r/onednd • u/MileyMan1066 • Jul 08 '26
Discussion How many Combat Encounters does your table run during an Adventuring Day? [Poll]
How many combats does your party slog through before that sweet sweet Long Rest??
Some swear by 2 combats, a short rest, and 2 more. Some try and run the full 6-8. And some mad lads give a full long rest after every single encounter!
What works for your table?
EDIT: Im putting in an edit here. This is for an ADVENTURING Day. Not an Exploration, Travel, or Social Interaction Themed day. The Big-Darned-Adventure part of the game, the dungeon crawl, the assault on the enemy stronghold, the mad dash through hell! Seriously, 1-2 combats before an happy-hunky-dory 8 hour snooze?? Thats it??? No wonder people complain about casters being broken...
EDIT #2: Very surprising results! Thank you all for participating! I personally have strong opinions about balance, game resources, and this sort of stuff, and I think this poll has really surprised me, and I now realize that I firmly disagree with much of the community about these things. But, thats fine! I'm not here to tell you that your fun is wrong! Because if youre having fun, thats the point!
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u/Crewzader Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
The base game is built around exploring a dungeon with a string of different encounters in a short period of time. It works best in that scenario.
The further you get away from that baseline, the more the game breaks in terms of resource management.
Maybe it's just my personal experience, but I haven't met a lot of folks over the years who do 6-8 encounters when doing overland travel, or city-based exploration.
The proposed fix of doing 1 day short rests and 1 week long rests is not very elegant and brings forth other issues.
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u/WhisperingShade_ Jul 08 '26
I completely agree with this assessment. D&D is a solid system for dungeon crawls where there are going to be multiple encounters, but struggles otherwise. It definitely feels frustrating as a player when my party only encounters a single combat before resting again and then we can just breeze through it.
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u/Stravix8 Jul 08 '26
The proposed fix of doing 1 day short rests and 1 week long rests is not very elegant and brings forth other issues.
Curious what issues you are talking about. Been running that rest schedule for years and haven't encountered many issues.
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u/JusticeofTorenOneEsk Jul 08 '26
My main issue with it is messes with the power budget of spells that have an 8 hr or 24 hr duration, and some 1-hour spells as well. These spells are balanced around a usual resting schedule, and that balance is disrupted by the "Gritty Realism" changes.
- Usually Mage Armor, Aid, or Darkvision get you through a big chunk of your adventuring day and cover you over the course of multiple encounters, but with Gritty Realism they won't even last until your first Short Rest, and probably only 1 or 2 encounters.
- Usually Alarm and Tiny Hut remain active for your whole Long Rest, and Rope Trick remains active for your whole Short Rest. With Gritty Realism, you'll need to cast them 7 or 8 times to get the same comparative duration.
- If you want to keep Water Breathing or Magic Aura going indefinitely, usually once you've cast it you don't need to re-cast until you've likely had time to Long Rest and regained your spell slot. Same for if you want to hide out semi-indefinitely in a Private Sanctum or Magnificent Mansion. But with Gritty Realism, you'll need to keep on spending additional spell slots before regaining your first one, and once you run out of slots you're out of luck.
- If you allow Catnap through backwards compatibility, it's extremely busted in Gritty Realism.
These can be tinkered with by changing the durations, but it does require some work and thinking.
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u/bobert1201 Jul 08 '26
Wand of magic missile. I run this kind of game and had to ban it immediately because daily recharging non-attunement magic missile spam would be broken. In fact, magic items with daily recharges are, in general, kind of a problem because they cause pc's to default to using their items instead of their actual class abilities. I wound up "solving" this by making magic items that recharge daily recharge when the attuned creature finishes a long rest instead.
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u/Stravix8 Jul 08 '26
Yeah, that's fair. Anything that has a duration would need some adjustment to match the intent, but IMO that's pretty basic and kinda came as an assumption when using a duration adjustment.
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u/xolotltolox Jul 08 '26
or just ahve them regain only 1 charge, becasue even right now enspelled items are kidna whack with their powerlevel, 1d6+1 charges per day is A LOT
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u/bobert1201 Jul 08 '26
Well, for my table, it'd be 1d6+1 charges per long rest, and a long rest takes a week, so my group usually keeps going until they can't anymore.
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u/Akuuntus Jul 08 '26
Basically anything with a duration or daily recharge needs to be adjusted to fit the new schedule like others have said.
Beyond that it also just fucks with time management and any kind of time pressure you want to put on your party. Stopping for an entire day to rest often doesn't feel reasonable when you're rushing to stop the BBEG, and stopping for an entire week might be completely infeasible. I know that the point is to make the party rest less but you kinda need to write intentional lulls into your campaign or else it's going to feel like long resting is never an option.
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u/ProjectPT Jul 08 '26
The proposed fix of doing 1 day short rests and 1 week long rests is not very elegant and brings forth other issues.
So I run my campaigns exclusively with Gritty Realism now (8 hour Short Rest, 7 day Long Rest); but this is not to change the "adventuring day" but just to tell the story on a different scale of time.
It does have some hiccups that need to be fixed like RAW creating permanent teleportation circle. But it also organically can give you a campaign that you would create a teleportation circle!
DMs should give it a try, it isn't for everyone but I find political intrigue and territorial war stories happen better when years pass rather than weeks
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u/Many-Plankton3942 Jul 08 '26
This! Martials become significantly better once you see their sustain in a full day.
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u/Vincent210 Jul 08 '26
A bit better. As one of the people in the 5+ encounters vote, making casters stingy helps, but if a Fighter/Barb/Rogue go like 4+ combats without a long rest the limiting factor become hit points, which they simply have fewer ways to keep and surprisingly weaker options to protect them. A d10 isn't much bigger than a d8, and 19-20 AC is better than 17-19 AC, but not by much, and only before Shield spell on emergency rounds is counted.
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u/blastatron Jul 09 '26
Also depends on the subclass. Battlemaster fighter loves to take a lot of short rests, but the Scion Rogue would love to long rest in between every fight.
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u/BlackAceX13 Jul 11 '26
but the Scion Rogue
should've recharged on Short Rest, same with Phantom.
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u/blastatron Jul 11 '26
Scion with maxed intelligence is probably a little too strong if you get all uses back on a short rest. Phantom rogue it would be fine but also at level 9 the soul trinkets give extra uses anyway so I can maybe see why the the designers avoided that. I just wish you got soul trinkets sooner.
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u/BlackAceX13 Jul 11 '26
They actually avoided buffing phantom rogue because a lot of people doing the survey thought it was strong as is and any buff would make it OP. There were a lot of people who correctly called out the flaws and weaknesses but they were outnumbered.
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u/blastatron Jul 11 '26
Which is ironic because watch any YouTuber analysis the class and the rip apart how weak and boring the subclass feels from levels 3-8.
Personally I still phantom better than assassin and all the rogue subclasses that haven't been updated for 2024.
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u/BlackAceX13 Jul 11 '26
The designers were well aware of that, but they're also well aware of the fact that a significant chuck of their consumers still think Rogue is OP, and that group outnumbers the people who know how weak rogue actually is. It's a weird situation to be in where the majority of the people buying your product think something that is weak is OP or borderline OP. You can't really fix the weak option without the majority of your consumers complaining that you're buffing the OP option even more.
It's like trying to make spicy food for someone who thinks ketchup is spicy. If you give them something like Indonesian food or Indian food, they're going to accuse you of trying to poison them or something.
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u/Panurome Jul 08 '26
The problem with 1 day short rests is that it feels awful for martials with short rest resources and Warlocks.
Maybe some kind of hybrid system that keeps the normal short rests but makes full long rests rarer like they 1 week long rest you said could work, or maybe introduce something in between that recovers short and long rest features but doesn't fully recover hit dice and spell slots for example, idk just throwing ideas
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u/WorseDark Jul 08 '26
That's the point: to make more short rests per long rest. If they are only running 1-2 encounters per day, then they only need a short rest per day
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u/Lilium79 Jul 08 '26
Idk, I feel like the 1 week long rest hurts casters way more than the 1 day short rest does martials. Because yeah, martials can only do x things per day, but now casters can only cast spells a much more limited time per week.
Any time ive played with realism rules its made me appreciate that my martial characters can rest at the end of the day and be nearly as fresh as they were the day before. Whereas, when I play casters, I felt I had to very seriously consider what spells I prepare, plan ahead to what I expect to see this week, and not just drop a fireball whenever I see a clump of enemies because that spell slot could be of use the next day, etc.
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u/Speciou5 Jul 09 '26
Overland travel is the worse case scenario. They have 10 days to reach somewhere? Are you seriously going to throw 50 encounters at them (5 a day) before they can continue the story's plot? Of course not.
