How Many Encounters?

[Skyscraper]

In any event, i believe this is something that is likely to adapt itself naturally between the DM's and players' playstyles.

Those players that prefer a faster-paced game and always run into encounters unprepared are likely to spend powers and healing surges more quickly; while the more tactical players might not. Also a DM who throws dungeons with room after room filled with monsters and traps to the players asks his players to be more stringent with their resources.

As players and DM play together, they'll adapt to each other eventually IMO. Experience is not just for characters

Sky

 

[lukelightning]

If players manage to use every single daily power in an easy encounter, and want an ER, they haven't done a very good job of resource management, and there will be consequences.

Exactly. You take out the first room of kobolds then take a rest? Fine.

"What's that sawing and pounding noise?"
"It's the rest of the kobolds, shoring up their defenses."

 

[KarinsDad]

So far, we have had 7 encounters one day and 5 encounters on another.

The 5 encounter day stoppage was due to the fact that two PCs were out of healing surges after the 5th encounter. We had plenty of Dailies left over.

So from my experience, it is the healing surges which limit encounters per day. But, that is just for our group.

However, it is also dependent on how the PCs are designed and how effective the players are with those PCs. A PC Paladin that takes the feat for 2 more healing surges will most likely increase the number of encounters per day by one on average (assuming that the bottleneck is the Paladin which in our game, he gets attacked the most, so he gets damaged the most, so he has to heal the most).


I would think that 5 encounters per day would be a good rule of thumb, realizing that encounter difficulty, dice rolls, and tactical situations/decisions could make the number smaller or larger on any given day.

 

[Amphimir Míriel]

Exactly. You take out the first room of kobolds then take a rest? Fine.

"What's that sawing and pounding noise?"
"It's the rest of the kobolds, shoring up their defenses."

This.

Also, the kobolds get time to call up reinforcements, including Kobold Hero and lead strategist Tuk-Err.