D&D 5E The 6-battle adventuring day, does it even exist?

[Ovinomancer]

They are impractical because 6-8 encounters do not fit in the average session & trying to cram that much combat in across multiple sessions results in losing track of any plot & things going on when 2-3 sessions of combat wrap up. There is also the body count problem where you wind up with things like 200% of a town's population being part of the evil cult in town.

Yes you can make changes that sorta fix the bad baseline, but that runs into trouble with making it more difficult to make changes elsewhere without a lot of changes. At the end of the day the 6-8 encounter expectation so many things are tuned to is a bonkers mistake that should never have happened even if >70% of the mostly players surveyed said they want to see much longer adventuring days with more combats than their gm gives them.

Sigh. It's not 6-8 encounters, it's the daily adventuring XP budget. Swap up to all hard, and it's like 4-5. Swap in a deadly, and it's 4 or fewer.

With this in mind, you can make some very small changes to how you present encounters and easily get here. Want to burn deadly XP but not be deadly? Great, link 2 medium encounters (or 1 medium, 1 hard) so that the second is arriving as the first is finishing. Waves make for great, engaging combats that burn the XP budget but don't overwhelm, and make lots of sense that not all of the bad guys are clustered together to begin with. Simple.

Or, make a random encounter really random, with maybe just this one isolated group today but tomorrow it's the lead element in a war party, or you find a lair of monsters and it's a mini-dungeon with 3-5 "rooms". These things are very simple to implement and get you to the expected baseline easily.

 

[Ovinomancer]

DIA - player
ROFM - player
TOA - player
POA - DM
TOD - player
OOA - DM
SKT-player
MOC-player

None of these had even 6 fights in most days in my experience.

I've run the first bits of DIA (that campaign has a pin in it due to some scheduling) and SKT, and both have good examples of many encounters in a day. The guidance isn't that most or all days should have the daily XP budget in them, but that it happens enough that it's always a consideration in how players choose to interact.

 

[Charlaquin]

They are impractical because 6-8 encounters do not fit in the average session

Sure they do.

 

[ad_hoc]

DIA - player
ROFM - player
TOA - player
POA - DM
TOD - player
OOA - DM
SKT-player
MOC-player

None of these had even 6 fights in most days in my experience.

Did you play HoDQ as part of ToD? I didn't play the latter just the first part. That one is a perfect example of following the 6-8 encounter guidelines. For everything except the overland travel chapter which has 1 encounter per rest. I might go back to it for another post to show it.

Let's do Rime of the Frostmaiden since I'm doing it now. As I said this one suffers from the overland travel problem as the PCs are expected to have encounters on the way to adventure sites.

Spoiler: RofM spoilers

Act I - Ten Towns Quests - Most of these are mini-adventures which I think is great for learning the game. There are 2 'full' ones

Cauldron Caves -
Encounters 6: 2 Harpies, Dire Wolf, Water Weird, Frost Giant Skeleton, Sea Hag and Will-o'-wisp, Crawling Claws
Penalty for long rest: None but players think missing NPCs could still be alive and might die if they rest.

Mountain Climb -
Encounters 5: 1 random wilderness encounter, avalanche, 2 crag cats, Yeti, Yeti
Penalty for long rest: Garret might die

ActII - Most of these adventures have 4 encounters. I think the designers were intending random encounters to make up the difference but there is that overland travel problem again.

Act III - Sunblight

The party can fight the dragon in which case they are probably facing 2 random encounters (or more) plus many encounters with the dragon as it flies from town to town. The penalty for long resting is that the dragon burns down Ten Towns

Fortress: 13 Encounters - 10 Guards, Grandolpha Muzgardt with dragon and 3 Duergar, Mind Master and Mimic, Duergar and Ogre Zombie, 4 Animated Armour, 2 Duergar and 2 Duergar Hammerers, 4 Duergar and Umber Hulk, 3 Rust Monsters, 4 Duergar, Xardarok Sunblight and minions, Duergar Hammerer, 15 Duergar, 2 Hammerers
Penalty for long rest - Dragon is repaired and fortress denizens better able to respond to PC threat

Auril's Abode 11+ Encounters - There are 6 encounters in the shipwrecks, Ghost, Abominable Yeti, 7 Yetis, Ice Troll, Frost Giant, 7 Piercers, Giant Walrus, 2 Frost Giant Skeletons, 4 Tests, Auril (3 forms), Roc
Penalty for long resting - Not given though in Auril's home and she hates creatures who shelter themselves from the cold. Extreme cold is also DC 15 here.

