Many class features have a limited number of uses per day, such as the barbarian's Rage, the cleric's Channel Divinity, or the paladin's spell slots for Divine Smite.
How much damage such a feature can be expected to contribute to combat depends heavily on how many encounters you'll have in a day...
@NautArch - I think there are differences, e.g. I am not asking for consensus, but we can work to resolve. Howerver, busy with work right now. Would you prefer to keep this one open and retarget the other as dupe, given this has upvoted answers?
How is this question opinion based? I am asking for statistics on play experience and data based answers. I could have understood a closure as a potential duplicate of that other question but I am not requesting any opinion. I am also not asking for consensus, I am just requesting actual usage.
@NautArch I honestly do not understand what your issue is -- same for the other answer you linked.
Because consensus is an average of what people have said - but what people say is opinion-based. The average isn't even necessarily helpful. Both of these duplicate questions are asking the same thing - and what they are asking is entirely dependent on the table and how they run their games. There is what the book recommends for encounters/day, and then there are what happens at actual tables. The latter is fungible and completely table-dependent. If anything, this feels like a discussion, which would do better on a forum or in our chat here. If you really feel otherwise, open a meta.
Hi, NautArch. The XP guidance is not based on anyones table. The encounters in adventures are not based on anyones table.
Consensus as I understand it is: "a general agreement". I am not looking for people to agree on what the right number of encounters is. I am merely looking for data that gives me an idea what it often is.
My understanding is that play experience based answers are legitimiate answers.
@Nautach, Can you explain what you man with the "Combat vs Non Combat" encounter question? Nearly the entire encounter chapter is talking about combat -- and clearly all the XP based math there is only for combat, am I missing something? I saw you also seemed to think that is a big issue in the other question that you got closed, and its unclear to me why non combat encounters would matter? And what they would be, like a trap or something?
Got your link to Korvin's answer, will educate myself, thank you ;)
My take is that the question in its current form falls afoul of the "all answers are equally valid" definition of bad subjective given in the help center.
Which is why I vtc'd for opinion based.
If it so happened that at every table I played at averaged 12 encounters per day, that answer is just as valid as someone else's who averaged 3 or 7 or 100.
I think we need information to be provided by the question that allows us to determine that the 100 and 12 answers are not correct. As written, they would be entirely correct, as they are based off of experience and data, but in terms of what players can generally expect, they are certainly wrong.
I think the best way to improve the question would be to identify a real at-table problem you are trying to solve with this information, rather than just documenting trivia about one of the game's systems.
@GroodytheHobgoblin didnt ping you in any of those messages, so here's one
@ThomasMarkov Thomas, thank you that is helpful. I can see how asking for experience will make each persons individual experience a valid answer.
There is no "at table" problem here, as the question states, the background is a build optimization problem. In most cases where you aim to calculate expected damage, you need to assume how many encounters (most typically combats) you will run into on an average day.
In all the answers I had on such questions, I had to come up with an ad hoc number pulled from thin air, with no in depth analysis or supporting data. That felt unsatisfying.
I wanted something to point at that provided the reasoning behind why I assume 3 rounds (or 5, or whatever), without having to write a novel each time.
@ThomasMarkov Plus the output becomes of questionable use: if we average these together, what do I do with that? The average still has no use for the person designing characters for 7 encounters or 100 encounters, because they're designing characters for that number of encounters.
@GroodytheHobgoblin Nobody's playing the statistically average game of D&D. That game is locked in a hermetically sealed vault in Geneva and only taken out once a month to let the statistically average players stretch and eat.
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In reality, if you're designing for a certain assumption, you'll need to elaborate on that regardless, and more pragmatically it's better to pick a target and express the bounds ("this doesn't work if you've got more than N combats per day") so that people can measure its relevance to them.
I still think the closure reason is a bit myopic, because (while I have a single data point in my personal experience answer on the LMoP section), the bulk of the data provided is calculated from game rules, or from survey results, and that is the pooled experinence of 82 people. Using a sample's statistics to estimate the actual value of something is I think as far from opinion as you actually can get.
I'm looking for something practical. And for me the answer that is based on the experience of 80 people is way beyond good enought to help me decide how to build my character.
I also think the challenge to how applicable and useful this is is contrieved. The adventures that are being put out by WotC do not differ that much in challnege per level. The median table is actually a pretty normal table, and I'd love to see your hypthetical table with 100 encounters per day. It just does not happne.