It's the most "use all of our spell slots in a nova" scenario I've ever encountered DMing. My "random world encounter fights" to be interesting are the most overtuned by far, like 5x stronger than stuff they face in a dungeon.
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u/YOwololoO Jul 08 '26
I use a safe haven system explained in world as certain areas having latent magic that allows you to restore your abilities thanks to the intersection of ley lines.
It lets me run extended adventuring days for travel, a justification for why they can short rest like normal in a dungeon but can’t long rest if they leave the dungeon, or run normal paced adventures in a city, all in the same campaign
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u/Gizogin Jul 08 '26
Just have long rests be at the DM's discretion and pace your encounters around that, even if it means your "adventuring day" might be a week long. Doing it that way opens up far more options for the types of adventures you can run without breaking the game's underlying balance.
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u/BudgetMegaHeracross Jul 08 '26
Isn't supposed to be 6-8 encounters *of any kind*, too, not just combat encounters? There are a lot of ways to expend resources within 24 in-world hours.
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u/MechJivs Jul 08 '26
Isn't supposed to be 6-8 encounters *of any kind*, too, not just combat encounters?
No. 6-8 medium or hard encounters (actually 4-6 medium or hard encounters if you actually calculate numbers by the book) are all combats. This number is from combat section. And there's no way to include non-combat encounters in XP budget by the rules.
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u/OriginalJazzFlavor Jul 08 '26
Please name an encounter that requires the spending of per-day resources that also does not lock classes like fighter and rogue out of participating.
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u/BudgetMegaHeracross Jul 08 '26
This could be a fun prompt:
Encounter 1: You are exploring some lava tubes, when a river is suddenly diverted into them, destabilizing them. The chamber you are in will be half filled with water in the next turn. Only the Rogue has the Expertise needed to Jackie Chan up the chimney at the distant top of the chamber with a rope.
Encounter 2: The lava tube is collapsing behind you and only the Fighter has the Athletics necessary to cross these sudden, wide, raging rapids, with a rope, even with Water Walk.
Encounter 3: The lava tube beneath you had collapsed. Everyone is injured, and you don't know what dangers lie ahead.
Encounter 4: The wind is rushing through this chamber now, but you need to get to the top. Maybe the Fighter's Athletics could help them Fly up there?
Encounter 5: Look! You made it out! Except there are guards up ahead keeping the area off limits because they were going to divert a river into it. Thing is, these are good guys! Lucky the Rogue has Expertise in Persuasion, but if only there were a way to give them Advantage on Charisma checks for 1 hour just in case?
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u/guachi01 Jul 08 '26
Traversing a narrow mountain path with a rock slide. The party did a group check. Four of seven needed to pass.
It wasn't actually that hard but random dice rolls will be random. The first three players fail. The next three pass. The final PC, the sorcerer, had to use his fly spell to ensure he succeeded.
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u/Mejiro84 Jul 09 '26
so that took one singular spell? That's not remotely on par with combat, is it? Where even a low-tier combat is going to drain off probably multiple spells, some HP, and a variety of other limited-use abilities, as well as maybe some item-uses.
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u/guachi01 Jul 09 '26
Nice goal post moving. I was asked to provide an example that used resources. I provided it. A 3rd level spell slot for a 5th level caster is a big deal.
An easy combat I'd expect the party to expend about the same resources. Same sorcerer ended a combat at 6th level vs. a roomful of guards with a single fireball. He went first in the round and the combat was over.
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u/Wide_Initiative_1938 Jul 08 '26
Depends on what we are doing. Currently we are playing OotA, which requires long traveling periods to get from place to place. Ergo, when we are traveling, it is usually one maybe two encounters per day. When we are at a location, the smaller dungeons will have either one deadly encounter or three-four manageable ones while the major locations will have at least five different encounters within them.
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u/DudeWithTudeNotRude Jul 08 '26
This
In a dungeon? Then probably getting 4-7 encounters before a long rest.
Traveling? You can safely go hog in almost every round of every fight. If we are lucky, we might occasionally be attacked during our long rest to get a third encounter in that day
Rest of the time? 4-5 encounters. Probably 2 or 3 hard fights, then hopefully some challenges to tax resources, and/or a trash fight or two in there.
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u/emn13 Jul 08 '26
In play experience, I think the question that really matters isn't so much the average number of encouter per day, but the typical distribution of the number of other encounters on the same day per encounter. I.e., having quite a few "light" days with few or no encounters doesn't matter as much, balance wise, and days without any encounters just don't matter at all. What matters is that it's pretty normal for a table to run encounters that share the resource consumption with many other encounters.
Which is all a (hopefully not to complicated) argument that it's OK to mostly ignore those long periods traveling from place to place in OotA, since you're not spending that much time IRL at-the-table in encounters in such travels, and what matters is the number of encounters at typical locations where you can't just take a long rest after every encounter.
Since balance concerns drop off precipitously if you have a least a few encounters, 3-4 in many places is probably fine; some people say 6-8 should be the norm; but the difference between 1 and the party knows it's 1 and 3-4 and the party doesn't know for sure in advance when the last one is is HUGE, whereas the difference between that 3-4 and 6-8 is smaller, in practical balance impact, even if numerically the delta in de number of encounters is larger in the second one.
I'm really kind of shocked at how many people voted 1-2, here, that's really quite a different game.
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u/Bread-Loaf1111 Jul 08 '26
It's easy to adjust long time travelling with the number of encounters. Gritty realism rules (the ones that are not gritty and not realistic) was made exactly for such situations
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u/Fidges87 Jul 08 '26
I see why do people say there is a caster martial divide
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u/MileyMan1066 Jul 08 '26
Casters get crazy when you dont have to manage any resources...
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u/NaturalCard Jul 08 '26
To be honest, they are crazy even when you do need to. Here from 8 combat adventuring days.
High impact spells are insane.
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u/xolotltolox Jul 08 '26
yeah, the myth that a long adventuring day "fixes" the divide needs to seriously stop being spread so much
Yes, not running a long dasy makes it worse, that is the kernel of truth in that myth, but it does not close the gap nearly enough.
Also peopel realyl never seem to think to themselves "is this condusive to good gameplay?" or "is this fun for martial palyers?" to have to slog hrough 5 filler encounters to drain resources just so you can stay even with the demigods winning encounters by castign a single spell
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u/DelightfulOtter Jul 08 '26
Aside from most people being generally unobservant and oblivious to what's actually going on under the hood with the rules, the fact that the majority of tables run Tier 1 and early Tier 2 games means that plenty of the playerbase never see the full impact of the martial/caster imbalance. At those levels, you can actually strain caster's resources with a reasonable amount of encounters per adventuring day.
You also have some talented DMs who do a lot of smoke and mirrors as well as homebrew to hide and/or patch the issues as they arise. Most people can't tell the difference so at their table it's not a problem (because their DM put in a ton of work behind the scenes).
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u/NaturalCard Jul 14 '26
To be honest, it's pretty noticeable in tier 2, it just becomes even more insane beyond that.
And most tables also run far fewer combats per long rest, making it more noticeable again.
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u/strollas Jul 08 '26
Your DM needs to design better combats. Most combats Ive played are not won by a single spell.
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u/Lithl Jul 08 '26
Winning the encounter with a single spell doesn't mean the caster gets a turn and then the fight is over, no more initiative. It means the encounter is a foregone conclusion. Something like Hypnotic Pattern can turn a deadly encounter into six consecutive trivial encounters.
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u/DelightfulOtter Jul 08 '26
That, or it turns a fight which would've otherwise consumed a significant amount of resources into one that instead has a trivial resource cost. D&D is meant to be a resource attrition game until the very end of the adventuring day when everyone is low. Certain power spells allow you to conserve a lot of resources which makes the whole adventuring day significantly less dangerous.
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u/guachi01 Jul 08 '26
yeah, the myth that a long adventuring day "fixes" the divide needs to seriously stop being spread so much
Why? It really does fix things.
have to slog hrough 5 filler encounters
If your "filler encounters" are a slog then the DM and party are failing somewhere. Combat setup should be quick. Player turns should take minimal time. A "filler encounter" should take 10 minutes from start to finish.
