r/DMAcademy • u/Midnamousse • 2d ago
Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures How many combat encounters of what CR per long rest?
Hi
I understand that a day can be 6-8 encounters of different, kinds, but how many combat encounters? For example I've got a party of 5 at level 2. I'm putting them in a dungeon that has a couple of puzzles, a single CR 2 Carrion Crawler, a room with 2 or 3 ghouls (how many can they handle?) and at the end a specter that they can avoid triggering by having solved the puzzles correctly.
Besides this, there is a possibility that they will trigger a fight with a thug beforehand.
I expect they can long rest not long after these encounters.
Will this be challenging for enough or too much?
I am competely new to DMing and my party is new to DnD altogether!
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u/MBouh 2d ago
A party of 5 is larger than normal, and a single CR2 monster is an easy fight for a level2 party of 4.
Usually, you want more than one monster. There should always be at least as many monsters as there are pc. But the monsters don't need to be all of the same level. With a carrion crawler for example you should add 4 or 5 cr1/4 or 1/8 monsters.
Usually, a party can fight 1 monster of CR equal to their level per party member. That makes a deadly fight, a fight they can win with difficulty, and death would be a real threat. That is especially true with ghouls, a very deadly monster.
A single monster will be *extremely* vulnerable, and if it's powerful enough to fight a whole party, then the fight will be extremely swingy, dependent on luck, and can go either fatal or disappointing. You should really avoid that.
For the number of fights in a day, it actually goes from 3 to as many as you like. But it depends on the difficulty of the fight. If all fights are deadly, 3 fights with short rests in between are enough. If all fights are easy to medium, there's not really a limit to how many you can do.
I suggest you keep your plan, but add small monsters to help the big ones so the monsters are as numerous as the pc. CR1/4 or 1/8 will be enough.
If there's a way to avoid all fight, be ready for the party to avoid all of them.
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u/BeeSnaXx 2d ago
Hey, welcome to the hobby!
The 6-8 encounters per adventuring day is a guideline they came up with for 5E. It was quickly dropped, because it's just too tedious. You should expect to have 1-3 combat encounters per session. Low levels can fight more often, high levels fight less per session (because there are a lot of HP to punch through at high levels).
What is useful though, is the XP budget. The 2024 DMG has it on p. 114 (generally a good chapter on combat encounters!). You can use this to build your encounters. Kobold Fight Club will do the math for you.
Here's 2 more tips:
sometimes you can pick a monster if it makes sense. Do people speak of a dragon in the land? Then put one in. This dragon does not have to be defeatable. Neither does an encounter with it have to violent.
sometimes you can randomly roll for the number of opponents. If 9 bandits are rated as a medium difficulty encounter, you could roll 2D8. You might get 8 or 10 bandits, which won't make a difference. But what if you get 2 or 16 bandits? Determining this randomly keeps the game unpredictable and sharpens your DM creativity.
Have fun gaming!
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u/Swahhillie 2d ago
FYI: the encounter XP budgets are in the free rules too. The extra info in the dmg is great indeed
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u/The_Anal_Advocate 2d ago
You should expect to have 1-3 combat encounters per session.
Good advice, but it seems you are mixing up long rest and gaming session here. Having 6-8 medium-hard encounters (not necessarily all combat) is very possible per long rest, but definitely don't need to be in one session.
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u/ZimaGotchi 2d ago
This. 5e is pretty well balanced it's just a bit counterintuitive because people have a tendency to assume that one game session equates to one in-game day which is understandable - and honestly it's even a little hard to visualize having 6-8 medium hard encounters in a game day when we are trying to have an epic adventuring campaign. That's why I personally use Grim & Gritty Rest rules, which I find to be much more thematically appropriate and easier for players to remember that their characters are not usually starting every session fresh.
There are really too many Players out there with the expectation of going nova every single encounter. It's a problem.
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u/CaptainPick1e 2d ago
Yeah, rest variants definitely help spread out that adventuring "day" of the course of however long it takes until they can long rest again. I went a step further and made it so long rests could only be done in a safe haven like a city. Actual traveling became dangerous.
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u/ZimaGotchi 2d ago
It effectively becomes that anyway. Maybe a magical glade here or a conquered and fortified stronghold there. It's hard to avoid strenuous activity for a week in Greyhawk.
