D&D General How many encounter do you complete before getting a Rest?

How many encounter so you complete before getting a Rest?

  • 1

    Votes: 17 37.0%
  • 2

    Votes: 21 45.7%
  • 3

    Votes: 16 34.8%
  • 4

    Votes: 12 26.1%
  • 5+

    Votes: 13 28.3%

Reef

Hero
This is the second poll on rests, only because it was suggested that per encounter was a more useful metric than Short Rests per Long.

So, how many encounters (on average) does your group make it through before taking a rest, for whatever reason?
 

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This widely varies, depending on the group, the encounter, the DM, and the scenario. Anywhere from 1 to 6-8.
I’ve changed it to allow more than one vote, to accommodate people with multiple groups. I would just take the average within each group though, as I know there is a ton of variables.
 

It’s naturally a bit variable depending on the risk of the situation and the party’s need for healing, but I’d say 1 to 3 encounters between short rests is pretty typical in my experience.
 

This is the second poll on rests, only because it was suggested that per encounter was a more useful metric than Short Rests per Long.

So, how many encounters (on average) does your group make it through before taking a rest, for whatever reason?
Short or long?
 


Depends. At higher levels I tend to not have as many combats, but it's still typical to have 3-ish. But I use the alternate rest rules for pacing purposes so it's not hard when you have to sleep overnight to get a short rest.
 

It can be anywhere from 1 to 5+, in the same campaign. It really does depend on the situation. Sometimes we have a single encounter with bandits before we reach town and rest up, the next time we rest is after multiple encounters in cavern complex, so it really varies.
 

Using the info from this thread (and assuming my other group is about the same) and only counting long rests because my data on short rests is more sketchy it comes to an average of 2.6. The mode is 1. The median is 5. The most is 10 and the lowest is 1 (not including days of no combat encounters).

One caveat however, the vast majority of "one encounter in a day" encounters were meant to be that way and were not, "we need to rest before we go on type encounters." This is because despite my games having a lot of combat, I also run adventures that have to do with skills and engagement which might only have one or two combats total for the whole thing.
 

It can be anywhere from 1 to 5+, in the same campaign. It really does depend on the situation. Sometimes we have a single encounter with bandits before we reach town and rest up, the next time we rest is after multiple encounters in cavern complex, so it really varies.
This is us also.
 

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