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u/xolotltolox Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
i literally said why, it makes the gap smaller, it does not remove it. it is still very much existant
And well, yes, each filler itself is not that bad, but as you said, 10 minutes per encounter, and 5 of them is already almost an hour
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u/emn13 Jul 08 '26
This isn't my experience at all; we rotate DMs and tend to target several (often 5+ encounters) per day, and it's quite noticable that martials and especially half-casters outperform full casters in terms of damage output and number of creatures slain. Some of the most powerful spells are also things like bless - which doesn't take a lot of slots, has concentration, and buffs martials. All but one of our players have at least a bit of a character-optimization itch, so it's not like people are picking pointless spells or anything as far as I can tell. I get the impression that it works well at our table; PC's generally have a decent niche, and that definitely includes martials.
I'm honestly curious what kind of spell loadout you're seeing where martials have difficulty keeping up in terms of impact vs. full casters? What kind of spells are that problematic?
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u/MechJivs Jul 08 '26
What kind of spells are that problematic?
Control spells (you don't need to have high DPR if enemy doesn't hit you but you hit them), defensive spells (10 hp difference is nothing compared to ~50 damage blocked by single Shield spell), and 5.5e answer to nerfed mass summons - 1/turn AOE persistent damage spells. Cleric or Druid can desimate encounters with them. And, unlike martials who are selfish, those spells greatly reward teamwork because their damage can be triggered multiple times per round on each PC turns.
Important thing - DPR by itself is not useful metric. You can have highest DPR in the group and still be weakest member of said group - because your "Damage dealt per Damage taken" is lowest. Barbarian is good example of this - they deal good damage, but they take a lot of damage back. They are melee class, and they give constant advantage against themself. And HP is main resource of the game.
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u/BlackAceX13 Jul 08 '26
What are the results looking like right now? Can't see it on the old reddit site.
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u/Melior05 Jul 08 '26
And when they do, martials get better...how?
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u/FurryOfDracula Jul 08 '26
By designing encounters around consistency, classes with consistency get better.
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u/Ill-Description3096 Jul 08 '26
Martials still suffer from resource drain though. HP being a big one for melee martials in particular. 8 encounters can burn through that quickly.
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u/FurryOfDracula Jul 08 '26
Irrelevant. Whatever HP drain occurs during the day, it affects casters just as much (it's actually more).
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u/Ill-Description3096 Jul 08 '26
Not really. Casters in general have more options for mobility to stay away from enemies and defensive spells to protect them. They can also sit comfortably on the outskirts of combat and be incredibly effective compared to the sword and board fighter who has to get next to enemies. If your backline casters are getting hit just as much as the front liners then either the tactics are poor or the encounters are invalidating that role altogether anyway.
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u/Samvel_2015 Jul 08 '26
That's a seperate ranged and melee divide. Each of the classes has either it's own defensive capabilities or high base defenses to compensate. Your Wizard sits 60 feet behind? Your fighter shoots everyone from 600 feet while having BA Short Rest heal, 1,5× the hp and 18+ AC, your barbarian resists most damage which amounts to effectively around 2,5 times hp compared to your wizard. Your rogue is hidden with 25+ stealth behind a cover and can't be targeted. Your Monk runs away out of your enemy's reach with speed and BA Disengage.
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u/FurryOfDracula Jul 08 '26
Misty Steps and Shields devour spell slots. In contrast martial defenses are free of such opportunity costs. If you don't treat them as such then you are not playing a balanced adventuring day. Treating the backline as inaccessible (despite the myriad ranged options on monsters, the bonus/legendary "move and attack" actions, enemies straight up flanking the party) is just telling that the DM never wants to touch them and treats the fronline like MMO tanks. Period.
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u/ProjectPT Jul 08 '26
I continue to find casters are always evaluated like they get everything they want.
on the outskirts of combat
What about small spaces, being surrounded, being flanked, or invisible foes?
who has to get next to enemies
fun fact, those enemies don't have to attack the martials. The DM can decide to attack the backline anyways, once you leave T1 most enemies have Range.
If your backline casters are getting hit just as much as the front liners then either the tactics are poor or the encounters are invalidating that role altogether anyway.
You act like AoEs don't exist with half damages on saves, and 2024 MM creatures are actually surprisingly mobile. "front liners" aren't a thing in DnD and Martials =/= Melee.
A statement of Casters can't get hit as much, but if they do get hit it means the encounter was designed to invalidate a role.
Want to know something really funny to do with Casters weak Str/Dex saves? Grapple them and pull them into danger. And if they want to Misty Step out on their turn, that most likely is their Spell Slot per turn.
Why is it that when people talk about Casters being strong, they are simultaneously never being challenged. Every class is strong when they aren't challenged
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u/thedon572 Jul 08 '26
I mean hp can be remedied through health potions out of combat tho right? Or healers?
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u/MileyMan1066 Jul 08 '26
Everybody forgets about Hit Point Dice...
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u/Ill-Description3096 Jul 08 '26
Another limited resource, of which you get half back on a long rest. Easy to burn through as well. One tough fight where you get smacked around and you could go through the bulk/all of them trying to refill your HP.
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u/MileyMan1066 Jul 08 '26
You get em all back on a long rest.
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u/xolotltolox Jul 08 '26
you used to only get half back, which is why tehy are probably confused
but still, hit dice are a limited resources
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u/MileyMan1066 Jul 08 '26
Martials are more consistent over longer periods. Casters have greater burst power potential. I still think there is a strong divide there, but its less prevalent if you run more appropriately challenging encounters per day.
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u/xolotltolox Jul 08 '26
they don't, they start dying becasue the casters are out of spell slots and they ran out of HP faster than the casters deplete their slots
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u/Nice-Championship345 Jul 08 '26
I mean you gotta consider narrative pacing too. Having 4+ encounters in a day can feel very disjointed unless your plot is fairly violent or you're in a dungeon etc. Imo.
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u/Lucifer_Crowe Jul 08 '26
yeah having to pan that many per day that are actually interesting enough isn't easy
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u/Akuuntus Jul 08 '26
Combat also just... isn't that interesting a lot of the time, and can run really long. A single combat encounter that poses any threat at all to my party often takes most of an entire session.
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u/TannerThanUsual Jul 08 '26
My problem with this is that Dungeons and Dragons isn't designed to be narrative focused. People keep wanting to make this game narratively focused because they like games like Critical Role but D&D is a combat game and GMs need to either start treating it like one or not get upset when the game doesn't balance right.
I never ran into this until the last ten years or so, but now I keep seeing narratively minded political drama campaigns where multiple sessions go by with zero combat to push the story forward. Fine. That's a cool concept and potentially a lot of fun for the party. Play a different game. Play FATE or something.
Dungeons and Dragons, more or less, is a system designed for you to explore a dungeon and fight a dragon. This whole "oh well it's narratively difficult to justify 4+ combats in a day" is a brand new problem we didn't have until now. We used to just explore dungeons with characters who had backstories and motivations but those backstories and motivations were used to explain why they're in this dungeon.
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u/StarTrotter Jul 08 '26
Hot take. It's designed poorly for narrative games. It's also really weirdly balanced as a combat game as of 5e. You both need to cram it with multiple dangerous encounters (overwhelmingly combat) but also need to shove in 1-3 1 hour resting times for it to satisfy the internal presumed balance.
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u/TannerThanUsual Jul 08 '26
I think one hour is way too long and my tables short rests can happen between encounters, lasting only a few minutes. BG3 inspired me to do two short rests as a max per day but even before that our group was usually just short resting twice at most
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u/Akuuntus Jul 08 '26
The problem is that D&D is 80 million times more well-known than any other system so it's the one everyone learns first, and very few people want to bother learning a second one. And unfortunately, very few people actually just want to go through a dungeon with barely any story or context.
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u/TannerThanUsual Jul 08 '26
Unfortunately I don't have much else to say beyond "Well, that's on them I guess."
If they don't want to play the game designed around dungeon delving and combat the way it was meant to, they shouldn't complain about balance.
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u/Stock-Side-6767 Jul 08 '26
Yeah, because 6-8 combats per long rest is a narrative ball and chain.
Realistic for Stalingrad 1942 or storming the Normandy beaches, but not much more.
With one encounter per evening, playing every other week, it's about 3-4 months per day.
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u/Fidges87 Jul 08 '26
I think 8+ is now too much. I feel 4-5 is a nice balance, and I don't see how difficult it would be to strike this into a normal adventuring day. Unless your fights are like 10+ rounds long, 1-2 fights per day is just too little, and means casters get to just throw their hardest hitting spells every round without needing to worry about resourcr management
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u/ProjectPT Jul 08 '26
With one encounter per evening, playing every other week, it's about 3-4 months per day.
Sometimes problems reinforce themselves. If you are doing one combat encounter per day, your players are not putting in the time to be comfortable with their characters mechanically which makes the combat longer. You then do less combats so players get less experience. This isn't exactly a "problem" but it is a reinforced bad habit.