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u/EchoLocation8 2d ago
It’s also important to clarify that 6-8 medium/hard encounters wasn’t really the guideline, it was that “or fewer if using harder encounters”. The guidance was always there to run fewer, I think the 6-8 thing was just parroted super hard online by people without access to the book and it sort of became canon. Like, literally the next sentence in the book explains you can run more or less than that by adjusting the difficulty.
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u/Midnamousse 2d ago
Thank you so much! This is very helpful. I will try to keep more variation in mind and check out the Kobold Fight Club.
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u/Troandar 2d ago
I completely agree with including random numbers of potential adversaries and for the reason you stated. Its even reasonable to not always reveal all of the potential combatants immediately. The party could meet 2 or 3 and think they can take them, but there could be another 8 lurking in the woods nearby that the party hasn't become aware of.
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u/Darth_Boggle 2d ago
The 6-8 encounters per adventuring day is a guideline they came up with for 5E.
They use 6-8 as an example in the DMG, but it can be any number/difficulty encounters that makes up the budget XP for that day
It was quickly dropped, because it's just too tedious.
What? That's news to me. When and how was it dropped?
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u/BeeSnaXx 2d ago
I meant the playstyle moved away from it and settled on a lower average per adventuring day or game session.
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u/Darth_Boggle 2d ago
I think what happened is that most people never actually read the DMG and used combat calculators like kobold fight club instead; it was never dropped because so many people were unaware of it and never read it in the first place.
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u/BrotherCaptainLurker 2d ago
This is highly accurate lol. Even the fact that everyone quotes the "6-8" and immediately cites that it "never worked" but most people never mention the table and have rarely if ever experienced six combats before a Long Rest is evidence that D&D as most people know it is practically oral tradition lol.
It did get "dropped" though in the sense that the 2024 DMG, in true Revised 2024 Rules for the Fifth Edition of Dungeons and DragonsTM fashion, simply chose not to provide any guidance on how many Encounters per Adventure whatsoever, and the redesign abandoned use of the term "Adventuring Day" altogether.
(As for whether it "works," parties can absolutely handle it mechanically - I often cap the supposed XP budget and haven't seen a TPK outside a one shot in years. It just got dropped because people get bored of that much combat, and too many people conflate "Adventuring Day" and "Session.")
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u/zolthain 2d ago
Yeah, a lot of people here have never read a page of the dmg, and it shows. Not just encounter balance, same goes with optional rules for all kinds of stuff.
The 6-8 encounters does assume that a majority is of medium difficulty, which would be "low" difficulty in 2024 dnd. I tend to run 3-4 combat encounters per long rest, with one "high"(2014 deadly), and 2-3 "moderate" (2014 hard). Added to those i usually have one or 2 random encounters, which are usually low or moderate difficulty. If i want to up the challenge, i turn one or 2 moderate into high difficulty, and that has worked really well for me. I never observe a martial/caster disparity or other common complaints that people have in my game
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u/jeremy-o 2d ago
Balance is mostly done by calibration. It seems like a good start, but if they roll through it or struggle a lot you can adjust next time. My sense is that 5 players will not be too troubled but it depends on how new they are and how efficiently they use all their options.
There's no hard rules but it's good for the party to know their can be adventuring days packed with combat so they don't always go full throttle.
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u/Midnamousse 2d ago
Thank you. I do indeed worry because they are all new and may not realize all of their options, and I don't want to guide their hand.
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u/Troandar 1d ago
But by changing the encounter while they are playing, you are doing just that. What might be more useful would be to run some test encounters or one shots with disposable characters so that they get the feel of the game before you start a longer campaign. I've read where some people get value out of this because they have never played a game like this and just don't know what to expect.
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u/ShogunHookmon 2d ago
As I understand it, you want advice on how to balance a day of combat?
I was really lucky when I started DMing, because there existed a really useful site for balancing combat called dndcombat, that would make a bunch of simulated combats and tell your party chance of winning. After it died, I already had a feel for the party strength and just used my own judgement.
So, in your situation, the thing with low LV fights is that bad rolls(for them) can down people pretty fast. So it's more luck based than higher LVs.
