D&D 5E How many encounters per day is YOUR average?

[FrogReaver]

No, I only expect you to not be a d*ck about demanding to see other people's documentation while happily spewing white room assertions yourself.

I mean if you had anything to back up your assertions you wouldn't be calling me that. I mean, you could show evidence in white room. You could show it with an actual play experience where you have actual details about that play experience.

But at this point your just being dismissive about my white room for no good reason - because you've got nothing that shows my white room is incorrect.

 

[FrogReaver]

No, but bear in mind we're not letting the wizard use control spells, which do remove opponents immediately, preventing the damage that they would deal while it lasts.
There was no real way to compare those so I reckoned they were much of a muchness.

I'd suggest that there is a strong argument that control is better. There's also a strong argument that versatility adds power. Both of those arguments hold whether in a short or long adventuring day though.

Because of this I'd even suggest that Wizards are better compared to fighters in longer adventuring days. For every encounter the Fighter can action surge and dump battlemaster manuevers on, the wizard can cast a level 3+ control spell. By level 9 the wizard can cast a level 3+ control spell in virtually every encounter. The Fighter will only action surge and use superiority dice in maybe 3ish encounters per day.

The question isn't whether we can argue that wizards are stronger than fighters - which is what you seem to be trying to show. The question is does changing the adventuring day from long to short really change that power differential for combat. I don't think it significantly does.

Whoops. Good save. I get 234 damage which is close enough.
I used 2/3rds chance to hit rather than actual 30%. That is close enough to 65% I think.

Nice that 1% chance to hit difference is probably that 7 damage difference.

I'm assuming fighter kicks in their action surge, so they effectively get an extra round of attacks. Hence why they got 10 attacks in a 4-round battle at level 6. In a 3 round fight they would get 4 rounds x 3 attacks = 12 attacks. At level 13 they would have one extra superiority dice, and would be using D10s rather than D8s so I rounded the 144 up to 150.

Using 4 rounds.

So my basis is this - I know that a level 6 Half Orc Fighter can do a NOVA round of 67.1 DPR (it's hard to calculate as it combines action surge, trip attack and precision attack, but it is calculatable). By level 13 he gets bigger superiority dice, another superiority dice and another attack. The bare minimum i'd expect his Nova round to do would be 50% more, puttinh him right at 100 DPR. The reamining Rounds would be something like 27.2 DPR each. That puts him up to 180 DPR. Using superiority dice a little more wisely may boost DPR further. So I'd expect to be able to get really close to 200 Damage over 4 rounds and that's without feats or multiclassing or magic weapons. Any of which can skyrocket that number.

They weren't responding to your in-depth analysis post. They were responding to the post where you said the classes were balanced over a one-encounter day.

Those posts are all connected.

Indeed. How many opponents are generally featured in your 1/day encounters?

When I'm running it will be 1-4 typically. Occasionally I'll put a bunch. Some areas will have multiple encounters, but those are fairly rare.

The last few have been (party is all level 3) -

• 1 succubus
• 2 werewolves
• 6 gnomes (mix of pc like classes and repurposed goblins)
• 1 longer day of 1 mindwitness, followed by an interrupted short rest of 2 grells, followed by an interrupted long rest of 4 level 1 GOO warlock cultists.
• 2 winter wolves

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

I'd suggest that there is a strong argument that control is better. There's also a strong argument that versatility adds power. Both of those arguments hold whether in a short or long adventuring day though.

Agreed.

Because of this I'd even suggest that Wizards are better compared to fighters in longer adventuring days. For every encounter the Fighter can action surge and dump battlemaster manuevers on, the wizard can cast a level 3+ control spell. By level 9 the wizard can cast a level 3+ control spell in virtually every encounter. The Fighter will only action surge and use superiority dice in maybe 3ish encounters per day.

But if you have just one encounter in a day, the wizard can cast those level 3+ spells every round, whereas the fighter can only use their resources once. The fighter only gets to use 1/3rd of their daily resources, but the wizard gets to use almost all of theirs.

The question isn't whether we can argue that wizards are stronger than fighters - which is what you seem to be trying to show. The question is does changing the adventuring day from long to short really change that power differential for combat. I don't think it significantly does.