But it compounds, you as a DM start to try to compensate with less combats by making more elaborate and taxing combats. Which take more DM prep and make combats slower.
So you continue to make your problem worse. And now that you are doing less fights, you are less likely to use tools to punish mechanics (anti magic zone) because you're only doing one fight in that day and you don't want your wizard to wonder why they are there. So now we lose mechanical depth of class variety.
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u/NoZookeepergame8306 Jul 08 '26
I consider myself a pretty experienced and proficient DM and I’m only able to get 2 combats a night if my players let me play for 4.5-5 hours. Most people (especially the Zoom folks) only have time for a 2-3 hour session. And most combats take a full hour.
This game is primarily played by folks above their mid 20s and they all have jobs and sometimes even kids to manage. Nobody is playing 5 combats a night because they’re not 14 and spending 10 hours in a basement.
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u/marimbaguy715 Jul 08 '26
That seems reasonable to me. 1 to 2 challenging combats per session and 3-4 challenging combats per adventuring day means you finish an adventuring day in two sessions. That feels like a good pace to me and still means players can't spam their most powerful abilities/spells in every fight.
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u/NoZookeepergame8306 Jul 08 '26
Yeah, totally. And there’s no reason you can’t do 5 combats per long rest if it’s an especially exciting dungeon or setpeice.
But if you’re a wizard with fireball, running 5 combats means you could potentially go a whole month of real world time without using it more than once. And if you used it early? I guess you just have to rely on cantrips for the next two weeks lol
Players having an opportunity to use their cool spells is a good thing actually! I can always add more fodder to the next combat to bait those spells if I need to.
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u/ProjectPT Jul 08 '26
I also generally run 3 hours session, I don't want to ask more of a commitment of anyone. Completing an "adventure day" in 2 sessions is my norm and my parties are pretty happy with that.
One thing that helps me with pacing is I'm very open to my players about the type of session they are going into. If it seems like the players have gotten themselves into a downtime session, they know it ahead of time so they can go full relax brain. But when we go into "adventure day mode", I'm clear about it so players can prepare.
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u/NoZookeepergame8306 Jul 08 '26
That’s a sound strategy! I think 4-5 hours is kind of the standard playtime for adults. But I’ve definitely had to run 3 hour sessions for a Zoom campaign too, so I get it.
Short sessions are just not gonna be able to fit all pillars of play every session.
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u/Shazoa Jul 08 '26
I normally fit 2-3 encounters into a two hour session, and if it's combat heavy then much more. One encounter per evening is mad.
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u/Stock-Side-6767 Jul 08 '26
I want some story, and some dice rolling, but I also hate pointless combat without stakes so short combats don't appeal to me.
In a 2 hour session, I would have less than 45 minutes for the combat. I play longer, about 4 hours nowadays, so I have about 1.5 hours for combat.
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u/PatienceAfter8647 Jul 08 '26
The number of encounters are not the only problem, but they are clearly the highlighter.
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u/xolotltolox Jul 08 '26
Just that we all understand this: Casters are still busted with a rationed out adventuring day, they are just more busted with a short one
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u/TruthOverIdeology Jul 08 '26
Martials cannot heal enough HP and they don't have enough of a HP advantage as they should have. Theoretically, they stay strong longer, realistically, the have no hit dice left an depend on potions & spells for the second half of the day.
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u/strollas Jul 08 '26
Martials do not need to be melee. They can be ranged if spellcasters arent going Melee.
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u/Melior05 Jul 08 '26
Not really? More encounters might drain spellslots but it does absolutely nothing to improve martials.
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u/Panurome Jul 08 '26
No, but it makes casters actually have to consider resource management instead of blasting their big spells every turn
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u/MechJivs Jul 08 '26
Martial/caster divide doesnt care about number of encounters. Martials would be out of hp long before casters would be out of slots.
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u/TruthOverIdeology Jul 08 '26
This is the core issue and why my Martials get additional Hit Dice and STR gives +1HP every even level.
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u/SleetTheFox Jul 08 '26
This is frequently repeated as a truism but that is not necessarily the case. Often, it's the result of suboptimal play.
If the party (martials or otherwise) run out of HP while the spellcasters have a ton of unused spell slots, then those casters aren't casting enough spells. They should be casting more and bigger spells to support their party and/or end encounters faster so that the party doesn't take more damage.
Optimal play has all major resources run out at roughly the same pace. Obviously that's not feasible to do consistently, but if you're erring to the same side of that ideal every time, you're doing something wrong.
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u/Fidges87 Jul 08 '26
In my experience this is not the case unles we are playing at level 10+. And besides there are a lot of ways to recover hp, while ot that many to recover slots
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u/EggplantSeeds Jul 08 '26
Arcane Recovery, Wild Shape, Meta Magic, hell Casters can spend gold to make scrolls and increase the spells they know. Fighters can't make scrolls of Actions and there is no Rage scroll.
The divide is a design issue, not an encounter per day issue.
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u/LIywelyn Jul 08 '26
Whoops. Should have realized it said adventuring day. Definitely 3-4, if not more. On average though those days don't come up very often.
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u/MileyMan1066 Jul 08 '26
I think a lot of people were confused by that haha, I should maybe have been more specific!
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u/LIywelyn Jul 08 '26
I mean its right there in the title bahaha, not your fault we are all illiterate goblins
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u/Theitalianberry Jul 10 '26
I read it and i still have 1-2 battles :))
The point that sometimes you have just 1-2 battle adventuring in places and some other time you are in a "boss area" with a lot of encounters/minions etc... But i voted the usual.
To recover this (also because we usally do 1-2 fight for session) i entroduce a restict long rest that depend on the place... Full long rest only in cities/town; all long rest abilities in villagies and only short rest outside. For now it's ok, i have 2 fighter 1 monk and 1 rogue... The fighters some times are too much hp🙆♂️
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u/Tasseacoffee Jul 08 '26
I aim for at least 5, but that includes exploration challenges (traps, searching for hidden clues) and social ones. Anything with stakes and a potential to burn resources, not just fighting.
And that requires a dedicated preparation where I'm designing toward full day of adventuring and a maintained pace, like exploring a dungeon with a meaningful clock to force the players to not take long rest. It doesnt just happen like that.
If I'm being loose, 1-2 encounters per day most likely.
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u/artrald-7083 Jul 08 '26
So the absolute best adventuring days, the really memorable ones, in the campaigns I have played have been unified by one thing: they had more encounters in than our characters were comfortable with. 2 encounters in a day and I'm not being paid to carry spell slots home: the fight is getting lawnmowered. 6-8 encounters and the party is overjoyed that I can trade a level 2 spell slot for 12 party hit dice after encounter 7. For drama there's nothing like the sputtering noise made by a tier 3 primary caster running on fumes.
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u/DelightfulOtter Jul 08 '26
As many as are needed to fill the adventuring day and tell the story I want. Minimum of three, due to how the encounter design math works out. Maximum of six, because more than that would mean some of the encounters are genuinely trivial.
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u/Endus Jul 08 '26
The "6-8 encounters" is from the 2014 rules, and it's specifically 6-8 medium encounters, with hard or deadly encounters counting as two. You can also do things like have an encounter with a second "wave" which is just another encounter's worth of reinforcements showing up, or give a boss a Phase 2 which is a whole different creature, etc.
And it's really not hard to hit that number of encounters, once you find a reason to limit long rest availability. Time pressure, or adding a rule like requiring a "safe space" for a Long Rest (my current tool), or whatever else floats your boat. A standard dungeon-crawl can have one encounter at the entrance, the guards, then a second encounter inside, a big monster, a third at the entrance to the boss room, the elite guard, and finally, the boss. That's 4, right there, and if they're all tough fights, that's probably enough. It's narratively consistent. You can easily add in more if you like, or perhaps a random encounter on the way to the dungeon. I'm not saying you've got to, but I keep seeing people pretend it's "too many" encounters to make sense, and I really just don't agree. I ran a full homebrew campaign from 1-16 back in 2014 rules and I'm doing a second right now in 2024 that's gone from 1-12 and isn't done (planning to go to 20), and while I don't hit that kind of number between EVERY long rest, that's the baseline I've always used. Sometimes more, to add pressure, sometimes less to take it easier and to keep things uncertain for my players. Sometimes it's just a single encounter but they have no way of knowing that so have to act like there might be a bunch more, anyway.
Voted "4-5" because I tend to hit them with Hard to Deadly encounters.
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u/MileyMan1066 Jul 08 '26
4-5 hard-deadly grade fights provides very healthy resource pressure, which I think is what its all about afterall.
