Combat length

[MerricB]

Our 16th level 4E party played through three combats last night. All took a little under an hour.

Combat 1: 8 rounds (40 minutes) level 17

PCs: Warlock 16, Wizard 16, Rogue 15, Fighter 15
vs
Elite Controller 16, Soldier 18, Soldier 18
All PCs out of harm's way except for the Fighter, who took the brunt of the attacks

Combat 2: 11 rounds (60 minutes) level 17

PCs: Warlock 16, Wizard 16, Rogue 15, Fighter 15, Cleric 16
vs
Soldier 18, Soldier 18, Lurker 17, Lurker 17, Minion 18, Minion 18
Fighter dying after 1st round of combat (bodaks!), then revived

Combat 3: 10 rounds (50 minutes) level 18

PCs: Warlock 16, Wizard 16, Rogue 15, Fighter 15, Cleric 16
vs
Brute 18, Brute 18, Brute 18, Elite Controller 18
Cleric knocked unconscious and within 1 round of death from ongoing damage before saved by Wizard

All battles played without minis; most players had cards for their powers.

I thought these data points might be interesting - if you've got such results for *any* edition of D&D, please post them!

Cheers!

 

[Alan Shutko]

We run about 1.5 hrs for 5 rounds, with minis.

 

[Hussar]

Five minute rounds. That's a good clip.

In our last 3.5 edition game over OpenRPG and then Maptools, we averaged about 5-10 minute rounds, although the campaign ended at about 10th level. We always used minis and maps, because it's a virtual tabletop and minis and maps can be 100% prepared beforehand.

With macros for actions, it meant that it was simply a case of point and click most of the time. Unfortunately, there are STILL players who cannot grasp the concept of macros and we wind up spending about 50% of combat time on 1 or maybe 2 players. Sigh.

My first 4e combat took 3 hours. Again, because of player issues (not bothering to prep any macros and barely reading the rules for their character) and some connectivity issues as well.

Did I mention that wasting time in combat is one of my HUGEST pet peeves.

 

[MerricB]

Two more combats....

Combat #1: 7 rounds, 50 minutes

five Level 16 PCs
vs.
Level 16 Blaster Trap
Level 16 Blaster Trap
Level 18 Controller
Level 20 Elite Brute
Level 15 Artillery

Combat #2: 15 rounds, 70 minutes

five level 16 PCs
vs.
Level 21 Brute
Level 21 Brute
Level 17 Elite Soldier
Level 19 Controller

This was interesting - first half of the combat was just against the brutes, thanks to defensive terrain, then second half vs soldier & controller so went by pretty fast.

Cheers!

 

[bagger245]

Can you tell how you went about without minis? How did you deal with positioning, especially area effects.

 

[Dausuul]

My group plays with minis, but we go at about the same rate - when I'm planning adventures, I go by the guideline that one fight = one hour.

4E does set-piece battles very well but isn't really geared for the quick skirmish. It's kind of the opposite of previous editions, which (IME) were very good at short battles that depleted the PCs' resources bit by bit, but had trouble producing satisfying big battles without a lot of DM intervention.

If I had to go with one, I'd pick 4E, since I tend to favor the set-piece battle over the ablative approach, but I find myself missing the skirmish option. The last session I ran, I wanted to do an old-school dungeon crawl where the PCs faced a series of smallish fights that wore them down before facing the grand finale... but after the first "smallish fight," I realized the session was going to bog down something fierce if I went that route, so I ditched most of the planned encounters. We still didn't get to do the finale, either.

I did try one thing which I thought was fairly successful, which was the "sentry" scenario; a handful of minions sitting near a gong, which they can ring to sound the alarm and raise hell. The PCs' goal is to take out all of the minions before any of them gets a chance to bang the gong. It made a nice fast-paced fight scene, but you can only do that so many times in an adventure.

I'm now considering creating a new monster category, the "ambusher" (sort of a lurker variant) which would fulfill that skirmish-role. The ambusher would have extremely low hit points and poor defenses, a medium-strength offense, and a massive opening salvo that rocks the PCs back on their heels. That way the monsters can be fairly sure of getting in some good licks, but the PCs then dispose of them quickly.

 

[MerricB]

Can you tell how you went about without minis? How did you deal with positioning, especially area effects.

To some extent, I have a pretty good idea of where everyone is on the battlefield anyway. (It's like playing blindfolded chess, except you have fewer pieces to work with).

However, I also use relative or one-dimensional positioning. So, the fighters are adjacent to the monsters, the archer is 8 squares away. At the beginning of the combat, they might be 20 squares away from each other, so if the monsters move forward 8 they're now 12 squares away, the dwarf moves forward 5 and is 7 squares away, whilst the human paladin charges twelve squares and is now adjacent.

Apart from that, we use narrative techniques to describe what is going on. If there's a pit about then the fighter with Tide of Iron is likely to be able to use that ability to push a PC into a pit.

There are times when I show the players a map of the battlefield to get it in their minds.

Our next encounter - the climactic one of P2 - will use a battlemat and minis because it is complex enough and deserves one.

Cheers!

 

[JohnSnow]

Well, when we were first playing 4e, our combats ran awfully slow. So, the first few combats in Keep on the Shadowfell took us up to an hour and a half (or more). We didn't know the rules and spent a fair amount of that time looking stuff up.

Now that we're familiar with the system (2nd-level), my group of 5 players manages a single encounter in about 30-40 minutes. Most of that is just them being comfortable with their powers and me being comfortable with the rules.

Oh, one 4e specific thing: the phrase "I tackle it" no longer fills me with horrifying dread. Hooray for comprehensible grappling rules.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Last combat in 4e took a bit over two hours. But it was kind of two encounters, so we'll call it an hour apiece.

But it was a fun combat, so I didn't really care.

 

[catsclaw227]

We're still not getting under 1hr for most combats. Occasionally, we can get one done in 30min, but those are usually when the PCs just kick major butt (hitting lots, rolling high damage, crits, APs, etc) the enemies that have any kind of intelligence or instinct would run away if half their numbers and/or the leader is dead in 2 rounds.

But, we generally take a long time. My players like to mull a bit, they roll slowly and dramatically, always roll to hit and damage separately (I would prefer they roll their damage dice with their attack dice if its only one opponent), but they have fun doing it. When it starts to feel draggy, I will:

a) drop the monster HP down and damage up and make it more swingy the rest of the encounter, or
b) have the monsters start to take morale checks to surrender or run.

I have two players that consistently have hideous streaks of poor to-hit rolling. Its funny and sad at the same time...