusually high numbers of encounters actually lead to balance issues at a particular table.

In particular I think how combat planning happens at a particular table can make a big impact on perceptions of balance. For instance, when the party's attack plan is created collectively, it seems to matter a lot less which character does what in the combat itself, as everyone has a personal stake in the success of the plan.

And I'd further note that the impact of combat length on balance can be unpredictable. A long, close-range engagement where most turns can be spent targeting one's enemy of choice is going to play out differently balance-wise than a long, drawn-out running battle with heavy use of manuevering and cover. To the extent that one's campaign style emphasizes a particular flavor of combat, the relationship between combat number, combat length, and balance issues may vary considerably from table to table.

 

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

My dungeons and dragons adventures tend to involve Dungeons. Most have had 4-6+ encounters per long rest, easily. I don't think I've ever once run an adventuring day with only a single combat encounter. Even when I'm running other adventure styles than dungeon crawls.

An example - I ran a ravnica adventure, with the following encounters:

• The party investigated an Izzet research facility, they were attacked by loose experiments.
• The party investigated a Golgari splinter faction. They were harried by sporelings on their way through the undercity and forced to fight a group of modified ghouls before being granted audience with the faction leader.
• The party attempted to find their target in an airship field, where they were ambushed by assassins.
• The party chased after their target on her airship while riding griffons, they boarded and had to fight their target and her guards.

That's Five combat encounters, and they were supplemented by several investigation scenes, exploration with multiple traps in in the izzet facility, a tense social scene with the golgari leader, and the chase sequence with the airship.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

I think it's because he asked the wrong question and didn't have people eliminate days with little to no combat in their averaging. It should have been "In days where combat is a meaningful portion of encounters..."

If we're counting "adventuring" (as opposed to downtime) days where resources are spent, but no combat occurs, my response would be considerably lower.