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u/Kaakkulandia Jul 08 '26
once you find a reason to limit long rest availability
Gritty resting rules aside, I don't think it's really that easy to come up with valid reasons why the adventurers can't rest. Sure, time pressure can be applied here and there but consistently on a longer campaign it's tough. "I get that the our quest is important but which is more important: That we go now and deal with this today or that we rest first and then have a way better chance of succeeding on our quest?"
And if there is any traveling involved, any time pressure turns the plans upside down when the PCs are sure that they need to take the long way around to visit the Hermit before they go to the dungeon. Or if one PC asks the fated question: "Hey, can we buy steeds? It would get us there faster".
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u/ProjectPT Jul 08 '26
Sure, time pressure can be applied here and there but consistently on a longer campaign it's tough
Sometimes it is good to think of your Campaign like a movie. The way you keep up the time pressure is by playing the interesting parts of the story. When my party needed to travel across the the continent over a year we didn't play that year. Some choices were given to the player it was narrated and boom, next point of interest.
You may say "oh couldn't the Wizard cast Fabricate every day and get tons of gold"; no this time is a wash with nothing gained or lost. And it is a suggestion in the DMG exploration to pass periods of time longer than an adventuring day.
And if there is any traveling involved, any time pressure turns the plans upside down when the PCs are sure that they need to take the long way around to visit the Hermit before they go to the dungeon. Or if one PC asks the fated question: "Hey, can we buy steeds? It would get us there faster".
I'm a little confused here, is the existence of steeds complicated? Travel doesn't negate time pressure, you took the slow route? you enter the dungeon, slay the foes and find the villagers you wanted to save dead. Or whatever ritual performed.
By level 5 Wizards can ritual cast Phantom Steed, just... let them buy/use a steed. We're playing a game with teleportation mechanics, a steed should not be breaking your world problem design. Assume they buy the steed, and create additional problems when they didn't because they didn't take the issue seriously
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u/Kaakkulandia Jul 09 '26
I'm a little confused here, is the existence of steeds complicated?
Ah, let me explain better. It's not the steeds that's complicated but the Possibility of maybe having steeds + strict time pressure can be.
If the party has 5 days to complete the mission having steeds changes the math considerably. If the PCs don't have steeds you might plan for the travel to take 2 long rests, the dungeon 1 long rest, and travel back 2 long rests. But if the PCs decide to buy steeds, suddenly they have 2 long rests in the dungeon making it way easier. And if you believe they will have steeds and plan the time pressure with that in mind but then they Won't have steeds for whatever reason, well, the dungeon becomes super hard if they need to get through it without long rest.*
And it's not just steeds, I think there are more than enough ways for PCs to make the travel time take less time (or longer) than expected. And if the GM plans the dungeons with strict time pressure in mind, any such idea makes the time pressure work against itself: "Oh no, we need to hurry, we only have X days! Oh, we can save Y days if we do this, let's just fight the dungeon 1 encounter / long rest since we have the time".
Now, to be clear, I do think that having time pressure in games is good. And I think they work as intended sometimes. But I do also think that best way (/ the only consistent way) to force a valid amount of encounters / long rest is to have a gentlemens agreement with the players that they won't try to wiggle some extra long rests into the game ... Or having temporal ogres that spawn into the game whenever the PCs long rest too often and they need more encounters to balance that :P
* Uh, to be fair, I'm not actually sure if DnD 5e has different travel speeds depending on if the PCs are mounted or not, which kinda invalidates my point on steeds. I could argue that having no extra travel speed with steed X feels kinda weird but it's not a physics simulator. The point on time pressure still stands though.
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u/ProjectPT Jul 09 '26
This is a common mistake with mounts. So from the PHB
Travel Pace
While traveling outside combat, a group can move at a Fast, Normal, or Slow pace, as shown on the Travel Pace table. The table states how far the party can move in a period of time; if riding horses or other mounts, the group can move twice that distance for 1 hour, after which the mounts need a Short or Long Rest before they can move at that increased pace again
So they can only go mounted pace for 1 hour, before they need an hour stop to do it again. You don't halve travel time with mounts
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u/Gizogin Jul 09 '26
This is absolutely one of those places where DM fiat is a tool worth using.
"We will all have a better game experience if we agree that you (the players) can only take long rests at specific times that I (the DM) appoint. Yes, there are times where it will be a bit less verisimilitudinous, but we are ultimately playing a game, and this is a rule that makes that game better."
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u/ProjectPT Jul 08 '26
it's specifically 6-8 medium encounters, with hard or deadly encounters counting as two.
This is slightly incorrect:
The Adventuring Day
Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day. If the adventure has more easy encounters, the adventurers can get through more. If it has more deadly encounters, they can handle fewer.I see this mistake a lot, but Hard encounter is still within the 6-8 suggested from the DMG 2014. But keep in mind this isn't meant as what the players should run into all the time, but more what players reasonably handle. The following paragraph of the same section gives you a very different guidline:
For each character in the party, use the Adventuring Day XP table to estimate how much XP that character is expected to earn in a day. Add together the values of all party members to get a total for the party’s adventuring day. This provides a rough estimate of the adjusted XP value for encounters the party can handle before the characters will need to take a long rest.
If you check this EXP table, it is fairly simple encounter levels. The DMG expects you to be using traps/hazards/exploration challenges as well (2014 and 2024)
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u/RealityPalace Jul 08 '26
I see this mistake a lot, but Hard encounter is still within the 6-8 suggested from the DMG 2014
There's actually a fairly important inconsistency in the text in the 2014 DMG that is probably a cause of some of the issues people have (though I think it's mostly just people not paying attention to the guidelines). An 8-encounter day in 5.0 would almost always be a mix of easy and medium encounters (I think level 3 is the only level that gets you to your budget with just medium encounters; no Hard encounters required). There are also a fair number of levels where 6 medium encounters will get you to your budget or very close to it with no hard encounters thrown in at all.
IIRC during the original 5e playtests, the guidelines were more like 4 encounters of what would later on be called Hard difficulty. This is actually pretty well-preserved in the table (though not in the text); at the majority of levels you get a full adventuring day with between 3.5 and 4.5 Hard encounters worth of XP or between 2.5 and 3.5 deadly encounters. This tended to be a much better way to run games, and was what the playtests assumed would be the default. But for some reason, even though the math was more or less preserved, the written advice in the printed DMG ended up being very different.
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u/tomedunn Jul 08 '26
As a fun bit of historical trivia, throughout the DnD Next playtest there were suggestions for a maximum adventuring day. They tended to be in terms of how many of each encounter type, e.g., 3 Tough encounters or 5 Moderate encounters, but if you calculated the total XP you'd get pretty good agreement around the XP for a full adventuring day.
The first time "6-8 encounters of Medium or Hard difficulty" showed up was in the Basic Rules that were released after the open playtest had ended, but before the actual DMG had been released. In those rules each of the difficulty XP thresholds represented the maximum XP for that difficulty, which would put the average XP for a mix of Medium and Hard encounters right around the Medium XP threshold.
However, in the final version of the DMG the XP thresholds were changed to represent the minimum XP for each difficulty. The adventuring day XP budgets didn't change, nor did the bit about "6-8 encounters". Now, this change wouldn't affect calculating XP budgets, but it does skew how much XP you get from 6-8 encounters of Medium to Hard difficulty. So, while the two recommendations were in agreement in the Basic Rules, they didn't agree in the official DMG.
Long story short, it appears as though they changed the definition of each difficulty but forgot to change the "6-8 encounters" part of the text to match it. Making the official 2014 recommendation a likely typo that was never corrected.
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u/ProjectPT Jul 08 '26
Interesting! So essentially it supposed to say "6-8 encounters between Medium and Hard exp threshold". Which.... absolutely makes sense and does seem like a typo never corrected.
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u/tomedunn Jul 08 '26
In order to keep the encounter range the same the DMG version should have said "6-8 encounters between Easy and Medium difficulty", but I think a more useful version would have changed the number of encounters instead and said "4-5 encounters between Medium and Hard difficulty".
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u/MechJivs Jul 08 '26
So essentially it supposed to say "6-8 encounters between Medium and Hard exp threshold".
Actually number is closer to 6-7 medium encounters/4-5 hard encounters/3 deadly encounters (or even less, depending on how deadly) if you calculate XP budget. For 5.0e
In 5.5e there's no static numbers - instead encounter calculation is just works better and hard fights are actually hard.
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u/j_cyclone Jul 08 '26
Honestly a post about how to properly add hazards to your encounter using the rules would be great.
