Quote Originally Posted by Trask View Post
If D&D, as many as possible. That's only slightly sarcasm. In D&D I think oftentimes quantity > quality when it comes to combat, because generally combat means progress. If we're our Quest is to rescue Princess Buttercup and we have...

A random encounter with dryads in the wilderness
Fight worg mounted goblins at the entrance
Sleepy/dumb ogres guarding a treasure room
A rival adventuring party who wants to take the princess near the underground sea cave
A giant octopus while trying to take the makeshift raft out to surf with the princess

That is a lot more fun to me than one huge fight where we

Walk into the cave and fight a huge epic encounter 1 big guy with a mountain of HP, legendary actions, special reactions, lair actions, summoning minions with a bonus action, a transformation once he reaches 20% health....and then grab the princess. And it takes an hour and a half.

Maybe I'm like this because in my experience as a player, 90% of the time combat ends in PC victory. So what's the point of a big "interesting" battle? I'm not saying it doesn't have its place in the DM's repertoire, but I'd rather have 3 different fights in dramatic locales against different NPCs in each case than just 1. When a D&D session ends, I get retroactive feelings of fun and excitement when I can look back and say "Wow, we did a lot today!".

Maybe I just don't appreciate tactics as much as some others, but to me a long combat in D&D is akin to getting flavor fatigue. I just want to eat something else man! I'm tired of eating this, I want to eat something else already. Its part of the reason why as a DM I generally have no problem whatsoever with PC's getting lucky and killing someone faster than I expected them to.
That's a reasonable stance to take. The only thing I would add is that the DM is a also a player and a lot of DMs will create encounters of the type they like to run.

I know when I DM I like challenging fights. I like abilities on enemies that I feel will be memorable - I certainly think this motivation would lead me to create the kind of encounter you don't like.