Caves of Hunger - Lots of encounters here. Long rests are punished by harassment from Tekeli-li which may not be a problem. Evil wizards are also on their way.
Doom of Ythryn - Plenty of encounters and PCs are in a race against the evil wizards

 

[Charlaquin]

Sigh. It's not 6-8 encounters, it's the daily adventuring XP budget. Swap up to all hard, and it's like 4-5. Swap in a deadly, and it's 4 or fewer.

You really only need about 3 or 4 if they’re all hard. 3 medium, 2 hard is a really good mix at most levels.

 

[robus]

To be honest I think the 6 fights per long rest is not really that common to start with in official content.

It’s not per long rest, it’s per adventuring day. Not every day is an adventuring day.

 

[robus]

We are really not at a place where we can long rest. I find it is rare that we are in these circumstances (which is probably why I am close to panicking) ....

As a DM I never seem to panic.

This is probadly due to the information imbalance. The players are almost always in the dark, whilst the DM know what will happen next.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The 6-8 medium or hard encounter adventuring day is built into combat balance. If the adventure doesn’t focus on combat anyway, it won’t really matter if the classes are balanced in combat or not.

Well, I mean, it will matter if the class design was predicated on "give up some non-combat ability in order to have more combat ability."

Which...uh...yeah, that's kind of literally what the Fighter is.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

The opening of Hoard of the Dragon Queen was my only experience of a 6-8 encounter adventuring day. I think that it happening at the beginning of the first campaign developed for the new system (and developed out of house at that) and then never really again in published WotC campaigns (at least that I've seen) tells you how seriously WotC takes this 6-8 encounter thing.

There are places in other adventures (particularly dungeon crawls) where you certainly could play with 6-8 encounters in the day, but that is the only place I've encountered where the adventure seemed to strictly enforce such an overfilled day, continuing long after the group has expended all resources, since they are level 1.

I think fundamentally it takes too extraordinary of circumstances to explain why characters would push on with their resources at the limits for it to make any sense in a normal adventuring day, and when the occasion arrives where it does actually make sense without elaborate conceits that characters would simply have no opportunity to rest it feels unfair to enforce that because players have gotten used to playing their characters without being so strapped for resources and it is likely in the lead-up to the climactic final battle or some such.

 

[ad_hoc]

Hoard of the Dragon Queen encounters

I should note too that it isn't necessary for all days to be many encounters, it just needs to be a threat and there should be consequences for resting. If there are only 2-4 encounters in an adventure, the players shouldn't know that so the tension is maintained.

Spoiler: HotDQ spoilers

Chapter 1 - Far too many encounters. Town is under siege no time for long rests.
Chapter 2 - Few encounters (which I think is appropriate for level 2)
Chapter 3 - Many encounters. No mentioned consequence for long rest though denizens can better defend themselves if they find evidence of PCs there (and there are wandering monsters that will probably see their camp).
Chapter 4 - 1 encounter per long rest (overland travel).
Chapter 5 - Non-adventure chapter.
Chapter 6 -

Day 1 - 1 (probably social) encounter
Day 2 - 2.4 encounters on average
Day 3 (castle) - Potential for many encounters. The party is under pressure to make something happen without being uncovered. Once the PCs are discovered or they convince one side to attack another then there is no more chance for rest. The PCs are incentivized to rush for the gate facing encounters along the way.

Chapter 7 - 7 potential encounters. If the party rests outside there are brutal random encounters. They won't be able to rest inside as Talis will do something about that. And once discovered word might be sent for the flying castle to leave.
Chapter 8 - 12 potential encounters. The party might be able to find a place to long rest here. It is unclear as it doesn't say how long it takes the castle to reach its destination. Certainly not 2 though (remembering that only 1 long rest is allowed per 24 hours).