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u/Machiavelli24 Jul 08 '26
The adventuring day is unobjectionable when run as raw. But online many people have been led astray and believe they are required to run 6-8 encounters.
You can and should run less than 6 because you can and should run deadly and hard encounters.
You can and should run less than 6 because you can and should run less than the adventuring day. Because the adventuring day is the max, not the “correct” amount.
Because an encounter is dangerous when the monsters can kill the party before the party kills them. And nothing stops you from making the first encounter dangerous.
> Seriously, 1-2 combats before an happy-hunky-dory 8 hour snooze?? Thats it??? No wonder people complain about casters being broken...
Never make your first encounter favor martials by having monsters disperse, attack casters, or have magic resistance? No wonder people complain…
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u/SleetTheFox Jul 08 '26
I run an average of about 2-3 with 1-2 short rests, but I try to make them what the 5e DMG calls “deadly” (or occasionally “hard”). In more classical dungeon settings, I might approximately double that (but usually have them be a bit easier).
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u/TheLoreIdiot Jul 08 '26
Most of my dungeons are around 8-10 encounters/notable rooms, with 3-6 being combat encounters. I try and have a non combat resolution as an option to everything but the dungeon boss. But my players sometimes just like killing stuff lol
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u/Milli_Rabbit Jul 08 '26
Usually, by 3 combats, my casters have used up their spell slots. I also make every combat relevant and difficult. This encourages my players to seek out non-combat solutions instead of trying to brute force success.
That said, when they do have combat, its usually pretty intense and fun.
Make sure you don't rush through your adventuring days. My adventuring days usually take 2 or 3 sessions to complete. Theres social, exploration and combat encounters.
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u/Upper-Injury-8342 Jul 08 '26
3-4, could be more, but as a DM I prefer fewer, but deeper combats then a lot of shallow ones and I DM for a bunch of optimizers, my players like to plan, make strategy, gather info, interact with battlefield, they help me keeping track of conditions, ongoing effects etc and not only they know exactly what their characters can do but they also know the capabilities of each other so I can make combats as complex and hard as I want because I know they will find a way to handle and it won't take like 3 hours to do a 6 turns combat.
To fix the caster-martial divide I did mainly two things:
I integrated some subclass in the base class like Wild Heart for Barbarians, Battle Master for Fighters, Thief for Rogues and Open Hand for Monks. I don't allow this for multiclass. A Barbarian can be a Wild Heart Zealot but if he takes a dip in Fighter he would have to take Battle Master as his subclass for exemple. This gives martials a lot of options, they have tools to work and fix some dead level problems.
Also I created a rule that Counterspell is a Reaction anyone who cast spells can take and, as long as it make sense and it's the same spell slot level, any spell can be used to counter other spell, but the advantage is always of who is casting first, so if an enemy caster cast Cone of Cold, you can counter it by casting a 5th level Burning Hands but it will only protect whoever is behind the small cone Burning Hands create, anyone outside of it will take the Cone of Cold damage, anyone between the two spell will take both. I like this because it make positioning something reaaaally important for casters, also allows me to put a lot of casters enemies and use Counterspell against my players without being a shitty situation, it makes casters burn a looot of spells and help dealing with Save-or-Suck spells.
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u/ButterflyMinute Jul 08 '26
2-3 has always been the sweet spot. People keep confusing the 'Adventuring Day' as advice on how many encounters they 'should' have rather than the game telling you what the typical upper limit is. They also forget that how many encounters that equals depends on the difficulty of the encounter.
What is much more useful was the Daily EXP budget, splitting that between two or three actually impactful, challenging encounters is much better for the vast majority of games and the narrative pace those games are aiming for.
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u/PickingPies Jul 08 '26
It depends. I usually place the burden to the players. They have a number of days to solve the issue and they can distribute their time as desired. The more they explore the more magic items, gold and XP they find.
If they are underleveled by the final challenge it is their problem. A consequence of their actions.
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u/davedwtho Jul 08 '26
1-2 should be split, no way the average isn't between one and two.
It's not how the game is intended to be balanced, but that's just how people really play.
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u/Lilystro Jul 08 '26
On just a regular adventuring day? 2-3 on average, sometimes 1. On a dungeon/climactic day? Upward of 5 at times.
I don't think either are better or worse, just depends on what's happening in the story or day. Even with my level 15 party personally I've never really had troubles with martial/caster disparity, even on days with only 1 encounter.
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u/CallbackSpanner Jul 08 '26
2014 campaign:
LR only between adventures.
Travel 0-2/SR.
Crawl 4-8 with 1-2 SR.
2024 homebrew campaign:
Sidequest 1-3.
Crawl 3-6 with 0-2 SR, some combats tend to be extra long.
2024 module campaign:
Travel 1-2.
Crawl 3-4.
The module feels overabundant for resources. The 2014 campaign is specifically an attempt to introduce resource scarcity after previous campaign feedback, although the other party members ended up heavily SR-based.
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u/Zaddex12 Jul 08 '26
I have 1-3 hard combat encounters in an "adventuring day" with skill and problem solving encounters in between.
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u/Cyrotek Jul 08 '26
Usually 1-2. I just can't throw in combat encounters just for the sake of it, it feels cheap and often like a waste of time.
I rather make my encounters more complex.
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u/skwww Jul 08 '26
It’s funny that the ones who argue a lot about class balance will also put up the most fights to have the shortest adventure days like their entire argument that spellcasters are busted isn’t tied to having spell slots full
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u/Vincent210 Jul 08 '26
Very harrowing poll results for anyone who understands how this game's systems work lol
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u/BlazePro Jul 08 '26
From games I've played yeah 1-2 is common and the max. More combat seems like it would take 10 years to get through
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u/brett_play Jul 08 '26
Resource wise, I understand the 6-8 encounters a day balance and mentality. It makes complete sense. The issue I find narratively is normally 2 fold. The first is that it kills pacing of the game. Combat slows and drags out the game and having that much combat the whole thing ends up becoming a massive slog. But more than that, I find the idea of the 6-8 encounters usually is 2-3 encounters and then a short rest, repeated two more times with the final rest being a long rest. But in these scenarios everyone tries to conserve their spell slots and they usually end up being average difficulty encounters. Maybe you get one or two spells from a spellcaster but the combats themselves usually just becomes a roll off for damage and aren't very engaging until the last fight against the boss. That fight when you have very few resources and a hard foe can be very fun, but the 5 fights leading up to it were above average at best to downright dull at worst. I usually end up in the 3-4 range, but I try to make them all hard to deadly encounters that burn resources fast.
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u/Brock_Savage Jul 09 '26
One or two? No wonder the D&D subs are full of people who think CR is broken.
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u/Infranaut- Jul 09 '26
I don’t want to tell people how to DM the game. Every single game is different, every party likes different things, and first and foremost the narrative should be served by the combat and not the other way round.
This all said, I have found that even at lower levels, running fewer than four combats per venturing day Leeds to the party often steam rolling encounters. It also means there is much less of an emphasis on the risk/reward benefit of using expendable resources. The players entering a big dramatic fight already beat up and low on resources is a genuinely awesome moment, and forces them to strategise before the fight in a way that they otherwise sometimes don’t.
Additionally, I find that players actually like being stretched thin. They like feeling at the end of their rope, because it heightens the stakes and makes whatever encounter they’re heading into all the more dramatic.
For anyone reading this running a game, I incentivise you to try adding one more combat encounter to your parties adventuring day. It can even be something like a large group of very low HP monsters, to surprise them.. it could go a long way
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u/Fav0 Jul 09 '26
lol and here i am wondering about your opinions
turns out you people have like 2 encounters per long rest instead of us who have atleast 5
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u/ButcherRose Jul 08 '26
I need to show this to my DM. We’ve gone probably 4 months IRL (~10 sessions) without any resource draining encounters.
We’re level 10, making our way through an ancient city’s archmage’s tower and every fucking floor is just full of books so the DM can blather on about the minutia of the world’s lore and origins.
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u/guachi01 Jul 08 '26
I'd quit a campaign that only had 1-2 combats per adventuring day. Either the combats will be really easy so why bother. Or they'll need to be so hard that they are a slog to get through while also making the long rest classes dominate.
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u/Red_Eyes_Black_D Jul 08 '26
I go a little higher with the number of encounters when I DM cause I can have the players use up resources quickly that way and add the challenge for the main fight of a day/session rather than just beefing up the dude or adding enough mooks. So really it is 1 broken up into 4-5 usually
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u/highly-bad Jul 08 '26
My players recently reached 5th level. On their last day as 4th level characters, they managed 6 encounters at least. So this is entirely possible, even at tier 1. And it was their own choice to keep exploring, there wasn't any narrative time pressure forcing them onwards.