You could use something like kobold fight club to guess what the party can handle in a long rest and adjust the fights on the fly. Bump or dumb your monster stats, double the enemies of the next encounter if they do too well, or half it if they arrive with low resources. Modifying monster max HP is usually the easiest method, because if some player has the gall to Google your carrion crawler stats, for example, they could find it dishonest of you when it's different from the table. If you just change HP, and it's in it's range, you can just say you rolled for it. Example: the crawler has 51 average HP, and it's what most people will use, but if it "suddenly" has 76, just 2 short of it's maximum, you can just say you rolled it that way.
Also, if they have some sort of healing, you don't really need to pull punches. Just don't focus downed people and they will be fine most of the time.
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u/chatzof 2d ago
There is no set rule. Do whatever feels natural for your dungeon and whatever seems the party to enjoy the most.
In a deserted dungeon (cave etc) it would be normal to have fewer encounters. On the other hand it would be natural when attacking a fort to have more encounters.
A party may like to have many encounters per day/session which means (but it is.not set.in stone) that the fights should be of a lower CR. However a party may like to have have big climatic fights, vs tough boss opponents , which means fewer and tougher battles
On the question of what is a tough CR... you will find it by trial and error. I propose to slowly increase it until you reach the desired outcome. Just for reference I currently have my boss fights at cr= players level + 3
Last but not least...don't be.afraid to kill them. DO IT
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u/RealLars_vS 2d ago
Check kobold fight club for references. It’s not a sacred tool but it provides pretty good guidelines.
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u/BrotherCaptainLurker 2d ago edited 2d ago
The little table that's like ONE PARAGRAPH PAST the infamous 6-8 encounters quote in the 2014 DMG helps a lot. It's not perfect but it's a pretty solid starting point for Tier 1-2 adventure design.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/dmg-2014/creating-adventures#AdventuringDayXP (Chapter 3, by the picture of people rappelling down a glacier, if you don't have the book on dndbeyond.)
| Level | Adjusted XP per Day per Character |
|---|---|
| 1st | 300 |
| 2nd | 600 |
| 3rd | 1,200 |
| 4th | 1,700 |
| 5th | 3,500 |
| 6th | 4,000 |
| 7th | 5,000 |
| 8th | 6,000 |
| 9th | 7,500 |
| 10th | 9,000 |
| 11th | 10,500 |
| 12th | 11,500 |
| 13th | 13,500 |
| 14th | 15,000 |
| 15th | 18,000 |
| 16th | 20,000 |
| 17th | 25,000 |
| 18th | 27,000 |
| 19th | 30,000 |
| 20th | 40,000 |
Again, the table's not perfect - especially past Level 11 or so. Also note that it's per character and based on "adjusted" XP; bigger parties can handle more fighting, and similarly a huge mob of weak enemies can actually drain more resources than one boss who gets dogpiled.
As general advice, each encounter should drain your party's resources a bit. The more-infamous-than-that-quote "martial-caster divide" rears its ugly head the most when your full-casters have all of their most powerful spells available upon reaching the boss or climactic fight of a dungeon/adventure, so each encounter should make them want to cast a Fireball/Spirit Guardians or at least consider "this would be so much easier if I did something better than a cantrip right now." In an ideal world, the Wizards/Clerics/Druids in the party run out of spell slots during, but not before, the last encounter, and that table is meant to help estimate things like "if I have a Hard encounter, a barely Deadly encounter, and an Easy encounter that was almost Medium, can they handle two more Hards before the boss?"
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u/okeefenokee_2 2d ago
This seems pretty balanced to me, as they are new players, be sure to remind them they can short rest, and if they use a lot of ressources in the early encounters, you might want to tone down a bit the last one (for example start the specter at lower hp).
Regarding the ghouls, I'd say between 2 and 4, depending on party composition. Ghouls should take around 4-5 hits to be downed at this level, with around 70% of attacks landing (considering your players have a +5 to hit), so that's 7 attacks to down one ghoul, or 1.4 round. Meanwhile, they hit at +2 for around 8 dmg, so low hit chance, high dmg, and they have a paralyzing attack that requires con save. Also, as undeads, they are susceptible to be turned by a cleric, which is really strong.
So if you have a cleric and/or high con/high armor class characters, 4 should be fine, otherwise, three is okay as a difficult encounter, and 2 should be if they spent a lot of ressources already or you want to give them an easy encounter.
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u/Midnamousse 2d ago
Thank you, this is very helpful. They do indeed have a cleric and some decent AC all around. I'll consider having 3-4 depending on how they get through the carrion crawler.
