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Decided to get ender 3 pro for printing some terrain for my aos games(some as in hoping to add at least 1 board of terrain for each tournament I run). Playing around with cura the printing times sure seems long. 18h seems to be good ballpark with 25-36h ones being out there O_o Read also there's off chance of fire so don't feel like leaving printer unattended but...25h in same place is not feasible even if I dare to leave it on for sleeping.

So I see two options: Pause the print and use software to slice the pieces up to multiple smaller pieces I could do in like 5h. Slicing is not something I know how to do so would prefer pause but can you do it? I'm getting contradictory information on that. Googling it up says yes. Choose pause print, shut printer off, resume later. But I was also told live that with plate cooling the model might not stay in same place ruining the print...

...is that really a worry? Can it be prevented with something? Or should I start learning how to splice the STL's into 4-5 pieces?

Yes, pausing is possible. But it will give you visible marks on the first few layers after resuming. The print might also not stick to the plate, so you will need some adhesive to keep it there.

But I don't understand why you would pause your print. 48h prints are pretty normal for terrain pieces, longest one I had was a massive display base that took 100h.

The chance of fire is... not really there if you follow normal safety precautions like not storing your IPA or other flammable stuff next to a machine that gets hot.
Ender-3 also had a problem 2 years or so ago with faulty connections (crimped instead of soldered) between the power supply and the heated build plate, if that's what you're refering to?
It could get so hot that it melted or even catch fire. This was resolved though by them switching contractors and is easily checked touching the connections while printing. They should be cool.
It's also an easy fix with a solder iron and a new connection.

Pausing the print depends on your printer's capabilities. How it restarts the print is also down to the printer, and the material being used.

Try chopping a print down to two parts, and see if it can be rejoined well using the settings you usually use. Chopping a print also lets you print off faulty parts, instead of scrapping the whole print.

Yes, I have had nearly 72 hour prints and just let it go, checking periodically that there are no plugs or snags, which certainly happen 3/4 into a long print and the whole thing is ruined.

I find on my Ender 3 Pro pausing the print is not as effective as (horror!) simply unplugging the machine. It will allow you to resume right where you left off with no real visible issue. I have had to do this when I had to leave for an extended time and was not comfortable letting the print run unobserved.

However, I will say on some really long print runs where I did have a failure I was able to slice the stl at the point of failure (3D Builder is superb for this) and run that separately and just glue them together. This has saved quite a few large, long prints that I would have had to trash and start over.