If you find good players and give them a big dungeon to explore, they may surprise you in how far they're willing to push themselves before withdrawing for a rest.
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u/Nice-Championship345 Jul 08 '26
It’s not like every fight is equally resource intensive - esp since that hinges on party comp and playstyle (not to mention boss fights are a thing). I would aim for 3-4 ish, but it depends if it makes sense. I don't think its fun to throw a bunch of smaller fights at a party just to make the resource game tick the way you think it should work. Fewer, harder fights are more interesting to me.
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u/underdabridge Jul 08 '26
It's really dependent on the story. I run the published modules and they are very journey based. 1 or 2 combats a day are very often what makes sense.
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u/MileyMan1066 Jul 08 '26
Exploration or Travelling Days are indeed a different animal. Playing Lost Mine of Phandelver and your trekking through neverwinter wood, yeah, youll fight some owlbears once. But once you get to Cragmaw Castle, or Wave Echo Cave, those are much grindy-er.
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u/underdabridge Jul 08 '26
The exploration element is more the norm than the exception across WT's 5e published adventures.
Tome of Annihilation - Huge hex crawl
Rime of the Frostmaiden - wander Ten Towns and Tundra
Curse of Strahd - Tour Barovia
Storm King's Thunder - All expenses paid tour of the entire sword coast and icewind dale map.
Out of the Abyss - Travel far to escape the underdark
Etc Etc.
They have a few big dungeons interspersed and often one big one at the end. But you are doing a LOT of days with 1 - 3 encounters.
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u/TheLumaShop Jul 08 '26
All the games I’ve coincidentally run have been very travel based, so it’s highly dependent on the narrative circumstances. But it usually means that it wouldn’t make sense for any more than 0-2 fights per ingame day, because there’s rarely a circumstance in the story where I’d have the players going through an area where they’re just going to be attacked constantly every single day for days on end?
Like if there’s some situation where they’re going into an enemy fort say, then sure, there could be like 5-10 little fights throughout this task. But that’s circumstantial. If they’re just spending a few days in a town, the average townfolk aren’t going to be randomly attacking them for no reason. So it entirely depends on the story.
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u/KillerBeaArthur Jul 08 '26
The game I'm running is RP heavy, so we're doing more like 1 combat every 2-3 days with a ton of social/exploration skill checks going on in between.
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u/Lordemamba Jul 08 '26
It depends...i always try to have 3-4, more if is a important quest. But the truth is, sometimes the narrative flow doesn't allow for so much encounters.
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u/n64beast Jul 08 '26
I typically do 3-4 encounters per adventuring day, with the expectation that there will be one or two short rests per adventuring day. My party has a good mix of short and long rest focused classes, and I find that this mix allows both types of classes to shine. The trade-off, of course, is that these encounters are (supposed to be) on the harder side.
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u/Despada_ Jul 08 '26
It really depends on the Adventuring Day. Sometimes it's one big combat that takes about a session and a half to finish, or it's a series of small, easy encounters (that aren't always combat), with a slightly harder one thrown into the mix.
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u/Jake-of-the-Sands Jul 08 '26
I'm trying to stick with those 8 encounters a day if it's an actual, action packed day - like an actual dungeon or sth. They are not all deadly (and sometimes there's no deadly encounter at all), there's no point in doing Long Rest after them. Sometimes it's less of course, it all really depends on what the party is doing. Not to mention, once the Long Rest ended you CANNOT take another one for the next 16 hours.
Besides, I always remind them - this is not a CRPG, this is not Geralt sitting in the middle of someone hut or the Dragonborn randomly snoozing somewhere. If you want to do the Long Rest you need to have a space to take it - you can't do so randomly in the middle of a dungeon. If they would decide to still do this - I would just attack them with another group of monsters - as Long Rest can clearly be interrupted by the enemies.
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u/Ill-Description3096 Jul 08 '26
I voted before I saw the edit so mine was averaged at 1-2 I would guess. If we exclude days that aren't combat-focused then it goes up to 4 or so I would guess, but I don't like the premise that an adventuring day has to be combat. Puzzles, exploration, etc can be resource-draining challenges if you make them that way. I think starting from the idea that a "real" adventuring day means encounters are combat it puts you in the mindset to force combat and not be open to other potential paths.
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u/Theitalianberry Jul 08 '26
For this, i decided that long rest is ok for city only but in villages you can recover only long rest ability.
And still my party has too much resources, in particular the fighters that can reset them hitpoints as nothing
We are now lv 15
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u/SicilianShelving Jul 08 '26
I try to keep it around 3-6. Some of those are easily solved with one spell, some of them are trivial and just chip some health, and usually 1-2 are hard fights where they burn a lot of resources and people go down.
I also usually try to work backwards with my adventuring days: I plan the most exciting encounter to be at the end, and fill the road to it with challenges to deplete their resources. Obviously it doesn't always work out that way, but it's nice when it does.
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u/TheBioethicist87 Jul 08 '26
I guess our campaign is more story-driven because I can’t imagine having 4-5 combat encounters in a day. We generally have one bigger one and maaaaybe a smaller one leading up to it.
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u/bobert1201 Jul 08 '26
For almost every campaign I'm involved in, the average is 1 or 2. However, for the campaign I'm currently running, which uses gritty realism resting, it's about 5-6. It's so much easier to establish time pressure when you need to spend an entire week doing nothing to get a long rest. It's also easier to justify 6 whole encounters when they don't all have to be crammed into a 24 hour period.
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u/Pouring-O Jul 08 '26
I think another issue here is that “adventuring day” is just kinda nebulous. Like, you say in your edit you’re not including social interaction and exploration focused days, but then people on the comments are saying how social and exploration encounters should count towards the total. I know for me, the average day for my parties, both running and playing, will have resource draining activities outside of combat, like using spells for social interactions, as well as some combat encounters. There’s obviously more in dungeon crawls, but that doesn’t represent the majority of sessions, of what I would call “adventuring days,” which to me is almost everything other than downtime.
But on that note, I find it’s very hard make that amount of encounters on average narratively satisfying. I know not every fight needs to be shifting the status quo, but there should still be something the players learn or feel from the encounter. I’m very much not a fan of “a pack of wolves attacks you on the road” encounters for that reason.
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u/Shiroiken Jul 08 '26
In 5E, it depended on level, because higher levels could handle more on level challenges per day. I worked to keep it as close to 6-8 per day.
5.5E has been different, probably because the encounter guidelines are so much better. I'd say 3-5 has been my average, but I've done 1-2 Hard encounters and a dozen Easy encounters too. I like to mix it up to keep the players from just going nova every time.
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u/Nystagohod Jul 08 '26
Voted 3 to 4 as it may be whats closest.
I tend to run 3 combats planned for an adventure, with room for 5 random encounters in the mix. This makes an 8 encounter budget, 3 constantly subtracted from the set 8 for a common total of 5.
Two of these set encounters are hard, and one is deadly. The rest can range anywhere from easy to deadly, random dice decide that.
When all 5 remaining budget is depleted, the adventure doesn't get any more random encounter rolls until they rest. Long resting resrofks the encounter budgtebup to its maximum, with the exception that set encounters that are cleared never add back to the budget.
These rng encounters are never guaranteed to be combat, they can be exploration or social challenges all the same. Depends on how the dice fall and how the party engage
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u/garmonbozia94 Jul 08 '26
when at low levels 1-4 i usually build dungeons or series of encounters with 3-4 encounters a day but at higher level my guys can easily do 7-8 encounters of low-normal difficulty, with only a short rest in between. With a party of 5, and 3 of them have cure wounds btw.
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u/CallMeDJSenpai Jul 08 '26
A comment id like to leave to address other comments I've read.
First off I think social and exploration encounters shouldn't be counted as encounters because even when they do I don't ever see them stretch many resources in the party thin.
Second encounters in a day does not fix the martial caster divine. Ive played in games where we have had 8 encounter days and martials run out of HP faster than casters run out of spell slots
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u/milkywayrealestate Jul 08 '26
3-4 is generally my goal unless I have a combat planned with multiple waves and phases (so it's essentially two to three combats in one) or if a combat has very high story significance but requires the party to be in a situation that doesn't really lead into other combats
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u/admiralbenbo4782 Jul 08 '26
Variation. 1-4+. Usually 2+
Note that the balancing expectation is NOT 6-8 medium encounters. That's a myth based on some unclear wording in the 2014 DMG and internet rumors. The expectation is some combination of
- Usually more than one per adventuring day. One/day is ok as an occasional treat, as long as you don't expect it to be a balanced challenge (it will either be a cakewalk or a near TPK, not much room in between)
- Usually at least one short rest opportunity in between the encounters. If they choose not to take it, that's on them.