Agreed. General wizard vs fighter power comparison is beyond the scope of this comparison. - However I am trying to show that the balance point does change with different numbers of encounters. (Or rounds of combat.)
The wizard dealing more damage than the fighter in the first encounter is less important than the wizard's power reducing with the number of encounters, whereas the Fighter's power remains steadier.

So my basis is this - I know that a level 6 Half Orc Fighter can do a NOVA round of 67.1 DPR (it's hard to calculate as it combines action surge, trip attack and precision attack, but it is calculatable). By level 13 he gets bigger superiority dice, another superiority dice and another attack. The bare minimum i'd expect his Nova round to do would be 50% more, puttinh him right at 100 DPR. The reamining Rounds would be something like 27.2 DPR each. That puts him up to 180 DPR. Using superiority dice a little more wisely may boost DPR further. So I'd expect to be able to get really close to 200 Damage over 4 rounds and that's without feats or multiclassing or magic weapons. Any of which can skyrocket that number.

I was assuming the superiority dice were used in precision attack to turn misses into hits. Your earlier analysis showed the fighter seemed to be dealing 12 damage per attack, which translates to a rather unlikely 18 damage per hit given a 65% hit rate. If the hit rate was significantly improved through precision attack, that would explain the numbers.
However, the more attacks you make, the more SD you will need to burn to maintain that high DPR. Between level 6 and level 13, you get 50% more attacks, but only gain a single SD. Given the SD are a chunk of your effective damage, your DPR will go up by less than 50% when you get 50% more attacks.
Technically, the ballpark 150 damage in 3 rounds for a level 13 fighter that I estimated based on your figures was probably too high, because it depends on a hit rate that the fighter cannot maintain at that level.

When I'm running it will be 1-4 typically. Occasionally I'll put a bunch. Some areas will have multiple encounters, but those are fairly rare.

The last few have been (party is all level 3) -

• 1 succubus
• 2 werewolves
• 6 gnomes (mix of pc like classes and repurposed goblins)
• 1 longer day of 1 mindwitness, followed by an interrupted short rest of 2 grells, followed by an interrupted long rest of 4 level 1 GOO warlock cultists.
• 2 winter wolves

Ah. That would explain the difference in our experiences. Generally if I do a single major encounter in a day, it will have more than just a couple of opponents in it.

 

[tetrasodium]

Agreed.

But if you have just one encounter in a day, the wizard can cast those level 3+ spells every round, whereas the fighter can only use their resources once. The fighter only gets to use 1/3rd of their daily resources, but the wizard gets to use almost all of theirs.

Agreed. General wizard vs fighter power comparison is beyond the scope of this comparison. - However I am trying to show that the balance point does change with different numbers of encounters. (Or rounds of combat.)
The wizard dealing more damage than the fighter in the first encounter is less important than the wizard's power reducing with the number of encounters, whereas the Fighter's power remains steadier.

I was assuming the superiority dice were used in precision attack to turn misses into hits. Your earlier analysis showed the fighter seemed to be dealing 12 damage per attack, which translates to a rather unlikely 18 damage per hit given a 65% hit rate. If the hit rate was significantly improved through precision attack, that would explain the numbers.
However, the more attacks you make, the more SD you will need to burn to maintain that high DPR. Between level 6 and level 13, you get 50% more attacks, but only gain a single SD. Given the SD are a chunk of your effective damage, your DPR will go up by less than 50% when you get 50% more attacks.
Technically, the ballpark 150 damage in 3 rounds for a level 13 fighter that I estimated based on your figures was probably too high, because it depends on a hit rate that the fighter cannot maintain at that level.

Ah. That would explain the difference in our experiences. Generally if I do a single major encounter in a day, it will have more than just a couple of opponents in it.

You are missing some things though by trying to compress high level LOLdeadly encounters down into 3 rounds though. doing that will cause the fights to drag out with the inflated HP values creeping up up up.

 

[FrogReaver]

But if you have just one encounter in a day, the wizard can cast those level 3+ spells every round, whereas the fighter can only use their resources once. The fighter only gets to use 1/3rd of their daily resources, but the wizard gets to use almost all of theirs.