There's nothing wrong with anecdotes. @ThomasMarkov referred to the Good Subjective/Bad Subjective article has the following: "4. Great subjective questions invite sharing experiences over opinions. Certainly experiences inform opinions, but the best subjective questions unabashedly and unashamedly prioritize sharing actual experiences over random opinions. It’s more useful to share with us what you’ve done than what you think."
Of course you cannot prepare for each indifvidual fight or situation. But to compare differnet builds, you need to assume something. And I rather would assume something that has a high likelihood to be close to the experience, than something arbitrary.
Is your argument that averaging makes no sense, because in game things are not average? Then you need to delete approximatly 1022 opimization questions, beause by neccesity, they all must work with averages.
I am typing out an explanation, but if you're willing to strawman my position so hard that you'd pretend I'm arguing that using an average in any capacity for any purpose is unacceptable, then that's a pretty low degree of credibility you're willing to afford me in this discussion, and I'm not willing to continue to engage with you under those conditions.
"Average" might be the wrong word. The implicit problem that @GroodytheHobgoblin 's question is getting at is this: The DMG suggests it has a design philosophy of 6-8 encounters per adventuring day, yet it seems from published modules and actual gameplay that modules and campaigns are not actually playing 6-8 encounters per day. What is a typical number? You may not be interested in the answer, but it's not true that the answer is "opinion-based" which is the reason the question was closed.
Please dial back your appeals to fallacies. If you're genuinely interested in my position, please ask about it rather than strawman me to such a degree.
I would be curious if some of the users who voted to close could offer a version of this question that could survive. The question clearly has a factual answer, the problem is whether we have access to the necessary information. The Good Subjective article specifically allows discussions from experience. Those experiences may not show the answer, but could still provide evidence to support a reasonable answer.
So how could the question be worded to elicit those evidence-based answers?
@GroodytheHobgoblin Well that exact question phrased that way would just be a survey with all answers equally valid and not be valid for our site. Though, that's not the question you asked. Instead you essentially asked other people to ask that question and route along the averages they got. But that is still poor analytics which generates a garbage-in garbage-out situation. The closest close reason for aggregating arbitrary user data is the one I chose.
@LeeHachadoorian There is no version of this question that will survive because the question is inherently broken.
@doppelgreener I can see the point of the question itself being a survey of sorts, asking each answer about their experinece. I understand that will not work here, as the policies do consider such a request opinon based where any answer is equally valid, and will reword that part.
@doppelgreener What I struggle with is why askign for aggregate statistics would count as opinion based. How would you ask a statistics based question?
I understand the structure of the site does not support surveys, but why would that invalidate survey from other sites that do not have such a restriction?
So, *this right here* is the issue. You say that you'd prefer to assume something close to experience, and not something arbitrary. The issue is, what's actually concrete and what's arbitrary? Suppose there's a bunch of tables in a hall all running games. Some see 2 encounters a day, some 4, some 8, some 12, some a back-breaking 16. Let's say there's equal numbers for each, even. You want to know if a character will perform well, or compare two builds' performance, and their performance depends on the encounters per day.
Some incorrect assumptions have gone into what averaging the results out mean in this circumstance I describe, and incorrect assumptions have come out in turn.
If you want to compare in a way that's context dependent, you need to determine the context and then compare in that context. Your comparison results work for that context only. Because you averaged them for other contexts does not mean they apply to other contexts.
@doppelgreener If you knew the table and how many encounters it will have, you can build for that table, agreed. But what do you do when you do not know which table you will end up with? Or if you do not know the numbers these tables are running, but still have to make a build?
It's like trying to find Gorilla vs Shark, based on an environment with the statistically average mixture of trees and water (a swamp maybe?).
@GroodytheHobgoblin Well, you don't know the answer. Again, running calculations for an average doesn't mean you have a sound answer. If you didn't know the numbers of tables at that hall, you've still picked out a build that's only sound for some of the tables.
You have to pick a context to calculate for.
And picking the average context of all numbers is ... just a very roundabout way to pick a context, you'd have to justify why that's valid.
What justification does calculating against the average have in this hall?
In most optimization questions, you do not have that context, though. Typcial example "I want a barbarian optimized for damage output, level 1-12, we are playing ravenloft". Short of tabulating all the encounters in Curse of Strahd, as I did in the answer for Phandelver, how do you decide what to build?
@GroodytheHobgoblin I frequently see comments asking for clarification about whether they're optimising for burst damage in just one or two encounters, or more damage spread more evenly over more encounters, for the exact reason that this becomes really important.
Yes, and that is all good, and often there are a list of constraints like "17 level Fighter, max damage in one round, assume no prep" and so on, they all help.