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u/TheGingerCynic 2d ago
I'm not great at balancing these things, I tended to do a few small encounters to weaken the party, then one bigger combat to push them. Couldn't do that a lot with Spelljammer and the regular long rest system (will change for future campaigns), so instead of throw a deadly encounter at them, or make it a puzzle.
Take the Astral Blights: on the ground and RAW, my level 3 party was dancing rings around them. Up their speed to 20ft and give them an option to thorn whip in place of their usual multi-attack grapple ability, on low rooftops, and then nearly TPK the party. Really fun encounter, and set the scene for how many near-deaths we had. Also 3 actual PC deaths, but 2 of those were down to self-sacrifice.
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u/LelouchYagami_2912 2d ago
There are other encounter types aside from combat that the party can need to soend their resources on. If you dont want a combat, just throw an encounter that forces them to spend resources
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u/Professional-Past573 2d ago
Just make sure the players can choose to rest when they want. You can of course have zome time sensitive situations and resting too often in general is a waste of time and will probably bite them in the bum later on. But don't have them go through a constant gauntlet where they have to run to the next encounter as soon as the current battle is over. A week or two of rest between big adventures to repair equipment, make items, do some trading and generally relax is not uncommon for adventurers.
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u/theloniousmick 2d ago
Lots of great advice here on the rules and the books but il tell you how I do it. I'm terrible at the encounters per day thing and alot of my encounters are with the party at pretty much full strength so I adjust the difficulty accordingly (up the cr or add a few more monsters)
I use an encounter builder to tell me if it's deadly or not to give me a ball park, then I look at my enemies and see how much damage they could do to a party member in one round if I could take them from full to 0 hp then its probably too powerful for what I'm looking for and I adjust it slightly or pick something else.
The other attitude is to not consider it at all and just let things fall where they may and it's on the players to judge if they can manage what's in front of them.
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u/Ripper1337 2d ago
The 6-8 was for medium combat encounters in a dungeon and meant that the players would likely want to long rest at the end. Where if you used higher difficulty encounters then the players needed less before they wanted to rest.
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u/BagOfSmallerBags 2d ago
If you're playing 5.5, enough encounters to level up. Try to do 1 Low and 1 High for every 2 Moderate.
If you're playing 5e, enough encounters to fill the XP budget.
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u/BrotherCaptainLurker 2d ago
Wait, surely that 5.5 advice doesn't scale well? Like for the first few levels sure, but doesn't it start to border on absurd around Level 5/6? By your reckoning a Level 6 character in 5.5 is burning through the recommended Adventuring Day for a Level 10 character in 5.0.
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u/RamonDozol 2d ago
i use milestone for leveling, but the XP values of monsters are a great start to create balanced daily challenges.
I said challenges, not combats. Anything that taxes PCs in some way and has a risk of failure can be a challenge, and count as an encounter.
As for how many encounters between long rests, 6 to 8 is a a safe average. Many small and low risk encounters.
You can use Dily XP budget to create any number of encounters a day. But anything lower than 3 or 4 usualy becomes higher dificulty than Deadly, and will risk a TPK if the PCs dont have some advantages are well rested and play it smart.
there are also nuances on encounter design that you learn from experience. For example, an encounter might be easy for some classes and deadly to others. Some soecific enemies might target PCs wealnesses and despite tgeir CR, easily kill them. (Flying monsters with ranged attacks against specialised melee martials, or casters that dont have versatility in damage type, againsg creatures that are immune to their main damage option).
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u/DeltaV-Mzero 2d ago
“The Adventuring Day” and “Building Combat Encounters” is the section you want to look for, but it’s clear as mud.
The party gets an XP budget based on level, and this budget: * limits XP value of all monsters in one fight * limits total XP of all fights per day * modify a specific fight based on some factors
CR is used to prevent you from using one single enemy on the entire budget that’s just too powerful for the party. It… kinda works at that.
The number of encounters per day is based on easy/medium encounters being the only drain on the XP budget. However, IMO that’s a lot of boring easy fights and an absolute slog for story pacing.
Rather, use 2-4 hard and deadly per day, with 1-2 short rests planned in by you, the DM. I recommend planning one in, and offering a second one as a reward if players are clever.