A level 6 wizard is using 3 level 3 slots in that encounter. He is leaving up to 4 level 1 slots, 3 level 2 slots and 1 level 3 slot (arcane recovery) on the table. That's alot of power left on the table.

A level 13 wizard used a level 5, 6 and 7 slot. He is leaving up to 4 level 1 slots, 3 level 2 slots, 3 level 3 slots, 3 level 4 slots, and 2 level 5 slots (1 from arcane recovery). That's even more power left on the table.

But, I don't think that's a very important point overall. One can't judge how much power a class pushes into a limited number of rounds by looking at how much power they have left on the table afterwards.

Agreed. General wizard vs fighter power comparison is beyond the scope of this comparison. - However I am trying to show that the balance point does change with different numbers of encounters. (Or rounds of combat.)
The wizard dealing more damage than the fighter in the first encounter is less important than the wizard's power reducing with the number of encounters, whereas the Fighter's power remains steadier.

That's almost never how that works out in practice. Generally speaking if longer adventuring days are common then the caster conserves some higher level resources for the adventuring day. Fighters are the ones constantly in the realm of use it or lose it. I wonder how many action surges have went unused in games before the next rest, especially those that commonly have 2 short rests per day.

I was assuming the superiority dice were used in precision attack to turn misses into hits. Your earlier analysis showed the fighter seemed to be dealing 12 damage per attack, which translates to a rather unlikely 18 damage per hit given a 65% hit rate. If the hit rate was significantly improved through precision attack, that would explain the numbers.

Trip attack is a huge increase to chance to hit. It's even more valuable on a sequence of 6 attacks than it is on a sequence of 4 attacks as the proportion of attacks it will give advantage at any point in that sequence is higher at that level. I don't think you are factoring that in. And this isn't even the optimal use of superiority dice. One could easily get advantage on more of their attacks by saving some trip attacks from the Nova round and using them on subsequent rounds. Potentially granting 3-6 more attacks advantage by the end of the encounter (You only make 15 attacks in 4 rounds with action surge and so that's huge).

However, the more attacks you make, the more SD you will need to burn to maintain that high DPR. Between level 6 and level 13, you get 50% more attacks, but only gain a single SD. Given the SD are a chunk of your effective damage, your DPR will go up by less than 50% when you get 50% more attacks.

Precision attack at most can be used on 40% of attacks. More realistically you get a bigger bang for your buck if you only use it on say the 25% of attacks you miss by 1-5. Meaning you only would need 25% more superiority dice to keep up with the rate you are getting more attacks from a purely precision attack point of view. 25% of 4 superiority dice is +1 superiority dice. Amazing how that works out.

But for this Fighter Trip Attack tends to be more important than precision (precision tends to help more with GWM builds).

 

[FrogReaver]

You are missing some things though by trying to compress high level LOLdeadly encounters down into 3 rounds though. doing that will cause the fights to drag out with the inflated HP values creeping up up up.

The more rounds in a single encounter day the more spell casters tend to shine. Featless Fighters only tend to keep up in 3-4 round days.

 

[tetrasodium]

The more rounds in a single encounter day the more spell casters tend to shine. Featless Fighters only tend to keep up in 3-4 round days.

• "Each creature that starts its turn in the webs or that enters them during its turn must make a Dexterity saving throw. On a failed save, the creature is restrained as long as it remains in the w ebs or until it breaks free."
• "A creature affected by this spell makes another Wisdom saving throw at the end of its turn. On a successful save, the effect ends for it."
• "Also, the target can make a Wisdom saving throw at the end of each of its turns. On a success, the spell ends."
• "Each time the target takes damage, it makes a new Wisdom saving throw against the spell. If the saving throw succeeds, the spell ends."
• "
• At the end of each of its turns, it can make another Wisdom saving throw. If it succeeds, the effect ends."
• so on & so forth...

All of those no cost free save to end or ignore the spell clauses add up as combat durations go up. The fact that so many of them are only having to make those extra free saves because they failed the initial save to nullify the spell/casting itself makes the free no cost saves a bigger issue when shrinking the adventuring day with deadly & beyond creatures likely to have better saves & such than medium encounter creatures