D&D 5E (2014) How many combats does your 5e group typically have between long rests, if you have at least one?

[FormerlyHemlock]

Well according to the rules, you can only do one long rest per day. That means you have 16 hours you need to play out before you can do another one. Inside dungeons for exactly it is recommended to proceed time in minutes. Some actions like searching a whole room takes several minutes, but still, you will get at least say 200 rounds outside combat before the day comes to an end. Unless you do short rests in between to proceed some time. But that's still a lot of sitting around and waiting in enemy territory just to be able to take a long rest again. Or alternatively, the group enters the dungeon, does 2-3 battles, then travels back the next town, rests, goes back to the dungeon, does another 2-3 battles, leaves again... hmm it seems boring to me. And reduces the excitement of having to conserve resources and being scared of getting out alive.

You're making a certain set of assumptions here, including "what happens in the room stays in the room." In my game it would be more typical that the noise you make during a fight draws creatures from nearby rooms, either immediately or after a short delay; instead of fighting eight tiny groups of 2-3 bugbears at a time you're dealing with two dozen bugbears in the immediate vicinity, and your job during the fight is to handle them quickly enough that you don't get overwhelmed. Same bugbears, different assumptions--and doing it all as one fight actually makes it (potentially) harder, not easier.

Successfully taking an hour-long break in the middle of that fight is not likely unless you've already repulsed the bugbears and they've withdrawn to rest and/or change up their strategy.

I just can't make myself believe in the idea of 6-8 discretized fights that don't overlap at all, unless some of those fights are simple assassinations that are over during the surprise round with no noise during the kill.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

My group may take a short rest in the dungeon, but rarely a long rest. They normally try to reach a safe location before long-resting, after at most 3 fights. The reason they are scared is that
they don't know how many fights they may face, or the difficulty of those fights - it's the uncertainty that creates excitement. Wandering Monster checks are an extremely useful tool for keeping things tense, even a low-challenge encounter can be deadly when the PCs are ambushed in camp.
Recently my 6th-7th level party camped out in some ruins after killing a shambling mound,
unfortunately the ruins were also being used by hobgoblins who saw their camp fire...
eight hobgoblins (7 standard, 1 leader) vs 2 PCs (Barb-6, Warlock-7) & an NPC paladin
type proved to be a very tough fight.

You're making me think, and here is the thought:

1.) Normally, wandering monster checks do not (IME) disincentivize resting in dungeons, because fighting brings XP which is actually a reward, not a punishment.

2.) However, hobgoblins are a massive pain for almost zero XP gain.

3.) Therefore, large groups of low-CR creatures like hobgoblins and giant rats are excellent wandering monsters, even against high-level parties, especially if stealth is involved.

There certainly exist adventuring parties who can kill eight hobgoblins without expending any resources, even when surprised. And there exist other adventuring parties who will always throw up a Leomund's Tiny Hut, and can therefore never[1] be attacked while resting except during the first eleven minutes of the rest. But if so, they've expended resources to get good at resting and so deserve the fruits of their labors--a general policy of "use trash monsters as wandering monsters" will serve well to make the dungeon dangerous enough to discourage resting in it.

So, thanks for sharing your story, S'mon. It helped me.

-Max

[1] For small values of "never" which don't involve umber hulks, purple worms, etc.

 

[S'mon]

Therefore, large groups of low-CR creatures like hobgoblins and giant rats are excellent wandering monsters, even against high-level parties, especially if stealth is involved.

Yes, this is a notable feature of 5e; large groups of creatures have a very poor threat/reward ratio from the POV of the PCs. This is potentially very useful, although the GM may want to use alternate sources of XP if he uses armies a lot.

But even monsters that give lots of XP can be useful threat if they inspire fear in the PCs. Eg my
group certainly didn't want to stay & fight recently after beating some shadows & short resting;
when I rolled the encounter check and told them more shadows were manifesting, they legged it! They weren't thinking about Shadow XPV, they were thinking of their STR drain.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

It's also worth noting that even though hobgoblins and drow give very little XP, they give potentially great rewards in other ways. Drow have sleep poison which is worth a lot of money; hobgoblins have nice weapons and armor which is also worth money, and at least IMC they can potentially be converted into hirelings by offering them money and/or Geasing them with spells. For a group of 8th level PCs, eight hobgoblins are far more valuable as henchmen (12 points of ranged damage per hit!) than a source of 800 XP.

Therefore, 8 giant rats is probably an even better wandering monster encounter than the hobgoblins. Worth only 200 XP, +4 to hit with advantage for 4 points of damage per hit... very annoying especially if they make their Stealth rolls (+2) and then hit somebody who's trying to rest.