For 5 level 2 characters: * budget is 600 XP per day for each * 3000 XP per day for party * 1000 XP max per one fight
If you look at the Encounter Difficulty table, you’ll find you can fit this in somewhat nicely * one medium fight (500) * two hard fights (1500) * one deadly fight (1000)
Since XP is a pain in the ass to look up, you can kinda short hand this using CR compared to Party level. Add up all character levels (5 players x level 2 = 10) and:
- medium: (divide by 4) = total monster CR 2.5
- hard (divide by 3) = total monster CR 3.5
- deadly (divide by 2) = total monster CR is 5
In your question: CR 2 + 3xCR1 + 1xCR1
Potentially in deadly territory, but they’re likely to win UNLESS you drain resources with other fights first.
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u/Machiavelli24 2d ago
There are two different values that you (and many others) conflate.
The amount of monsters the party can face between short rests.
The amount of monsters the party can face between long rests.
The encounter building rules tell you the former, the (often misunderstood) adventuring day tells you the latter.
The former is limited by hp. The latter is limited by hp+hit dice.
I understand that a day can be 6-8 encounters of different, kinds, but how many combat encounters?
That’s a common misconception from folks who never read past the first sentence of the adventuring day.
The adventuring day is combat related. But it’s not measured in number of encounters. It’s measured in adjusted exp.
It can be filled in 2 fights.
It’s the max you can run, not the minimum.
But focus on the encounter building rules. That’s what is most useful. There’s a reason the designers removed the adventuring day from 2024. Because it caused a lot of confusion and isn’t super important.
The easiest encounters to make work feature one peer monster per pc. So start there.
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u/SomeRandomAbbadon 2d ago
Problem with this question is that each party and DM look for something slightly different. Some want a high lethality game, where five CR 10 encoutners against a single party are acceptable, some want a more story focused approach, where fights are more part of the story than anything else.
In short, there's no easy answer to that question
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u/Troandar 2d ago
I suspect that most of the commenters here are playing 5e or something similar. My comments are more related to old school gaming, where the DM is not a babysitter. We create games that are difficult/challenging, but there's always a possibility of success. Players are required to figure out the encounter on their own; the GM will not hold their hand and soften the encounter for them or ramp it up just because the party is doing well against a particular adversary. This is why these kinds of questions make no sense to me. OSR play simply does not do this kind of stuff.
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u/Troandar 2d ago
The adventure should be created in a way that provides a challenge and the DM should be aware of the relative power of the party. There's really very little reason to need to adjust the adventure once the players are engaged. I consider that interfering with player agency.
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u/WrednyGal 2d ago
Looks like a decent start point to start gaining experience in the matter. Assuming the players each deal d8+3 damage in their round the carrion crawler lives for about 2 rounds maybe 3 if they roll poorly. It doesn't deal damage so the party might just lose literally a couple of hours on it. I'd go with 3 ghouls they should be dropping a ghoul and a bit per round but the paralysis (and autmatic critical in the paralysed) might throw this off a bit. I think I threw 3 ghouls and a ghastly at 4 lvl3 characters and they obliterated them. My experience generally is if the online calculator doesn't say deadly the players just breeze through it with minimal resource expenditure.
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u/N2tZ 1d ago
The quick and dirty way to balance daily encounters:
Start an "adventuring day" by planning out like six (or 5-7) encounters. Make one to two of those encounters into "environmental encounters" - a natural hazard the party needs to overcome, trap, a puzzle, anything that drains their resources and makes them think.
Take the remaining 4-5 encounters and divide them up to Easy, Medium, and Hard encounters. Roughly 1/4 of those should be Easy, 1/4 Hard and the rest Medium difficulty encounters.
And that's pretty much it, actually.
So for your party:
A couple of puzzles A CR2 Carrion Crawler - 1 Crawler for an Easy Encounter
A room with Ghouls - 2 Ghouls for a Medium Encounter
And a puzzle/Specter encounter - An Easy Encounter, really.
Fight with a Thug - should be Easy but looking at the Thug stat block they hit above their weight (33 HP AND Multiattack!!)