Advising someone based on the average just means they're prepared for the specifically average case. It doesn't prepare them for other cases, not necessarily even their own case. The encounters/day information is something you need to understand for their context to answer their context.
Back to the example you made: In the hall, I think you could ask the table for the numbers, and if they know, you optimize for it. But if they do not know? Then you can either guess a table and encounter number, and hope you are right and build for that, or go with the average. Which one will be more successful?
The barbarian, for example was a real case. What build will be most likely to be useful -- the one based on averages from lots of play and campaigns, or one where I just make a guess at the encounters in curse of strahd, becaue neither the asker nor I know?
I think the point is that you often have to make decsions with incomplete information, and in that case, is there a better strategy than using the most likely outcome?
If I pick 8 because it's the average, I may not be able to keep up and contribute in any other table due to not being bursty enough or not being long-lasting enough. You've picked a result valid for 8, not for other results. We both had a 1 in 5 chance of a good result.
@GroodytheHobgoblin Luckily we are not in my theoretical game hall having to pick a table. You need to ask for clarification, or specify the assumptions you're making: "This works for 4 encounters/day, but at 8 encounters/day you need this other tactic." Asking or doing this involves actually nailing down specific context and working within that.
People have context to offer. It seems like your averages question is trying to skip that part and arbitrarily target an average, which is a questionable and unjustified decision. You need the context to know if that average even applies to them, so we're still back at "ask for context."
Yes, in that concrete case, the querant said they do not know anyting about Ravenloft, and do not want to know either. So, in writing an answer, I of course can explain how it will be better or worse depending on how things can be different; but I still have to decide on something to base it on. There is a lot of intricate calculation to compare damag builds.
@GroodytheHobgoblin That makes "optimise damage for ravenloft" with no knowledge of how they plan to play or how the GM plans to run it an under-specified question.
It's an invalid question, essentially. It doesn't make much sense asked without this context.
So would you close their question, because lack of detail? I feel that is the point... something useful can still be provided, even if it is not perfect.
OK, I see. Back to the start: my question was closed to be opinion based. We discussed now for quite some time how valuable or not averages are (and I guess, differn on that), but why does using averages make the question opinon based?
That is—instead of doing something unsound and arbitrary based on arbitrary user feedback, it's asking to outsource that to other people, who will provide something unsound and arbitrary based on user feedback.
None of them are more or less valid and worse, all of them are invalid because the averaging itself makes no sense to ask for.
But why is a statisitcal survey of typical D&D play garbage in? I do not understand that. How is this differnt from, say a statsistical survey of consumer spending that the govenrmetn does, other than in scope?
This is not a statistical survey of consumer spending. A statistical survey of consumer spending has actual reasons to use averages and totals as a thing that makes sense. We, here, are not justified in using averages as a thing that makes sense.
And that's where I wrote that it doesn't make sense here.
@GroodytheHobgoblin Thank you for responding well to that and asking me honest questions.
Ultimately, what this comes down to is asking a question that is a problem for you. Your problem is how to optimize for your games. You can't ask a general question about how to optimize for everyone - it's just not possible. Especially in our format here.
What works best here is to tell us what your encounters/day is like and then we can help you find an optimization that works in that environment.
Trying to create a general environment that is a catch-all for everyone isn't really how we operate, nor is it going to be actually helpful for anyone (except for those in play in that particularly chosen environment that has been deemed 'average'.)
i understand you want to ask something that will be helpful to as many people as possible - but you really should just ask the question that you need answered. If others find it helpful, that's awesome.
But if you try and make it all about others, then you're really not helping yourself or the site.
From what I can tell, the problem you are trying to solve is "I want an idea of how many encounters per day I can expect when I am building a character, because different builds perform differently with different numbers of encounters per day".
That's your problem, X.
You have asked a question about what you think a good solution Y is, "what's the average encounters per day?", because you think knowing that will equip you to better build your characters.
Classic XY problem.
Doppel has done a great job of explaining why even having a correct answer to Y leaves you no better equipped for solving X than when you started.
Instead, an on topic question might be something like "Some character builds are really powerful with only a few encounters per day, but taper off quickly as their resources are depleted. I want to take this into account during character creation, so how can I know how many encounters to expect on average at a given table?"
This is the sort of question where experience based answers are what we are after. Because it is experience solving your actual problem, not experience with a mostly unhelpful solution you thought of.
@LeeHachadoorian we have had multiple similar questions about encounters per adv day before, and I was tempted to suggest that this was a dupe of one from about 4 years ago ... but I didn't. Didn't feel like digging through so many q and a
Discussion between Groody the Hobgobl…
Discussion between Groody the Hobgobl…