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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 9457672" data-attributes="member: 2067">I'm finding it a little hard to parse "more output in a single 10 round combat adventuring day than in seven 3-4 round combats."D&D combat in 5e is about 3-5 rounds per fight, maybe up to about 7 if there's a significant legendary brick in your way or something. In that time, I usually see a long-rest recovery caster like the wizard dumping their top 2-3 spell slots and a rogue sneak attacking every round. The long-rest-recovery character has to make some choices about their efficiency and project what they think the rest of the day will bring, and the more at-will character doesn't, but that's mostly an experiential difference that has little impact on the numbers being dumped out. Having a long-rest-recovery character nova doesn't significantly reduce the duration of a particular combat, and that duration is what causes the party to feel threatened  by the fight (because every round spent is more damage incoming). So, my experience with 5e is fairly consistent in that regard: different rates of recharge on different characters doesn't impact individual fight duration significantly (maybe a round or two here or there depending on how the dice fall). The impact of the nova in 5e is not super significant, IMXP. Long-rest-recharge characters don't dominate my one-fight days. They burn their highest level slots, but the fights don't end faster, and still wind up threatening character death (which is what I want out of a "challenging" fight).  Parties with more at-will or short-rest characters don't take longer in those fights, either. I find D&D 5e's pacing to be as nearly as resilient as 4e's 10-round-standard in this regard (though subject to the round or two variability I mentioned above). I mean, this doesn't speak to # of encounters/day. Spend my highest level spell slot on my first turn on a buff or debuff that lasts 3 or 8 rounds, I'm still out my highest level spell slot, and that's a significant drop in my power. My experience is that each combat can threaten the PC's with death pretty reliably (if that's the fight I want to have), even if it's the only fight they have in a day. This kind of touches on the CR conversation and how different tables experience risk and combat difficulty, but in practice, a hard encounter for my groups (which I usually build using Xanathar rules) has always been one where at least one character felt the pinch of potential death, and that's usually enough for me to feel a combat was satisfyingly tough. It doesn't matter if it's a party full of wizards and clerics or a party full of fighters and rogues - the rules for making a hard encounter still pose the same general level of risk. When I have more than one encounter in a day, I still get the expected level of risk in each fight, fairly reliably. What changes is mostly that PC's leverage less renewable resources the longer the day goes.</blockquote>

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