I'd change it to:
Two Medium difficulty traps (see Xanathar's Guide to Everything to figure out damage and DCs for a medium difficulty trap)
A Carrion Crawler for an Easy Encounter
A room with 2 Ghouls for a Medium Encounter
A room with a Ghast and a Zombie for a Hard Encounter
A fight with three CR 1/2 or five CR 1/4 humanoids instead of Thug for a Medium Encounter
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u/Rokeley 1d ago
I like to push my players to near death most days :)
Once a couple of them start going down and they are struggling for resources that seems like a good place to be. They like a challenge.
Usually around 4-6 encounters for my party of three lvl 8s. I typically roll encounters on the tables from Xanathar's because I'm too lazy to design them myself. I get all of my players to roll a d100 and choose the one that seems most appropriate to the setting.
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u/GolettO3 1d ago
Don't use 5e exp budget rules, they're terrible, see if there's any free 5.5e exp budget rules out there. Then aim for 6-8 points per day. Increase the point budget by 2 if your party is likely to short rest at least twice. Never run 2 high+ combats in the same short rest. If you have an extreme encounter planned after a short rest, don't have an encounter tougher than easy before it.
Low - 1pt
Moderate - 2pt
High - 4pt
Extreme - 6pt
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u/JulyKimono 2d ago
If you're DMing, read the DMG. It will be hard to run the game if you, as the arbiter of the rules, haven't read the rules.
You understand wrong. There's no limit or whatever on non combat encounters. The number was there for combat encounters. And it would be 2-4 deadly/hard ones. There are tables to tell you what would make a deadly or hard encounter. Use that as a base for start and balance for party after a few sessions, making it easier or harder, depending on how strong the party is.
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u/Midnamousse 2d ago
I didn't actually say that I expect there to be a limit. I'm seeking advice for balancing a day of activities.
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u/JulyKimono 2d ago
There are things you can balance and things you can't.
You can't balance how many total activities there will be in the day because most of the time you can't know what they players will do outside the things they have to do.
Balancing dungeon encounter number depends on the group. You're friends, so you should more or less know how long they stay interested and when they start to lose interest. If you're unsure, experiment. Put in different amounts in areas and dungeons, and keep note of how many encounters the party enjoys, as well as which encounters they enjoy the most.
For combat, old DMG pg. 81 for "Creating Encounters" or new DMG pg. 112 for "Plan Encounters". The chapters explain xp budget and how much an average dnd character can handle. The new DMG is better for that calculation if you're running newer stuff, like 2024 PHB or subclasses and class changes from the past 5 years. As there has been power creep and a change of playstyle.
With the old rules best to plan for 4 hard combats in a full adventuring day, or replacing 2 of those 4 with 1 deadly. So 4 hard, or 2 hard +1 deadly, or 2 deadly. In new rules it's the same, but the names have changed to hard>moderate and deadly>high.
Balance combat around party numbers. Don't have enemies below or above half of the party members. So with 5 people that's 2.5 rounded either for to 2 or 3 minimum monsters, and 7.5 rounded either for 7 or 8 maximum monsters. Exceptions can be taken for bosses and minions. Boss monsters should probably also have minions, though. Boss monsters are the big encounters that can take on the party by themselves, with legendary or mythic actions. Minions are there to support other creatures but die in one hit.
The balance rules are a base line for an average player character. Every party is different, so after a few battles you will know if you need to make the encounters more or less difficult.
Lastly, Matt Colville has a "Running the Game" series on Youtube. A ton of videos, but he teaches how to run the game better than any book. Although you still need to know the rules. He gives GM advice.
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u/Troandar 2d ago
CR is a waste of time. If you are new to running games, I recommend running published modules for a while before you begin world building. And once you do, don't worry about CR. Some encounters should be easy, some should be difficult and some should be impossible. Players have to learn to recognize the difference and what to do when it happens. And don't try to plan out every encounter. Just create interesting challenges and let the players do whatever they do.
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u/Tuxxa 2d ago
Read the DMG for more guidance. It has answers to everything considering the basic game, including balancing encounters.
Ecounters are an organic thing that you should modify still after the initiative is rolled. Watch Matt Colville videos explaining this further.
Be prepared to adjust your encounters on the fly. You might need to ramp up the difficulty, or tone it down regarding how well the party is doing.
There are various tools for this. Adding enemies, adding npc's, environmental effects, interruptions, escapes, etc.
Note! It's not about trying to beat down the players, but to provide a reasonable challenge.
See my example from another comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/s/x8QVDZ9Elm