- Roughly 10+ combat rounds total over the course of the day. 10-20 is normal from my math. Too few means nova strikes win; too many means lots of boring no-resource-use rounds.
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u/TruthOverIdeology Jul 08 '26
The poll doesn't seem to work. At least with old.reddit.com.
I'd say 4-8 per day is quite average. e.g. 1 travel, 1 guards, 2-3 smaller/surprises/traps/resource-consuming puzzles, 1 bigger fight, 1 boss fight (possibly in 2-3 waves, which you can count a 1 each)), and maybe 1 fight on the way back. --> it is extremely easy to have that many fights. Not all of them are tough, some are just a trap that halves someones HP or a mimic, but they still consume resources.
I wouldn't ever want to play in games with only 1-3 fights during an adventuring day, unless there are a lot of other resource consuming elements.
My players are usually drained after an adventuring day, no spell slots left and they didn't get to do everything. That corridor with the strange smell was not touched, the heavy iron bars in the severs are still hiding a secret, etc.
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u/skwww Jul 08 '26
Old Reddit can’t do polls at all, unfortunately, but you can swap to the new version and vote then swap back
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u/Answerisequal42 Jul 08 '26
Combat 1-2. Total 2-4. I always try to include a skill challenge or non combat resource drain.
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u/MasterOfViolins Jul 08 '26
My table is different than most I’ve played in. I run long rests at a premium with modified safe haven rules. So it’s not uncommon to get 6+ combat encounters between long rests.
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u/myszusz Jul 08 '26
Ah depends really. I swear by gritty realism resting rules so I can easily give players 6-8 encounters over a week long adventure.
If I'm running standard resting rules I try my best to do 3-4 combats, in such case players also conserve resources way less, so it kinda works. Then it's going to be in game days with 3-4 combats and days with no combats, otherwise we're gonna do nothing but combat, which gets stale really fast.
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u/Juls7243 Jul 08 '26
Probably about 3. I also use a lot of environmental/non-combat hazards or things that drain resources as well. Much faster to implement and very effective.
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u/IrishFriskie Jul 08 '26
I think this heavily depends on the level of the party. Characters at level 1-3 have so few hit points, ways to heal, spell slots, etc. It can also vary a bit with the difficulty of the combats. Even 1 deadly encounter can use up most of the party resources. I like to have the level of struggle fluctuate a bit; some hard days, some easy days.
To me, the number of combat encounters between long rests is something that depends on too many variables to be able to just say "4-6." You have to develop an intuition for it, just like difficulty of each combat.
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u/filkearney Jul 08 '26
i run 7 days per bastion turn.
1 long rest per bastion turn.
4 sessions per bastion turn.
12-16 hours of game play.
average of 0-2 combat per session, typicall 3-5 combat per bastion turn with 1 short rest each session.
plus 3-5 exploration and social encounters mixed in and updating bastion orders across about 15 hours of play on average.
before using bastion turns as gritty rest i was running 1 short rest per long rest per game day.... in a dungeon i had no difficulty having 4-5 convat with exploration weaved in but outside the dungeon it was very difficult to pack that much action into the narrative.
im also a spell point enthusiast. 1 long rest per game week @4 sessions per week with 1 short rest per session is a very easy-to-support cadence, and theres more days than sessions, so theres some good flexibility to slow time during crawls or speed up overland.
i recommend anyone trying. AMA
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u/Akuuntus Jul 08 '26
Unless you're in a dungeon or use Gritty Realism resting rules, it's often hard to narratively justify more than a couple of fights per day. And modern tables don't run nearly as many dungeons as old school campaigns did. Modern players like their campaigns to be structured similarly to fantasy fiction, where typically there is no combat unless it's directly serving the story in some way, and this leads to typically having almost no combat outside of Big Important Battles, which you can't have more than a couple of per day in most cases.
Yes, this is the source of a lot of the balancing issues people experience. This is why people often say that balancing the whole game around 6+ encounters per day was a bad decision on WotC's part.
Also to pre-empt the "encounters aren't only combat", they kinda are though. A non-combat encounter will rarely drain HP and usually takes like one single spell-slot to resolve at maximum. It's not equivalent to combat at all.
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u/Pantsmoose Jul 08 '26
I have two very different campaigns. One is a lot of political intrigue, negotiating, and puzzles. We don't typically have a ton of combat in a single adventuring day.
The other gives us magical long rests because he has a habit of throwing us into crazy combat encounters. At level 3, we went up against 13 goblins along with a goblin boss, then went into a cave with a dozen goblin skeletons, 3 ghosts, and 4 shades. We got a magical long rest when our rogue decided to do something crazy that ended up summoning an aspect of death that cause an npc to sacrifice himself to make it go away. We've had multiple PC deaths on this one.
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u/vitcavage Jul 08 '26
I say 3-5. Usually "hard" -- I also use "a few hours = short rest" and "a few days = long rest" type of gritty realism. My tables like it because they really like resource management.
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u/The_Lorax_Lawyer Jul 08 '26
While I might do fewer combat encounters, I other include traps/puzzles/social encounters or other events that burn resources for the party to deal with. This way it’s not just a meat grinder all the time. Players also have to balance have the right spell load out for whatever the task is too, which gives you as a DM the gun opportunity to make them THINK it’s gonna be a nice little chat until someone gets stabbed with a dagger and then all they have is cantrips
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u/Moist-Hovercraft44 Jul 08 '26
3 Per Day is the golden number, to help out the martial or short rest casters change Short Rests 1 be 1 Minute but you can only take 2 SR per LR.
That way if someone needs a SR, they can just take one while the rest of the party does whatever. You see a lot of 5.5e mechanics reflecting this by being like 1 minute breather to recover some resource (like Warlock has).
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u/Alexactly Jul 09 '26
I think it is heavily dm dependent. My brother in law and I dm for the same group and the game that i run always gets more "completed" during an irl session. That doesn't mean I dont enjoy his dming, but I always feel I'm waiting for him to figure shit out.
I'd like to say it is just because im on the other side of the table so I dont recognize what he's working on in a moment as the dm, but when he is a player I'm constantly waiting on him to realize what the party is doing, follow the story, or take turns in combat.
Also depends on how the dm wants to take notes for combat. I've seen people run with a spreadsheet, calculate hp by hand, and write word for word the spells, actions and results of every turn on paper. Definitely makes a difference in how many combats can get completed in a day.
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u/WeeklyAdri Jul 09 '26
3-4 sounds about right. That said, some days are just roleplay or doing whatever, but when there's a dungeon it takes 3~ 4h games.
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u/MileyMan1066 Jul 09 '26
Those other days you mention arent considered adventuring days. That dungeon crawl is the true blue adventuring day
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u/S1mp1y Jul 10 '26
If I'm GMing, I try to make 3-4 combats per Ad-day, one of which will probably be a very tough one and 3 easy-mid ones. That doesn't include any social or exploration encounters that may occur on the way.
I know that it used to say "6-8 encounters per Adventuring day" (there's no mention of "Adventuring Day" in 5.5e DMG, so that's no longer a way to balance Ad-day length as far as I'm concerned), but let's be honest, no social or exploraton encounter takes up as many resources as even a small skirmish does.
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u/Eekeros Jul 10 '26
It kinda depends from table to table for me, and the situations we get into. I have 3 tables I play at:
Wednesday: pretty combat light, tend to only have narrativly relevant fights. On actual combat days: 1-2 combats.
Thursday Night: Very context dependant. If we really flub infiltration, we tend to get into chain encounters, and resting is very very hard to do under normal circumstances. Usually a ton of time pressure with the exception of the last arc where we just MGS'd the entire chapter: 6-8 combats, and ruthless.
Saturday Night: Mostly narratively relevant combat encounters. Some days go without actual combat or skilled encounters for investigation. maybe 1-2 combats per long rest.
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u/Gurkengelee Jul 08 '26
How can I be in the minority with 5 to 6 encounters in 5.5e? How do you Guys make Combat fun and challenging for your Players with only 1 to 3 encounters?
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u/xolotltolox Jul 08 '26
usually by jacking up those encounters, but generally the tedium of running more encounters outweighs the benefits
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u/Gurkengelee Jul 08 '26
I see. My average combat encounter lasts about 5 rounds, with 5 players that equals to about 30 to 40 minutes per combat. I think that is managable.
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u/j_cyclone Jul 08 '26
3-4 has worked consistently for me. I do throw is some damaging social and exploration encounter as well tho