 

[Rhenny]

Therefore, 8 giant rats is probably an even better wandering monster encounter than the hobgoblins. Worth only 200 XP, +4 to hit with advantage for 4 points of damage per hit... very annoying especially if they make their Stealth rolls (+2) and then hit somebody who's trying to rest.

Good call. Those little nuisance monsters can be...well, nuisances.

In one game I ran, the 3rd level, AC 18 fighter was swarmed by 6 crawling claws. In about 2 rounds those little annoyances did about 12 points of damage to the fighter, which whittled away nearly 1/3 of his hit points. Getting mugged hurts.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I'm in the boat of being a DM who wants to let my party experience those 6-8 encounters a day, but my generally sandbox style of DMing makes it difficult. I suppose using published adventures would help, but I haven't bought those since Dungeon Magazine was in print, and I don't intend to buy many.

The stand alone adventure I'm starting this week is going to be completely different from how I normally do things. I really want to test out the encounters per day guidelines as well as see how difficult fights with large numbers of mooks are. The adventure is going to be incredibly linear. Basically a seer is going to prophesy to the characters telling them (in more flowery words) that they need to be somewhere in a week to fulfill the goals of the adventure, and they need to travel a full 8 hours per day (still working on the right language to get that across). So they can basically take as many short rests as they feel they need to, but if they don't want to fail in the quest they have to keep moving ahead regardless of the opposition. We'll see how it works out. Hopefully it will give me the feel that I need for the challenges, since PCs tend to be rather powerful in 5e.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I'm in the boat of being a DM who wants to let my party experience those 6-8 encounters a day, but my generally sandbox style of DMing makes it difficult. I suppose using published adventures would help, but I haven't bought those since Dungeon Magazine was in print, and I don't intend to buy many.

The stand alone adventure I'm starting this week is going to be completely different from how I normally do things. I really want to test out the encounters per day guidelines as well as see how difficult fights with large numbers of mooks are. The adventure is going to be incredibly linear. Basically a seer is going to prophesy to the characters telling them (in more flowery words) that they need to be somewhere in a week to fulfill the goals of the adventure, and they need to travel a full 8 hours per day (still working on the right language to get that across). So they can basically take as many short rests as they feel they need to, but if they don't want to fail in the quest they have to keep moving ahead regardless of the opposition. We'll see how it works out. Hopefully it will give me the feel that I need for the challenges, since PCs tend to be rather powerful in 5e.

I'm kind of in the same boat. I'd sort of like to have the "lots of small fights per day in a cage match" experience available to my players, especially since one of them recently voiced his disappointment with melee characters in 5E ("it seems like ranged is always better"), but it's hard to make it believable outside of city defense scenario. Cheesey as it seems, I think I'm going to offer my players access to a megadungeon of sorts ("The Corridors of Chaos!") which is in reality a gigantic training simulator designed by nigh-omnipotent beings for their proteges, a sort of living video game. Upon entering the Corridors of Chaos level X, you'll be faced with six successive challenges (which are in reality simple CR X combat encounters) each involving the need to retrieve a key (highlighted in red) and bring it to the exit area (highlighted in green) while various monsters lurk in the vicinity to try to kill you. Taking more than three hours to complete all six challenges dumps you back out to the same instant you entered without gaining any XP at all; if you do complete all six challenges you gain full normal XP and some treasure. Each encounter starts at a range of between 60' and 180' to the goal, with the monsters somewhere within that same area; and moving more than 200' from the goal dumps you back outside the Corridors of Chaos, with no XP, as a failure.

That way, my players can have access to a strictly-controlled environment for when they want some easy, mindless combat and simple rewards ("abnegation" fun), without me having to explain "Why hasn't anyone else before you looted this ancient temple already?" They can use the treasure from the Corridors of Chaos to help deal with their problems in the "real" world, like the tens of thousands of gold pieces they owe a certain dragon and the tens of thousands of other gold pieces they owe a certain scro.

 

[Valador]

I usually play it by ear unless I have some very concrete battles mapped out. I do keep a few "random" encounters handy in case the players want to try and abuse the very generous rest mechanics. I'm a fan of eating player resources and tricking them into thinking each battle will be the last for the day, so they never really know how to gauge their resource use. Nothing annoys me worse than players who want to horde resources until the climax.

 

[aramis erak]

I was wondering if the 5e DMG's stated 6-8 combat adventuring day is common.

Not for my groups. 4-5 combats averaging about 5 rounds each.

 

[S'mon]

Currently 9 of 58 typically have 6+ encounters. Interesting that there is no discernible bell curve, I might have expected a peak around 2-3 or 3-4 encounters, maybe. I'm not too surprised so few have 6+, I always thought 6-8 was "this is the most they can handle" not "this is what they should have".